Shearwater to Bishop Bay – Nature’s Hot Tub
Morning on the day we needed to leave Shearwater.. But we also needed to take advantage of the WiFi for some work. Devon went to Hodge Podge early (the coffee shop / department store–sort of). While the girls kept sleeping I gathered the garbage and recycling packed into our folding cart, which, by the way, is super awesome! Devon, the girls, and I spent some time at Hodge Podge eating pastries, drinking coffee and cocoa, and working. Once we finished that up we paid for the garbage bags at the market, purchased a couple post cards, then headed back to the boat. We had to wait for a few minutes before the fuel dock was free for us, time which I leveraged to transfer fuel from the main tank to the aft tank, so I only had to fill the main tank.
At the fuel dock we purchased 1.8 gallons of gasoline for the dinghy and pumped 58 gallons of diesel into the main tank.
Since we last filled the tank, we’ve run the genset for 13 hours, accounting for approximately 3.5 gallons. This means the engine and boiler have consumed 54.5 gallons since Campbell River. This averages to just under 1.5 gallons per hour of motoring time, but we really don’t know how much the boiler is consuming. The engine alone is probably closer to 1 gallon per hour. Not too bad for 7.5+ knots of boat speed.
We motored out of the Shearwater / Bella Bella harbor area at 2400rpm, about 7kts boat speed, to slowly catch up with the rest of the Sail Alaska fleet via Seaforth Channel. As we rounded the peninsula and Dowager Island, heading north up Finlayson Channel, the wind picked up to about 11kts off our beam and we set the sails. We had a nice reach for a while, running 8-8.5kts in 12-14kts of wind until we turned almost dead down wind. Since we were relaxed, it was a good time to try the spinnaker. And what a beautiful day it was. We even rigged the pole to keep the asymmetrical full at dead downwind angle. For a time, the island shadow caused the wind to drop to 7kts, then it was back at 16kts. And we were cruising up the channel.
We finally dropped the spinnaker, which took a bit of doing because the sock got caught at the top and wouldn’t come down at first. After we dropped the halyard a bit the sock finally came down. We raced Sea Otter (at 7 knots) to Bottleneck inlet and turned inside.
We made water for the last 6 hours of the run.. Making 48 gallons and filling the aft tank to full finally a few minutes after dropping our anchor. Wait–did you read that? We dropped our anchor… with our new windlass… and it was so sweet!
Bottleneck Inlet is pretty, and quiet.. But really nothing to do here. The plan was to move to Bishop Bay the next day to check out some hot springs.
The next morning, we woke up a bit late and the boats were already leaving, despite the discussion that 1pm was the best time.. Oh well, we pulled out our anchor and headed out as well.
Out in the channel we had southerly winds in the 10kt range so Devon was eager to put up the asymmetrical again. We flew that for a while until the wind line passed and then we snuffed it with the sock for later use.
Later the wind spun around on our nose and increased to 20kts, so we motored the rest of the way. We made water for about 90 minutes to refill the tank on the way.
Coming up to Bishop Bay, the anchorage is a bit tricky. It’s very steep along the shore so we ended up anchoring just about 100ft from the rocks, in 70feet of water with all of our chain out. The current swirls around the bay in a circle and we didn’t expect strong winds in the night, so we felt okay. That said, we’ve realized we don’t have enough anchor chain/rode for some anchorages. Something to deal with some other day. Time to check out the hot springs.
After getting our swim suits on and the dinghy down into the water we hopped over to the dock, chatted with some Canadians that were taking a weekend trip in their 20-something foot power boats, and walked about 100 feet to the bath house. It’s a little hut, built over a concrete walled pool, with rock and sand bottom. The hot spring, just a bit up the hill, fills a little well and then spills down a hose into the bath house pool. The water is just between 101 and 102 degrees F, perfect for a hot tub, and there is NO SMELL. It was awesome. Inside the hut, various boating paraphernalia has been hung up with family and/or boat names and years to mark their visits to the bath house.
Some of the other crews joined us and then we finally headed back around 10pm to get the girls to bed. It was a fantastic evening. All of us were very tired after the hot springs.
