Sharphooks
Well-Known Member
Before I threw off the lines at the start of the trip I made a nav decision that I would avoid both Discovery Passage and Johnstone Strait.
Back in my commercial fishing days I was a crewman on a 50 foot limit seiner captained by a young Tlingit guy who thought waiting for tide changes was for the little people —-beneath his dignity. We had departed Seattle to do the Inside Passage to Alaska. Long story short, he got the boat into a set of rapids at Ripple Rock on a huge flood tide that brought the boat to a complete standstill.
When he realized he might have made a bad nav decision and tried to turn the boat and go back to the bay where all the more prudent mariners were patiently waiting for the slack tide, he came very close to rolling the boat once beam-to in the current. The added weight of a pickup truck chained to the rear deck didn’t help. To a man we all held our breath as blue water came onto the deck in the middle of the turn. To a man we knew the boat would roll.
With that memory of what big water does when squeezed through narrow rock channels by floods and ebbs, I have big respect for tidal bores. But once you make the nav decision to stay out of Johnstone Strait you’re left with the flip side of that coin---5 sets of rapids that include the Yucultas or “Ukes” as they’re called. I read up on them and got some good advice from several sources, including guys on this site. At full ebb or full flood on spring tides they are a force of nature:
I did not go through Dent rapids at this stage of the tide and these are not my photos but they’re worth including because they show why the Ukes get so much respectful attention:
The one thing I did have going for me to calm the gnawing anxiety I felt prior to getting into these rapids was 5 decades of running rivers, both with oars and outboards. I have a pretty good idea how to read water and know where to be in relation to eddy walls, overfalls, and yawning holes. And the most important thing I learned from all those years of running rivers—-it’s way easier to navigate upstream against the current rather then downstream with the current. So throwing caution to the wind, I decided to go full contrarian.
Instead of following the conventional approach of waiting for turn to ebb when heading north then waiting for turn to flood when heading south, I did the opposite and went straight into a good solid flood when heading to Port Neville And an ebb when heading back to Powell River. This proved to be a good nav decision for me and I used that contrarian approach both for the northbound and southbound portion of my trip.
Reason: It seems everybody has a 50 foot cruiser these days and they all have the same mind-set of waiting for the same tide change to make their move. And once they see the water do what they’ve been taught to look for by Ports and Passages and all the other cruising mags they read, they all make their nav move at the same time.
In a tight squeeze like Beazley Passage or Hole in the Wall, all of a sudden you have a wall of cruisers coming at you, all navigating with the current because that’s what the Waggoner Cruising guide told them to do. But to have rudder function under those circumstances they have to apply throttle so they’re coming at you going 10 - 15 knots on not what you’d call a straight predictable line. And roiling between these careening hulls were logs and wads of bull kelp And of course the monster wakes they were all throwing
But churning into a 4 -5 knot tide I could turn my boat on a dime — I found I could weave my way in and out of the cruiser zoo and their wakes and feel quite safe doing it. By the time I got to Whirlpool Rapids in Wellbore Channel there was a full-blown flood going on.
I felt like I was going through Big Horn rapids on the Thomson River back in the good old days. Yee haw!
It was amazing to feel the sudden loss of thrust when the props bit into the highly aerated water of a tidal seam or a whirpool. But the big twin Suzukis got the job done in short order and I was able to put all the rapids behind me at one long go and I finally dropped the hook at the top end of Wellbore Channel on the northern tip of Harwicke Island.
It was the first time I had a chance to relax all day. I took the dog to shore and took in the stunning scenery of the British Columbia mainland. The huge granite spikes of Three Finger and Shaker Peak, and off in the distance, Whitemantle Mountain, vainly showing off its white mantle in the warmth of an alpen-glow sunset. It was a part of BC I’d never seen and it was breath-taking to see that range from such a privileged vantage point
Coming out of Sunderland Channel the next morning I knew I had to navigate at least 15 miles of Johnstone Strait. I did this at dawn, passing both Fanny and York Island while it was still too dark to see. I had several people from this site recommend a visit to York Island for the WW II gunnery installations but I wanted to put the Johnstone Strait wind tunnel behind me while it was flat calm. Weather Canada was predicting strong wind warnings for later in the day, the meteorology term I have come to associate with any and all Johnstone Strait weather conditions .
The last “gate” of the trip, Cape Caution, was now on the horizon. But for me this was water I knew and I felt zero anxiety about the crossing, especially in the bigger boat I had beneath me this year. After refueling at Port McNeil I set a route strait across Queen Charlotte Strait for Rivers Inlet. It was a lumpy crossing and I was held to low RPM’S but two hours later I pulled into Rivers Inlet at Cranston Point. For the dog, arrival at Cranston Point meant a frolic on the white sandy beach of Open Bight.
