Sullivan Bay to Booker Lagoon

It’s been a long time since we visited Booker Lagoon – about 17 years –  so this year it is on our list of stops.

nice ride on the way to booker lagoon

The lagoon is guarded by a narrows. It’s short but has a dogleg approach from Cullen Harbour, making for a blind entrance until you make the 90-degree turn. Therefore, a Sécurité call is in order going both ways.

To predict the slack water, we use Alert Bay about ½ hour after either high or low.

We accidentally miscalculated slack, and entered with about 2kts of adverse current, with enough swirlies that we needed to add a bit of power. We saw 14’ at 11:59am on an 6-foot tide.

We had our choice of lagoon “arms” to anchor in,  but we went with our previous favorite, a one-boat cove in the NNW corner, protected by a small islet and drying area.

out spot in the one boat cove

looking our from our anchorage

another view shows two of the other arms in booker lagoon

one more view

cozy in booker lagoon

Eventually all the arms had a boat or two in them, but because they are so large, no one was lacking enough space.

We did our typical circumnavigation to check out our neighbors and scout for other locations we might like to try on our visit. The only other spot that appealed was the small cove just around the corner from the narrows in the SE corner. It has the added feature of looking out to the narrows so you can watch boats pass in or out. It is also seems to offer protection from SW winds, which our favorite spot does not. It also hangs on to the sunshine later into the afternoon. A smaller Grand Banks was anchored there, and we chatted about the Broughtons for a while before moving on.

We then went back though the narrows to check the current flows closer to max. We went through just fine in the dinghy. The outer harbour, Cullen, was full of boats. While views from there are pretty, we aren’t sure why boats prefer to anchor in a crowd out there and be exposed to fetch. Next, we explored the other “entrance” to the lagoon. It located between Long Island and Broughton Island. At 3:40pm we saw 13’ on an 8.7-foot tide. It is narrow and best transited in a small shallow draft boat or dinghy. But fun to explore, nevertheless.

The lagoon is large – our tour was 8.6 nautical miles and took us about 2 hours to complete.