Let's talk cruising in British Columbia

[evm1024]

Originally Posted by Macblaze

Ports and Passes is just a glorified Tide/current chart. You need to buy a new one every year. I use it but I wouldn't get one until I am actually on the boat.

You do need an appropriate fishing license for crab.

Straits... stupid autocorrect

Beat me to it.

A Tidal Waters Sport Fishing Licence:

is required to fish for any species of finfish or shellfish.

[NedX]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Don't tell Torontonians that .

Sooner or later, every thread devolves into politics

I've lived in Boston, which calls itself "the Hub" (of the universe.) It can seem like the center of parochiality sometimes.

There was even a joke back in the Cold War about how the Boston Globe would announce a U.S.-U.S.S.R. military confrontation:

HUB MAN INJURED IN BLAST
Planet explodes in nuclear war

Anyhoo, I'll yank this discussion back to BC now. Does someone in the region publish a similar thing to Eldridge, the essential tide and pilot guide for navigating the U.S. East Coast?

UPDATE: While I was typing, MacBlaze answered that. Waggoners is it. Thanks, Mac

[TrentePieds]

You don't even need to buy the tables. They are on HolyMotherNet.

And as for "straits", that's the correct spelling. Auto-correct as supplied by Wazzername, insofar as it is "correct" is correct American orthography. I've never bothered to look for an English/Canadian version. When you get here, you'll be in dire straits if you can't get used to all the extra "u"s we use. But we should be able to straighten you out :-)

Coming back to the tables: Entering, say, Porlier Pass from the straits you needn't worry about the state of the tide as long as you stay mid-stream. "Stream" is right. You'll soon know the velocity of the current. I recall one passage when I passed the range light on Dionisio Point 6 times in an hour, four times going forwards and three times going backwards. That was on a low rise of tide.

A few miles away is Dodd Narrows. That's a little more exciting. It's only a short, if narrow, channel, but it has a bend in the middle so you can't see, as you enter, what is coming at you from the other end. In my early days here, before we had VHF, when I was often told off to do a crooz'n'learn in a 65 foot ketch, I liked to enter on a fair tide. The flow would be six or seven knots at the full. I'd turn the boat around and slow to four or five knots and let the current take me through, backwards, at a speed of a coupla knots over the ground. Then if someone was coming the other way, I could gun her and stay ahead of that someone. Passing in the narrows is not recommended.

Here is a clip of Dodd's. Fellow is flying a Maple Leaf for a courtesy flag. Wonder where he's from :-)? But to be fair - Deception Pass in WA is almost a good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhO2aE4paYM

Dodd's is, however, really small potatoes. Now, Sechelt Rapids (Skookumchuck Narrows, meaning "strong water" Narrows) across the straits and up the coast a piece (you get in via Agamemnon Channel), THAT takes some finesse :-):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dXcu1wsn5Q

TP

[NedX]

Originally Posted by TrentePieds

You don't even need to buy the tables. They are on HolyMotherNet.

And as for "straits", that's the correct spelling. Auto-correct as supplied by Wazzername, insofar as it is "correct" is correct American orthography. I've never bothered to look for an English/Canadian version. When you get here, you'll be in dire straits if you can't get used to all the extra "u"s we use. But we should be able to straighten you out :-)

Clever wordplay. Colour me impressed.

Here is a clip of Dodd's. Fellow is flying a Maple Leaf for a courtesy flag. Wonder where he's from :-)? But to be fair - Deception Pass in WA is almost a good.

Hang on.

Am I seeing this right? This guy comes streaming in with the current, passes the whirlpool, and gets caught in a current going the opposite direction. Now he's pinned up against that far shoreline, but he can't head back (upstream in either direction). It looks to me like anchoring is the only option. Or landing. Or buying a motorboat, as his admiral is telling him while they wallow.

It looks like the navigational version of a grim existentialist novel.

How do you get out of that?!? Why did he go in?

[Lodesman]

Originally Posted by NedX

How do you get out of that?!?

Go thru at slack.

Originally Posted by NedX

Why did he go in?

'Cause he's an idiot.

[TrentePieds]

Yes, you are seeing right. No accounting for some people's kids. But note that he's wearing an itty-bitty Maple Leaf on the backstay and an incongruously HUGE Maple Leaf on the PORT side spreader. Also, he's dragging his fenders and his foredeck is dangerously cluttered in a boat having hank-on jibs. So...

The boat is, I do believe, a Haida 26. They were excellent little cruisers half a century ago before the wildly contagious Winnebago Virus took hold. They were powered, usually, by a Johnson 9.9 in a well under the poop. I've been through Dodd's many a time in equivalent boats, but in a cockleshell like that, there is wisdom in waiting for the slack. IIR the distance through the narrows is 3/4 mile, so on the slack, in a 5 knot boat, you are through in the 1/4 hour the slack lasts.

You can buy one of these for fifteen hunnert bux these days, This guy, for all I know, might have bought the boat for a pittance in Nanaimo just north of Dodd's and gone charging off thinking he was bound for where the coconuts grow. That would be consistent with his apparent nous :-)!

TP

[Uricanejack]

Well

He is a very determined wee bugger.

He might have been trying to find a back eddy, without much success.

Can’t say I’m much smarter. I like to sail through.

