Perhaps Earle Stanley Gardner's description of Princess Louisa Inlet in his Log of a Landlubber will help us in our efforts to keep this park in its state of serene natural beauty. Mr. Gardner wrote:

"There is no use describing that inlet. Perhaps an atheist could view it and remain an atheist, but I doubt it. There is a calm tranquility which stretches from the smooth surface of the reflecting water straight up into infinity. The deep calm of eternal silence is disturbed only by the muffled roar of throbbing waterfalls as they plunge down from sheer cliffs.

There is no scenery in the world that can beat it. Not that I've seen the rest of the world.  I don't need to, I've seen Princess Louisa Inlet.

Every day showed some new glimpse of nature. Constantly changing clouds clung to the sheer cliffs for companionship, drifting lightly from crag to crag, lazily floating along above their swimming reflections giving ever new light combinations, ever new contours. Clouds, water, trees, mountains, snow and sky all seem to be perpetually the same through the countless ages of eternal time, and yet to be changing hourly. One views the scenery with bared head and choking feeling of the throat. It is more than beautiful. It is sacred."

We left Vancouver just after 6:00 pm on Friday and dropped the hook for the evening in Smugglers Cove, near Secret Cove, on the Sunshine Coast. Met some really nice people from Friday Harbour, who were cruising up to Desolation Sound for a few weeks.

We left the next morning and after a brief stop at Secret Cove for a few supplies, headed up past Pender Harbour and into the Agmemnon Channel inland towards the Queens Reach, from which Princess Louisa Inlet eventually leads.

We reached Malibu Rapids (the entrance to the Inlet) around noon, about two hours too early for slack tide but after having read just about everything I could about the entry and a brief scope of the conditions, decided to enter against an ebb flow of about 6 knots. The passage was reasonably easy but much smaller and narrower than I had imagined. We tied to the dock at the head of the Inlet for the evening and spent much of the afternoon and early evening exploring on land. Princess Louisa and the Chatterbox falls are truly spectacular and since I cannot express it better than in the quote above, I will not even try.

Click here for a short AVI movie of the falls

We left 6:30 am the next morning to take advantage of the slack tide again (or we would have had to wait till 2:30 pm to get out) as did many of the boats who shared the Inlet with us the previous evening. Stopped briefly in Egmond and then headed back down the Agmemnon Channel. By the time we reached the Georgia Strait, the wind had picked up quite a bit and the Coast Guard had issued a Small Craft Warning. We pounded our way to Secret Cove and stopped for fuel and a newspaper. By the time we left Secret Cove the water was really upset and most of the trip back and into the protected waters of English Bay was pretty rough, but Kuredu handled this in her stride with no hint of distress. As my Dad said: "It was uncomfortable but I never felt unsafe or scared". A very nice vessel.