Our choice to visit Pirates Cove involved looking at the charts, figuring distances, listening to the weather forecasts and reading the guide books. It did not, and should have, involve looking at a tide chart. The guide mentions the entrance to the cove being somewhat tricky, which I didn't really think it was, but I don't think it mentions it being shallow. Going in at low tide does help to show where all the rocks and reefs are, and it makes it very obvious why the navigational buoys are placed where they are, but I'm never all that crazy about any passage where I have to stare at the depth sounder as it quickly counts down to zero. I'm guessing the calibration must be a little bit off, because the depth read zero several times but we never felt the boat touch bottom. Probably good to keep it that way so we have a little margin of error. The guide book says this is one of the most popular destinations in the Gulf Islands, which is probably referring to a time of the year when it is not pouring rain and the temperature is above freezing, because we had the place to ourselves.
The next morning we left a little early to make sure we had a bit more water under the keel going back through the entrance, and anchored again just outside in the cove in Ruxton Passage to wait for slack tide at Dodd Narrows. This turned out to be a nice anchorage as well although it wouldn't be that great if the wind was out of the south.
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