Summer Moorage Spots On Cortes Island

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - Harbour Authority Cortes Island started taking applications for summer moorage spots at 9 AM on April 1st.

Harbour Master Jenny Hartwick explained, “This is our way of helping to manage the number of boats using. What's happened over the last few years on Cortes especially after Covid, is we've seen a steady increase in summer visitors and local residents getting out on the water. That's put additional pressure on the available mortgage that we have at the docks.”

“The one point that I want to make really clear is we have ample space available for anyone who is looking for mortgage at the docks. What we do not necessarily have is available mortgage at your first choice dock. We have some areas of higher population density and the docks that are in those areas tend to be the most popular. For safety reasons, we cannot accommodate every single boat that puts in a request for mortgage at those docks. If we tried, there would be too many security issues, be it vessels getting damaged, the, the possibility of people getting hurt and literally the facilities themselves wouldn't be able to support the weight of all of the boats that we have asking to stay there.”

“Again, just making it clear for the community, absolutely we have the space and we will accommodate you. We just need your understanding in working with us to make sure that our docks are both accessible and safe to everybody.”

Cortes Currents: Do you have any docks that are already fully booked for the summer?

Jenny Hartwick: “I'm still working my way through numbers and applications. people give us the dates that they'd like to be there and we really try our best to fit everybody in. We say, okay, this person only wants three weeks, we can partner them with this person.”

“Typically the Cortes Bay and the Whaletown docks are full. That's been the pattern for the last number of years. Those two tend to be the most popular, again, simply because of their geographical location.”

“I have mockups of every single dock down to the exact footage. We plot out whose boat and then who we can raft together. We try to get everybody their first choice, but I would suspect this year, like last year and the previous years that Cortes Bay and Whale Town will be full.”

Cortes Currents: My next question was going to be about waiting times, but you mean there's just no chance of getting to those two?

Jenny Hartwick: “Most likely but, again, that's not always true.”

“We encourage everybody to reach out and communicate with us because stuff happens. Your boat breaks down. You go on an extended three week sailing trip. If people communicate that and they let us know, we're down on the docks every single day. We monitor and we watch.”

“If we notice that something's going on, we keep a wait list. If we can move somebody into their first choice doc, we'll do that.”

“One of the important things to remember in this, our Small Craft Harbours docks give priority to commercial and CFB mortgage. That is the mandate that we're given from the federal government, we are to support those users first.”

“The Gorge Dock for example, is primarily commercial users only. We actually don't solicit recreational mortgage at that dock because we really don't have room just with the number of commercial users that we have.”

“So there's multiple factors in play, but it's an ongoing process for us and we keep wait lists. We'll get you in if we can.”