The log of S/V Lacuna, spring and summer 2005

Chapter 3

May 10 through 15, 2005, Port McNeill to Fancy Cove.

5/11/05. I spent all day yesterday at Port McNeill. I made sure that I would stay a full day by paying for two nights’ moorage when I arrived. I knew I’d be tempted to take off if the conditions were right, but this is the last good stop for provisions and supplies for quite a while. It was mostly little stuff—I never did find a camera strap, but I got other stuff I didn’t even know I needed, including 15 charts ($300 Cdn).

As nice as the chartplotter is, there’s no substitute for the security of a well-equipped chart locker. The chartplotter has shortcomings that make it annoying to use when planning routes or trying to see the big picture. I had hoped to save some money by not buying a full set of paper charts, just a good set of small scale (large area) charts for planning. But I find that going into a shoal cove feels a lot less sketchy if I have the official large-scale paper chart in front of me. I didn't realize how much I use the above-sea-level topographic information, such as contour lines, for navigation until I tried relying on the chartplotter, which shows the land area as blank space. The vector cartoon on the chartplotter has given me consistently accurate and precise locations, for which I'm grateful, but it's only an accessory to the paper charts. Every time I find a store that stocks marine charts, I take in my wish list.

Service wasn’t very quick this morning. The wharfinger assured me that the restrooms/showers opened at 0700. By my third fruitless walk to the security-door-covered restroom, I gave up on the idea of getting a shower and instead motored to the fuel dock at 8:00, their scheduled opening hour. Twenty minutes later, the attendant and his dog strolled down to the fuel dock. After filling the tank, I left the dock and motored across Queen Charlotte Strait with hardly a ripple on the water. Headwinds (NW) had been predicted, but it was smooth motoring. By 1530, I set the anchor in Skull Cove, a beautiful little protected nook in Bramham Island.

I inflated the kayak and took it paddling for the first time. It was so much easier to set up and take down than the Folbot, which Ed and I used as a tender and excursion boat during our Vancouver Island circumnavigation. Equipped with a rudder and high-pressure tubes, it seems to track well. The inflatable, self-draining floor keeps the butt dry. I circumnavigated the cove, saw the hill that’s said to be a shell midden, and paddled around rocks and through shallows. It felt good to be paddling again. When I bought the kayak, I also treated myself to a good paddle, finally, a lightweight carbon-fiber unit. The shaft is bent at the hand positions to allow a natural wrist angle. I’ve been bothered by carpal tunnel symptoms in the past when I’ve used a straight shaft paddle. I hope this helps.

In the evening, I thought I heard a couple of long, drawn-out wolf howls, but they were so faint it was hard to be sure. It was a thrill, nevertheless.

The weather forecast predicts building SE winds as a front moves through, with predictions of gales off the NW tip of Vancouver Island. Just where I plan to be tomorrow—crossing Queen Charlotte Sound and passing Cape Caution. I’m resigned to staying another day here—there’s plenty of interesting cruising, anchoring, and paddling to do in the Slingby Channel-Nakwakto Rapids area. Cape Caution is no place to be if the weather isn’t benign.

5/12/05. I’m anchored at the head of Goose Bay in Rivers Inlet. Despite my apprehensions and the weather forecast, I had an almost textbook-easy crossing of QC Sound. When I woke up, the air was calm as can be. Even though the forecast still predicted building winds, the West Sea Otter weather buoy reported 1.2-meter swells and a light breeze. According to the Waggoner guide, that’s just the kind of condition you want when crossing QC Sound.

Goose Bay (click here for larger image)

I reviewed my navigation notes from the night before and noted that the predicted wind would give me a favorable course—a reach all the way. So I deflated the kayak and put it away (15 minutes—an easy job), removed the sail covers and rigged the halyards and sheets, and weighed anchor a bit after 0800. Lacuna’s motor purred away, eating up the miles as we traveled over low swells without wind chop. I kept waiting, in vain, for the wind. It didn’t show up until after 3:00 today—long after I was at anchor.

The swells in QC Sound weren’t very big, as swells go, but they were still almost enough to block the horizon when Lacuna was in a trough. Ott certainly earned its keep today—it would have been very tedious and tiring to steer in the swells, which kept building during the day. By the time I listened to the last weather report, before heading into Rivers Inlet, the West Sea Otter buoy was reporting 1.8-meter swells, and with the swells coming at the port stern quarter, Lacuna was rocking, rolling, and yawing.

