16 Jun 22

We both woke up at 04:00 and thought (very briefly) about getting up and going, but decided against it and went back to sleep until 7:30. After breakfast, we listened to the weather forecast and decided to stick our noses out and try to make it to Helm Bay, which will save us an hour of sleep tomorrow morning. The anchor was aweigh at 09:06. As soon as we got out of Port Stewart, the wind was blowing SE 20-25, as predicted with a 3-5 ft sea running, all right against us. However, we were able to make 5.5 kn SOG and it was not too bad (nowhere near as bad as last year’s trip over the Swiftsure Bank), so we stuck it out and turned into Helm Bay at about 11:00. The original plan was to tie up to a USFS float (dock) behind Forss Island, but some blanking jerk had tied his 20 ft console skiff right in the middle of the dock, leaving about 30 ft on one end and 25 ft on the other. With the wind blowing straight off the dock at 20 kn, we tried twice to get up to it, but could not get close enough for Terri to jump onto the dock with the breast line, so we had to give up. Fortunately, there is a USFS mooring ball about 1/2 a mile further in the bay, so we ran down to it and were tied up to it just after noon. We are perfectly secure here but it is not quite as sheltered as the float was from wave action, so it is a bit bouncy. It started raining again just after we got secured, so we are all hunkered down for the rest of the day. Hopefully, tomorrow, conditions will improve a bit, so we can run up Clarence Strait to Meyers Chuck. At 17:30, we finally gave in and fired up the generator for 1.5 hours so we could run the heater. With that, plus Terri cooking dinner in the oven, the main cabin heated up enough to last through the evening. The wind abated during the early evening and the rain slackened off quite a bit as well. We enjoyed 2 or 3 bars of cell service all afternoon.  We were very early to bed.

55-39.115’N, 131-58.924’W; Log = 15.5, Sum = 1032.6; Eng. hrs. = 3.2, Sum = 3277.3