Port Harvey to Potts Lagoon

Distance: 25.6 miles

Travel time: 3 hrs, 31 mins

We pulled out of Port Harvey mid-morning after the fog began to lift, headed for an anchorage at Lagoon Cove. We have several cruising guides and hadn’t read all of them before making the choice. As we approached, the chart revealed we’d be anchoring in 60’ of water, which is ok if the weather is calm, but not if windy. We turned on the VHF radio to listen to the latest weather update and learned the area was forecast to have gale force winds nearby, and 25-35 knots overnight. Nope, don’t want to go to Lagoon Cove after all, with its westerly exposure to prevailing winds.

Today’s tidal swing was big, so we saw lots of exposed rocks at low tide in Chatham Channel and elsewhere, as well as huge kelp beds. Further reading led us to head 8 miles further to Potts Cove.

Pretty boats abound, but almost all of them have more wood than we ever want to maintain, so we’ll just enjoy looking at and photographing them.

Mountains, most of which have been clear-cut sometime in past decades, rise from the water, and water depths continue to be in the 200 – 800 foot range. When we were on our Great Loop trip in 2012-13 we spent several months mentally and technically adjusting to the extremely shallow (10-20 feet) waters on the east coast. Up here, we’re going through a similar exercise getting used to the very deep anchorages, as our entire Loop we never anchored in water over 24 feet deep. 60 feet is common here in The Broughton Islands, and we have friends in Alaska now who recently anchored in 90 feet. We can’t yet imagine that, and wonder how we’d sleep with only a 3:1 scope on our anchor rode, the most we could manage with our 300 feet of chain.

Heading into the anchorage, we passed a large rock-blasting operation.

 

Inside Potts Lagoon, there’s a small community of Float Houses on the western edge. After 5:00 pm we watched a parade of small boats returning there after being away at work all day, somewhere. Bob spotted at least one 10-12 year old child among the residents. Wonder where kids who live here go to school? Home-school maybe?

 

After settling into the anchorage, late lunch and a nap, we dropped the dinghy to explore the area. It was high tide by then, so we were able to get all the way to the end of a 1.5 mile finger which clearly would have been dry at low tide. It was remote and pretty, and reminded us a bit of the Cypress Swamps in South Carolina. Kingfishers were plentiful, identified by their distinctive call even when we couldn’t see them. Blue Herons and Ravens too.

The community of Float Houses looks charming from afar, and sort of shabby up close.

Logs are tied together somehow between houses, providing a “walking path” of sorts between homes, or at least that’s our theory. None of the homes is attached to land, and all are off-grid of course.

Late in the afternoon a pretty boat (below) named “Fidalgo” pulled into the anchorage. On our dinghy ride we stopped to say hello, and it turned out they’re from Gig Harbor a few miles from where we live, they’re friends with our neighbors 8 doors down our lane, and they know Steve and Deanna from whom we bought this boat last September!  What a small world. They took off to drop shrimp pots while we dropped two crab pots.

By nightfall there were 4 boats in the anchorage. We’re liking this pretty, peaceful place.