Boats – Riveted

Headin’ South

Laura Domela — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 11:44:42 +0000

We are headed to Seattle this week for the 2018 Seattle Boat Show, where our Slowboat team will be giving a handful (well, two handfuls — 10!) of seminars about subjects that include cruising the Inside Passage to Alaska, flying drones from boats, photography, and how to live on a boat in Seattle without a permanent slip. Check out the full list here if you’re interested.

We left Anacortes Monday morning just before 10am. We took the Swinomish Channel route since it was an hour before max ebb at Deception Pass and well, we’ve done that before. We had a nice easy cruise down to Langley, with winds in the 5-10kts range, and only one spot with enough chop to get the windows salty. Tuesday in the San Juans is supposed to be a little nasty (E wind 25 to 35kts becoming SE 30 to 40kts in the afternoon. Wind waves 5 to 7 ft) but Puget Sound doesn’t sound bad.

Seals here on the dock at Langley, Whidbey Island

I had the helm all day while Kevin wrote an article and did some work, and when we got settled we showered and did more work before walking up to town for dinner and groceries.

Langley at dusk.

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Langley waterfront at dusk

We had an early dinner at one of our favorites spots in Langley — Prima Bistro (where we took no food photos, but we shared some kusshi oysters and charcuterie for starters, then ordered two entrees to share: the cassoulet and the pan roasted chicken with polenta, braised endive, and rosemary-gorgonzola pan jus). Everything was delicious, and we took more than half the cassoulet back to Airship for another meal.

The Star Store mercantile next door is open until 8pm so we grabbed some fresh produce and eggs and called it an early night!

We left Langley this morning before 9am. The weather was gray and rainy but we never saw more than about 10kts of wind.

We did, however, pass a big submarine as it headed north:

Pretty cool to see at such close range!

Halloween on Sucia Island

Laura Domela — Tue, 01 Nov 2016 00:29:38 +0000

Yesterday morning we did some boat projects (oil and oil filter change, fuel filter change) and then around noon we headed up to Fossil Bay on Sucia Island. We had about 20+ knots of wind from the north and some chop, but it was a pretty day to be out on the boat. We stopped at Matia Cove (on Matia Island) to check it out as a possible anchorage, and though it was pretty, we opted to continue on over to Sucia (for some increased hiking options). It was pretty cold out by the time we arrived (around 4pm) so we just hung at the boat and later made dinner (chicken piccata over zucchini noodles), and watched a couple more episodes of Black Mirror (Season 3…we’ve seen up to Episode 4 now). It rained most of the night and until this afternoon, so we just stayed cozy on Airship and worked.

Once it stopped raining, we dinghied to shore and then hiked over to Echo Bay and around out to the point. Even gray and cold, it’s still beautiful here.

Maybe because they’re all wet from the rain, but the bark on the madrone trees is just electric today!

We thought we might head back to Cypress Island today, but we’re staying put. It’s nice here, and we’re getting a lot of work done (and there are otters!). We’re the only boat on a mooring ball here…there were two boats at the dock last night (one sailboat, one Nordic Tug 37) and today only the Nordic Tug remains….a pretty quiet Halloween!

Too Bad About the Fish

Laura Domela — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 20:00:18 +0000

We had Airship hauled out on October 3rd for a much needed hull cleaning, new zincs, and a new coat of bottom paint. Kevin was out of town so I took Airship over to Cap Sante Marine solo. (It’s only a mile or so down the way.) Tight spot!

It’d been about 18 months since we had our last bottom paint, but when we were hauled out in April this year for our electronics upgrade, the hull looked good. However, when we arrived in Ketchikan in May we noticed we had some not-so-lovely green fringe growing on the hull (which got nice and long as it had time to grow all summer). This looked like it was going to be a fairly easy and inexpensive routine maintenance operation (even with all the fringe):

The estimate for the work to be done (hauling out, pressure washing, adding a fresh coat of bottom paint, replacing zincs, waxing the hull, and then putting Airship back in the water) was about $1800 — about 2BUs (Boat Units). (Spoiler: this is not how things went down in the end.)