Once again I was grateful for the chartplotter and good charts. I had prepped a course the night before to run through a complex of small islands before going into Goose Bay. Following the route on the chartplotter made it easy to figure out which passage was which. With all the low islands that look alike, the barely-submerged rocks, and other confusing and confounding impediments, it’s really reassuring to have a GPS.

Although I was planning to anchor in Goose Bay, I stopped at Duncanby Landing, down the bay. The establishment was nowhere near ready to receive guests, said the woman who met me at the dock. Planking was being replaced on the dock, leaving dangerous gaps. There was no inventory except the booze that didn’t sell last year. No showers, no laundry, no ice, no electricity. She was pleasant enough, but the news wasn’t what I wanted to hear. New owners, she said, and we’re not going to be ready by the 15th, as had been advertised. So I motored to the head of the bay, past the dilapidated and collapsing Rivers Inlet fish packing plant, tucked into a little cove out of sight of the cannery, and set anchor.

The Goose Bay fish cannery is gradually falling into the sea like many before it.

I took a sponge bath, washed my hair, watched the world go by, fixed and ate dinner, put up the boom tent, snoozed a few minutes under its shelter as a light rain pattered overhead, and relaxed to the max.

Lacuna at Goose Bay

5/13/05. 2:58 PM. I’m feeling stir crazy, but it’s a good day to be at anchor in a protected cove. The winds in Hecate Strait, not far from here, are predicted to build to 50 knots tonight as a front moves through. I could probably get to Dawsons Landing in a couple of hours of sailing or motoring. I’m in the protected waters of Rivers Inlet, so the SE wind would be partially blocked by the hills around the inlet, but every so often a gust catches Lacuna, makes her shudder and spin on her rode, and reminds me that I promised myself I’d be a conservative sailor.

I’d love to do some sailing—this could be just the right kind of conditions for Lacuna to dance along, with minimum fetch and a beam reach. Even fully loaded as she is, she can sail a knot over hull speed, stable and responsive, in those conditions. But there’s another complication: I’m running a generator test. I started it at 0945; it’s still running without refueling (on 0.55-gal gas tank!)—my guess is that it will run another 45 minutes or so before it runs out of gas. I started with battery 1 well discharged from two days of navigation. I ran the boat on battery 2 for about half a day before starting the generator. It’ll be interesting to see how well it charges the batteries.

It’s not a test just of the generator but also of my tolerance for it. As small and quiet as it is, when it’s on the cockpit seat it’s as if it were atop a guitar body—the vibrations rattle throughout the boat. I have the stereo cranked up (Los Lobos) and that helps a lot—the noise isn’t too obtrusive until the silence between the tracks. As soon as a CD stops I quickly put another in.

This morning, after starting the generator, I inflated the kayak and paddled around the cove. I took a brisk walk in the intertidal zone. I’d forgotten how sensuous sticky mud between the toes can feel. I was fast duck-walking across the slippery black mud, Teva-skating along (sometimes unintentionally) until I felt I had a good workout. Then I worked my way back to the kayak along the high intertidal.

There’s a shell midden at the point near the head of the cove. It’s a great place for canoes—a fairly steep sandy beach, perfectly protected from wind and wave, with a good lookout down the bay.

A shell midden on a sandy beach.

More recent human evidence included stray bricks mixed in with the shells. Nearby were several long logs beached and tied together with rusty chain, secured to the shore with lightweight polypropylene line, well aged. On the south side of the cove is a dormitory barge, its back broken as it slumps into the intertidal mud. Bits of iron, long bolts corroded and bent, are scattered throughout the intertidal.

5/14/05. I’m in Frypan Bay, all alone except for the seal who’s patrolling the waters, making a splash every so often, and the seagulls crying their courtship calls.

I finally couldn’t take the inaction any more and left the secure little anchorage in Goose Bay. I rigged for sailing—I took the sail covers off, set up the halyards and downhaul for quick action. As I was motoring past the old cannery, I had a nice tailwind, but as I passed Duncanby Landing a half mile later and raised the headsail, the wind shifted to a headwind. So I immediately dropped the sail and kept on motoring.

When I got out into Rivers Inlet, the breeze was light and fitful, even though there had been some interesting gusts through the anchorage. There was good outflow from Draney Inlet, and for half an hour I had a 10-knot beam wind, but soon the mountains blocked it off, I dropped the sails and started the motor again. It rained, sometimes hard.

