Chart Errors, Wolves, and Bears, Oh My!

Gone are the days when boating for us was heading out for weekend on well-charted and well-populated waters, going for hikes, and looking for cool wildlife, the largest of which might be a river otter or harbor seal. When you enter into wolf and bear territory, your shore range shrinks and your awareness enlarges. And when your chart plotter shows you driving on land when clearly you are not, you learn instead to pay close attention to your eyes, your depth sounder, and your old-school lead line.

Looking for an anchorage off the beaten path in Desolation Sound, we found an anchorable nook behind little Elworthy Island – a nook we would never have seen had we not been looking for it. Our chart plotter gave us no depth readings after a certain point, but we proceeded ever so slowly, having confidence in the advice that this place would make a good anchorage. Indeed it did, and other than the rave of mosquitoes, we only shared our anchorage with one other boat – a 26-foot Bristol Channel Cutter, whose owners had sailed her to and around the South Pacific and Australia for 15 years. We swapped sea stories, and they humored our kids, gave us their book, and offered us some yummy self-caught shrimp for lunch. Thank you, Dan and Alice!

Our drive the next day up the desolate Toba Inlet lived up to its reputation. Waterfalls cascaded down sheer cliffs, peaks kissed with snow greeted us around each small bend. It is sheer and wild. There are no emergency anchorages, no places to duck in to avoid weather or wind. We saw only one other boat – going in the opposite direction.

We entered the spectacular Brem Bay in the early evening near high tide. Steep cliffs rose to our left. A logging camp was at the head of the bay at the base of the cliff, and two large log booms floated along the cliff in front of it. Past the logging camp was a large expanse of flat grassland and shrubbery, broken by a bubbling, icy river coming down from the snow-capped peaks further up the valley. Opposite the bay on the other side of Toba Inlet, more white peaks rose in a line out of the bright green water. It was stunning.

What was also stunning was how difficult it was to anchor. We drove slowly along the cliff edge to try to find the spots that a guide book said we could anchor and shore tie our stern to prevent from swinging or dragging. Our depth sounder gave us no readings that would give us shallow enough anchoring depth, and we could already practically reach out and touch the scraggly trees ashore. As we edged closer and closer to find out where the anchorable water would be, the chart plotter showed us squarely driving upon land. So much for accuracy.

We motored past the logging camp, and despite assurances that it’s okay to tie up to log booms (as long as you’re prepared to leave at 4:00 in the morning when they want to hook up to a tug and depart), we chose not to take that course of action. We maneuvered slowly to the head of the bay, eyes glued to the depth sounder. This inlet, which at its center is 1600 feet deep, took its good time getting up to even a depth that we could read. We moved slowly across the contour lines: 300, 250, 200, 150, 70, 40, 19.5, 18, 17.5 (!), and into reverse we went. With a bottom contour like that and tidal changes of 16 feet, that is an impossible anchorage.

We proceeded along the bay to check out what looked like a very small cove at the far end of the bay. The chart showed it green (land at low tide), but we read in a guide book that the authors had heard secondhand of someone who had anchored there. That’s confidence inspiring, right? But it gave us reason enough to go explore.

We drove carefully and sounded the bottom. The space between 30 and 60 feet of depth gave us enough room to feel confident that we could anchor, but it was tight, and we would not have room enough to swing. We could not shore tie because we wouldn’t be able to have enough anchor scope out to keep us secure. We decided to set a stern anchor in order to keep us parallel to land. We made ourselves secure and headed out to explore the bay by dinghy before dinner. The kids were delighted with the bay as we traversed the shallow bank looking for bears and noticing the different flora, fauna, and terrain than we see in most anchorages. The glacial and fast-moving fresh-water river made the landscape of this bay a new one to our eyes. We pushed our little dinghy as far as we could up the river, tasted the fresh cold water, and then let the river’s current push us quickly back out into the bay, resulting in delighted squeals from both children.

The kids finally tucked in to bed after a long and tiring day, Tom and I went back up top for a glass of wine. As we sat on the cabin top, there she was 55 yards away, standing on the exact spot that we had gone ashore briefly a few hours earlier: a beautiful brown grizzly bear. She stayed mere seconds, perusing the berry bush, sniffing the ground, looking up at us, and then slowly ambling away. We were glad of the pool-length of water that separated us, but we were awed to be able to be so close to such a large and extraordinary animal.

In the morning, the terrain around us showed a different world than we had entered the day before. Expansive sand flats extended out from the river’s mouth, our stern anchor was clearly visible above water sunk deeply into the mud, and more and more land emerged behind Korvessa as the tide kept dropping. But our depth sounder never showed less than 28 feet of water below our keel, and our eyes could see the deepening contour of the bottom, even as dry land seemed to creep closer and closer. The chart plotter showed us on dry land. But we smiled with the knowledge of our new secret.

A morning low-tide dinghy ride and short beach excursion ashore was a good way to end our visit at this wild, difficult, and stunning bay. As we motored back down the inlet, fishing lines trolling behind us, it felt like we were headed back into the relative security of “civilization.” But after anchoring in Von Donop Inlet (and using our lead line to confirm depth after our depth sounder began acting squirrly) and seeking out one of the trailheads, we saw the sign posted clearly at the water’s edge: “This is Wolf Country.” Sigh. We are certainly still squarely in the wilderness. Just not as deep.

We chose to emerge from the wilderness with a stop at Gorge Harbor, where the kids played in the pool for 2.5 hours, and in Campbell River for three days of purging, cleaning, provisioning, and visiting with Tom’s parents. We are on the cusp of heading further into the wilderness as we round Cape Scott and head out to the west coast of Vancouver Island. And though we are loaded down with paper charts, a chart plotter, and three guide books, we know that the most important thing we can do is to use our eyes, our heads, our logic, and our hightened awareness.

p.s. Lest you believe that all is going smoothly, I thought I would give you a short list of things that have broken already. This is, after all, a shakedown trip. The alternator, the fresh water pump, the mount for the oil filter, the lid-hinge on our icebox, and one window-hatch. There will surely be more.

More pictures from Desolation Sound: