Laura Cove, Simoom Sound, and Echo Bay

Hello and welcome back! In the last blog post we flexed our seafood hunting muscles and explored some history at Billy's Museum. In this blog post we get a small break in the rain and run into some issues with the boat (oh no!).

The maps below show our path (in brown) that is covered in this blog post.

Our travels are depicted in brown

Travel stats for travel covered in this blogpost:
Distance: 21.4 nautical miles
Travel time: Approx 5 hours
Days: 5 days

Video highlights from this portion of the trip!

After a nice stay in Shoal Harbor we made our way to Laura Cove.  It was a nice little cove, but it started to rain hard as soon as we got there so we stayed in the boat that evening and left early the next morning. Not much to say about Laura Cove other than we had the whole place to ourselves... tired of me saying that yet?!

After a soggy evening at Laura Cove we scooted up to the Sound entrance, and fresh off our success in Joe Cove, we threw the shrimp pot in about 300 feet of water. Onward to one of the anchorages! We chose a spot in Macintosh Bay tucked in between some islands and set to building a rain shelter on the boat because we were fed up with the rain! Wouldn't ya know it, the minute we had our rain shelter up the rain stopped! That's the way she goes right? No problem- we were just so excited for a break in the rain. At this point the boat was getting to be a bit damp so the next morning with the sun shining, we opened all the hatches and dried out everything- we love that sun! I got to work on a little engine project that I had been putting off for a long time. I had purchased a coolant overflow tank months previously and just needed to install it. It felt so nice to get some boat work done with all the windows and hatches open. The project was finished in time for happy hour and chess. There's more information on the video concerning the coolant tank- check that out for additional details.

Our anchorage in Simoom Sound

Happy hour on the front deck

Cheers to the sun!

Scenic dog mission

Returning from picturesque dog mission

Another view of our anchorage in McIntosh Bay of Simoom Sound

The last morning in Simoom Sound started early and unexpectedly. We awoke at 3AM to our carbon monoxide battery alarm going off. Huh? The engine wasn't running, no fire going, we had a few windows open, and we felt fine. What the heck? A closer look reveals that the noise is the battery alarm on the carbon monoxide detector... which is connected to the house batteries. Another funny thing is that the vberth (bedroom) lights are dim.... must be the batteries... That's odd because we hadn't done anything differently than we had for the last 6 weeks of the trip. Slightly concerned, but not overly worried, we turned off EVERYTHING, and went back to bed.

Soggy Simoom Sound morning

We were hopeful that when we fired up the engine, we would recharge the batteries. When we were ready to leave the anchorage, we fired up the engine and tried to turn on the chartplotter... to which it flickered and then nothing.... radio doesn't work either... oh shit. Starting to become more worried, we waited and let the engine run to give the batteries some time to charge. 40 minutes later we tried turning the chartplotter on... still nothing. Oh shit big trouble! The engine is not charging the house batteries (the engine has a separate starter batteries- thank goodness!). So our entire electrical system is down- time for a course of action. We had planned on going to Kwatsi Bay, but knowing they didn't have power we decided to immediately head for Pierre's Marina in Echo Bay. We will sort this out there. We have a chartplotter type app on the phone and we can use that to navigate to Echo Bay.

The house batteries in question

We made our way to Echo Bay, watching the phone battery like a hawk seeing as though we only had 25% left. On the way we picked up our shrimp pot and it was record catch! More than 150 red spotted shrimp! We were still nervous about the battery situation, but the shrimp haul certainly improved the mood aboard.

Pierre's Marina

Ok, so we made it Pierre's Marina, and we are the only people there... except for Pierre. He greeted us and we started to tell him about our battery situation. Right away he offered up ideas and help, which was very welcome! After talking with him we checked the batteries' water level which turned out to be low. He didn't have any distilled water, but he did have some old batteries up the way. We went and transferred the old battery's distilled water into ours (literally pouring an old battery's liquid into a bucket then pouring that into, then charged it up with Pierre's industrial battery charger (apparently we aren't the only boaters with battery woes). We did this for the two house batteries that were low on voltage and water. Once charged up we installed them back in the boat and tested them by turning on a bunch of stuff. Chartplotter... that works! Radio.... that works! Back in business!

Another view of Pierre's Marina

While that was a victory, it didn't rule out that all the problems such as the alternator not charging properly, or will the batteries hold the charge, and why did the batteries get drawn so low? We would test the alternator question the next day when we started traveling again, but getting to the source of why our batteries got drawn so low was the most important issue.

