June 5 – Allison Harbour

After listening to the morning weather radio report, we elected to spend another day in Allison Harbour. The weather was fine but the ocean buoy report for “West Sea Otter” was a bit higher than our liking. We aren’t on a fixed schedule so we are playing it safe. We will continue to monitor conditions and go when we like them. The anchorage here is pleasant and we have it to ourselves so we dropped the kayaks in the water and went for a paddle.

While exploring anchorages in the past, we’ve noticed that the nautical charts tend not to spend a lot of effort to precisely chart non-navigable areas. This makes sense this the primary purpose of nautical charts is providing the safe travel of commercial traffic. Recreational use is a recent addition to their purpose.

What this means is that when you poke around with a kayak or shallow draft dinghy in the shallows and back waters of some of these remoter areas, you can find all sorts of areas that the charts only vaguely hint at. Today was a case in point.

As we paddled to the back end of Allison Harbour, over a bar that prevents larger boats from entering, a treasure of a protected lagoon unfolded. As is typical with the temperate coastal rain forests, the moss gives an emerald hue to everything.