Mothership Meanderings: Sidetrips from Orca Pass

August-September 2003

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.
To download a pdf copy of the magazine click here: > DOWNLOAD

by Alan Wilson

The channel-side grasses in the Cowichan River estuary. Laurie MacBride photo.

This June, like last year, we spent a long weekend of hard labour in the boatyard and then headed out for a few days holiday on the water. That’s the carrot that keeps us going in the hot sun, the dust, the sweat, the noise.

Pure paddlers are spared this annul ritual. No scraping and painting. Just pop your hull in the water and go. But for the many boaters who are now adding kayaks to their boats—commercially or privately, like us—the annual haul out is unavoidable.

The carrot, as I say, is time out on the water. And June has some definite advantages. The days are long and you soon discover you’re one of the few rather than one of the many.

The weather was certainly fine as we headed south towards Orca Pass, surging along through the waves, enjoying the sprightliness of the boat with its clean bottom.

Genoa Bay on Vancouver Island’s eastern shore was our first stop, just north of the Orca Pass area. It’s a quiet spot with a small marina which entertains a number of float homes and businesses including a floating art gallery, store (with kayak rentals) and a good shore side restaurant. Perched above on the bluff is Captain Morgans’ B&B where breakfast can be arranged separately by boaters. A couple of years ago we enjoyed a lovely breakfast on their broad deck high above the bay.

This time, after a lengthy sleep-in and a late breakfast of our own devising, we launched for a paddle into the estuary of the nearby Cowichan River.

Rounding the rocky mouth of Genoa Bay, we headed west into broad Cowichan Bay, making toward the estuary. On our right was Mt. Tzuhalem, an impressive ridge 536 meters high (over 1700 feet). Ahead of us were a number of ocean-going freighters at the docks loading lumber for overseas, and old pilings in the shallows.

Pin-pointing entries to rivers can be challenging and this was no exception. You find yourself in very shallow water and peer ahead at the low-lying land, trying to discern the river mouth. Your charts are next to useless, indicating a broad green tidal swath and ‘suggested’ channels subject to ever changing ebbs and flows. It can be frustrating as you try first this channel, then that one, to no avail. And if you don’t time things carefully you can find yourself stuck in the mud of a retreating tide.

In entering a river mouth, you have to consider changing tide heights and associated currents, river current which varies with the degree of runoff, plus wind. Your surroundings are constantly changing as tides run quickly up and down the shallows, adding to the navigational confusion.

Using my binoculars, I finally spied an area of darker water and some low-cut mud banks, indicating a main channel, and we paddled in with the rising tide and bonus breeze at our backs.

The tide and wind nicely cancelled the river current as we followed the twists and bends ahead, with alternating sandbars and cutbanks. Around us the marsh grasses waved and danced, and an abundance of birds swooped and called.

We pulled ashore on a broad, curving sand bar for a snack, staring up at Mt. Tzuhalem, watching a family of mergansers and checking out the vegetation around us.

After a break, we relaunched and paddled further upstream,where the current became stronger. Rounding a bend, we came to a confluence of channels and a broad pool with rocky ledges and a couple of rope swings—obviously a swimming hole. Here the river current momentarily lost itself in deeper water, pausing on its push to the sea.

On a warmer day we might have been tempted to swim, but instead we probed one of the back channels which slowly narrowed to a fringed finger. The birds chirped and trilled as Laurie’s camera snapped repeatedly.

Exiting that backwater, we tried paddling on against the current of the main channel but it was soon too strong to make headway, so we gave up, let it push our bows around, and were carried back downstream.

Once out of the river, we found the wind had picked up and was now in our teeth. We had a tough slog back to Genoa Bay, keeping close to the steep shore to catch a bit of a break in the narrow ‘windshadow’ created as the onshore wind was deflected upward.

BUTCHART GARDENS

Our boat on one of the mooring buoys in Butchart’s Cove. Alan Wilson photo.