I should probably mention that I did cause a *very* small short in the electrical system before the system went down, but I've done that before and it never killed batteries... Was it that and the combo of low water in the two batteries? As we pondered this and tested a few other theories we started to hear a clicking sound... A sound we have never heard before. We couldn't place where it was coming from. It was forward, but where? A few more switches flipped and we discover that noise is only on when we have our chartplotter/sail instruments on. After an intense hunt we come to discover our depthsounder (which has no moving parts) is making the clicking sound. Come to think of it, our depthsounder has been acting a little funny lately...
We unplugged it and the noise stopped.

So the theory is that the depthsounder has a small short that drew down the batteries to a level that they couldn't bounce back from. We probably never noticed the clicking sound because it was so faint, we would only be able to hear it when the boat was dead silent. However we only have the chartplotter and instruments on when we are traveling (engine running etc). Hence, we never heard it. Who knows how long that has been going on!
That's my theory, but we won't know if that fixes the problem until we leave the dock and test the alternator and batteries....  oh no a CLIFFHANGER!!!!!

Hang in there like Sylvester Stallone and come back next week as put our theories about the batteries and alternator to the test!

Disco using Jenny as a pillow. What a silly dog.

Joe Cove and Shoal Harbor

Hello and welcome back! In the last blog post we had enjoyed a break in the rain at Booker Lagoon. This post starts with us leaving Booker Lagoon, bound for Joe Cove. The maps below will show you our route in red.

Our travels can be seen in red. The distance we traveled between Booker Lagoon and Shoal harbor is approximately 18.2 nautical miles which took us about 5 hours.

Video highlights from Joe Cove and Shoal Harbor

After two great days in Booker it was time to leave. In order to exit Booker Lagoon you need to traverse the narrow inlet at slack tide and when it was time for us to leave the fog had set in thick. We cautiously and slowly made our way through a tangle of islands. How people did this stuff without chartplotters and GPS is a mystery to me.

Due to the fog we opted to make a short sail over to Joe Cove, resetting our shrimp trap and crab trap on the way in. At this point we are starting to get a little smarter about fishing- why make a separate dinghy trip to set traps when you can set them from the mothership en route to the anchorage? We pulled into Joe Cove, finding this anchorage empty of boaters as well... cruising the Broughtons in September is ok by us!

Evening tour on the dinghy

Jenny on our evening tour

We fished and relaxed in Joe Cove setting our second crab trap by dinghy after we had caught some fish to bait it with. We probably could have stayed another night in Joe Cove but we were too excited to check our shrimp and crab pots we had set on the way into the cove. On our way out of Joe Cove we pulled our pots and boy howdy we hit the jackpot!

Our crab trap had a large male dungeness crab and a large red rock crab! That's dinner right there! And the shrimp pot.... FILLED WITH SHRIMP! OMG it felt like we won the lottery! The pot had 130 shrimp in there!! Wooo! Once the shrimp trap was up, we continued on our way. It's nice pulling the pots from Maya because then we can clean up the lines, and stow the traps all while we are underway. Those tasks take an good amount of time so if we do that while we are motoring to our next anchorage it's like we are multitasking.

Look at that fresh shrimp!

That's a lot of food!

From Joe Cove we headed towards Echo Bay and Shoal Harbor. En route we passed the Fox Group of Islands. Seeing that it was dead calm and there were lots of pretty islands around we decided to do something we've never done before.... fly the drone while underway. Scary! Anywho, you can see some of the shots below and in the video clips. What is not shown is the perfect landing aboard Maya while moving- not easy to do! Maybe there's a future for me as a helicopter pilot..... or maybe I'll stick with boating.

Here we are traveling through the Fox Island Group

Maya moving slow by steady

We continued through the channels and arrived at Echo Bay. We threw out the shrimp pot into deep water and then made our way to a deserted Shoal Harbor- another anchorage all to ourselves! The sun even came out! With the amount of rain we had seen on our trip it was so nice to see the sun.

Our boat is great for sunny days, however since we don't have any sort of cover in our cockpit makes things a bit uncomfortable when the weather is crappy. If we have bad weather at anchor it basically means we are stuck inside. And if we are underway we are wet. A very popular style of boat up here is the Pilothouse. That style of boat has a cabin that kind of sticks up and has windows all around- that allows for the captain to drive the boat from inside... while wearing slippers. We love Maya, but these rainy and windy 50 degree days have us dreaming about a pilothouse. We have plans this winter to create shelter for us in the cockpit by way of an arch of some kind in the back and some sort of canvas enclosure. I plan on continuing the blog posts through the winter so I'll detail that then.

