on our way north

May 7th - Smugglers Cove

From Vancouver, we skipped on up to Smugglers Cove for a few days while we waited out weather to go further.

This was one of our favorite spots last time around; partially because we thought we were badass after getting through the entrance (after being scared to death of the 60 ft wide break in the rocks), but partially because it's just a gorgeous spot.

Called Smugglers because it is so hard to find and people used to use it as a hiding spot to smuggle booze and Chinese laborers back in the day.

They've got a great trail there, which we checked out

But mostly we ate lots of crab - yum!

May 11th - Prideaux Haven

From Smugglers, we made it to Desolation Sound - an area smack in the middle of the backside of Vancouver Island. Turns out it's not so desolated in the middle of summer because the ocean water gets honking warm since the tide cycles don't fully exchange the water. Fortunately, we missed the crowds (and the warm water) and had only a few other boats in this gorgeous spot for the night we stayed.

We caught our first prawn - woohoo! A little more work than crab because they live at about 300-400 ft under, so we're still working on our prawn trap recovery system, but we're pretty sure it will include that new spin pole of ours (we have actually used it for sailing...once).

Turns out prawns like cat food. And crab like old smelly pot roast. Those have been the successful bait so far. It makes me wonder if we're eating the guys that would have won the Darwin awards if they were human.

They're spiky little suckers that like to flip off the deck if you don't watch them.

May 12th - Octopus Islands

Off to another spot that we visited last time, but just so gorgeous that we couldn't pass it up. This time we entered the Octopus Islands from the north instead of the east - much less pucker factor since it's not so rocky (last time there was a big ol' rock a few inches from the bottom of our keel).

There's a great hike here up to an alpine lake

It's a great spot for a few days, but we ended up there for six, waiting for a weather window to get through a particularly nasty area (Johnstone Strait). And since I saw this print on the 2nd hike, we decided to spend more time doing boat projects for most of that time:

50 16.755'N 125 13.767W