Barkley Sound Day 8 – Dodging the gale in Dodger Channel

At about 8:30am this morning, Devon was already up and Capt’n Pete dinghy’d over with our frozen salmon filets. A few minutes later I took our dinghy back over to shore pay him, since we had to go to the Market to get WiFi for the credit card machine. I ended up chatting with Pete for a while with a cup of coffee and then realized it had been a while so we hustled back to shore and I went back to the boat. Today we were definitely going to leave Bamfield, but first we needed to get a couple things from the store, drop off our garbage on shore, and fuel up the main tank as well as the dinghy tank. Since we didn’t want to hassle with lifting the dinghy on the davits every day I finally spent a few minutes to properly (sort of, it’s a hack with parts we had on board) rig the dinghy painter for smooth towing. It ended up involving a soft shackle and an anchor shackle, but now it tows well and the painter doesn’t run across the bottom of the boat and cause drag anymore. The dinghy motor is running great with the clean fuel, new plugs, and use of the actual proper key.

After fueling up we headed out of Bamfield Inlet and across Trevor Channel, through Satellite Passage to round the top of Helby Island and back down the northwest side of Diana Island into Dodger Channel. It’s an interesting little spot with tons of rocks and reefs around us breaking up the swell. There’s a small amount of wind protection, but not tons. It looks like there are lots of cool places to explore with the dinghy and kayak. In fact, Katherine took off in the kayak as soon as we got here while the kids took a little quiet time after lunch.

The batteries were down to about 60% when we fired up the engine back in Bamfield and only got to about 70% by the time we’d reached our new anchorage, so we fired up the genset to charge the rest of the way while we sat at anchor.

After sitting for a few minutes we realized we had a little current trying to turn the boat parallel with the channel, but wind coming from the side that brought us perpendicular. So we were swinging back and forth and a little rolly. We decided to try a trick that we’d heard about in a couple seminars to rig a bridle from the stern cleat to the anchor chain and let the chain out to spin the boat. So we set it up with an elastic Shockle and a soft shackle at the chain and the other end of a line through the stern cleat and a snatch block to the genoa winch. Then let out the chain more. This brought the boat broadside to the wind, but in line with the current. Suddenly the boat movement stopped and we were sitting nice and smooth. We’ll just have to watch this set up if the wind shifts later to ensure we don’t end up in a weird situation. And just to ensure we don’t put sideways pressure on the bow roller, we set up a snubber on the bow from the side deck cleat through the chock.

Then it was time for a bit of coffee and to make a plan for the rest of the day. We turned on the weather radio and suddenly heard about a gale warning for West Vancouver Island with NW winds to 35kts. We also saw the winds gusting up to 20kts and 26kts right where we were, so we got a slight bit concerned. After futzing with the Satellite email for a couple hours I finally realized what the problem had been and was successful in downloading the latest weather data from PredictWind. It showed the peak winds at 6pm (it was 7pm by this time) and then falling off. Right about the time I was reviewing this weather info, the wind died to 0 and stayed calm most of the night. PredictWind showed a bit higher winds for tomorrow night so I think we’ll plan to move on to a new anchorage that has better protection from the wind tomorrow, just in case. Ultimately, our anchor never would have moved in the 26kts of wind, we had the Rocna down, well set, and 120 feet of chain out in 28feet deep water.

Devon had prepared ribs with a rub a couple days ago so she baked them for about 90 minutes in the oven and they were fantastic! We don’t really know what temperature it cooked at, the oven was set to “4”. Great dinner! Then we dropped the crab pot, had some ice cream for dessert, and it was off to bed.

* Anchored in Dodger Channel, Barkley Sound, Vancouver Island, BC
* Engine Hours: 1434.9 to 1436.7 = 1.8 hours
* Genset Hours: 629.5 to 631.5 = 2.0 hours
* Water Consumption: 170 / 8.1 = 21 gallons
* Water Produced from Watermaker = 0 gallons
* Barometer at 1021mb and falling