Photo: Osprey anchored in Frederick Sound, Seymour Inlet.

Steep cliffs towered above us as we wound our way to the head of Frederick Sound in Seymour Inlet. The chart showed the Sound narrowing near its head, turning right, then left, before ending in a protected basin. I stood on the bow watching as we entered. What would we find? A beautiful anchorage? A noisy industrial logging camp? I knew we wouldn't find pristine wilderness. In Cruising the Secret Coast: Unexplored Anchorages on British Columbia's Inside Passage, Jennifer and James Hamilton had reported seeing a large logging camp here. But that would have been sometime before 2008. We were hoping to find only the abandoned site of a former industrial logging camp, not pristine but still beautiful.

And that's what we found. A steep almost bare rock dome on one side, forested hills on another and at the basin's head a green marsh. To the side of the marsh sat a large pile of slash and a row of abandoned fuel barrels. A small floating dock led to a logging road that snaked up the creek bed and disappeared around the corner.

Cruising in Seymour Belize Inlets means sharing the waters with logging camps. And that means being flexible. Logging camps come and go, parking in one spot for a few years, then moving on. No guide book can keep up with their movements. The best thing to do is be prepared to either share an anchorage, if there is room, or move on.

In this case we were lucky. We had a beautiful anchorage to ourselves. We even had a dock to land the dinghy on and a road to walk on.