Day 8 and 9

While at anchor in Bickley Bay, we listened to the weather on the radio and found that the westerly system that forced us up through Yaculta and Dent rapids in the first place had increased into a full gale, with winds over 40 knots blowing down Johnstone strait on Wednesday and Thursday, and winds over 25 up till then. As we really don’t have to be in Port McNeil until Friday to meet up with dad, we decided to dink around in the sheltered channels and islands for a few days before we committed to the strait.

            So, after a long night's sleep, we woke up around 8:00 or 9:00, and the first thing we saw was a grizzly on the shore, poking along the beach, eating mussels or clams. After a while the bear wandered back into the woods and we got started with the day, making breakfast at port for the first time in a very long time, and generally just lazing around for most of the day. At one point it was so hot, what with the cloudless sky and absolutely no wind in the bay, that Carmen and mom jumped in the water for  a bit, and I inspected the bottom using my GoPro on a long stick. Eventually, however, we decided to move the three miles down the channel to Camp Cordero Lodge.

            The passage down channel was extremely easy and short, as we left around 4:00 and arrived at 5:00. We tried to sail for a bit, tacking back and forth across the channel, but a tug slowly overtaking us forced us to drop the sail and motor along the side of the channel, and by the time the tug was past, we were already at Cordero Lodge.

            At Cordero, we ended up being the only transient boat on the dock again, and the location was just perfect. Wayne, the owner and operator of the lodge, had a stroke recently, but is really nice, he helped us tie up, set us up for a ride to Blind Channel grocery store, and he even let me borrow some tools from his shed when I did some work on the wind vane self-steering.

            The self steering was the main reason, besides free WiFi, that we stopped off at this sweet little place, and for those who don’t know, a wind vane self steering is a device that uses a small wind vane, in my case pivoted horizontally, to move the rudder and keep the boat on a steady course in relation to the wind. And as our electronic autopilot is  not working at the moment, the only way I’m ever going to be able to singlehanded is if I get the wind vane up and running. However there is one little problem; the vane gear that came with the boat is a Cape Horn, one of the best manufacturers, but sometime in it’s life it was badly dented and bent, probably from being backed into a dock. The problem was that one of the pieces had been knocked out of alignment, so in order to re-adjust it I had to remove half the gear from the boat and take it all apart. I was able to do all that and put back together without too much trouble, and now I just have to hope that it works.

           

            Cordero turned out to be so nice, and the weather so bad in Johnstone, that we decided to stay one more day, and so far we have done nothing but sit around and do computer stuff like updating this blog, answering emails, and doing some longer-term planning. It’s the perfect place to relax, and you could just sit for hours in the sun and watch the fifty or so hummingbirds buzzing at the feeders just outside the main building. 

In a way I’m almost glad that this gale is blowing through, because if it wasn’t we wouldn’t have met the Muse or Wayne, and we would have missed these few days of R&R, which all of us badly needed. That's one of he things I love so much about sailing: for every event, good or bad, there is almost always a bright side, or if not, the storm will always pass, you just have to wait it out. It also makes you rethink that four letter word: P-L-A-N

The bear in Bickley Bay

Taking apart the wind vane self-steering

Everything all laid out

Hummingbirds at Cordero Lodge