Cruising The Channel
21 July 2013 | Gore Bay
Our trip had to include a passage through Little Current with the only bridge on our cruise. It only opens on the hour so if you time it wrong...We waited almost a full hour for the bridge. Darn when you arrive at just the wrong time. Lots of loop-de-loops spending time.
Heywood Island and Browning Cove was our destination. We'd heard good things about this harbor so why not take a shot.
Wow!! A Beach!! Into the dinghy and ashore we went. Warm water and Kody loved it. Perfect for the dog. Two to three feet of water out 100 feet. We played, we enjoyed. We also took a long dinghy ride exploring all the nooks and bays. Alice saw a water snake, big deal.
The LaCloche Mountains were not far and there was a fiord called Baie Fine with a special treat at the end called the Pool. This turned out to be a four mile trip into the mountains via this fiord. A little tricky at first, you know white knuckles going less than 1 knot, depth 8.1, 8.0, 7.9, 7.5 and then we were through the tricky spot. We anchored at the head of the fiord and dinghied the rest of the way to the Pool. The entrance to the passage to the Pool was a bit shallow and I guess I'm a little chicken and don't really want to do any bump and find type navigating especially around granite rocks. So we anchored and then took the dinghy.
The Pool is really neat, just the dead end of this rather long cut in the mountains. We beached the dinghy and with Kody free to run we started up the trail to Lake Topaz. About a half hour up hill. No big deal for Kody but Alice and I were pleased when the lake appeared.
Warm, OMG, Clear, unbelievable, no growth on the rocks and yes even Alice was in and swimming. Bob, Alice and Kody enjoying this small piece of heaven on earth.
Later that evening back aboard LB another sail boat arrived and anchored near us. Alright another boat! We dinghied over to say high and met them on one of the granite rocks. People from Israel and Russia cruising in Canada, neat. They wanted to find Crater Lake and had been looking along the shore for the trail to no avail. It turns out Crater Lake is now Topaz Lake and to get there they had to travel the same way we had just finished. They were disappointed that their small charter outboard wouldn't make the trip up and back so we offered them some extra gasoline to do the trip. They were so appreciative of our offer, lots of thank yous and good will, Americans are friendly and we are appreciated, at least in this small corner of the world. They had to start back unfortunately and had to decline our offer. Can you go figure. Israelis and Russians together on a small charter sail boat. Maybe there is hope.
This was as far east as we've been. We turned west back through Little Current and off to Bell Cove. Okay, so this was not one of those must visit again type harbors, but you can't win them all right? 40 feet of water to anchor, no beach and not much to explore, bah humbug.