Turns out there was more than just the green stuff growing down there:

How did SideVu even work with all that crap covering it?

After the pressure washing to remove all things living, it was eventually discovered that the previous owner of our boat had used an epoxy paint over the top of an ablative paint, and the bottom paint was now just flaking off.

Here’s a good, short summary of how antifouling paint (aka bottom paint) works.

Simply put, ablative paint is designed to wear off of the hull (like a bar of soap sluffs off layers as it’s used). Ideally we would probably haul out and do new bottom paint every two years or so. (How often depends on how much time you spend in the water, among other things.) Apparently, if you put a layer of hard, epoxy paint over the top of an ablative paint that’s meant to wear off, then the epoxy paint won’t stick to it. It’s like trying to paint in acrylic paint over oil paint. The acrylic will just peel off.

The remedy for this predicament was to sandblast the paint off of the entire hull and start fresh. (Oh, and the estimate moved from $1800 to….$5000. Awesome.) There was no getting around it though…it needed to be done right. If you paint over flaking paint, you’ll eventually just have more flaking paint, so away we went.

Once the paint was gone, they discovered some thin areas in the gelcoat (sanding? no one knows), which meant moving Airship inside and applying four coats of epoxy before painting the hull with two coats of the normally-used ablative bottom paint. (Another $2000, ka-ching.)

Bare Airship (Bareship?)

The guys at Cap Sante did a great job, and the hull is now factory-fresh and likely won’t have anything growing on it for a while. (Oh, and the sonar SideVu sensors now have a sonar-appropriate protective paint so hopefully we won’t see barnacles like that again any time soon.)

The hull was waxed up to the rub rail while it was out of the water (much easier to do than when the boat is in the water). Nice and shiny!

And…finally! Going back into the water Friday afternoon:

Boat lifts are cool!

All good, right? (Except for the extra $ and three weeks out of the water instead of 4 or 5 days as originally thought.)

Not so fast, my little boater friends.

When the boat went back in the water, Kevin discovered that our house batteries were drained. Uh oh. This means at some point we weren’t plugged in as we should have been, and the 12V deck top freezer (the only thing we left running off the house batteries) had run the batteries down to empty. The deck top freezer. The one with 25 pounds of Alaskan halibut and salmon filets. I headed up to the top deck to check…and yep, what we had there was a stinky, soggy pile of fish mush. This must have happened when the boat was inside, because if we’d have been outside and not plugged in, the solar would have kept up with the freezer load. Also, the inside fridge/freezer had defrosted and dumped a bunch of water onto the floor in the galley (mostly dry by now…just the rug was wet). That’s another very good reason I’m glad to have Amtico flooring rather than teak and holly sole…if that had been real teak and holly under the fridge it would have been a big stained ruined mess of very expensive wood. The Amtico was just fine.

But to make matters worse, we think the freezer’s motor burned itself out from running on too low a voltage for some time, so we’ll be trying to figure that out over the next day or two. Kevin’s working on a wiring project (fixing/improving a couple of things that were on his list) and I’m trying not to be too sad that we lost about $600 worth of fish. (We can always catch more fish, right?)

To recap: we thought we’d be hauled out for 4-5 days (and outside in the yard the whole time) and we ended up out for three weeks (and some of that time inside a building, with no solar backup if we failed to have shore power).

The lessons to be learned from this are:

Even if you think you may only be hauled out for 4 days, it could be 3 weeks and all your fish will spoil.
Always be sure you know what kind of bottom paint goes on your boat, and that the next paint job is compatible with what’s already on there. The more you’re educated about the maintenance on your boat, the better. As new boat owners it’s easy to feel like you should just trust what “more experienced” people tell you…but it’s better to know for yourself.
All the loads to your house battery should be turned off. Our lithium batteries have built-in circuitry that cuts them out if the voltage gets too low (to protect them), but most house batteries don’t have this. If something’s running off your battery, it could overdischarge and damage or destroy your house batteries.
It’s a good practice to empty your fridge and freezer and do your defrosting in a controlled manner (and then turn everything off) before having your boat hauled out for any period of time. It’s harder to do this when you live aboard (even if you live aboard half the time), but, well…in our case I’d much rather have all that fish back.