[Uricanejack]

Originally Posted by TrentePieds

You don't even need to buy the tables. They are on HolyMotherNet.

And as for "straits", that's the correct spelling. Auto-correct as supplied by Wazzername, insofar as it is "correct" is correct American orthography. I've never bothered to look for an English/Canadian version. When you get here, you'll be in dire straits if you can't get used to all the extra "u"s we use. But we should be able to straighten you out :-)

Coming back to the tables: Entering, say, Porlier Pass from the straits you needn't worry about the state of the tide as long as you stay mid-stream. "Stream" is right. You'll soon know the velocity of the current. I recall one passage when I passed the range light on Dionisio Point 6 times in an hour, four times going forwards and three times going backwards. That was on a low rise of tide.

A few miles away is Dodd Narrows. That's a little more exciting. It's only a short, if narrow, channel, but it has a bend in the middle so you can't see, as you enter, what is coming at you from the other end. In my early days here, before we had VHF, when I was often told off to do a crooz'n'learn in a 65 foot ketch, I liked to enter on a fair tide. The flow would be six or seven knots at the full. I'd turn the boat around and slow to four or five knots and let the current take me through, backwards, at a speed of a coupla knots over the ground. Then if someone was coming the other way, I could gun her and stay ahead of that someone. Passing in the narrows is not recommended.

Here is a clip of Dodd's. Fellow is flying a Maple Leaf for a courtesy flag. Wonder where he's from :-)? But to be fair - Deception Pass in WA is almost a good.

Dodd's is, however, really small potatoes. Now, Sechelt Rapids (Skookumchuck Narrows, meaning "strong water" Narrows) across the straits and up the coast a piece (you get in via Agamemnon Channel), THAT takes some finesse :-):

TP

More proof Darwin was wrong

Have you seen the one with the tug getting girded

[NedX]

Originally Posted by Uricanejack

Well

He is a very determined wee bugger.

He might have been trying to find a back eddy, without much success.

Can’t say I’m much smarter. I like to sail through.

Jack, were you in Woods Hole last year? I was wondering what this guy was up to, sailing along with it at 4.5 knots. Small craft going either direction are supposed to wait til slack. But I guess he knew what he was doing.

And 4.5 knots is child's play compared the the numbers I'm seeing in BC...

[nmuir]

Originally Posted by TrentePieds

The boat is, I do believe, a Haida 26. They were excellent little cruisers half a century ago before the wildly contagious Winnebago Virus took hold. They were powered, usually, by a Johnson 9.9 in a well under the poop.
TP

Not to say anything about the captain's ability to read current tables, but a bit of thread creep instead...

Yes a Haida. Great boats. I sailed Victoria to Hawaii in one. My brother-in-law sailed one around the world. Spoke earlier this year to someone who went Canada to New Zealand with her family on one. Amazing....

[sv_pelagia]

Originally Posted by nmuir

Not to say anything about the captain's ability to read current tables, but a bit of thread creep instead...

Yes a Haida. Great boats. I sailed Victoria to Hawaii in one. My brother-in-law sailed one around the world. Spoke earlier this year to someone who went Canada to New Zealand with her family on one. Amazing....

Around the world yes (!), but in this case no match for Dodd Narrows. Must be the human factor [emoji22]

[MicHughV]

I must say my favorite memory of BC is fishing for salmon...an art unto itself.....and orca watching....and those monster crabs...no question, BC is a truly stunning place....!!!

[Uricanejack]

Originally Posted by NedX

Jack, were you in Woods Hole last year? I was wondering what this guy was up to, sailing along with it at 4.5 knots. Small craft going either direction are supposed to wait til slack. But I guess he knew what he was doing.

And 4.5 knots is child's play compared the the numbers I'm seeing in BC...

Not me but a man after my own heart

Why? Because it’s there.

Contrary to popular advice, I often avoid slack water and prefer to ride the flow. Most of the tow boats wait for slack then they get busy.

The Ferries just run to there schedule and punch through when the get there, Some will even run Seymour when they get thier.

I prefer Polier to Active, No Ferries.

When I was a kid I used to try run up the down escalator just because it was there.
I’ve out grown that.

[sv_pelagia]

Originally Posted by Uricanejack

Not me but a man after my own heart[emoji2]

Why? Because it’s there.

Contrary to popular advice, I often avoid slack water and prefer to ride the flow. Most of the tow boats wait for slack then they get busy.

The Ferries just run to there schedule and punch through when the get there, Some will even run Seymour when they get thier.

I prefer Polier to Active, No Ferries.

When I was a kid I used to try run up the down escalator just because it was there.
I’ve out grown that.

I wouldn't go near the Devil's Hole (Dent Rapids) on a full flood. [emoji27]

In general, I do not mind a little opposing current going through Porlier. But when I do, I can't help wondering what happens if my engine quits on me. There's not THAT much room between Virago Rock, Virago Point and Race Point/Boscowitz Rock. Managed to sail through once, just to say I did (even then, I kept engine running in neutral [emoji215]).

Perhap Uricanejack is in a powerboat? On a sailboat, for most passes going at slack is safest and least nervewracking; much beyond that it's tough to motor against.

[Lodesman]

Originally Posted by Uricanejack

Contrary to popular advice, I often avoid slack water and prefer to ride the flow.

I prefer to go with the flow, too. Of course in Canada we have rule 9(k).