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| Puget Sound to Victoria, B.C.
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February 12, 2007
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Hi,
I have your 2006 Waggoner Cruising Guide and I love it! I'm waiting for the 2007 guide to hit the stores (I have yet to find it in stock). I take it with us every time we cruise the Sound.
My only complaint with the books is that all of the cruises are based on running a 40' + boat. I own a 30' express cruiser (with full camper canvas) but am unsure if my boat is capable of taking some of the cruises. I know for instance that I couldn't/wouldn't want to take the Inside Passage clear up to Ketchikan, but can I safely make it from Tacoma to Victoria? Which is the best route? I was thinking of avoiding the sometimes rough water of Admiralty Inlet and going the back way through the Swinomish Channel through the San Juan' and then down to Victoria. Or, in your trusted opinion (weather always in my considerations - either route) could I go from Tacoma to Port Townsend and straight across the strait?
My boat is 30' x 9' 9", twin gas 4.3 liter I/O's, and weighs in at about 8,800 lbs. We have a GPS, auto-pilot, etc. I have about 25 years of experience with this and smaller boats, but not much long range cruising (just a couple of overnighters, to be truthful). Any advice you could give would be appreciated (and getting a bigger boat is not considered "good advice").
Thanks,
Randy Lyons
South Prairie, WA
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Response
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Hi, Randy,
A couple things before answering your questions.
First, the 2007 Waggoner came out in mid-November, and has been on shelves since then. Where do you shop? Maybe we should contact that store. As an alternative, you could order your 2007 copy direct from our www.waggonerguide.com Web site.
Second, believe me, the Waggoner is not written only for boats 40 feet and larger. Our original research was from a Tollycraft 26 powerboat. We covered all of Puget Sound and the Inside Passage to Prince Rupert and around Vancouver Island in that boat, and would do it again. We see boats of all sizes cruising happily and safely all the way up the Inside Passage.
Some of our fondest cruising memories include our three-week vacation to Desolation Sound aboard our Thunderbird 26 sailboat, a boat with no headroom and no head, either. We used a bucket. The refrigerator was a Coleman ice chest we moved between the cockpit and the cabin, and cooking was on a 2-burner alcohol stove. We weren’t kids – we were in our late 40s.
So, from the way you describe it, I think your boat could go anywhere you want, as long as you mind the weather and watch the currents. For a Tacoma to Victoria cruise, my preference would be to go up Puget Sound and Admiralty Inlet. If Admiralty Inlet appeared to be rough I would run west from Point No Point and go through Port Townsend Canal and Port Townsend Bay. Time of day and weather would dictate whether I overnighted in Port Townsend or pressed on to Victoria.
Decisions need to be made on the fly, with alternatives always in mind. On one trip around Vancouver Island, we departed Bamfield, in Barkley Sound, at 0600, not knowing if we would put in at Port Renfrew, Port Angeles, or Port Townsend. The strait was calm, so it looked like we would make Port Townsend. When we got to Port Townsend, it looked so good we pressed on, arriving in Winslow (across Puget Sound from Seattle) at 1815 – just over 12 hours from Barkley Sound in near-calm conditions.
Alternatively, on a trip from Puget Sound to the San Juan Islands, we found big seas in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and were forced to run back south and around Whidbey Island. By the time we popped out of Deception Pass the clouds and wind had passed, and the strait was calm. We could have saved 60 gallons of fuel by waiting in Port Townsend, but it didn’t look that way at the time.
I guess you could go through Swinomish Channel and the San Juan Islands, but remember that Guemes Channel across the north side of Anacortes can be hellish on an ebb tide, as can Rosario Strait between Guemes Channel and Thatcher Pass. The problem is that the ebb current in Guemes Channel crashes into the ebb pouring out of Bellingham Channel, setting up a fierce tide-rip. When this rip meets the ebb in Rosario Strait, it gets worse. If a fresh southerly wind is blowing, oh, boy. You don’t want to be there.
Haro Strait, between the San Juan Islands and Vancouver Island, can be no picnic, either, especially on an ebb.
Conversely, the entire trip, regardless route, can be a piece of cake. It all depends on wind and currents. That’s why I would choose Port Townsend as an overnighting point, unless you find conditions favoring a run all the way to Victoria.
We call this entire exercise “working the problem,” and it’s part of the fun of cruising. The same patch of water can be benign one day and scary another day, all depending on weather and currents. There’s no single answer. There’s just the best answer at the moment, based on your assessment of the variables.
Regards,
Bob Hale
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