Saturday August 7, 2010

Happy Birthday Laura!

We left Bayfield Inlet about 10:30 am and traveled out Alexander Passage to the open water. We traveled about 10 miles in the open water which was a lot calmer than yesterday. We reentered the windy route a mile 55 – again traveling among the rocks on each side. We decided not to go into Byng inlet but continue on down the North Channel to Cunninghams Channel. WE probably should have stopped at this point since it was about 1:30 and anchored behind Golden Sword Island. Instead we continued on through Rogers Gut . This was probably one of the hairiest areas of the trip because in parts only one boat could go through. While we did do a securite call before entering, this does not necessarily mean that other boaters are listening to their VHF radio or that they even have a VHF radio. From Rogers Gut we did the run out to the Bustard Islands – a godforsaken group of islands lying out from the mainland. As you can guess, I was not impressed and would not go there again. When we arrived the first anchorage was full. So we moved around the island and attempted to anchor in The Harbour. Again it was full but there was space to back in and tie to shore. Unfortunately the bottom was rocky making it very difficult to get the primary anchor to stick and there was a west wind blowing which kept blowing the boat away from from the shore. On top of that the shore was extremely steep. After several futile attempts to tie on to shore (with quite a gallery watching and after grazing the shore with the rear undercarriage of the boat) we left to anchor out in a small bay close to the open water. However this time we approached the shore bow in, dropped anchor and then dropped a second anchor off the back of the boat to stop swinging as the shores in the bay were both relatively close. The weather forecast called for strong winds around midnight. Once anchored, I dove under the boat to ascertain any damage caused when we grazed the shore. Fortunately, there was no damage.

As I think about it now, I wonder why anyone anchors back into shore and ties up, when it seems so easy to drop an anchor off the back and achieve the same result. Tying off exposes the most vulnerable part the boat to damage – the props and the rudders. Whiles The Old Grouch is reasonably well protected since it is a single engine boat with a strong keel supporting the rudder and protecting the prop, it seems to me that those with two engines and their exposed props and rudders could do considerable damage by backing into the shore.