So I got a little bored this afternoon & decided that the weather wasn’t too awful. I don’t like making the run across to Howe Sound from Cow Bay in one hop anyway – its a long day, particularly when I’m alone. But I think I need my 1st Mate back because she keeps me from having adventures.
I checked the Dreamspeaker guides as well as Active Captain and found what looked like a nice little marine park really close to Porlier Pass. Wallace Marine Park is the name of the place and my destination was Connover Cove. I thought that would be ideal because the tides are crappy timing right now so being next door to the pass would make hitting it at the right time really easy, thereby avoiding the adventure I went on the last time I went to Vancouver alone. Dreamspeaker made it sound like the entrance here was a little tight but once I got inside it would get deeper and I’d be OK. I shouldn’t have come at as low a tide as I did – it was about 3.5 feet when I came in and headed for 1.9 feet. But I crept in with the depth alarm screeching at me and likely had at least close to a foot under the keel all the time. Then it didn’t really get any deeper. OK, maybe a foot or even two feet deeper but by the time I got over to the float it was every bit as shallow as the entrance.
That picture is the depth finder taken after I got tied up to the float. Just for reference we draw 4-1/2 feet. Now that’s a little deceptive because the transducer isn’t right at the waterline and we only need about 3.4 feet below the transducer but still, its pretty damn tight. Tight enough that when I realized there was still another foot for the tide to drop I got out a piece of string and a weight to check just exactly how much room I really had. It turned out that I had lots of room – I didn’t measure it exactly but it was above my head so probably 7 feet. Take away the extra 1.5 feet that the tide dropped after I got tied up and I had 24 whole inches to spare at low tide.
In my defence the alternative to tying up here was going another hour up the coast and anchoring in an unfamiliar anchorage or going two hours further and anchoring in Pirates Cove where we already know the holding is crap. I don’t like anchoring alone so it was easy to convince myself that if I could get in here I’d be OK. And like I said, neither Dreamspeaker nor Active Captain did a very full disclosure on how tight it really is in here. Pretty though – really really pretty.
That’s my view out the harbour entrance tonight. I’ll go out tomorrow morning on a high tide and have 10 or 12 feet to spare. No worries.
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