Booker Lagoon to Pruth Bay – Logs Are My Nemesis..

Woke up at 4:30 again (actually just Devon did) but I was sort of awake and eventually got up because I couldn’t sleep.  After untying from Ruby Slippers and heading out of the anchorage the fleet headed north through Queen Charlotte Strait toward Fury Cove.  A long day but the early start helped catch a couple knots of current in our direction.

The engine heat option for the heater that I wired on Saturday is working great!  Nice and warm downstairs without running the boiler.   We just have to remember to switch on the engine heat switch before we turn on the heating system itself.  Normally there’d be a toggle switch with one side boiler, one side engine only, with off in the middle, but I’m using a couple spare breakers on the main panel instead.

Also, since replumbing the raw water intake on the new toilet on Saturday, its working just fine even underway.

Two wins!!

Around 9:45am we got a log through the prop and it didn’t sound good.    It made a few grinding noises for a few minutes afterward, and then seemed to operate o.k. after that.   Might have had some stuff jammed in it for a while, but without looking at it we just won’t know.

The wind was on our nose and opposing the current as we headed north into the open Pacific Ocean, then back into a channel toward Fury Cove.     Devon and the girls didn’t feel well and all stayed up in the cockpit.  I was down below much of the time, finding drinks, Dramamine, lunch, taking a quick nap, then doing the dishes that had built up since yesterday.  Wind was 15-18kts until 15 minutes before the cove when the land shadow dropped the wind to 3kts.

We arrived at Fury Cove at 2:45pm and rafted up to Ruby Slippers again.  This cove is beautiful.  It could pass for a tropical paradise in some respects.   At high tide, there are spots where the ocean washes in and there are white sand beaches around that area.

I fired up our drone again and flew around the anchorage capturing the other boats and the scenery.  I buzzed past Devon and the girls dinghying to the beach and flew out of the cove to see the ocean side shore.   Amazing place!

I finally relaxed a bit, with not much to fix for a while (at least that I CAN fix).  Then I decided to try adding some engine insulation, cutting the insulation I bought in Campbell River into pieces that I could stuff in various open areas around the engine compartment.

Devon made Tillicum Village style clams for dinner, using the smaller clams we had dug up in Booker Lagoon.  We watched a movie, had a little bit of ice cream and then it was time for bed.  Only one night here.

On Monday morning we left Fury Cove and across the channel, then slowed down and trolled for Salmon for a few hours as we motored north at a slow 2.2kts.  We caught a few small rockfish and I hooked a big fish (likely a salmon) but it got away.   We saw some very large bait balls several times on the fish finder, one of which scared me because the boat depth sounder indicated 30 feet of depth when it should have been 120 feet.  At one point, we even caught two rockfish at the same time on the double hook squid lure.   I just realized as I write this that we forgot to put the herring oil/scent on the lure though.  Along the way, Devon cleaned, chopped, and cooked the larger clams (in salt water) that we had from Booker Lagoon, making a tasty (albeit very salty) clam chowder for lunch. I think in the future we can cook the clams in salt water, but use fresh water for the actual chowder.

After fishing we motored into Pruth Bay and rafted up to Ruby Slippers again.   There were quite a few boats in the bay so the anchorage was a bit tight, but everyone fit.  There is a Hakai university marine science outpost here that you can visit while you explore the beaches and trails around the bay.   The outpost has satellite Internet for their work and they provide FREE WiFi to visitors from that satellite link.   They limit it to 300MB of data per session per day which isn’t that much, but the cost of satellite Internet is quite high.   Also, if you are technically savvy, you can get around the 300MB limit but it wouldn’t be good karma for me to publicly describe how.

Tomorrow most of the fleet is planning to stay at Pruth Bay all day but we’ve decided we want to get to Shearwater a day early so we have more time to work on replacing the windlass as well as get a few other things done like laundry, fill the water tanks, and commission our water maker (a process that consumes fresh water).  So far we are getting about a week out of our 130 gallons of water but we aren’t showering often.   We’d like some more freedom with our water usage.

We may slow down in a few spots and troll for Salmon again tomorrow but our intent is to get to Shearwater (about 40nm away) in the afternoon and hopefully there will be room on the dock for us.