Blunden Harbour Lay Day

We had a good night’s sleep despite the wind and white caps. We awoke to sun and 10-15 knots of wind but no white caps. We’ll spend the day in Blunden Harbour as the forecast for tomorrow is much more favorable for going around Cape Caution.

a perfect for a dinghy explore

The reason Blunden Harbour made our float plan this year is a long-standing desire to get into Bradley Lagoon. You need at least +11 feet to get past the rocks, and the lagoon is very large. It would be easy to miss the timing to get back out if you lose track of time.

Even through the winds were up again and small white caps were all around, we launched the dinghy to see if we could make it into the lagoon. We picked our route carefully, using the lee of several islands to get out of the chop.

We arrived an hour early for high tide. When we entered, the tide at the Raynor Group was 11.5 feet.  Although the current was still running into the lagoon, it seemed like there was enough water to get into the lagoon and not too much current to be a problem. Turns out it was just enough water. The rocks on either side of the main flow were quite visible under the surface, we rode the current in and kept the dinghy off the rocks. Definitely favor the right 1/3 of the channel when entering.

The wind was still quite strong, and touring the north or south arms of the lagoon would mean one direction would be a very wet ride. Therefore, we headed into the east arm of the lagoon. The arm is wide, and the water mostly greater than 15 feet on the +11.5-foot tide. The shallowest we saw was a 5.5-foot spot.

We arrived at the end of the charted water and continued on for another .9 mile. You feel like you’re the first person to explore the area when there is nothing shown on your chart.  It was pretty, remote and well sheltered from the wind. Very enjoyable.

After an hour we arrived back at the entrance of the lagoon. I wanted to test the theory that slack would be reasonably close to high tide at the Raynor Group. That didn’t come to pass.

preparing to exit bradley lagoon

The water was higher, but the current flowing in seemed even stronger than when we came in an hour earlier. We went back though the rapids right at the high tide predicted time, but the flow was very strong; maybe 8 knots. I had to continue to add power to make way and was happy we had a 30 hp Yamaha pushing us through. With the higher water, the flow was more linear and the rocks well covered, but the high flow rate and turbulence demanded all my attention at the helm.

current on our bow as we exit bradley lagoon

Our total dinghy trip was 6.9 nm. After we returned to OceanFlyer, I looked at Google Earth and saw that even though we thought we had reached the end of the east arm, if we had continued to explore the “end” a little further, we would have found a channel and could have continued further to the NE.  Next time!

Tomorrow, we think the weather will cooperate for our rounding of Cape Caution.