Day-O!

Monday, June 15, 2020. Pearse Islets to Waddington Bay. 15 NM.

 

They say that attitude is the difference between adversity and adventure. I’ve also read that the simple act of smiling, whether you are feeling happy or not, can increase the good neurotransmitters; things like dopamine and serotonin, that improve your mood. Today had a lot of forced smiling to adjust the attitude to adventure levels.

In fact, the day really started late last night, with two rookie mistakes; one small and annoying, the other that might have had significant consequences. After going to bed exhausted, I woke up around 11:30 with the sound of increased wind in the rigging, and a halyard “ting-ting-tinging” off the mast, as the wind picked up. I realized that, despite looking over the weather extensively for the next several days on the outside of Vancouver Island, we had forgotten to check the weather for the anchorage we were in, for that night. Rookie mistake number 1. We had selected Pearse Island for it’s protection from the west, but a quick look at the forecast for the night showed east winds building to 20 knots. The anchorage we were in had no protection from the east. In fact, looking east was basically looking back 50 miles down Johnstone Strait. And we were on a lee shore.

I got up to take a look outside, and saw the waves building, as the boat started to become more active. I then took a quick pee break. Rookie mistake number 2. As I relieved myself, I felt my feet getting wet, and realized we had forgotten to empty the pee bucket on the composting toilet, what with all the other chores we completed during the day. Sure enough, the bucket was overflowing.

Now, I am loathe to say anything bad about our composting toilet, as it has simplified sewage management on the boat immensely. On our previous boat, I was forever fixing macerator pumps, holding tanks, pumping handles, etc. The composting toilet trades all these complicated (and disgusting) maintenance tasks and trades them in for a couple of very simple and easy maintenance tasks. The trade-off, though, requires that the simple tasks of emptying the pee bucket and the main tank be done without fail on a regular basis. They are easy to do, but if you forget – well, wet feet at midnight.

Anyway, after drying and cleaning my feet and the floor, I stepped out into the gathering storm, and emptied the bucket over the back. The rocky shore was disconcertingly close in the faint light of midnight.

I climbed back into bed, but it wasn’t long before the anchor alarm app on my phone went off, as our chain stretched out in the growing wind. I reset it, and went back up to the cockpit to turn on the instruments, and check the wind speed and position. It started to feel like a dangerous situation, so I pulled a sleeping bag and pillow into the cockpit, and settled down where I could keep a closer eye on things. I knew I wasn’t going to sleep well down below, anyway. Sara, on the other hand, is the world champion of sleepers, and I knew she would get through things without batting an eye. In fact, I was quite happy for that, as I knew a sleepless night for two of us would be much worse than a sleepless night for only one. She could always carry the burden the next day, if I was too exhausted.

I spent the rest of the night in the cockpit, watching our anchor chain get stretched further and further, and the rocks coming closer and closer. Every time I started to drift off, the anchor alarm jerked me back to attention, as the boat broke through the artificial GPS defined boundary that I had set.

Finally, around 5:00 a.m., we seemed to have stretched all we were going to stretch, and I fell asleep for a couple of hours.

I headed back down into the cabin around 0700, and turned the heater on, so that things were warm when Sara got up. The wind had calmed a bit, to 15 knots with gusts to 20, and we decided, after a quick breakfast, to get the anchor up and find somewhere with better protection, as the east wind was forecast to last until the evening.

Blackfish Sound

This is when the adventure/adversity dichotomy started to become a bit fuzzy. We got all our foul weather gear on and went out into the blustery wind and rain to pull up the anchor. Sara ran the windlass as I eased the boat forward to take the pressure off the chain. The anchor came in slowly but surely. 175 feet, 150 feet, 100 feet, 75 feet – then, the windlass started to slow and strain, and the anchor chain pulled straight down, but it became clear, it wasn’t going to keep coming aboard, and the windlass was close to blowing a fuse.

From experience, we knew that it was not wise to strain the windlass to that point, so we backed off. We pushed the boat forward to see if we could dislodge the chain from whatever it had become caught on, but it wouldn’t budge. We knew it wasn’t the anchor that was caught, since we still had about 75 feet out in 30 feet of water. The chain was stuck on something.

