Bamberton to Brentwood Bay Paddle

When we camped at Brentwood Bay Provincial Park, I came up with a cool little adventure paddle across the Saanich Inlet to explore Brentwood Bay and Tod Inlet around the Butchard Gardens. Tina will drive the kids and take the Mill Bay to Brentwood Bay ferry to meet up with me, and treat herself to some nice spa time at the resort while I take over the kids for a few hours. We will all then head back on the ferry, making this a one-way paddle for me.

One complication was that our campsite is set 1.5km back from the beach in the forest on a steep hill, so access to water by foot with all the paddling gear is impractical. I opted to bike down and lock my bike at the day use area. If you came just for the day, you still have to walk about 100m down a fairly steep hill to get to the beach from the parking lot.

Then it’s time to pump up at the beach and launch!

A second factor in this paddle is the timing of the Brentwood-Mill Bay ferry. It starts in Brentwood Bay, takes 25 minutes to cross Saanich Inlet, and 10 minutes to unload and load the passengers before going the other way. In otherwords, every 35 minutes the ferry makes a trip across the inlet. Launching from Bamberton and cutting across the inlet is about 2.5km, which would take a competent paddler about 30 minutes to complete. Thus, timing the ferry is of crucial importance. Or, you can go south and cross near Willis Point, avoiding the ferry route all together, but this adds a few kilometers to your total paddle and you will be paddling past a rock quarry.

I made the silly mistake of looking at the Mill Bay to Brentwood Bay ferry schedule when I launched, thinking I had 35 minutes more time than I did before the ferry started. Realizing the mistake mid paddle, I had two options: one was to go full speed to the east and cut across the ferry route as quickly as possible, or two was to find shelter near Senanus Island because the ferry wouldn’t get too close to it.

You can see from the GSP tracking that I detoured towards Senanus Island for a minute, and then had the good sense to check Google Maps and realized that the ferry would cross south of Senanus and I was in fact paddling alongside the ferry route! I quickly aimed east again and paddled hard.

I paddled 3km at a speed of 6km/h and crossed Saanich Inlet in 30 minutes, before the ferry left its port. I relaxed and thought about the lessons learned. It would have been much better if I launched 30 minutes earlier, which would put me way ahead of the first ferry out of Brentwood Bay (first sailing on the Sunday was 8:40am), and of course I should have checked the ferry schedule for both directions to see which port the first ferry will come out of. Failing that, it would be better to wait until the ferry left from Mill Bay to Brentwood Bay before crossing, since this would have given me about 1 hour to leisurely cross the inlet.

This section of Sannich Inlet is inhabited by human development. Lots of waterfront houses and pleasure boats are anchored and moored around Brentwood Bay.

I paddled behind the ferry as it entered port in Brentwood Bay, and explored Tod Inlet. Again, it’s dotted with sailboats. There were a lot more kayakers and paddleboarders here in this very well protected inlet. There was no sight of the world-famous Butchard Gardens from the water, except for several yellow signs warning people about getting hit with debris on Firewords Saturdays.

Rounding the corner, I stumbled upon a developed landing site, with a gravel beach and a new floating dock.

I went up to explore and learned that this area is SṈIDȻEȽ (pronounced sngeet kwith, meaning “Place of the Blue Grouse”), with recent and ongoing restoration efforts revitalizing the land and inlet. It’s part of Gowlland Tod Provincial Park, with pit toilets, trails, some old ruins, and a massive maple tree with an impressive trunk.

I paddled back to Brentwood Bay and pulled out from Verdier Park near the ferry terminal. Paddleboarders, kayakers, and canoists were seen staging and launching from here, but the parking lot for this park is small and mostly time-limited.