As I am sitting here bobbing around on a mooring ball in Princess Louisa, every direction the tug turns is a phenomenal view. Bar none. We have 3 waterfalls cascading 500 yards from us. This definitely was worth all the effort to get here!
Generator run times are restricted to twice a day. The evening run is from 6-8 pm – I’m not clear why as I’m sure no one can hear our generator with the thundering water. **This mystery will be explained later in the post.
We got up bright and early Thursday morning. There is a gale warning out in the Strait of Georgia. I worried that the wind might funnel up the inlet. Once you start up, there are no anchorages. You have to make it or have to slog back. We got out of Pender Harbor and we said, “It doesn’t look that bad.” Famous last words. There were GIGANTIC swells pitching us to and fro. It was downright terrifying. I literally was earnestly praying out loud. We just had to go around the corner and then it was calm, peaceful and no pitching.
As a reminder, you have transit Malibu Rapids to access Princess Louisa Inlet. Our trip was slated to be roughly under 6 hours. According to the Point Atkinson tide information in Ports and Passes, we needed to add 25 minutes after high water to determine when we could go through Malibu rapids. Today that was 1:24 pm. We arrived on a flood tide, we will be leaving on an ebb.
We were roughly 2 hours away when we met up with the batch that left on the previous slack. SIXTEEN BOATS!! Wowie. Roughly that time, some rain came in and brought some pretty rough winds with it. I felt sorry for those boats that were bucking that flood with the wind. Also, they were heading down to the gale-force winds. I don’t think it is supposed to subside until the morning. Since we were going with the current and with the wind, it was a little rolly but not awful.
We arrived an hour early, so we cruised a bit up Queen’s reach to kill some time. Because of the foul weather, there was only one other sailboat (Sea Lark) that was waiting to transit the rapids. And no one waiting to come out. Nice relaxing passage for first-timers! You need to announce when you are going through the rapids because folks on the other side cannot see you, as there is a dog-leg. On the radio you say, “Securite’, Securite’, Securite’ This is motor vessel (x) transiting Malibu Rapids heading northbound into Princess Louisa Inlet. Any concerned traffic use channel 16. Motor Vessel X out.”
A boat carrying passengers (commercial) was heading out, he did not make the securite’ call. A boat coming in, following the proper procedures announced he was coming through. The passenger boat piped up and said, This is motor vessel x in the middle of the rapids, please do not come in. The other boat said it would stand by. This same passenger boat was throwing up a huge wake in a no-wake zone. Evidently the rules are not for him.
**now to clear up the mystery as to why you have to run your generator during certain hours only. We woke up this morning and over half of the falls that were cascading down the sheer cliff yesterday have dried up. The waterfall that we are parked near, while is still grand, is 1/3 of the size it was yesterday. So, when we run our generator, our neighbors will definitely hear it. It must have been all that rain yesterday and we were treated to a rare experience that not all get. It was worth donning all our rain gear yesterday!
We are going to stay one more night up here. We’ll explore the inlet in our dinghy. We head out Saturday morning. We’re going to Blind Bay and stage for a good weather window to cross the Strait of Georgia. We have reservations at Van Isle Wednesday for 4 nights so that we can do some boat maintenance. (yes, folks, it never ends!)
Talk Soon.