Alison Sound – June 5th

After the events of the day before we decided to take a leisurely motor up Belize Inlet and then up to the head of Alison Sound. Depending on the conditions we could anchor up at the head of Allison Sound. There were some pictographs on the rocks up Alison Sound we wanted to try to find.

We left the little cove we were in and first thing we came across was a float plane heading right in front of us. Dropping off a couple of men at a small dock in Strachan Bay. There is evidence of a fair amount of logging around but not a log of activity at this time. Maybe due to Covid?

There is a small homestead / camp in Strachan Bay right by the entrance to Pack Lake. It has apparently been there for many years and occupied by a logging family for a 3 or so generations.

We looked in to Village Cove as we left. it is just up Mereworth Sound around the corner not to far. It looked like it would be a pretty little spot to anchor up.

There is another logging camp around the corner on our way to Belize Inlet. The camps we saw seemed to be fairly compact and contained to a small area of the shore.

There was a fairly large dock that we probably could have tied up to for a night. we did not see any people on shore or boats at the dock. But just around the corner to spotted our first pleasure craft — sort of !

Belize Inlet is beautiful with a number of waterfalls along the way. About halfway up Belize Inlet is the entry to Alison Sound

We decided we would drop the anchor and stay the night. We dropped the anchor in about 60 feet but the bottom here shoals steeply. The wind was coming up the sound so we pulled towards shore and we were quite comfortably anchored in about 30-40 feet. After about 2 hours the wind came up and was gusting 15-20 knots over the mountains and into the sounds and we were pushed back to almost 100 feet. With the strong gusts and the depth we were in we decided to pull up anchor and headed out to find a better anchorage for the night.

The problem with these deep inlets is the anchorages are often very deep with limited swing room and they shoal steeply. And often the best way to anchor in this kind of anchorage is a shore tie. We don’t do shore ties — long story! Let’s just say the one time we tried we left Smuggler Cove with our shore tie between our tails while fellow boats looked on chuckling away!

We went into one little cove to anchor and it was shallow but full of rocks and logs and trees that had fallen down. In the end we motored back to our little cove at the end of Strachan Bay. Dropped the anchor in a nice happy spot. Lilly woke up just in time to climb around the boat all night. The laundry drying on the line in the cockpit all day. Time for a beer!