Generally, if your boat is going to be hauled out, you should prepare it correctly to avoid accidental damage to things you care about.

If there’s a chance it will be below freezing while your boat is hauled out, you should fully winterize. The cold can attack much more quickly than when your boat is resting in 50+ degree water.
Be sure your propane is turned off.
Check all through-hulls when you go back in the water before starting up.
Some types of sonar transducers will overheat if they are turned on out of the water. Double check yours.
Don’t assume that your haul out will be a short as you think. You never know what will be discovered when your boat is out of the water.

Friday night after we got back to our slip, we emptied out the stinky freezer and started some tests on our house batteries to make sure they did the right thing (shutting themselves off before they got too low…looks like they probably did). We had a nice dinner and a glass of wine up at Anthony’s, and then came back to Airship and watched the documentary on humpback whales that I bought last week. It was a good choice as an end to a bummer of a day. Oh well. Live and learn.

How to Get Into Boating

Laura Domela — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 04:39:01 +0000

I wrote this article for Slowboat (the new venture we’ve started, together with Sam Landsman) and I wanted to share it here, for those who might follow Riveted but not Slowboat (yet).

It’s entitled “How to Get Into Boating“, but it’s about so much more. I hope you like it, and I’d love to know what you think!

Click here to read the article on Slowboat.com

Power Made Easy – Airship’s Electrical Upgrades

Kevin Morris — Fri, 30 Sep 2016 04:14:19 +0000

Before our 5-month trip up the Inside Passage to Alaska aboard Airship, we did some major upgrades to Airship’s electrical power system. Now, after five solid months on the boat – mostly away from marinas, here is a summary of how the system performed, what we learned, and what our “ideal” power system might look like.

SPOILER: It was AWESOME! We could not be more thrilled with how robust, reliable, and easy to use the new power system proved in five solid months of harsh use.

BONUS SPOILER: For the first 3 weeks of our trip – from Anacortes, Washington up the Inside Passage to Ketchikan, Alaska, we never once ran the generator or hooked up to shore power. We never once turned off the inverter or the water heater. We basically had all the power we wanted or needed without having to flip a switch, read a meter, or think about “how much power do we have?”

BONUS SPOILER DISCLAIMER: We said we didn’t “have” to read a meter or worry – but we did anyway. We’re data nerds. We looked at the meter about 15 times per day “Wooooo – look at that! We’ve still got 94% of battery left. Whoa! check it out – our solar array is pumping out 30 amps! Wow, we haven’t had to start the genset or hook up the power cord for WEEKS!”

OK, here is Airship’s system and the philosophy behind it.

We think of the power system in terms of power sources, power drains, and power storage. Power sources include the main engine alternator, the generator, solar panels, and shore power. Power drains are things like the refrigerator, freezer, water heater, lighting, laptops, and misc appliances. Power storage is the house batteries.

Airship 2016:

Power sources:

150A 12V engine alternator
5KW 120V Cummins/Onan Generator
Two 260W Solar panels with dual BlueSky charge controllers and IPNPro Remote display
30A Shore power cord connected to Magnum Inverter/Charger – 125A 12V charge rate.

Power Drains: (note, we are only counting “house” power – not including the navigation instruments, engine electronics, bow and stern thrusters, windlass, etc.).

Major: Water heater, refrigerator, deck-top chest freezer (These account for the majority of daily power usage.)
Medium: Nespresso coffee machine, laptop chargers, hair dryer, Wallas diesel heater fan (These account for noticeable usage, but aren’t significant.)
Minor: Lighting (Airship is all LED), phone chargers, entertainment devices (stereo, TV, etc). (These things use so little power, you almost don’t need to think about them.)