For me it meant time to stop musing on rocks and rapids turn my attention to fish.
Back in my commercial fishing days I was a crewman on a 50 foot limit seiner captained by a young Tlingit guy who thought waiting for tide changes was for the little people —-beneath his dignity. We had departed Seattle to do the Inside Passage to Alaska. Long story short, he got the boat into a set of rapids at Ripple Rock on a huge flood tide that brought the boat to a complete standstill.
When he realized he might have made a bad nav decision and tried to turn the boat and go back to the bay where all the more prudent mariners were patiently waiting for the slack tide, he came very close to rolling the boat once beam-to in the current. The added weight of a pickup truck chained to the rear deck didn’t help. To a man we all held our breath as blue water came onto the deck in the middle of the turn. To a man we knew the boat would roll.
With that memory of what big water does when squeezed through narrow rock channels by floods and ebbs, I have big respect for tidal bores. But once you make the nav decision to stay out of Johnstone Strait you’re left with the flip side of that coin---5 sets of rapids that include the Yucultas or “Ukes” as they’re called. I read up on them and got some good advice from several sources, including guys on this site. At full ebb or full flood on spring tides they are a force of nature:
I did not go through Dent rapids at this stage of the tide and these are not my photos but they’re worth including because they show why the Ukes get so much respectful attention:
The one thing I did have going for me to calm the gnawing anxiety I felt prior to getting into these rapids was 5 decades of running rivers, both with oars and outboards. I have a pretty good idea how to read water and know where to be in relation to eddy walls, overfalls, and yawning holes. And the most important thing I learned from all those years of running rivers—-it’s way easier to navigate upstream against the current rather then downstream with the current. So throwing caution to the wind, I decided to go full contrarian.
Instead of following the conventional approach of waiting for turn to ebb when heading north then waiting for turn to flood when heading south, I did the opposite and went straight into a good solid flood when heading to Port Neville And an ebb when heading back to Powell River. This proved to be a good nav decision for me and I used that contrarian approach both for the northbound and southbound portion of my trip.
Reason: It seems everybody has a 50 foot cruiser these days and they all have the same mind-set of waiting for the same tide change to make their move. And once they see the water do what they’ve been taught to look for by Ports and Passages and all the other cruising mags they read, they all make their nav move at the same time.
In a tight squeeze like Beazley Passage or Hole in the Wall, all of a sudden you have a wall of cruisers coming at you, all navigating with the current because that’s what the Waggoner Cruising guide told them to do. But to have rudder function under those circumstances they have to apply throttle so they’re coming at you going 10 - 15 knots on not what you’d call a straight predictable line. And roiling between these careening hulls were logs and wads of bull kelp And of course the monster wakes they were all throwing
But churning into a 4 -5 knot tide I could turn my boat on a dime — I found I could weave my way in and out of the cruiser zoo and their wakes and feel quite safe doing it. By the time I got to Whirlpool Rapids in Wellbore Channel there was a full-blown flood going on.
I felt like I was going through Big Horn rapids on the Thomson River back in the good old days. Yee haw!
It was amazing to feel the sudden loss of thrust when the props bit into the highly aerated water of a tidal seam or a whirpool. But the big twin Suzukis got the job done in short order and I was able to put all the rapids behind me at one long go and I finally dropped the hook at the top end of Wellbore Channel on the northern tip of Harwicke Island.
It was the first time I had a chance to relax all day. I took the dog to shore and took in the stunning scenery of the British Columbia mainland. The huge granite spikes of Three Finger and Shaker Peak, and off in the distance, Whitemantle Mountain, vainly showing off its white mantle in the warmth of an alpen-glow sunset. It was a part of BC I’d never seen and it was breath-taking to see that range from such a privileged vantage point
Coming out of Sunderland Channel the next morning I knew I had to navigate at least 15 miles of Johnstone Strait. I did this at dawn, passing both Fanny and York Island while it was still too dark to see. I had several people from this site recommend a visit to York Island for the WW II gunnery installations but I wanted to put the Johnstone Strait wind tunnel behind me while it was flat calm. Weather Canada was predicting strong wind warnings for later in the day, the meteorology term I have come to associate with any and all Johnstone Strait weather conditions .
The last “gate” of the trip, Cape Caution, was now on the horizon. But for me this was water I knew and I felt zero anxiety about the crossing, especially in the bigger boat I had beneath me this year. After refueling at Port McNeil I set a route strait across Queen Charlotte Strait for Rivers Inlet. It was a lumpy crossing and I was held to low RPM’S but two hours later I pulled into Rivers Inlet at Cranston Point. For the dog, arrival at Cranston Point meant a frolic on the white sandy beach of Open Bight.
For me it meant time to stop musing on rocks and rapids turn my attention to fish.
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