Smuggler Cove

Nice peaceful night last night on False Creek. I forgot to mention yesterday, that our anchorage out of the main Fraser River channel, in a small open cove, wasn’t so great. Waked all night long by passing ships and tugs, that rolled and rocked the boat. So last night made for great sleep! This morning, Mike wanted to go to a museum, so he and Bill spent the first half of the day in Vancouver, before heading out 20 miles for some bays just north of Cowen Island. While I very much enjoyed the Cannery museum in Steveson, I came on this adventure for nature and the scenery. So I split from Bill and Mike this morning, and came 40 miles to Smugglers Cove. Not to worry, the three of us will join up again tomorrow, so I’ll get some down time tomorrow to explore the cove and some of the trails around the marine park here. After I pulled anchor, I noticed Mike was having trouble getting his anchor up. He does not have an anchor windless, so got his workout this morning. He was able to finally get the anchor up beside the boat and saw that it had snagged a 1” diameter steel cable. Cable was probably buried in mud. He was able to get his anchor freed from the cable, and let the cable drop back down. So any fellow boaters visiting False Creek, beware of the bottom if you anchor at the very end in the corner near Science World! The ride in the Strait of Georgia was pretty rough today. First hour was pretty good leaving False Creek. The next three or four hours, in 1 ½ to 2 foot choppy seas. Then the last two hours were relatively smoother, with just some light chop (waves less than a foot.) This is a beautiful cove with several basins. I anchored in the inner basin. There are four or five other boats here. Sail boats and some larger trawlers. The inner basin is more shallow, so for tonight, I have it to myself. There are stern ties along the shore; basically chains that are anchored in rock. That’s to keep the boats from swinging, as the cove and basins are small. I ran a long line thru one of the chain links, and secured both ends back at the stern of my boat. That’ll allow me to just pull the line through when I’m ready to leave, so I won’t have to untie it first. Somewhere I read the mosquitoes here are bad. As the sun set, that was not a lie… Before leaving Vancouver, I decided to top off my fuel, even though I had only burned 18 of my 100 gallons. Although, I think I added just shy of 20 gallons, if I did my conversion from Liters correctly. Doing all the math, the end result with exchange rates, I paid $6.75/g for non-ethanol. Not as bad as I thought it would be. But I expect it’ll be more in some of the more remote locations as we go north.Read more