We pulled out on Monday a little after noon, in sunny and hot weather, with a brisk NW wind in our faces.
Crew for this voyage was wife and First Mate Lisa, and First Puppy 'Bina.
Unfortunately we needed fuel again, so it was another obligatory stop at the fuel dock. This time we had to wait about 45 minutes for our turn at the dock. It happens sometimes. There is only so much room at the dock. We took on 80 gallons of diesel and left there about 2:15 PM.
Here's a shot of a beautiful yacht that pulled in to the fuel dock just as we were leaving.
And here are a couple more yachts at Doyon's Landing, a private moorage just on the south end of town.
I just hate it when you pull into a private moorage in your beautiful 100' yacht, only to have an even more beautiful 160' yacht pull in next to you! The one on the right is the Glaze, which I photographed on an earlier trip this year. It has a nice website if you are interested.
Here is a map snippet of the first portion of our trip.
It was hot and sunny and windy and I just wanted to chill out on the boat.
So we headed to a locally known hole called Ice House Cove.
It's only about 10 miles from town, so we did not log much distance today, but we did find a nice, secure, and beautiful place to spend the night.
The entry path into Ice House Cove is a little tricky, but I have gone in there in the pitch black in the dead of winter, so doing it in bright sunlight in mid afternoon was a piece of cake.
We got tied up to the mooring buoy at about 3:30 PM and just hung out for the rest of the afternoon. Notice the side panels on the flybridge are pulled up to let some air in.
When it got to be dinner time we enjoyed a great dinner of roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and green salad.
Around 7 PM we put the raft in the water (sans outboard) and rowed the short distance to shore so we could de-water Bina and she could stretch her legs a bit. She's supposed to use the puppy pads on board but she hasn't been doing so well at that lately. And of course we spoil her.
Sometimes things happen when you're out on these trips that seem odd and you can't explain. About 8:30 PM, right at low tide, a small runabout came in and tied to the beach nearby. This is not a nicely sloped sandy beach. This is a steep and rocky beach.
There were 3 young adults on board, and one of them was carrying an infant in a front pack like carrier. They tied off the boat and scrambled up the rocks, baby and all. About an hour later they came back, still carrying the baby. They scrambled down the rocks, got in the boat and left. Who knows what they were up to.
When it got to be bedtime we realized that the wind had kicked up a bit and the waves were slapping up against the hull, making sleeping up in the front berth sort of like sleeping inside a base drum. So we made up the couch bed and went to bed out there.
Tuesday morning we were up early and had a good breakfast and took Bina to shore again.
We pulled out about 10 AM. We're on vacation after all.
Weather was sunny, with some patchy fog still rolling around. And of course still breezy.
Here's a map snippet that shows the second portion of the route.
We went north into Carroll Inlet.
It's not very far up into the inlet.
We anchored in about 180' and started halibut fishing.
Lisa had this idea that if you stay on a halibut fishing spot for 6 hours then you will catch a halibut.
We stayed for 6 hours - we didn't catch a halibut.
We didn't catch anything.
But it was a pleasant spot to spend the afternoon.
We did see some Killer Whales pass by.
This was the best shot I could get of them.
We pulled anchor about 5:30 PM and headed to the Shoal Cove dock, just a couple of miles north in the inlet.
Interestingly enough the Shoal Cove dock is not in Shoal Cove. It's too shallow in the cove for anything other than a skiff so the USCG and the USFS put their docks just a mile or so north of the cove itself. The USCG used to maintain a LORAN station near Shoal Cove and they used the access road to get there. LORAN was a navigational system before GPS, but the LORAN station has been shut down.
Just about the same time we arrived there a small runabout, perhaps 22' long or so, also arrived, with 5 "kids." I called them kids, but Lisa said they were "young adults."
They set up a barbecue up at the top of the ramp and cooked a salmon fillet. They ran around on the 4 wheelers, and generally had a good time.
Here is a picture of them when they were loading up to leave. They had the 5 "kids," the two 4 wheelers, and they had picked up a dune buggy that apparently they left there a few days ago. It was a pretty heavily loaded boat.
Dinner this evening was hamburgers and salad.
The Shoal Cove dock has a clear view of the western sky, which can lead to some very good sunset pictures, under the right weather conditions. This was one of those times when I would run out and take a picture of the sunset, and then run out again 5 minutes later because it was better. I think this picture was the best one of all of them.
We had a very quiet and restful night on board.
On Wednesday Lisa got up very early and took a few pics, and then of course went back to bed.
We had a good breakfast and then took a longer walk up the road.
Lisa was collecting rocks off the road - don't ask.
When we got back to the boat it was -2.1' tide, and the back of the boat was sitting in about 10' of water. Good thing it only takes about 3.5' to float the boat.
We pulled out about 11:15 AM, headed to Thorne Arm, just up and around the corner.
Here's another map snippet that shows our short voyage this morning.
We anchored in about 180' for some more bottom fishing.
