Pierless Blog - 2025-06-21/22 - Tenedos Bay/Desolation Sound

 June 21, 2025 - Laura Cove to Tenedos Bay

Tenedos Location      
Path to Tenados Bay

Saturday, June 21, we raised the anchor and headed to Tenedos Bay.  We enjoyed our two days at Laura Cove and had a great time exploring the area on foot, paddle board and dinghy, but we were ready to explore more of Desolation Sound.

Leaving Laura Cove

Dave at the helm     

The move to Tenedos Bay was a short trip of about 6 1/2 nautical miles.  We stayed outside the small islands this time to enjoy a more expansive view.  There are several anchorages in the bay, so we had a few options.  One is close to a trail leading to Unwin Lake, a popular swimming spot.  The anchorage has many stern-tie locations to accommodate more boats.  Unfortunately, a boat was already anchored without stern-tying.  This lets them swing with the tides and basically sweep the entire anchorage.  We decided it was a bit dicey, so headed to the "inner" bay where there is room for more boats.

Inner Bay - Pierless on left

The waters around Desolation Sound are fairly deep, so good shallow anchorages are in high demand.  We found 12 boats in the inner bay, but there were still many good spots to drop anchor.  We chose to stern-tie and anchored in about 50 feet of water tying off to a rock on shore.

Pierless stern-tied - Inner Bay

We spent the first afternoon paddling around and watching the tide drop.  We were in Desolation during spring tides, so the tidal range was about 18.5 feet between high-high and low-low!  

Dave preparing to paddle

We have both been puzzled and surprised at the lack of wildlife in this part of B.C.  We saw one deer, one racoon, several seal, seabirds, barnacles, oysters, starfish and crabs - but little else.  A few mussels and some sand dollars, but little more.  No whales, dolphins or porpoises or bear.  This is a relatively dry area and that may have something to do with this.  People do see many more animals once north of Johnstone Strait.  I should mention that we saw many transparent nudibranch in Laura Cove and Prideaux Haven.  Very interesting creatures and not often seen unless you are diving.

Just another day in paradise

Our next day included more paddling and relaxing.  A few boats left and some came in, but it was never crowded.  Dave paddled to the trailhead leading to Lake Unwin and hiked up for a swim.  I explored more of Tenedos bay via dinghy.  We observed harbor seal and some fish, but no other wildlife apart from birds.  These included oystercatchers, king fishers, eagles, seagulls, cormorants and others.

We will head for Lund in the morning.

- Brian





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