Book Recommendation for the Broughtons

The Waggoner urges readers who plan to cruise the Broughtons to buy and read Bill Proctor's book, Full Moon, Flood Tide, to get a fuller appreciation of that fabulous cruising area. Here is a hands-on recommendation from some fellow cruisers.

Bill Proctor's (with Yvonne Maximchuk) book Full Moon, Flood Tide is an absolutely delightful way to get to know the Broughtons and surrounding area in a unique and in-depth way. We can't recommend it enough. We stopped by to tell Billy so, and in the process picked up some extra local knowledge from Billy's wife, Yvonne [same first name as Yvonne Maximchuk -- ed].

We used Bill Proctor's book every day, and visited almost all the places it describes. Without the book we never would have known what we were looking at.

Three places particularly struck us: the head of Viner Sound with its old logging railway; Watson Cove on Tribune Channel, with its hidden waterfall (although not so hidden after three days of rain) and nearby ancient cedar tree; and best of all, the Ahta River at the head of Bond Sound, an absolutely pristine salmon spawning river, teeming with every sort of wildlife from very large, dead salmon that have just completed their life cycle, to very much larger hairy brown mammals that feed on them (and just about anything else they want to). The place is like something from a fairy tale, and not all that easy to find and explore, but very much worth it.

As usual, the Waggoner was with us throughout our cruise, and was indispensable. Thanks for such a wonderful publication.

—John and Lorraine Littlewood

For those who don't know, the Broughtons is the name generally applied to the inlets, islands and waterways that lie on the mainland side of Queen Charlotte Strait, north of Johnstone Strait but still inside Vancouver Island. The area includes the islands adjacent to Blackfish Sound and Fife Sound. It also includes Knight Inlet, Kingcome Inlet, Tribune Channel, Drury Inlet and MacKenzie Sound.

Locals call this area the Mainland, to distinguish it from the Vancouver Island side, which they call North Island.

I think the Broughtons are the next sexy cruising area in the Northwest, an area with a history, grandeur and appeal that Desolation Sound had 25 years ago. It's up there and it's exciting, and most cruisers haven't visited it yet.

—Bob Hale