True to form the weather seemed to kick up as soon as I dropped the anchor, but thankfully it calmed down quite a bit before we left.
However, we got no fish, again.
This is what I told Lisa at the time:
"I have given up all hope of ever catching a halibut again."
Since it was late in the day when we anchored we did not have the obligatory 6 hours to stay there, per Lisa's mandate.
One of the blogs I follow states that while he, the boater/blogger, wants everything to go smoothly and have uneventful but enjoyable trips, his readers seem to want drama, things going wrong.
When we bottom fish I don't use the anchor that is on the winch. There is not enough "rode" (chain and line) on that anchor. I use a smaller anchor that has about 450' of line and chain on it. The downside is that I don't have it on a winch. I use a "buoy pull" system to pull that anchor. That system is complicated and I don't think I can describe it properly here, but suffice it to say it is something of a challenge for two old people like us to pull it.
When I went to pull it, the anchor hung up on the bottom, and I could not get it up off the bottom. This is a potentially dangerous situation, so I just put an extra buoy on the line and left it for the night. I did call the USCG and notify them that I was leaving it.
Here's another map snippet that shows the very short run from where we were anchored to bottom fish to the spot inside Moth Bay where we anchored for the night.
I have anchored inside Moth Bay many times over the years. It is a nice place to spend the night.
When we got in there there was a small sailboat named "Liberty" anchored in there, but there was plenty of room for us to anchor as well.
We got anchored up OK and then had a good dinner of hot dogs for me and hamburgers for Lisa, and salad for both.
About 8 PM we put the raft in the water and rowed Bina to shore. On the way back we rowed over to the Liberty and chatted with the two guys on board. They were just wrapping up a 9 day voyage around our island, and headed to town tomorrow.
At 9:30 PM, just before full dark, I reset the anchor, moving just a little closer to the Liberty, and a little further away from the big rock that was menacing us right off the stern.
Whenever we are anchored I am up several times in the night, checking our position on the GPS to make sure we are where we're supposed to be. I also set a shallow water alarm on the GPS so that if we drift into shallow water an alarm will sound.
Thursday morning we were up about 7 AM.
The Liberty was gone - not unexpected.
We took a short shore excursion and then I got this shot of Lisa and Bina in the sunlight.
Here's where the drama starts...
We were sitting there enjoying breakfast, with the generator running, and I noticed that there were lots and lots of jelly fish around the boat. And I mean lots!
Just about the same time I started worrying about the generator salt water intake sucking them up - the generator quit. The generator is a small diesel engine that uses salt water for cooling.
The sea strainer that is the first filter on the sea water was plugged almost solid with jelly fish goo.
I neglected to take a picture of this, but you can thank me later.
I had a hard time cleaning out the sea strainer, and then I had to figure out how to get the remaining jelly fish goo out of the sea strainer canister. I tried pliers, hooks of various sizes, screw drivers, etc. but nothing worked. Pardon my language but it was like trying to suck snot out of a bottle.
Then I remembered that I had a large turkey baster on board. Don't know why I put it on board. That was the perfect tool to suck all that goo out of the sea strainer.
So then I tried to start the engines and the port engine would not start.
More drama.
I have run this boat for 7 years, putting almost 2000 hours on the engines, and without exception the engines have always started - until today.
It only took a few minutes for me to discover that the port engine starting battery was low, and that's why the engine wouldn't start. Now that the generator was functional again I could start it and run the battery charger for awhile to charge the batteries.
After charging the batteries for awhile I successfully started the port engine.
However, it would not kick into gear.
The starboard engine was fine, but the port engine was in permanent neutral.
I am no mechanic so I called my mechanic on my sat phone.
He said he thought the problem was electrical because my engine controls are electronic.
So I shut everything down, waited awhile, and then started the engines again.
Everything was fine.
Guess I rebooted.
We pulled the anchor and went back out to where our other anchor was stuck on the bottom.
After some very tense moments and some very hard work, we were able to successfully pull the anchor. I had thought I might have to cut the line and say good-bye to it.
Around noon we start trolling again at the entrance to Carroll Inlet, near Ice House Cove, where we had stayed the first night out. There were fish jumping everywhere.
After only about 2 hours of trolling we had 2 nice Pinks and 2 even nicer Silvers on board.
We headed back to the Shoal Cove dock (we like it there) arriving there about 4 PM.
Here are the fish we caught.
Dinner this evening consisted of fresh Silver salmon cooked on the Foreman Grill, potatoes, veges, and salad. Very good.
After about 2 1/2 weeks of warm sunny weather the rains finally returned.
We had a quiet evening on board and a very restful night, listening to the rain.
On Friday morning we were up, and had a quick breakfast, and then took another longer walk up the road, in the rain. Lisa's still collecting rocks.
We fired up the engines (without incident this time) about 10 AM and headed for home, arriving in the stall at about 1 PM.
We logged about 100 nm on this trip.
Another successful voyage on Faraway.
Back to work on Monday - ugh.
No comments:
Post a Comment