In January 2007, three of us set out from Thunderbird Marina near Vancouver in BC and sailed a small 22ft sailboat up to Chatterbox Falls in Princess Louisa Inlet. Having experienced the area from sea level, I thought it would be nice to see what it would look like from the air. So I set out with the C172 floatplane version to cover some of the same ground… err, water. So everything is the same. Except for the flying versus sailing. In sunshine instead of snow. In a simulator instead of real life. But the rest was the same 
Major caveat: you would notice I said JANUARY 2007. That is, mid winter. And, as luck would have it, we picked a time that coincided with some severe weather, including icy temperatures and significant snow, way more so than normal for BC. But it just made the trip that much more memorable!
First up: the route we took:
And here we are, sailing away from Thunderbird Marina. Still looks lovely, doesn’t it?
This is what the first part of the trip looks like from the air: showing North (in the foreground) and South (a bit further back and right of the middle) Thormandby Islands plus the mainland in the background. I have marked Smuggler Cove where we spent the first night
This was where we tied up. Still looking good…
The next morning we headed north and east. This shows the coast we were following:
And turning into Agamemnon Channel
And back in real life; here we are motoring up Agamemnon. And by now it started getting pretty cold…
Passing by Egmont with the Skookumchuck Narrows in the background. This is probably the fastest tidal flow in Canada: the tidal height can reach 9 ft and 200 BILLION gallons can flow through on one tide! The current can reach up to almost 18 knots: that’s like 33km/h!
Coming up: we spend the second night in Vancouver Bay, lovely fresh seafood and then… the ice…
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At this point we entered the Jervis Inlet and started looking for a suitable place to tie up for the night.
Vancouver Bay looked good: nice and sheltered with good places to tie up.
And here we came across a local that had just emptied his shrimp traps:
We were able to come to a suitable commercial arrangement so we had fresh shrimp for supper!
The next morning we started back up the Jervis Inlet
Still beautiful in the sim… but in real life, things started to change… And yes, that is ICE you see on the water!
Interesting days to follow!
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Nice pics, must have been an amazing trip!
It isn’t the biggest tidal flow in Canada though, that would be in the Bay of Fundy.
Thanks: it was indeed a great, once in a lifetime trip!
I would happily accept that the volume and height difference in the Bay of Fundy is much greater than at the Sechelt Inlet. HOWEVER: I did say " the fastest tidal flow in Canada". The Skookumchuck Narrows restricts the flow into and out of the very significant sized Sechelt Inlet to a very narrow channel. This leads to the water flowing through the narrows at a VERY fast clip. This is the area of the Inlet:
And all that water has to flow through this “venturi”:
Makes for interesting currents…
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You won’t see that kind of channel flow through the Bay of Fundy, for sure, that really is a lot for a small area like that, and the scenery in your pics is spectacular.
The flow in and out of the Bay of Fundy is about 40 times greater than the flow of fresh water from the St. Lawrence River into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The bay’s tidal flow is immense, some 70,000,000,000 cubic feet (2,000,000,000 cubic m) entering and leaving on the twice-daily turn of the tide.
The flow is that great that it results in a Tidal Bore, a small wall of water which changes the flows of all the rivers flowing into the Bay of Fundy and makes them flow in reverse.
(I’ll bet you can kind of guess where I live, huh!)
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Onto the next part of the trip. In the sim, the rest of the Jervis Inlet up to Princess Louisa Inlet looked lovely!
In real life, crossing over to the North side of Jervis Inlet to get to Princess Louisa was daunting, to say the least!
And Princess Louisa itself: turning onto the Inlet:
Landing at Chatterbox Falls:
The view in real life was extraordinary!
All that is left are some sim shots of the Inlet and then going home again.
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