Day 10

Today was a long day, but unlike the passage from Blaine, it was actually a very short mileage. We had spent the night at Cordero lodge, making it the second time in the voyage we had stayed in one place for more than one night, the first being Port Townsend, and I don’t know if that counts as it was only a weather stop. However, as sailors, we can never just have a normal day, so we woke up the next morning at 4:00am and were off the dock by 4:30, making it the earliest start of the voyage so far.

This early start was due to the need to push through Green Point Rapids at slack before ebb. After running the rapids with at exactly slack and popping out the other side having not seen a single ripple, we suddenly found ourselves with about six hours to kill before slack at Whirlpool rapids on the way to Forward Harbor, our eventual destination. Since it had been such an early morning, we opted to go for the lazy path and headed up Lochborough Inlet to Sidney bay, which we read had a nice dock. Upon arrival, we saw that you had to pay, and that to pay we would have to blow up the dinghy and row across the bay, so we left after a only around five minuets for mom to go through the book exchange and see if there was anything worth reading, which unfortunately there wasn’t. After leaving Sidney, we just poked into the other little bay in Lochborough, Beaver Inlet, which the Cruising Guides said was full of log booms, but we had seen a sailboat anchored up as we sailed past on the way to Sidney, so we decided to check it out anyway. It turned out that there was some extensive structuring going on for putting log booms together, but it wasn’t active and we found good anchorage way up in the very head of the inlet. Here we grabbed some rest and started to work out logistics for the rest of the day.

After a while, our quiet little anchorage with only two boats anchored almost half a mile apart began to fill up rapidly as first another sailboat the two powerboats came in, all evidently with the same idea as us, waiting for slack to get to Whirlpool and Forward Harbor. From the sailboat, Dalliance, we got information to the effect that the weather and chop outside the sheltered Lochborough Inlet was still not too bad, with around 15 knots of wind funneling straight down the channels from the northwest.

Not too long after all of the other boats arrived, we were the first to raise anchor and head out for the rapids, and we soon found out why the other boats stayed at anchor. But that was all to come, and for the run out Lockborough, we decided to sail a bit and maybe try the Cape Horn self-steering I had fixed at Cordero Lodge.

As soon as we were out of the confined waters of Beaver Inlet, I dropped the servo oar for the wind vane in the water, ran the control lines, and after fiddling with the vane for a bit, locked the control lines and let go of the tiller. Nothing happened. Nothing continued to happen for the next hour or so of sailing as the cape horn kept a course almost steadier than I could keep myself, never deviating more than 5 or 10 degrees before correcting, and only backwinded the jib twice on a half-hour dead downwind run, which is impressive for a experienced sailor, let alone a machine using nothing put the force of the wind on a tiny little piece of canvass. By the time we had to start the engine and were forced to take down the self steering, we had already named it Ron, after the excellent helmsman, if poor navigator, from one of my favorite movies of all time: Captain Ron. The most fitting quote would be “Don’t worry, they’ll get out of our way”, perfect for a self-steering, which will point you in a straight line, no matter what ships, reefs, or landmasses happen to be on that line.

After putting Ron away for a while, we headed out into Chancellor Channel, bucking a current that was steadily decreasing and a chop that was doing exactly the opposite. At one point, we could see Johnstone Strait and the wind, chop, and current all against us reduced our speed to around one or two knots even with the engine at full throttle until we tucked into Welborne channel right before Whirlpool Rapids. We hit Whirlpool around an hour after slack with the current with us, and so it was a bit rougher than Greene Point, but no worse than Yaculta, so we were fine. Where the day really got interesting was what came after.

Forward harbor, about 6 nautical miles up Sunderland Channel from Johnstone Strait is a popular spot for boats to wait for a weather window, and so when we arrived, it was already chock full of around a dozen boats, from a couple of fishermen, some megayachts and motor cruisers, and half a dozen sailboats. Considering that on top of the general overcrowdedness of the harbor depths ranged from 30 to 60 feet, and we only carry around 220 feet of scope, we decide to try our luck at Althrop Point, on the other side of the rapids, now running at full ebb.

Althrop Point turned out to be a lot les crowded with only one fishing boat also anchored up there, and the depth was a much more reasonable 20 feet, so we anchored up over what felt like a slightly rocky bottom with decent holding. The only problem with this otherwise perfect anchorage was a rock that was just awash and looked to be only a few feet of our stern if we swung over that way. This is the only part of sailing that I hate. Absolutely and totally despise it, and only since I became a skipper did I realize the impact of being at anchor. At dinner I could barely get down one bowl of chili, and far the rest of the evening I fretted around, not wanting to pull up the hook, as we had a good hold and it looked like we were just clear of the rock, but then I was also deathly worried that I would drag and that would be the end of that. However, I went with the first option and decided to stay were we were, but I did move my sleeping back out into the cockpit and set an alarm to go off every hour and a half so I could check the depth and position. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep a wink until midnight, when we swung over towards the rock, which was now underwater as the tide rose, and from the deck I could see the bottom fourteen feet below rise up into the rock only about five or six yards off the stern, maybe less. At that point the wind had died down and I decided to take in 20 feet of scope to pull u clear of the rock, and now in 25 feet and well clear of any rock I finally got some sleep on the cold, hard cockpit bench until four in the morning once again for another early departure.