Kayaking Bunsby Islands

We (Sheila, Dorothy, Brian & I) took a pre-arranged water taxi from Fair Harbour out to Bunsby Island with Voyageur Watertaxi. Leo is a good guy, with a skookum boat. He was quite chatty and we learned how he got into the business. He dropped us off at a beach on the inside of Bunsby island.

We had a short paddle from our drop-off point to Island 195. There are places to pitch about 4 tents upland and then some places to camp on the front and back stone beaches.

After we set up camp and had lunch, we went for an afternoon paddle. The wind was blowing from the south, so we kept to the northern, sheltered lee of the Bunsby islands. We had a look at Green Head and then the sun made an appearance.

Well over 50 oyster catchers congregated in front of our beach. Early in the evening, two canoes appeared and a family (with 2 kids and 2 dogs) set up camp on an islet across from us. I went for a short evening paddle around the islets. It had cleared off and we enjoyed a fine sunset that evening..

We made a day paddle over to the Arcus Peninsula, Cuttle islands, and Battle Bay. The Cuttle islands were interesting (the northern Cuttle island campsite looked great). We landed on the beach at the eastern end of Battle Bay and collected fresh water.

The weather improved and by mid morning, the skies had fully cleared. The photo was taken at the small "Paradise Beach", just across from our campsite. A dead humpback had washed up on there earlier in the year; the meat eaten by scavengers, the bones are in Kyuquot, but there were still some baleen scattered on the beach.

We were back at camp for lunch and developed an afternoon routine that included wandering around on foot and some reading. We also put some of the water that we had collected out in the sun on the back beach to warm it and we had a bucket shower. After dinner, we had a small fire to burn our trash and we checked out the evening sky and sunset.

We had a longer, more open stretch of water paddle from the Bunsby's to Spring island and we opted for an early start of 7:00am (which required some gentle negotiation). The skies were clear and we were on the water before the sun made its way over the hills of Vancouver island. We poked around a couple of interesting rocky islets, and passed around Thomas island on the outside. We hooked around to the inside and found the hole that goes right through Thomas island.

Beyond Thomas island, we paddled open water that was calm and enjoyable. We passed by a kelp bed and a fair sized group of sea otters. Leo and his water taxi passed by on his way to the Bunsby's and we all waved.

We reached Spring Island and paddled inside the largely protected islets on the SW aspect at a low tide. We carried on to the camping area at the south end and paddled around the slightly lumpy water at the southern end of Spring island.

We pulled up to the stone beach and we had the place to ourselves. We were spoiled for choice of tent sites and finding shade was a prime consideration. No other kayakers arrived that day. It had rained hard a few days earlier and there were still sun warmed, fresh water pools in the rocks. So in the afternoon, we had bucket showers. The Kyuquot portion of Spring island was closed due to Covid restrictions.

We had another 7:00am start and paddled out to Thornton island. The outflow winds made for sloppy seas so as we approached Thornton, I saw that the people on couple of recreational fishing boats watched us closely with a "do you need help?" look. They seemed to want to provide assistance, so much so, that one guy called out "do you want a sandwich?".

We pulled into a delightful, protected cove on Thornton island to take in the atmosphere.. The sloppy seas continued thereafter and we even ran into an outflow current that slowed our progress and then we made our way over to Grassy island.

Grassy island was quite a nice reward. It is a beautiful place with limited protection from winds and sun. There is space for many tents. The interior was largely impenetrable but it was straight forward to walk around the island. It somehow reminded me of camping on the Sea of Cortes (Baja, Mexico).

We also found more fresh water pools from the rains and showered again.

We found enough shade during the day, protection from the 15kt afternoon NW wind and watched the sun set into the Pacific Ocean.

Grassy island was my favourite camp site of the trip.

I had researched that coastal hikers on "clubtread" had highlighted Sandstone Point, so the plan was for a short hike that day. First we paddled by the McQuarrie islets and then we landed just north of Jurassic Point. There is a large dry out area at low tide, so we landed a couple hundred metres north of Tatchu Creek.

We waded across the creek and continued on shingle beach to splendid Sandstone Point. We could have landed there (gentle swells that day).

Sandstone Point is a marvelous place to wander around the sandstone features, to watch the surge channels, tide pools and enjoy the setting.

A family of river otters carried up a rockfish onto the sandstone and gleefully consumed it. On a calm day, you can even kayak up one of the surge channels which opens up onto a steep beach.

We filled up a number of water containers at Tatchu Creek before we paddled north to Gregoire Point.

Brian spotted a bear on the beach and we paddled over for a better look (it turned out to be our Gregoire Point campsite).

Once the bear had left the beach, we landed and set up our tents. There were bear prints everywhere, so I named the bear "Gregoire". We had collected enough water for afternoon bucket showers.

There wasn't much of a sunset (a cloud bank appeared over the horizon). Around 2:00 am we were all awakened by a wolf on the beach that howled, barked and yelped for 10-15 minutes. We could hear another wolf responding, some distance away. In the morning, we spotted Gregoire, the bear, out on the low tide rock shelf. He realized that we were up and he quickly made his way into the forest.

The marine forecast on the VHF radio had indicated rain showers but they didn't materialize. Conditions were calm and we had a leisurely paddle up the coast towards Rugged Point.

We decided to duck into Kapoose Creek which is at the far southern end of the Rugged Point beaches. There is a large out-of-place house and we approached the boat landing and small foot bridge over Kapoose Creek to find a black bear along the shore. It moved along the Kapoose creek bank, stopped to for a drink of water and then swam across the creek. We paddled a little ways up the creek to the first set of rapids and collected water for afternoon showers. On our previous trip to Rugged Point, we had dragged our kayaks over the rapids, but this time, we turned around and headed for the beaches.

We scouted a couple of camping places and opted for the "second beach" and landed in the small surf without incident. Once we had the tents up, we explored the beaches and talked to a group of kayakers on the "first beach" and some day trippers from Kyuquot.

We pretty well had the run of the main beach to ourselves which is an amazing place.

While sand beaches are lovely for walking on, they are second to the gravel beaches for tenting because the sand gets into everything. What a hard life....

We went for an evening stroll on the main beach and inspected a couple of floats that had drifted in from Japan.

The marine forecast of drizzle held off until we launched our boats. The forecast of larger swells didn't materialize so the surf launch from the beach was straight forward.

Low hanging clouds and light rain and drizzle characterized our 22km (11 nm) paddle back to Fair Harbour. We had some light rain as we put the boats on top of the vehicles. Then, it was simply point the car in the right direction and drive home.

Overview of our route. The blue dotted line represents the water taxi to Bunsby island and the red line was our kayak route.