A decade or so ago I found a keen deal at the Seattle Boat Show – about 400 feet of half-inch, yellow polypropylene rope. I bought it, took it home, wrapped it on a spool and stowed it in the lazarette of Quadra. Although I dislike the nuisance of stern tying in a tight anchorage, I bought it just in case.
It’s never been touched. Until today.
We woke at 0430 a few days ago to run 42 miles for a date with slack water at 1120 hours in the rapids leading to one of the most striking marine destinations in the Pacific Northwest – Princess Louisa Inlet and Chatterbox Falls, a mighty splash of water fed by snow melting on rocky slopes soaring a mile high. It was early in the season (May 22) and I thought the inlet and the 895 feet of moorage at the falls would be relatively free of boat traffic. Instead, we found the dock full and a couple of boats anchored on a sandbar just below the falls.
The inlet is a deep valley slicing through a range of coastal mountains. Water depth -300 to 500 feet is normal and 1,000 feet is not unusual - is too much for anchoring. It is a delightful place, full of beauty and the pleasant roar of the falls, and is a British Columbia park that is supported financially by a U.S.-Canadian nonprofit, the Princess Louisa Society. I have contributed to the society, but that does give me any priority in finding moorage below the falls.
So, we found ourselves taking a buoy that snuggled in a shallow niche of the shoreline about two miles below the falls. I didn’t know buoys existed here, but the crew of Scout, a handsome steel yacht from Olympia, Washington, alerted me on VHF and then pointed to a loop of steel wire hanging from the rocks rising above the shore. Just the place for a stern tie, they said.
I chose to hang on the buoy without tying to shore and noted that a pair of 50 footers was sharing a buoy a mile away without the use of a shore line. Later, as the oyster-clad rock pile astern grew even closer, I capitulated. Out came the spool. I hung it on a broom handle in the opening of the lazarette hatch, climbed into the dinghy and headed for shore, yellow line in hand. It was a snafu, too agonizing to describe, but finally we were hooked to shore. Within 30 minutes or so, it became obvious that the geometry (or maybe physics) of the tangle of lines just wasn’t working. So we dragged it back aboard and swung on the buoy. Ellen and I were convinced the buoy and its anchor had dragged during the tussle with shore lines.
Then the master of Puffin, a beautiful Bill Garden-designed wood trawler, hailing from Tacoma Washington, rowed by. We discussed the situation and he rowed around the rock heap looming off our stern.
He found another loop of rusty wire embedded in rock and, once again, the yellow line was taken ashore. It worked. We held fast, a fair distance off the heap of rocks looming tall astern and comfortably spaced from the beach that curves away from the rock pile. Fully confident the boat would hold tight, we explored the shoreline and outer harbor in the tender. We saw another buoy out in the channel, far from protected shoreline spots, and wondered why it was there.
There was little tidal action over night – only a few feet of change – and I slept nicely. But this morning the tide has been falling, falling, falling. More than12 feet.
With the tide at its lowest, I believe a good high school broad jumper could leap from the swim platform to the rock pile. There’s a light breeze and the yellow line keeps the stern from swinging closer toward the beach. The depth sounder shows 20 feet. I can’t sit or stand still, and find myself watching the depth sounder and nervously circling the boat looking for the first hint of trouble.
Because one enters Princess Louisa Inlet at slack water in the rapids (a half hour approximately after low or high tide), boating traffic comes in surges twice a day. Today one could enter or depart the inlet in daylight only at about noon and later at 1920 hours. We counted outbound traffic at mid day and after seeing seven boats head for the exit we cast off our shore lines, yanked our line from the mooring buoy and headed for the dock at the falls. There was a spot for us.
Folks who took our lines told us the buoys tend to drag because of inadequate anchors and failing mooring chains. Park rangers don’t come here until the season is well under way, so boaters assigned themselves the task of pulling up most of the buoys because they thought them dangerous. One couple pulled up the anchor we saw in the channel and dragged it back to the dock. Some of the chain links had eroded to the thickness of paper and obviously it should have been retired years ago. They agreed our buoy had dragged under the hand tugs on the shore line and we were fearful for the 50s sharing a buoy, but decided they were crewed by veteran skippers who would be wary.
I have trusted mooring buoys in parks in Washington state and British Columbia. It is disheartening to learn that – in this case at least- this trust is not always deserved.
I’ll probably need to use the yellow poly again for a shore tie as we move deeper into the wilderness along the northern B.C. coast, most likely in combination with an anchor. There are few spots with buoys for pleasure boaters, but if and when I next tie to one it will receive the same vigorous back-down test I give my anchor. Trust is gone.