When I last left you, we were coming out of Heriot Bay at Drew Harbour by Rebecca Spit and heading toward Desolation Sound. With a bit of wind in the forecast, we ducked into Von Donop Inlet on the north end of Cortes Island, one of our go-to spots. It’s a long, narrow, well-sheltered inlet inside provincial parkland with no homes, roads, or recent logging, so it’s dead quiet.
Mid-September is the start of the off-season, so we finally got all the way to the very end around the corner, a calm little pocket we’d never anchored in before because it usually fills up. We dropped anchor about three metres down at low tide, with plenty of room. A few dolphins were hanging around the entrance, and later five or six boats joined us, but they all spread out and left, so the place was ours.
The run over from Quadra was gorgeous, with good visibility, mountains in the distance, and we even got a friendly RCMP safety check that we passed with flying colours (they still wouldn’t take our expired flares). The water here is green with pink moon jellies, and we heard kingfishers and spotted an eagle, a raven, and a few seals.
You can dinghy ashore and walk a path over to Squirrel Cove. After a couple of cloudy mornings, we got a string of sunny September days, though the water is getting too cold for swimming. Tomorrow we’re heading over to find a spot in famous Desolation Sound for the rest of the season.
Check out the 2026 Boating Season Playlist