Storage:

600Ah 12V Lithium battery array with battery management system from AM Solar

Our philosophy is to set things up so the batteries can power anything and everything for one full day.

Why?

When we are traveling, we often spend only a single night at an anchorage or marina, then cruise several hours the next day to another destination. In that situation, we’d like things to be as easy as possible – no hooking up to shore power, no running the generator, just nice silent trouble-free battery power. And, we don’t want to be constantly worrying about how much power we’re using, turning things (like the water heater) on and off all the time, etc. That means we need a big enough usable house battery capacity to handle one day of our normal use, with a little to spare. And, we need an inverter big enough to handle any AC loads we might have without running the generator or hooking up shore power.

We calculated our daily usage while we were cruising around the San Juan Islands in the winter and spring. It looks like we use up to 450Ah of 12V electric in a typical day – if we leave the inverter and electric water heater running 24/7. (It turns out that the water heater accounts for OVER HALF of our total power usage on Airship).

NOTE: Don’t be put off by the electrical terminology. “Ah” stands for amp-hours. If that’s too unfamiliar, pretend that electricity comes in “gallons” and substitute that in your mind. “Airship uses 450 gallons of power per day.” Pretend that the battery is a fuel tank, and it holds a certain number of gallons. Pretend that the power sources pump a certain number of gallons per day into the battery. You’ll be just fine.

For that reason, we decided that a USABLE house battery capacity of 600Ah would be perfect for Airship. Note the word USABLE there. For normal lead-acid or AGM batteries, you should not regularly discharge more than 50%, so a 600Ah usable capacity would require 1200Ah of total battery capacity. For lithium batteries, however, they are typically rated for 100% of their listed capacity (some companies rate for 80%), so a 600Ah battery capacity gives 600Ah (or 480Ah if 80% rated) of USABLE capacity.

So, with a 600Ah usable battery capacity on Airship, we should be able to run everything just fine for a full day without adding any power to the system and without doing anything particular to conserve.

Now, once we’ve done that, how do we refill the battery for the next day?

Time to talk about our Power Sources:

First, there is the solar. Our two 260W solar panels don’t ever put out even close to 260W each. Solar panels must be rated by a marketing guy who stands in the Sahara Desert pointing the panel directly at the sun exactly at noon. No solar panel in the real world ever comes close to its rated output. Second, even in the Land of the Midnight Sun, it’s not always sunny. You only get a few hours of good, solid sunlight per day, and most of those are at a steep angle, not with your panel pointed right at the sun. Clouds, rain, and fog all cut down significantly on your power output.

Finally, for boats and RVs in particular, there is a HUGE issue with solar that most people are not aware of – PARTIAL SHADE/SHADOW. In a normal solar panel, if you cast a shadow on JUST ONE of the little square cells (many panels have 50-60 of these little squares) – you have just cut the output by as much as 90%! Yep, you read that right. Casting a shadow on something like 5% of the panel almost completely shuts the panel down. And, on a boat, there is usually not a place you can put a panel where it won’t often be shaded by some part of the mast, antennas, or some other rooftop protrusion. Add to that the boat swinging at anchor, and you realize you just have to live with the fact that your solar panels will often be severely under-performing.

On Airship, we have a mast with a radar dome and several antennas. That means that at least one of our two solar panels will almost always have partial shade. If you have two panels on a single charge controller, that one panel will cut the output of BOTH panels significantly. So, we chose to have a separate charge controller (called an MPPT controller) for each panel. That way, when one panel is shaded and the other is in full sun, each one will have its output separately maximized by the charge controller. But – if you’re adding solar to a boat, RV, or whatever – REALLY pay attention to partial shade. Even a seemingly-small shadow is NOT OK!