Fishing in Shoal Harbor

Jenny filleting her big greenling

ANYWAYS! This area has quite a bit of history- logging, fishing, and native people. Just around the corner from our anchorage in Shoal Harbor is Billy's Museum. We made a short dinghy trip over to the museum and met Bill himself! Bill is an 83 year old guy who has lived in the area his whole life. He has seen incredible changes throughout time and is the unofficial historian of the area. He has written several books detailing the characters, and happenings of the area. We purchased two of his books and devoured them- it's so cool reading about all the rich history of the area as we are traveling through. And after reading these books, let me just say that logging back in the day was absolutely insane. Guys would go out into the deep wilderness by themselves and be cutting down massive trees. The stories in the books are just insane. Book details below if anyone is interested.

Billy and Jenny

So we got to the museum and met Billy. And he gave us a tour of the museum where he has all the items he has found beachcombing in the area. Everything from old native tools, beads that first explorers of the area traded with, among a million other things. We were the only people there so we got a personal tour through all the buildings. It was very nice to meet Bill and the museum was very interesting.

Post museum field trip we weren't feeling motivated to move the boat anywhere so we decided to stay another night. The sun was shining so we spent the rest of the evening fishing with Jenny pulling in the biggest fish of the trip. We didn't have a scale, but it was probably an 8 pound greenlin (looked like a scuplin). That fish fried up nicely and provided us with a ton of crab bait which we put to work right away. Fresh fish and sunshine made for a great evening.

A float plane buzzed us!

Pretty cool!

At this point of the trip it had rained a bunch of days in a row and any sunshine we got we cherished. We had gotten a break in the weather at Shoal Harbor and were hopeful for more sunny days coming. Unfortunately, the next morning it was pouring rain again. The storm continues.... in spite of the gloomy, wet weather we decided to explore a nearby inlet- Simoom Sound.

Thank you again for stopping by and reading about our adventure. Sorry this post was a little light on the photos- I think we were focusing a bit more on the video side of things. There will be more photos in upcoming blogs.

As always, please feel free to leave a comment or a question. Cheers.

Port McNeill and Booker Lagoon

Welcome back! In the last blog post we had just finished our first few stops in the Broughtons and in this one we stop at the area's biggest town and weather the first Fall storm before exploring more of the area. The following blog post covers our travels in the maps below. 

This blog post covers the purple path in the map above from Freshwater bay to Port McNeill and then to Booker Lagoon. During that time we covered 45.1 Nautical miles, which equates to approx 9 hours of travel in Maya.

Video highlights from Port McNeill and Booker Lagoon

Port McNeill is the only "big" town in the Broughtons (pop approx 2500), which makes it a prime place to resupply. We were in need of a huge grocery run so we were bound to a dockside stay to wait out the storm and resupply.

Arriving in Port McNeill we requested for the easiest dock spot to pull into- we didn't want any dramatic docking episodes. Port McNeill fulfilled our request and gave us a spot at the end of a dock... behind a 60' catamaran and next to a 164' megayacht equipped with a helicopter! Our boat felt like a bath toy next to the megayacht! We quickly befriended the helicopter instructor, who travels with the boat. It was fascinating talking with him about the owners and how the boat is operated. There were 10 people on the boat full time- captain, cook, engineer, stewards, deckhands... and one helicopter instructor... Unbelievable. One deckhand even followed the owners around town with a chair in case they wanted to sit down... weird. I guarantee you that we have way more fun than they do! Even on our tiny boat!

Our neighbor for a few days...

I mean, c'mon.... that's just ridiculous

These people will never appreciate the free hot showers at Port McNeill like we did!

Anywho, we spent 4 nights in Port McNeill taking care of a bunch of errands. Jobs included sourcing prawn trap line and some other fishing gear, restocking on groceries, and getting as many runs in as we could. Jenny also had to take some continuing pharmacy education tests too. The weather was cold, wet, and WINDY... perfect weather to be at dock for.

Not much else to say about Port McNeill- the vibe reminded me of a small town in Northern Wisconsin.

Reprovisioning in Port McNeill

Disco managing to survive the cold, wet days in Port McNeill. 

I think that's the upper limit of the fireplace there, bud.

After 4 nights at dock we were ready to jettison back into the wilderness! We booked it to Booker Lagoon, which was recommended to us by fellow boaters. We made a sporty sail (gusts up to 30 knots) to Booker Lagoon and made it through the tight entrance to find a boat-free lagoon! Wooo!

Passing through the entrance to Booker Lagoon

Safely through the entrance

We dropped the hook, threw the traps out, and enjoyed the peace and quiet of the deserted lagoon. We enjoyed the day at Booker Lagoon so much that we decided to stay another night. The decision was easy as the weather was clear and sunny.... we didn't want to waste any of the nice weather traveling when we could be thoroughly enjoying it at anchor.