The following day we had planned to head right into Orca Pass to get some pictures for this issue. But as we began crossing the broad mouth of Saanich Inlet, Laurie started reading to me from one of our guidebooks about a cute little cove nearby with mooring buoys and a dinghy dock, owned by Butchart Gardens.

She and I must be the only two people who grew up on the coast without visiting Butchart’s, long one of the major attractions to Victoria. I didn’t need any convincing this time. That’s part of a holiday, I guess, to give in to a whim.

Butchart Gardens was founded in 1904 and has evolved over the century to become a true world class tourism destination. It’s a botanical fantasyland with twisting, immaculate paths among amazing flowering trees, shrubs, flowers—a profusion of vegetation that’s transformed the original barren limestone quarry into paradise.

The Gardens impressed us from the moment we entered. We ambled along among happy visitors from around the world, a variety of languages and laughter. If ever there was proof that plants please people, this was it. Couples from afar asked us to snap their photos in front of outrageous spilling blooms. Everyone wore a smile.

At one point, we wandered through a rock-lined passage which opened upon a stunning view from the edge of one of the former quarry’s great pits. The colourful floral contours below and the elegant fringed pools in former hollows, took our breath away.

Further on, as we crested another small rise, the land again fell away to a distant pool with a misting, shooting fountain waving huge plumes of spray in time to some distant controlling program. I realized my mouth was hanging open and shut my jaw with a self-conscious snap.

For its artistic sight lines, its multitude of species, its excellent services, we recommend Butchart Gardens highly. Visitors are welcome year round and there’s always something in bloom. For boaters (or those arriving by floatplane), the entry by water from Butchart’s Cove is hard to beat. For more info see www.ButchartGardens.com.

In the busy summer season, when the four mooring buoys in Butchart’s Cove are full, boaters can anchor in nearby Tod Inlet and take their dinghies or kayaks about a mile back to the dock in the Cove. Tod Inlet has abundant good anchorage and access to the great trails and views of Gowland-Tod Provincial Park. Nearby Brentwood Bay has a variety of community services, ferry, marina and public dock.

PREVOST ISLAND

Leaving Butchart Gardens behind, we finally entered the Orca Pass area proper, heading around the southern shore of Saltspring Island, making our way to Prevost Island where we dropped anchor in the inner bay of Annette Inlet.

Prevost is a small island but it’s BIG for paddlers and boaters due to its many commodious indentations. Boaters can anchor in James Bay, Selby Cove, Annette Inlet, Glenthorne Passage, Ellen Bay, and Diver’s Cove.

Paddlers can find excellent camping at James Bay on the northwest side, purchased by the feds and province under the Pacific Marine Heritage Legacy program. The RedIslets site off the east side of Prevost was one of the few campsites prior to James Bay becoming public. There’s good paddling in and out of the many bays on the island and around the off lying islets, including the Hawkins Islets, a recreation reserve near James Bay. We had a lovely day paddle to Hawkins Islets a few years back and enjoyed seeing lots of intertidal life there.

On this visit to Prevost, we paddled around Annette Inlet and Selby Cove very slowly one evening, enjoying the variety of shoreline, from sandstone to pebbly conglomerate, and the creatures we could see—red rock crabs, herons, eagles, harbour seals, river otters and more. I encountered a group of five otters preening one another on a derelict float at the water’s edge. I kept my distance and used my zoom while they lolled about. We also saw blooming prickly pear cactus on the shoreline, indicating a high aridity.

Unfortunately, this was all the time we had for our holiday. We didn’t try to see any orca this time—there was plenty of other life in the sea and on land. And we knew we’d be back another time to explore more of Orca Pass.

After a peaceful night alone in the snug inner bay of Annette Inlet, we headed back up Trincomali Channel towards Gabriola. Both of us were already busy pondering how we could apply some of the things we had learned at Butchart Gardens to our own garden.