We let some more anchor chain out so we could sit back and puzzle things out. What was going on? Was the chain wrapped around a rock, or a log, or somehow caught up in some debris on the bottom? All these things had happened to us before. What was clear was, with the wind blowing 20 knots and waves coming down 50 miles worth of fetch, now was not the time to try and sort things out. We would wait for the wind to settle later in the day, and the current to ease off, so that we could try to get the anchor up with less pressure on the chain.

We settled in for a bouncy, but otherwise quiet day on the boat. I took a nap, and Sara did some boat chores, and once again took a shot at the ever-complicated tasks of planning, coordinating weather, currents, and wind to see where else we could explore during our time together. She also made lovely biscuits and soup for lunch.

Then, we sat and waited some more. We practiced knots, solidifying our bowline and rolling hitch skills in the cockpit. Finally, things seemed to have eased enough for us to try again. Neither of us was keen to spend another night in the same anchorage, so we headed out back into the rain, and the now easing wind, to try again.

We worked the boat around to one side of where we thought the anchor lay, thinking that if the chain was caught under a rock or a log, maybe we could pull it out before we brought it up. No luck; we still hit a windlass breaking strain at 75 feet. Next, we tried to set our alternative anchor, in the hopes of easing the pressure off our primary anchor chain to help us raise it off the bottom. Almost instantly, the two became tangled, and we ended up having to pull up the secondary anchor by hand, as the second windlass wouldn’t grab the chain right. We had never used this anchor before, and now was not the time to test it.

In the end, we used the boat to pull on the chain going forward. When we eased off the throttle, we took up the chain slack on the windlass without overloading it. This process seemed to work, and before long, we saw 75 feet come up again. Then, shortly after that, we managed to get 50 feet in. We were almost off the bottom! Finally, we saw the 50 foot mark come by. The windlass was straining, but lifting. In came 25 feet, and we were off the bottom! Sara drove forward to get us into deeper water, and I kept slowly raising what seemed like huge load for the windlass.

 

Finally, I saw what had been causing us all the problem. A massive ball of kelp had gathered around the chain, and had now slid down to sit on the anchor. It was about the size of an oven, and must have weighed a couple of hundred pounds at least. It took about 10 minutes with the boat hook, pulling off bunch after bunch, to free up the anchor so it could be brought back up over the bow roller.

In retrospect, we realized that we had been warned by the various cruising guides that anchoring somewhere with a strong current was bound to build up kelp on your chain and anchor. Having been there for two nights, I think we had built up a huge ball of kelp, and as we pulled the chain in, it slipped down until it caught near the end, creating a load that was too heavy for the windlass. Driving around and pulling on it a bit had knocked off enough kelp that we could just raise the remainder, and finally knock it off and escape. At last, we were free!

It was about 5:30 p.m. by the time we were done with all this messing around, but since we are close to the longest day of the year here, it doesn’t get dark until about 10:00 p.m. We decided to push north in the late day to Waddington Bay, in the norther Broughtons. On the way, we were treated to low cloud over flat calm waters as we crossed Blackfish Sound. Black and white porpoises (maybe Dahl’s porpoises) surfaced around us multiple times, and they seemed to be enjoying feeding in the quiet water.

Eventually, the rain started again as we worked our way up Spring Passage toward Waddington Bay. We pulled into the still bay surrounded by evergreens right down to the water. For the first time since we left Nanaimo, we shared the anchorage with others. Six boats were already silently lying at anchor as we found a spot among them. Not a person was in sight, though, as everyone was tucked away from the rain.

We put up the cockpit enclosure, and started the process of drying things out. Sara worked her daily magic, and before long, a steaming dinner of shrimp stir fry and rice was on the table as the Spotify “Eclectic Mix” kept us company.

Waddington Bay

As I close this entry, Harry Belafonte is singing “Day-O!”, and tallying his banana! Six-foot, seven-foot, eight-foot bunch! After a good night’s sleep, attitudes will be dialed back to adventure. Here’s hoping for a sunny day tomorrow!