Booker Lagoon was our first shot at shrimping.... we were eager to put that new gear to use! Shrimp are typically found in water around 300' deep so we dropped our pot in the only deep void of the lagoon and let it soak. Sadly, when we pulled up all 350' of line (which is a lot of work!) there were only 12 shrimp... That's ok- at least we weren't skunked! We savored each of the shrimp over a tasty lunch.

Our first shrimp haul

Tasty lunch

Jenny with a nice sol fish! Note that it was not a halibut!

Tasty fresh fried fish!

Jenny has been baking bread like crazy using sour dough starter we got in Alaska.

Disco with Maya in the background

A stunning sunset to cap a sunny layover day in Booker Lagoon.

Maya at anchor in Booker Lagoon

Another angle of Maya at anchor in Booker Lagoon

Stormy low clouds

Mist in the trees. Distinctly PNW.

We had an amazing time in Booker Lagoon, but were eager to move on and continue exploring more of the Broughtons. Join us next time where we visit with a local legend and run into some issues with our electrical system!

Thank you so much for stopping by and reading. Check back soon for more posts (trying for weekly updates).
Cheers!

Crease Island and Freshwater Bay

Welcome back! In the last blog post we had just finished Johnstone Straight and were continuing through deeper into the Broughtons. The following blog post covers our travels in the maps below. This post is our travel in RED in the zoomed in map, where we stop at Crease Island and Freshwater Bay.

Map of area in lower map

Travel in this blog post is the red line and stars.

Video highlights from Crease Island and Freshwater Bay

Continuing our trek north we weaved our way through more channels to Crease Island, which was also noted for excellent crabbing. Again, Jenny went to work fishing and INSTANTLY had two large fish! Dinner and bait all in one! Woowhooo! We baited the traps and spent the evening relaxing.... we were finally in the Broughtons!

Jenny with dinner!

The next day came, and we're excited to pull the traps.... how many crab will we have?!?! None. We had no crabs! We only caught an alien booger thing and a giant starfish. Dang. That's ok, the previous night's fish was delicious. Anywho, we decided to pull up the hook and make our way to a "secret anchorage" that people had mentioned to us back when we were in the San Juan Islands. I'll let ya in on that secret.... Freshwater Bay on Blackfish Sound.

What the heck is that thing and what did it do to all the crab?

Something cleaned our bait fish

We caught a huge starfish

Maya at anchor at Crease Island

It's not mentioned in any guide books or noted as an anchorage in any maps so we were a little skeptical, but we pulled into the bay and dropped the hook just in time to see the show. And that show was wildlife extravaganza! We saw orcas, humpbacks, seals, and dolphins all at the same time! It was freaking nuts I tell ya! We took the dighny over to the action in time to have 150+ dolphins swim past us during, what we assume was a fish hunt. That was one of the most unreal things we have ever experienced! The pictures don't do it justice... we were so close to them! All the while this was going on, whale blow holes were going off and tails were in the air... birds circling everywhere too! It was amazing! 

Dinghy ride over to all the wildlife spectacle! 

Pacific Whitesided Dolphins

So many dolphins!

It was amazing!

Good morning from Freshwater Bay

Rita in Blackfish Sound

We stayed two nights in Freshwater Bay, watching wildlife from the comfort of our boat. It was simply the best! The second night, in the pitch black we both awoke so some sound outside the boat. We both got up and investigated.... there were whales surrounding us! Now we couldn't see them as there was no moon, but their blowholes were going off in every direction. Best we can surmise (SPELLING?!) is that the whales were sleeping around us! Totally unreal! After enjoying as long as we could we went back to bed... knowing we were sleeping with whales! So cool! 

Maya parked in Freshwater Bay

Humpback whales

Humpback

Jenny caught dinner again!

Maya in front of Flower Island in Freshwater Bay

Those seals are HUGE

Maya in Freshwater Bay from the drone

Disco in her spot

We could have easily stayed an entire week in Freshwater Bay- the wildlife viewing was that good, however the weather forecast was calling for the Fall's first storm. It was hard to leave Freshwater Bay, but the winds were expected to reach 40+mph out of the Southeast, which Freshwater Bay was exposed to. We picked up the hook and made our way to the area's only town, Port McNeill.

A passing cruise ship from our anchorage

Some cool geology must have happened around here

Disco with Blackfish Sound in the background

Thank you so much for stopping by! Please stop by again soon- in our next blog post we weather the first fall storm in Port McNeill and then continue exploring the Broughtons.

Storm approaching- time to get to Port McNeill

"Are we done with this boat thing yet!?"