Alston Cove to Quigley Creek Cove

This morning’s mission is to dinghy up to the head of the cove and explore the circular fish traps/weirs. We saw these in 2022 and wanted to see them again.

First thing this morning, I took the drone up one more time to look at the approaches to the head of the cove at a low tide of 1.24-feet at Milne Island. These photos, combined with those from yesterday, gave us a very good preview of what our approach should be. It looks like there is lots of water, but it really gets shallow once you are past the large rock.

beautiful morning at alston cove

the approach to the fish traps

this shows the structure of the shallow water at thehead of alston cove

At a 5-foot tide at Milne Island, we saw no fewer than 3 feet of water on our dinghy trip to the shore. I tried to stay in what I thought was the deepest water carved out by the creek on the south side, but no matter, we had enough water.

The best thing about the timing is we had a nice approach and landing on a medium steep rocky shoreline. It was easy to get off the dinghy and secure it to some larger rocks upshore.

Easy landing for the dinghy

it is a short walk up the rock encircled fish traps

We walked along the creek. It’s pretty, but I don’t think you’d get very far upstream even at high tide due to all the rocks. Using Kayaks and portaging over the shallow rapids might work, but we’ll leave that to the more adventurous.

karen scoping out the river to see is we might make it up in the dinghy

We then then walked over to get a look at the circular fish traps. It’s easy walking with a mix of stone, reasonably solid marsh, and firm mud.

view from the fish traps back down alston cove

overhead view of the fish traps

About four of the seven circular fish traps are still intact and held some water at the lower tides. They’re really cool to see.

one of the large fish traps that is still intact

Back to the boat and then off to Quigley Creek Anchorage, which is right at the mouth of Laredo Inlet, about 45 minutes run. It’s a popular anchorage, as it’s not far beyond Meyers Narrows and is just off Thistle Passage.  We were here in 2022, but shared the anchorage with 3 other boats, which was a bit tight given that it’s also a deep anchorage.  The weather wasn’t great when we were here before, and we didn’t explore the creek.

quigley creek cove viewed from the creek entrance

oceanflyer anchored in quigley creek cove

Today is sunny and the tides are right to explore the creek as far as we can at high tide. We entered the anchorage to find it empty, so we could choose our spot. At 1:25pm, we were off to explore. We found 15’ at the entry to the creek on a 12.6 foot tide at Milne Island. It’s really pretty, and we made our way as far as we could, abput one mile. It got quite rocky and we read about 1.8’ on the depth sounder, so we turned around, found a slightly deeper spot and dropped the anchor to just enjoy the peace and quiet and take more pictures.

looking up quigley creek from its entrance

Quigley Creek

After a while, we headed back down the creek, ready to explore all the islets around the anchorage. Unfortunately, we also noticed that the tell tale was no longer streaming water on the dinghy engine. I was really worried, as it would have been a very long row back to OceanFlyer, but I was able to continue under power without overheating the engine – I kept a close eye on the temperature gauge. Nevertheless, we made a beeline straight for the boat to troubleshoot.

Given that the engine didn’t overheat, it pointed to a blockage in the water line to the tell tale hole. I cleaned it out – not finding much – and then dropped the dinghy back into the water to test it. While there was “some” water flowing, it wasn’t normal. Up went the dinghy again, and I tried more aggressive cleaning. I found some black tarry stuff that seemed to be the culprit. And voila – the engine was “peeing” like normal.

 We went out to explore among the island and islets. It was sunny and calm and we had a great time.

The weather is supposed to change, so we soaked up all the sun we could. When we turned in for the night, we were the only boat in the anchorage.

mother nature puts on an impressive show