Arriving at Waterfall Inlet

July 10th (Wednesday) 

Today was moving day! We had grown to feel very at home at Calvert Island, and it was somewhat sad to leave, but on the other hand we were very excited to be off adventuring to a new anchorage once again. 

Before leaving I paddled over to the Hakai dock for some last-minute internet. I wanted to get the blog stories and pictures sent out to my mom to bring you up until today. I paddled in the kayak instead of taking the tender because we patched Kiki yesterday afternoon and it is not supposed to be re-inflated fully for 24 hours, and because we could not keep it at a perfect temperature we were hoping to leave it longer than 24 hours to fully cure. 

When I got back home we started the engine and raised our anchor.  We started trolling with two lines out, and also started making water. Today was the first time that we had tried running our water maker system fully off of our vessel batteries with the engine running to replenish charge through the alternator. Our low pressure pump always runs off of the batteries as it is DC, however, our high pressure pump is AC driven and we have always run our generator to power it. This makes a lot more noise and also burns gasoline. 

We let our batteries fully charge before trying to run the whole system off of the batteries, and were thrilled to discover that our alternator put out enough amps that we were not actually depleting our batteries at all. Yay! So now, effectively our water maker system is both an AC generator powered system, and a DC engine driven system through our inverter. 

Coming out Kwakshua Channel we saw two pairs of porpoises and two very curious sea lions. Out in Fitz Hugh Sound we saw lots of birds and a whale, and although we patiently trolled all the way to Fish Egg Inlet we didn't catch a thing. Darn salmon. 

The marine forecast for today had been for northeast winds of 15 knots, becoming southerly 10-20 knots. This was part of the reason we decided to leave today, as we were hoping to sail while trolling. Unfortunately it was almost completely dead calm. The weather was very dynamic looking, with distinct cumulus cloud cells forming together with heavy rain showers, and as these passed over us while we were crossing the sound we expected gusty winds, but it remained calm. 

When we came close to the entrance of Waterfall Inlet, where we were going to anchor, we wanted to drop a prawn trap. We wanted to do it off of our sailboat, which we had never done before, because we did not want to use Kiki to come out and set it later. Since the water was glassy calm, and there was no wind, we figured this would be quite simple. We had all of our line flaked out in the cockpit so as to prevent any tangles and to allow for a quick deploy. The trap was baited and ready to go, and we were just about to pick a spot, when a massive storm cell came over us, and with it came 20 knot winds. The first wind of the day right when we wanted calm. We waited it out, and finally as it calmed down and we were once again able to hold the boat stationary we let out our trap. 

With our trap set we made our way into a beautiful, and seemingly very well protected anchorage, that we had all to ourselves. In fact we have not seen anyone else in all of Fish Egg Inlet. 

Anchored at Waterfall Inlet. 

After a few more heavy rain showers had passed, the sun came out, and we went out onto our foredeck to enjoy. We watched as a group of 20-30 gulls were flying, then landing and dunking to pick up small surface fish. We also heard the call of a Common Loon, which is ironically, not very common out here. Occasionally we could hear strong wind in the trees, and looking to the hills we could see the trees all blowing around, but in our anchorage it remained calm. 

Tonight was the first dinner we had only leftovers, but it was amazing. Leftover prawn and crab pasta, leftover oven cooked Lingcod, Dungeness crab dipped in butter, with fresh bread and fried sea asparagus! Yummy!! So many amazing flavours!!