British Columbia The Central Coast

Fly Basin, Smith Sound

Thursday, July 19, 2012TheCambrians

A boat rounding Cape Caution to the south.

Today was the day.  We left Blunden Harbour close to 7:30 this morning and motored north with a one metre westerly swell and ten knots from the southeast – right up our backside.  You couldn’t ask for better conditions.  They were so good, in fact, that we by-passed our intended anchorage, Miles Inlet, and continued up the coast, beyond Cape Caution and 51° N, entering the Pacific Ocean for the first time in four years.  It was heavenly.

It’d been a long day and we’d put more than a few miles under our keel, so we ducked into Smith Sound in the afternoon in search of our next anchorage, Fly Basin.  Like so many good anchorages around here, you enter through a rocky, narrow channel that opens up into a large, landlocked bay surrounded by old-growth cedar and looks more like a lake than the sea.  But what really stands out is how quiet it is here, even with three other boats already anchored. 

Apart from its good protection from the winds off Fitz Hugh Sound, there’s nothing special about Fly Basin (which presumably gets its name from all of the deer flies).  We’d planned to take the kayaks out to explore, but the afternoon winds filled in shortly after we dropped anchor so we had to use the dinghy instead.  We weren’t impressed.  And neither was Sally whose shoring options were few and far between.

But it’s only a quick stop along the way and we’ll be leaving in the morning with the tide to set ourselves up to enter the first of many inlets – Burke and Dean Channels.

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