We have now measured the output of Airship’s solar system over a wide range of conditions – from winter in the San Juans to mid-summer in SE Alaska. We have seen our total daily output range from 80Ah to almost 200Ah. Now, remember when we said our normal daily usage was around 450Ah? That means our solar provides something like 20-50% of our daily energy needs.

Second, there is the engine alternator. Airship has a 150A engine alternator. When we’re cruising, about 100A of that (on average) makes it into the house batteries. So, if we put 100A into the batteries for 4.5 hours of cruising, we’ve replaced our daily 450Ah that we used from the batteries. If we factor in 100Ah per day or so from the solar, we could cruise as little as 3.5 hours and end up with the batteries full again – just from the solar and engine alternator.

So – what if we don’t cruise 3.5-4.5 hours per day with some sunlight to boot? That’s when we need the generator or shore power. If we stay at anchor for more than one night, we need to run the generator to replace what we used each day. Our generator (using the “charger” part of the Inverter/Charger to charge the batteries) gives us a 125A charge rate. So, we’d need to run the generator between 3 and 4 hours per day to refill the batteries. If we have a good solar day and the solar pitches in 125Ah or so, that cuts an hour off the generator run time.

One thing we love about the lithium batteries is that they can be charged at full speed directly to full. Regular lead-acid or AGM batteries have to be charged more gently, slowing down the charge rate as they approach full. Our friend Steve says he thinks of it as pouring beer into a glass – when you get toward the top, you have to slow down to let the foam settle. So, with regular batteries, you have to run the generator much longer to charge them completely. You get to 80% or so pretty fast, but then the charge rate slows way down. Generators like to be run with heavy loads, though. It’s not good for your generator to run “easy” with light electrical loads. Lithium batteries, then, let us run our generator for a shorter time, and under a much better load than if we were trying to put the same charge into conventional batteries. It’s win-win.

Finally, when we’re at a marina for more than one night, we can plug into shore power. This year, our power system was so good, and we so seldom stayed more than one night at a marina, that we hardly ever needed to get out the shore power cord. It was wonderful! (This also means that we saved a few bucks in marina power charges. Power can be expensive in BC and AK since marinas often get their power from generators. Power alone can add $20/day to your moorage fee.)

One thing we did here was reduce the charge rate for shore power. Usually, when you plug into shore power, you have plenty of time, so there’s no need to rush getting your batteries back to 100%. And, if your 30A shore connection is using most of its capacity to recharge your batteries, you can easily trip the breaker if you try to run “other stuff” at the same time. So, we tell the charger to go slowly on shore power, and save some of that capacity for other things – like making coffee.

The one thing we’d maybe upgrade on our system at this point is to change our Inverter/Charger to one of the new “Hybrid” models. These new units have the ability to sense when you’re using more than the available shore power, and actually dip into the battery reserves to boost the output. It can be almost like having 50A power available, even though you’re plugged into only 30A. Then, when you’re using less power, the Inverter/Charger goes back to recharging your house batteries. It would be a nice upgrade.

One final note, for expedition cruising, this system also gives a nice measure of redundancy. If the generator fails, we still have solar and engine alternator to give us power. If the charger fails, we have a second battery charger that can step in. If the engine alternator fails, we can divert power from the generator and solar. It’s a very robust system that (so far) has served us extremely well.

Overall, we are thrilled with the major electrical upgrades we did to Airship this year. As we said, probably the only additional thing we’d change would be a swap for a “Hybrid” style inverter. If you’re on a larger boat with 240V AC power and/or 24V DC power – all these same principles apply, you just need bigger (and more expensive) versions of the same equipment.

Cabbage & Tumbo Islands | BC

Laura Domela — Mon, 26 Sep 2016 01:17:54 +0000

I didn’t write much or take many (well, any) photos in Nanaimo. We got in late. It was raining. We dinghied over to the Dinghy Dock Pub and shared a caesar salad and some fish and chips and then dinghied back to Airship in the dark. In the morning it was gray and drizzly and we pulled the anchor and motored on while I cooked breakfast. Nothing wrong with any of that…it was fun, it just wasn’t very photogenic.

