The Broken Group

We spent 6 nights in The Broken group.

One of the anchorages we stayed at in 2023 and we really enjoyed was in a little group of island. It’s called Joes Cove on the chart. The biggest island is called Turtle Island. The Broken Group is part of the Pacific Rim National Park.

A popular spot for kayaking. Lots of groups are brought in by water taxi for a few days of camping and kayaking. There are designated camping spots for the kayakers in the park.

It looks like the beach has been groomed for the boat drop off and pick up here.

We had the skiff down for a bit of motoring around.

There are new regulations that require prawn pots to have “rot cord” We have yet to fish prawns since we left home. But we’ve decide to give it a try in here. We heard that the prawn fishing was very poor. But Jim saw some prawn pots when he was out trying to catch a Rock Fish or a Ling cod. He was unsuccessful in that endeavour. But came back and put the rot cord in the prawn pots.

The water is very green and murky. Not really sure why it is like that this year.

After putting out the prawn pots Jim decided to try fishing for some rock fish from the big boat. Not even a nibble.

We left the pots out overnight and went back to the Joes Cove anchorage and anchored up on the opposite side from the previous spot.

And that night was the Tsunami. That was a bit exciting. Well the excitement was trying to decide what to do – should we hang tight and hope we didn’t get swamped and pushed to shore. Or should we pull up anchor and head into deeper water. Andrew was giving us regular updates on the situation in Hawaii. There were 4 sailboats in the anchorage with us. We decided to let out a little more anchor rode. And Jim went to bed. I waited until after the 11:30 predicted arrival time in Tofino. And in the end it was a bit of a nothing burger. Which was a good thing !

The next morning it was very foggy in the anchorage.

We had to wait until around 11 am before we could motor off to pull the prawn pots.

We got 145 prawns. In 4 pots. That was exciting for Jim.

Jim put the pots back in the water for another overnight soak.

We motored up to the Pinkerton Islands for the night.

There is a lovely lodge in that area. The Broken Islands Lodge. Our first night in Joes Cove we had met a group of kayakers that said they were staying at the lodge.

https://www.brokenislandslodge.com

Once at the Pinkerton Islands Jim took the heads off the prawns. It was a beautiful sunny day. A lovely anchorage. I was thinking I should get out the paddle board and go for a paddle. And then the wind came up and that was the end of that thought ! We have not had a lot of paddle board weather. We’ve had a lot of wind though!

We had pasta with pesto and prawns for dinner. The prawns were a little small and some were a little soft. So they were a little disappointing.

The next morning it was again quite foggy and we had to wait for the fog to mostly clear before we could pick up the pots.

One pot had a huge amount of kelp wrapped around the line. It was a bit of a worry that it would get stuck on the pots as we were pulling them up. And after all the worry a little jerk on the line and it mostly fell off. And then I thought – I should have taken a photo ! Darn !

We got 225 prawns this time. We were going to go to Effington Island which is another popular spot but it was still in the fog so we motored back to Joes Cove

Jim put the prawns into contains to freeze them. We ended up freezing 5 pots of prawns.

And dinner was prawn salad on sourdough toast! which included a very lovely avocado from Ucluelet.

We were back to the side of the anchorage we started at. The other end had 7 sailboats and 2 motor boats. We are seeing a lot of the same boats along the way. Brother Wind and Arganauta came in after us. We had met them and went for a walk on shore in Nuchatlitz. Aquila Bay – we met them in The Bunsby Islands.

Lots of kayaking activity. This boat came and picked up 9 kayaks.