Sweet, Sweet, Booker Lagoon

Booker Lagoon is everything a lagoon should be.   It is large, protected, and beautiful.  There are several little inner bays, islets, and passages with strong currents due to the tides.  There are clams to dig at low tide, sea asparagus and nodding onions to forage.  There is a deep shrimping hole in the large part of the lagoon as well plus at extreme low tide the possibility of a few oysters left over from a marine farm that was blown away in a storm a few years ago.

Since we still don’t have a working anchor windlass we again rafted to Ruby Slippers.

I spent the rest of the afternoon removing the windlass completely.   I removed a few circlips and finally found the shaft bearing, which was destroyed.   This is all starting to make sense.  The upper seal obviously stopped sealing at some point in its 10 year life, allowing water from around the gypsy down through the seal into the shaft area, rusting the circlips and bearing which eventually failed.   This bearing failure mostly likely caused the squeaking we hear when we raise and lower the anchor and the gypsy itself began resting on the base, squeaking as we raise and lower the anchor (which we’ve been hearing for a while).

While I worked on the boat, the kids spent a lot of time with Jim in his dinghy as he cruised around the lagoon in his dinghy collecting firewood for a beach fire and later digging for clams at low tide.   Morgan and Ellie had lots of fun digging in the dirt and finding the clams which were amazingly abundant just a few inches below the surface.   Devon and I were very surprised that they were digging in the dirt, especially Morgan, who really hasn’t done that before.

We also tried to set up our prawn and crab traps but couldn’t find our bait jars (we made some out of plastic bottles) or the weight to hold the excess prawn trap line underwater.

I became increasingly frustrated with boat issues, at which point I had to stop for a while.   The windlass is toast.  The bearing is destroyed and we’d need to replace that along with the shaft seals and circlips, all of which are parts we will need to order from somewhere first.  There is no way to fix it without those parts.  I’m also concerned that there are other parts we need to replace that I haven’t found yet.

Making this difficult to handle is that there is no cell service in the lagoon, I let the sim card for the old Iridium phone expire (since I had a new Iridium Pilot system), and yet the new system was not hooked up fully, nor had I remembered to bring a phone handset for it.

However, the Delorme InReach (now Garmin InReach) device works fine and I could SMS text people to help arrange things from shore.  The next place where we had a chance of getting parts and service is Shearwater – 5 days away.

In addition to the windlass issues and my inability to get either sat phone working, the toilet is still not working right, and I can’t find the plumbing parts bin so I can get rid of the anti-siphon valve I added.

I successfully (I think) wired a switch to set our Hydronic Heater to Engine heat only mode.  With this option, I can turn the heating system on without running the diesel boiler.  So while the engine is running the engine coolant heats the water loop for the cabin heating.  This will save on fuel while we are motoring so much.  We will see how much heat it makes next time we are motoring.

In the evening, I duct taped over the hole in the deck where the windlass was now missing, to keep the rain and possibly sea spray out of my bed, then cleaned up the deck and put the tools partly away.   Mark on Ruby Slippers pulled out his new drone, which he got from Costco.  It has 6 blades, retractable landing gear, a gimballed 4K video camera, and a huge tablet remote control.  It’s pretty slick and was only about $1000.

I finally ate some dinner at 9:30pm and everyone went to bed–tired.

Friday, we woke up at 7am so Devon and the girls could head over to the rock at low tide for clam digging.  I continued my pursuit of windlass repair/replace options via SMS messaging with the Delorme.  By 10am we’d found a way to get a new windlass to Shearwater where we will be stopping on Wednesday.   It involved overnight Saturday delivery to Seattle, driving it from Seattle, WA to Richmond, BC by Devon’s super awesome parents, then flying to Shearwater, BC where I will grab it and hopefully successfully install it.   A few more days of rafting to other boats before we get there.  We have two stops between Booker Lagoon (where we are now) and Shearwater, 116 nautical miles away by boat.

For now, we will relax and enjoy ourselves.   We have all day today and tomorrow in Booker Lagoon, and then head out Sunday.

In the afternoon, the fleet took the dinghies out of Booker Lagoon to go fishing for bottom fish.  two and half hours jigging the bottom and we caught a few rockfish and a few greenlings.  One crew caught a huge Ling Cod and another boat caught a large orange eyed rockfish and another crazy fish with blue mouth and blue flesh.

Potluck Dinner/BBQ on the rock, good food, discussion, etc.  Morgan fell asleep as we got ready for the potluck and we had to wake her.  In her hungry and sleepy state she didn’t want to do anything, including going the to the bathroom before leaving the boat.   A short time after we got to the rock Morgan had to pee.   Both girls had to pee outside in the wilderness for the first time.   It took a bit of encouragement, but after Ellie did it, Morgan finally gave in.

Sunday I finally fixed the toilet.  Ripped the entire raw water hose out, cut it down, removed the whole loop, including the anti-siphon valve, and ran it straight from the check valve to the toilet.  Bam!  It works now, at least while at anchor.   We will see if it also works when we are underway.    We will need to monitor the toilet if we are heeling a bunch because without the loop there is a chance that water could siphon into the boat through that hose.  We can close the valve on the thru-hull if needed.

I also wired up power to the Iridium Pilot and the Redport Optimizer and fired it up..  Doesn’t work.   The status light just flashes red.   After a while I found the install guide and according to the troubleshooting section this means that the below decks unit can’t communicate with the above decks unit.  Crap…  This could be a cabling issue, but if course that will be tough to troubleshoot.   In the meantime, I had asked via a short email through the InReach for the Iridium Pilot SIM to be activated, and they completed that based on an email I received back.   So now I am paying for the Iridium Pilot service, but can’t use it.  Gah!

We did some organizing of the boat, had dinner, and later in the evening the fleet decided to move outside the lagoon (through the narrow channel) to the outer harbor so that it would be easier to leave at the time we wanted in the morning.  It’s difficult for some boats (specifically the power boats with smaller rudders) to maneuver through the whirlpools and eddies in the channel created by the tides.  Ideally you want to time your passage for one of the four slack periods each day.  Our move was a bit later than the slack tide however so the current was close to 4knots at the time.  Everyone made it through just fine.  Then we went to bed, ready for a 4:30am start to go 71nm to Fury Cove, again with quite a bit of current pushing us and a lot of wind against us..  It will be a lumpy ride.