The original route that I’d plotted down to Cabbage & Tumbo Islands took us on the outside of Gabriola Island, Galiano Island, Mayne Island, etc…to Cabbage & Tumbo which are on the outside of Saturna Island. We did this because we wanted to avoid going through Dodd Narrows with over 6 knots against us (and because we didn’t want to wait a couple hours for better timing). However, once we were on the outside of Gabriola the conditions were pretty choppy and would continue to be more and more on our beam the further we went…and so we opted to go through Gabriola Passage with some current against us (just over 4 knots). We made it fine…avoiding the bigger eddies and whirlpools easily.

Ahhhh, much calmer on the inside route. We figured we might change our plan and stay at Winter Cove or Lyall Harbour (two places we haven’t stayed before) but when we checked the tides, it looked like we’d be arriving at Winter Cove just a few minutes before slack and therefore easily able to go through the teeny tiny little pass-through at Winter Cove out into the Strait of Georgia (called Boat Passage) and on to Cabbage & Tumbo Islands. Hard to pass up a new, narrow passage with rocks to avoid!

Here’s a Navionics screenshot showing Winter Cove and it’s position relative to Cabbage & Tumbo Islands (Winter Cove is the really round cove, upper left on Saturna Island. Cabbage & Tumbo Islands are the ones off the lower right shore of Saturna Island:

Here’s Boat Passage on the Navionics chart (charted rocks in red):

Kevin’s brother was playing a concert that happened to be streaming live online, and we happened to be getting good enough internet data to stream it, so along the last part of our cruise we were watching the concert on Kevin’s laptop with audio bluetoothed to Airship’s stereo system. It was a new concerto written by Joel Puckett and performed by the UT Wind Ensemble (with special guest Craig Morris) at the Bates Concert Hall in Austin. (How cool is the time we’re living in?? Also, if you click that link to Craig’s website, I took that portrait of him…it’s one of my faves.)

We grabbed a mooring ball in Reef Harbour and sat and watched the rest of the concert before heading out for a little dinghy exploration. We beached the dinghy on Cabbage Island and hiked around a bit.

Not sea asparagus, but what is it?

Sandstone texture on the beach:

Hey! It’s Mt. Baker!

We’re grilling some brats and corn and I’ve got a couple of small potatoes in the oven. (Gotta get rid of the corn and potatoes before we cross back into the United States tomorrow.

Octopus Islands to Rebecca Spit | BC

Laura Domela — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 02:26:24 +0000

Last night just as we were eating dinner, guess who pulled into the cove where we were anchored? Thomas, Lars, and Urban…on Dawnbreaker! After dinner we had them over for some brownies and wine (and stories, and laughing, and planning the next anchorages….)

This morning after breakfast, Kevin took the drone up for some aerial photos, because look at this location!!

We took the dinghy out for a little exploration before we left. We beached it on Octopus Island and walked around a little.

Oops…someone lost an anchor:

I found a couple of large beds of sea asparagus on the beach on Octopus Island, so I harvested a couple of handfuls and will probably cook it up or put it in a salad. There are tons of recipes online for things to do with sea asparagus.

Both Airship and Dawnbreaker left around the same time…to hit Surge Narrows around slack this afternoon at 2pm. Slack was…slack. Uneventful in Surge Narrows…

Looking out into Sutil Channel:

Gorgeous anchorage at Rebecca Spit:

We dinghied over to the Heriot Bay Inn & Marina and then walked up to the market to restock on veggies and wine. If we didn’t feel so much like grilling back on the boat in this gorgeous weather, we’d have tried out the pub or restaurant at the Inn…

Back on Airship we sat on the top deck with a beer and some snacks and watch the light from the sunset over the spit. Not sure where we’ll go tomorrow yet, but here’s the view from right now:

There’s good internet here (and there has been since we left the Octopus Islands) so we’ve been working all along the way as well…it’s not just as interesting to write about work!

