Haida Gwaii Trip - Day 5

After eating breakfast in Beattie Anchorage, we decided to have a bit of an adventure and pass through the Louise Narrows, just to the SW. The Louise Narrows is a passage around the western side of Louise Island, which is...well, quite narrow (who woulda guessed?).


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Louise Narrows

In addition to being narrow, it's pretty damn shallow as well.  It has been dredged multiple times over the past 20 years in order to keep it passable.  Even so, at low tide, the middle point is around a foot deep.  So needless to say, you need to time the tide correctly in order to pass through.

We made our way down from Beattie through Carmichael Passage, which was described in the tour book as the "Saltwater Yosemite Valley."  Well, while it was pretty awesome, I don't know that I'd go that far.

Approaching Louise Narrows

We arrived at pretty close to low tide, so we had a bit of wait ahead of us.  We decided to take the dinghy up through the narrows to get a better idea of what we were up against.

Recon mission up the narrows

At points on our dinghy ride, were were in aboooout, 1 1/2 feet of water.  Also, as the tide was still ebbing, we were pushing against around 3 knots of current most of the way.  The outboard engine was not too happy with us at times. 

"Can you see the bottom?

Yes, I can STILL see the bottom."

After our recon, we made our way back to the boat to wait for the tides.  Something like 4-5 hours later, the narrows looked quite a bit different.

Before

After

It was go time, so in we went.  Nick was on the bow watching for rocks.  Alan was on the foredeck relaying messages from Nick.  The Captain was at the wheel, and I was in the wheelhouse reading off the depth sounder (and trying to take pictures).

Halfway through.  Good right and you're in about 6 inches of water

Well, even at high tide, we only had around 3 feet of water under our keel at a few points.  If you drifted 4 feet right or left out of the center of the channel, it got REALLY shallow in a hurry.

The exit!

Bit of a nerve racking experience, but definitely awesome.  I would do it again in heartbeat.  After the narrows, we decided to make a shorter day of it, as we were all pretty mentally exhausted from the passage.  So we made our way down to Cecil Cove, about 30 minutes south of the narrows and anchored for the night.

Anchored in Cecil Cove