On day 3 of our paddling trip to Desolation Sound Marine Park, we got up at 6am to get ahead of the wind (as I explained in Part II). We packed up our campsite on East Curme Island and were on the water around 8am. It was flat water at this time, so we had a very leisurely paddle over to Otter Island and along the coast to Bold Head Campground.

I was really curious about Bold Head because I’d read it was a nice site. It’s backed right again the cliffside and there are several tent pads up at the head, but it was empty. I could understand why – as nice as it is, I’d still pick the Curme Islands when given the choice, so I suspect it may act primarily as overflow for the islands.

The campsites in the Park are all first-come-first-serve and according to BC Parks, if the tent pads are all taken, you should move on to another site. Though they do state that if moving on isn’t safe, find the least impactful spot (somewhere with no vegetation that looks like people have camped there before). Fortunately we didn’t have any issues with availability on the May Long weekend, but I could see it being an issue in the height of summer. The problem is, the islands are all very small, and while there’s 3 of them, there’s limited options for overflow camping since most of the sites are set on bedrock. Fortunately there are a lot of tent pads, and I assume that’s why.

But if you do find the islands full, head over to Bold Head – it’s not far and it is nice. The toilet situation is quite different though. The other campsites I visited all had an outhouse (sometimes two), but Bold Head just has a throne toilet and at the time of our visit, it had a wasp nest inside! There are bear caches at all the mainland sites, but none on the island sites. It is also a tricky landing on Bold Head, but manageable.

Unfortunately our simple paddling was short lived as the wind came up suddenly while we were touring around Bold Head. It wasn’t too bad at first, but as soon as we started paddling across Tenedos Bay, it really caught us unaware and started hitting us broadside. It was still manageable, but definitely veering into uncomfortable territory for me as I could see some small white caps forming. It’s ~1km to cross, so we really powered it to the bay on the other side. I had put on my spray skirt, so I had no issue, but Seth didn’t have his on. This wouldn’t have been a problem, but I accidentally bumped him and almost put him in the water… oops! This was the closest anyone came to a capsize on the trip though, so all in all, it was fine.

We continued up through Call Bight to Portage Cove. Seth took a quick break along the rocks to get his skirt on and we powered up to Portage. This turned out to be the most challenging part of the entire trip. It was definitely windy and while the waves weren’t bad along the shore, it was slow moving through the headwind. I was very excited to pull into Portage Cove and take a proper break, but we were disappointed to learn that Portage Cove is private property and not actually in the park (as we were informed by the numerous trespassing signs).

I know these properties long pre-date the park, but it was a low moment for me. There’s not a lot of pull-outs between Bold Head and Hare Point when you’re taking the southern route and I needed a proper break. Fortunately, the tide was coming down, so we pulled out on a tidal beach for a reset. This proved to be a good idea because I was getting a bit upset and stopping to have a snack and talk things through helped a lot.

We decided to get properly suited up in our wetsuits and come up with a plan for the rest of the day. There’s a longer stretch between Portage Cove and Galley Bay with no beaches, so our plan was for me to lead (as the weaker paddler) and Seth to come right behind. This worked really well for us and we stayed close together throughout the paddle.

It was a bit rough coming out of Portage Cove, but then the wind either dropped down or was sheltered by Zephine Head. I think it was actually the former as it was gusting pretty strong at times, but overall, the sustained wind speed wasn’t too bad. We ended up actually having a nice paddle along the cliffside before stopping in Galley Bay for lunch.

Once we hit Galley Bay I felt much better because we would have the wind at our backs when we turned down Okeover Inlet. We’d started the trip from Lund, but we were planning to finish at the public wharf in Okeover instead to switch up the trip. In fact, we ended up not actually repeating any coastline, which made for a more diverse trip.

As soon as we got around Zephine Head, the wind pretty much died and we had a simple paddle down the inlet to Hare Point. There’s a huge campsite at Hare Point and we landed at the main beach to assess. There’s two key areas to the site, with a bunch of tent pads at the back of the beach and a bunch more along Hare Point. We were the only people there, so we decided on a site along the Point and then paddled back to land on the rocks instead. We kept the same strategy of tying the boats on and letting the tide bring them up for us.

We were joined later in the afternoon by another family of kayakers who camped in the other section of the tent pads, otherwise we didn’t see anyone else. I really liked our site at Hare Point, but the wind was unquestionably getting worse. To be fair, we were on a pretty exposed tent pad, but I ended up guy-lining the tent to the rock for peace of mind and it was the only night we used the fly.

The wind was supposed to be even worse the next day, so we had to do a bit of risk management. I was reassured by the fact that it’s a lot calmer in Okeover Inlet than in the Sound, and that the wind would be at our backs. In case you’re wondering, I use both the Windy App and the weather network for wind information. I usually find Windy to be good, but on this trip the Weather Network was more reliable for wind speed (though the Windy app was still accurate for direction). We’d been planning to get weather updates on our marine radio and via inreach message from Carolyn (who had our trip plan), but there was cell service in pretty much the entire park, so I ended up just using my phone.

What arose as more of a concern as we watched the inlet from our campsite, was the currents. Okeover Inlet is huge, with lots of other inlets branching off it, so with up to 5m of difference between high and low tide, that’s a huge amount of water coming up and down the inlet twice daily. We arrived at Hare Point at slack tide, so we had no trouble getting there, but as the tide changed, the current got quicker and quicker, until it was really clipping down the inlet at a fast pace.

We’d already decided to get up at dawn the following morning to try and get ahead of the wind, and this decision became much more important when we realized that the tide would be switching again at 7:30am. It would be working with us until then and we didn’t want to have to battle it the whole morning.

It ended up working out really well. It was hard crawling out of bed so early, but we were on the water by 6:45am and with the wind at our backs and the current with us, we absolutely flew down the inlet! It was super fun! It’s 10km of paddling back to the public wharf, which would usually take us around 3 hours with breaks, but we ended up doing the whole thing in about 90 minutes. The wind looked pretty intense later in the morning when we returned to Powell River, but we managed to get ahead of it and actually had a very enjoyable paddle.

Our ferry reservation out of Langdale wasn’t until 8pm, but since we’d finished so early, we decided to power back to try and get on an earlier ferry. Unfortunately this didn’t really pan out. BC Ferries was so busy over the long weekend that it actually crashed the website, so we couldn’t check the ferry times and ended up being way out of sync with them. We waited for the ferry at Saltery Bay for the better part of 2 hours. Then we rushed down to Langdale for 2pm, only to be told to keep our 8pm reservation because we probably wouldn’t get on any earlier than that anyways. So we ended up burning 6 hours in Gibsons instead. In hindsight, I would have preferred to spend some more time in Powell River, but you can never know that at the start of the day.

We had a nice time in Gibsons. We explored some shops and enjoyed a pint at Tapworks and a really nice meal at Buono Osteria. We finished with a nice walk along the waterfront. Overall it was a fantastic trip. Seth and I used to do a 3 day paddling trip every year, but we missed 2021 and 2022, so this one was long overdue and a good reminder of how much we enjoy the trips. We do lots of day paddles, but overnight trips definitely have a very different feel. I don’t think we’ll have time to do a second trip this summer (mostly because it’s hard finding someone to watch our dog), but I’m really desperate to do another trip, so we’ve already started brainstorming for next year!

There are lots of things to consider when visiting Desolation Sound, but May turned out to be good timing for us. We’re so lucky to live in a place with so many epic places to explore and I can’t wait until the next trip!