Port Harvey to Shoal Bay via Whirlpool and Greene Point Rapids | BC

Laura Domela — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 02:00:59 +0000

Last night after catching up with George and Gail about how their season was and the progress they’ve made on rebuilding the restaurant and store, we headed back to Airship to cook up some dinner. Tonight turned out to be tostada night! We grabbed some of the pulled pork (the stuff we made and brought from home) from the freezer, cooked up some black beans with jalapeno, garlic, and shallots, and then got all the toppings together: lettuce, shredded cheese, homemade salsa, sour cream, and some fresh lime to squeeze over the top. I’d picked up a bag of chipotle tostadas in Port McNeill last week thinking it had been ages since I’d had or made tostadas. We heated the crunchy tostadas in the oven and then built on with the toppings. They turned out great!

Port Harvey this morning:

Sabby on the dock:

George came down just after 8am with fresh cinnamon rolls. We took two to go, chatted a bit more and then headed out for Shoal Bay.

The rain started (again) just as we were leaving. We pulled the crab traps we’d set out on our way into the bay, but we only had one male keeper…the rest were females so back in they went.

We saw several sets of Pacific White-Sided Dolphins on our way through Johnstone Strait and into Sunderland Channel:

Our route today took us through Whirlpool Rapids and Greene Point Rapids. Both Whirlpool Rapids and Greene Point Rapids run to 7 knots at max ebb and flood, but can be safely traversed at any time as long as your boat has enough speed, stability, and rudder authority.

We had about 4.5 knots of current with us at Whirlpool Rapids…nothing too dramatic.

Even with what look like pretty good boils, our autopilot kept us on track with not much work.

We arrived at the Greene Point Rapids right AT max flood, and had about 6 knots of current going with u, but not much drama:

A little squirrely back toward the Cordero Islands and lodge:

We arrived in Shoal Bay and docked at the government dock (no other boats when we arrived besides the owners’ boat, but there are two more now). We walked up to the “pub” (the pub that’s never in pub mode when we’re here because it’s either too early or too late in the season) but we met Will inside…he’s from England and has been working here for most of the summer…and he said “Well guess what? It’s a pub right now!” so we had a beer and chatted with him for a half an hour or so. It’s rainy here too right now, but still so beautiful.

Tomorrow we’ll head on to the Octopus Islands. We’ve heard great things about them but never been. We’ll also go through more rapids tomorrow (the Okisollo Rapids). Unlike Whirlpool and Greene Point Rapids, you do not mess with the Okisollo Rapids at any time besides slack (which is exactly what time we’ll be there). During non-slack, there are large whirlpools, and an overfall/standing wave than can be between 5 and 8 feet tall! Eeeek.

Sounds like there’s some great kayaking and/or dinghy exploring around the Octopus Islands, but it’s not supposed to clear up until Tuesday, so maybe we’ll need to spend two days there.

Echo Bay to Port Harvey | BC

Laura Domela — Sun, 18 Sep 2016 02:43:11 +0000

We arrived at Echo Bay early in the day yesterday (since we got out of Booker Lagoon by 7:30am). It was rainy all day.

Dawnbreaker arrived later on (still pouring rain). Luckily, they had these fancy umbrellas onboard:

Thomas and Urban, above…doing the umbrella spinning thing for drama. Not pictured, Lars at the helm, being serious (but probably not really).

It rained all night. But hey, that means nice freshwater wash down for Airship, so it’s okay.

We slept in this morning (after a not-that-late-but-still-kinda-late evening hanging with the Dawnbreaker crew). After dinner last night, Thomas, Lars, and Urban brought over a homemade apple pie (and a bottle of wine) and we got out the pint of vanilla bean ice cream we brought from home (and still hadn’t eaten yet! How did THAT happen?) … fun conversation, stories, dessert, wine, espresso…

It was great catching up with Pierre, as always. He’s making some expansions and improvements to the store and the restaurant, and he’s got a new, darling cabin for rent (plus suites in the lodge) so if you don’t have a boat but want to come to Echo Bay, there are options!