Dawsons Landing, Rivers Inlet (click here for larger image)

I stopped at Dawsons Landing—and as the Waggoner guide said, the store was remarkably well supplied. I bought a few groceries and a couple of charts, did my laundry and took a shower, then left and motored into a 15-knot headwind to get here.

Dawsons Landing boardwalk.

Someone loves to garden--there were dozens of pots full of greenery.

This business has been here for at least half a century. In that time, all kinds of cables and ropes have been used to hold together huge logs that keep the dock afloat. Greenery grows in unlikely places.

I’ve been actively avoiding people, it seems. I relish the thought of a deserted anchorage. I went to Dawsons Landing only because I was out of clean underwear and wanted a shower. I didn’t want company. A garrulous sailor on a big catamaran engaged me in conversation, which I enjoyed, but it felt good to get back on Lacuna and leave the dock.

My self-enforced solitude is perhaps in pursuit of some epiphany or insight. I haven’t had this much solitary time in decades. Nothing revolutionary has been revealed, however. I’ve confirmed a number of things that I already knew about myself: I’m independent to a fault. I’m fussy about details. I love charts and knots. I enjoy solving problems and collecting information. I need to have several things going on at once or I get bored. Perhaps I need some mind-opening agent like acid or peyote or psilocybe to get things moving, to clear the mental constipation that affects everyone.

I find myself actively avoiding news. I bought a paper in Port McNeill to use as drip catcher when I changed oil in the outboard motor. I read one story about human sexuality but everything else was of no interest. At home, I read at least one newspaper a day, often two, and listen to the news on NPR morning and evening. But the news has been so bad, the direction the USA is headed is so wrong, and a majority of the voters are so backward, uninformed, and judgmental, that I can’t stand it any more. I’m happy when the news of interest is the VHF weather station’s report of sea conditions at the lighthouses and offshore buoys.

5/15/05. I’m anchored in Fancy Cove, off Lama Passage. I had a long day today, made longer by the noise of the generator as well as the outboard—my first experiment in running both at the same time. I figured that the difference between silence and one motor was a lot greater than the difference between one and two motors, and I was right. Running the generator added little to the discomfort (compared to sailing) of listening to the outboard, even at the relatively low RPM I run. The generator runs five and half hours on 0.55 gallons of gas, and although the tests are underway, it may be possible to run the generator every third or fourth day to keep the batteries up.

Now, in the blessed absence of motor noise, I find myself just sitting and listening to what’s around me--the gurgling stream flowing into the cove near my boat, the sigh of the wind through the trees on the distant ridge, the light slap-slap of wavelets against the bow of he inflatable kayak, the antiphonal cry of seagulls…It’s as rich tonight as a Bach cantata.

It rained, rained, and then rained some more last night. I was glad I had the boom tent on. I left the sliding hatch open to get the full effect of the night air. I sleep on the settee berth with my head as close to the companionway as possible—I love feeling as if I’m sleeping outside. What I hadn’t figured on was that the sail cover is an essential part of this operation. I’d always put the cover on before putting up the tent, but the forecasts yesterday (for today) made me think that I’d be able to do some sailing today, so I didn’t put the sail covers on.

Rainwater ran down the folds of the mainsail and dripped onto the rug in the cabin. I was sleeping right next to the drips but didn’t hear them—and didn’t know about them until I put my bare feet on the rug in the morning. Cold and wet! One of the first tasks was to take the rug out into the cockpit to let it drain then mop up the cabin sole with a rag—and rinse my hands once again.

My hands have taken such a beating that I have to apply industrial-strength hand cream once or twice a day. For a couple of months before the voyage, I was working all the time to get Lacuna ready for the voyage. There was lots of woodworking, fiberglass work, sewing, and other handwork that my skin wasn’t used to. When I set sail in Olympia my thumbs were split along the nails, the backs of my hands were lacerated in several places, and it hurt just to make a fist, my skin was so dry and tight. It took several days before I got to a port where I could get remedial hand cream.

Tomorrow my plan is to stop at Shearwater to get some supplies then head north. It was a long passage today--46 miles, but it put me on schedule with my planned itinerary.

--Dennis Todd

jump to Chapter 4

log entries
photo gallery
itinerary

Ed's Van Isle 2000

the boat
library

e-mail lacuna