A Minted Location day guide
Dock & Dine in Vancouver
Vancouver has one published dock-and-dine access, and it is civic rather than commercial.
The Granville Island public dock, behind the Public Market, is free, first come first served, with a three-hour limit and registration required on arrival on 604-315-3003. Tie up, register, and you have three hours to shop the Market or eat on the island. It is the one place in this city where you can leave a boat and go buy lunch on a published rule.
Everything else here works the other way round: you berth first and walk. Bridges, Dockside Restaurant and The Sandbar on Granville Island, and Cardero's, Ancora and the Mermaid Inn on the Coal Harbour side, are all walk-up from a berth rather than tie-up-and-dine. Several of them sit on the water; none of them is an arrival point.
So dining follows the berth — Coal Harbour, Quayside or Fishermen's Wharf — and downtown starts at the top of the ramp.
The chart below is a departure diagram rather than a dining strip: the Fraser River lift that sets the regional ceiling, the fuel wharf that sets the bunkering one, the two Narrows you pass through, and the two rapids that gate the cruise at either end.
The stops, as their own docks describe them
| Spot | Where | Arriving by boat |
|---|---|---|
| Granville Island public dockThe only published dock-and-dine access in Vancouver, and it is civic rather than commercial. Tie up, register, and you have three hours to shop the Public Market or eat on the island. | Behind the Public Market | Free, three-hour limit, first come first served; registration required on arrival at 604-315-3003 |
| Bridges · Dockside Restaurant · The SandbarAll three sit on the water at Granville Island or across False Creek, and all three are walk-up rather than tie-up. Use the public dock behind the Public Market and walk in. | Granville Island and False Creek | Use the Granville Island public dock and walk |
| Cardero's · Ancora · Mermaid InnThe Coal Harbour side, and the same arrangement. The Mermaid Inn is a floating restaurant and the only dining at the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club's Coal Harbour station, which has no clubhouse. All three are reached on foot from a Coal Harbour berth. | Coal Harbour and False Creek | Berth at Coal Harbour and walk |
Dockage notes are what each restaurant publishes on its own site — space is first-come and dinner-hour rafting is real, so hail ahead. Where a venue states nothing about docking, we say so rather than guess.
Planning more than lunch?
We represent buyers wherever the right boat sits — shortlisting, surveying and sea-trialing on the buyer's side of the table. Tell us the mission and we'll tell you which boat, and which berth, it calls for.