1 Jun 23

After going to bed early, we were up at 7:45. The Admiral’s swimming suit is still wet from yesterday and she did not want to climb into it to get into the hot spring, with here or at Wewanee, so we decided to get going, skip Wewanee (for the time being) and head straight to Coghlan Anchorage. The anchor was aweigh by 09:35, although not without a bit of drama; with only about 20 ft of chain, plus the anchor, to finishing pulling in, the chain jumped off the gypsy and all 135 ft of it ran to the bottom in 25 m of water. I could not stop it running until it got to the rope rode. The winch struggled and made unpleasant grinding noises getting the chain and anchor back up; I’m a bit concerned. The trip up Ursula Passage, down Verney Passage and across Douglass Channel was uneventful except for a brief visit by a couple of porpoises. The views along the way, although offering a wintry visage, were spectacular. After crossing Douglass Channel, we popped into Hartley Bay, thinking we might spend a night, but although we got up to the fuel dock with no problems, the rest of the docks are apparently very shallow, so we elected to move on to Coghlan Anchorage. We were anchored in the relatively shallow depth of 9.8 m at Otter Shoal by 14:00. After we settled in, I went forward to see if I could do anything to improve the operation of the anchor windlass, which seems to be struggling a bit to pull up the anchor when we are in more than 20 m of water, which has been the norm lately. Other than clean off the gypsy, clutch and brake pads, there is not much I can do here. The gear box (between the motor and gypsy spindle) is not accessible without tearing down the entire winch, which I would rather not do until we are in a port like Prince Rupert. While I was doing this service, I foolishly managed to drop the keeper key (between the clutch and spindle) down into the anchor well. Naturally, I had to pull 700 ft of rode and 50 ft of chain (from the spare anchor) out of the well, but at least I found it; without this key I do not think the winch would work at all, certainly not the manual override. Immediate crisis averted, we settled in for Captain’s hour.

53-23.793’N, 129-17.332’W; Log = 26.6, Sum (2023) = 676.3 N-m; Eng. hrs. = 4.8, Sum = 3219.0