Planning the Trip to the Broughton Archipelago

Ellen

With Vargas under our belts, or should I say spray skirts, we were ready for the next adventure. The woman on Ahous had recommended paddling in Johnstone Strait. In doing some research, we stumbled upon the Broughton Archipelago on the internet. I ordered another BC boating atlas that includes Johnstone Strait and the Broughtons.

Originally, we planned out a trip as we usually do, camping at a different place each night. Over a few glasses of wine after dinner, we planned to cross Johnstone Strait, round the west tip of Hanson Island and lunch at Square Notch Beach or Mel's Beach, and then cross Blackfish Sound to Flower Island to make camp. The next day we planned to make our way up to Cedar Island by going through Swanson Passage and crossing Knight Inlet. For our third day, we were going to go to Village Island to see the Indian ruins and then take Village Channel to another ruins site and camp there. We would return to Hanson Island and make camp the next night at Square Notch or Mel's. Our final morning would be a quick crossing of Johnstone Strait back to Telegraph Cove.

On the drive up to Vancouver, however, we decided that we would base out from one location if we liked the campsite. We chose Flower Island as our base camp due to its central location.

John

I like Vancouver Island for kayaking. The scenery is overwhelming. It demands return trips in future summers. Making sure the Garmin saves the waypoints, having a good chart in my map case, and understanding slack tide in the area would be accomplished before I launched again.

After spending five weeks on the Missouri River, a short jaunt out to Cypress Island in the San Juan's, and a enjoyable paddle around Vargas Island, I sense I was burned out. Not from paddling, but from setting up and tearing down camp, packing up the kayak, and the numerous early morning starts. I was ready to base out. If we could settle in on a nice campsite for a few days, we could paddle a light kayak doing routes from and around the camp. The campsite would remain intact. We had never done that before. I needed it.