We wandered around a bit this morning chatting with the other boaters (there were 7 boats at Pierre’s last night…that’s a lot for this time of year!)…and then made breakfast before heading out. (Our default breakfast is…breakfast tacos. Today’s were the last of the chorizo scrambled with some eggs, sliced avocado, homemade salsa, a dash of habanero hot sauce in flour tortillas…yum!) We left around 10am and headed over to see George and Gail at Port Harvey. The rain came and went, but it was a beautiful cruise:

We went around the west side of Gilford Island through Cramer Passage and Retreat Passage to Knight Inlet (bottom of Gilford Island) and then through Chatham Channel to get to Port Harvey. We were timed to hit Chatham Channel at max flood, so the current would be going with us, but at potentially 7 knots. We read up on Chatham Channel, and nothing sounded too dangerous (no whirlpools or eddies or overfalls), and it’s a smooth-bottomed channel, so the flow is laminar which is just fast, but not turbulent. We went through with no issues at all. We had 4.5 knots of current with us at the narrowest/fastest part, but that’s it. Nothing weird or nail-biting or anything.

We dropped our crab pots just west of Range Island on our way into the dock at Port Harvey and then caught up with George and Gail here for a bit. The rebuild of the store and restaurant are coming along nicely, and should be fabulous and better-than-ever for next season!

George said they’d seen a big grizzly on shore near their house next to the apple tree for the past two days, so to keep an eye out. We did, and then there he was!

George waited while I took a few photos before he fired his rifle to scare the bear away.

Now, we’re just hanging out on Airship (one other boat here tonight, the Jacari Maru, a Puget Trawler) and about to make dinner. We aren’t sure of our plans for tomorrow yet. Maybe Shoal Bay, and then the Octopus Islands…and then maybe Heriot Bay or Rebecca Spit on Quadra Island (in the spirit of trying to also go some places we haven’t been before). I could explore like this indefinitely.

Klemtu to Shearwater | BC

Laura Domela — Mon, 12 Sep 2016 16:49:03 +0000

We left Klemtu on the early side yesterday. The water was smooth and the skies were clear. Gorgeous day to be on the water!

We arrived at Perceval Narrows near max ebb, but the tidal swing is small right now and we estimated we might have as much as 2kts of current with us. As we got closer we kept an eye on our speed as we binoc’d the area between Martha Island and Lizzie Rocks, and it looked fine…a little bit of movement in the water but not much. We went through easily with just below 2kts of current with us. Just like we thought!

Gorgeous in Reid Passage:

A bit of swell (crashing on the rocks) as we came out of Reid Passage and into Seaforth Channel:

We arrived into Shearwater around 3pm, caught up with Christophe (the harbour master) and then headed up to do laundry and get groceries. We did some work while waiting for laundry, and then had dinner up at the pub.

View from dinner (before it got too cold and we moved inside):

We ran into the guys from Dawnbreaker, the big sailboat docked next to us in Kasaan (and then again in Klemtu) and caught up with them after dinner (had a nightcap on Dawnbreaker). We’ll probably see them again tonight in Codville Lagoon…fun bunch of guys!

This morning it’s gorgeous out! Kevin’s finishing up an article and I’m going to make breakfast here in a minute before we head out. Codville Lagoon isn’t far, so it’ll be a short cruise today.

Shearwater, from Airship this morning:

Not sure when we’ll have internet next. Our rough plan is Codville Lagoon tonight, then maybe Pruth Bay or Fury Cove before crossing Cape Caution. We need to look at the weather forecast and that’ll give us an idea how fast or slow we need to be over the next few days. The guys on Dawnbreaker have some other spots between here and there marked on their chart that sound interesting too…so we’ll just play it by ear!