Cruising Adventures of the Red Witch

August 4th and 5th (Monday and Tuesday)  We had a couple more days of fog. Sometimes it was very thick, and other times it was more like high cloud, but it was constantly present. The worst part about it was that often there was a visible blue line of clear sky and sunshine out near the end of the channel. It was like Calvert Island was actually creating the fog and it was clear everywhere else.  We made ourselves stay home and get what we needed to get done, done. We ended up spending a lot of time on devices on the wifi figuring stuff out for our water maker and other things. It was a somewhat brain-numbing time, especially since we are not used to staring at screens as much anymore.  As a break, I reorganized the back cabin of our boat, which being our storage space and workshop, has a way of getting easily unorganized. August 6th (Wednesday) After some more brain-numbing chores in the morning and after the heavy drizzle had drained itself out, we headed out in Ki...

August 3rd (Sunday) In the morning we got our domestic-water low-pressure pump plumbed in line for our water maker, and we were able to make water again. Yay!  Unfortunately it only worked for half an hour before it overheated and cut off, because it is not designed to run continuously. So, because we can only run it for half an hour or so, we made water again later in the day, and will need to make water more frequently, and try to stop the pump before it overheats. It is not ideal, but it works for the time being.  Unfortunately we realized later, when we went to fresh-water-flush our system, that that is the one thing that we do use that domestic water pump for. I don't know how we failed to think of that, but we were just so focused on making the water maker system work again. Tomorrow we will have to figure out something so that we can flush our system with fresh water, as it is not good to leave it sitting between uses with salt water in it. After we did some research ...

August 3rd (Saturday) This morning we left Stryker Island. We did not get an early start as we were hoping to sail, and the winds were supposed to be best in the afternoon.  The last time that we had tried to make water, the flow had been low, so since then we had cleaned all of the filters and we were planning to make water today while motoring out. Unfortunately the flow was still too low to make water, and after troubleshooting the system, starting by making sure the thru-hull was not clogged we have concluded that, for some reason, our low-pressure pump is just not creating enough flow/pressure. It is supposed to be a 40psi pump, but when we close the exit line the pressure switch is now shutting the pump off at about 15psi. The pump is still pumping water, but with much less flow than it should be. Unfortunately, when we left Vancouver we did not get a spare pump for this because we were still testing the whole system, and we thought a pump would last longer than this. Lucki...

August 2nd (Friday) We went out for another early morning kayak paddle to take advantage of the low tide for viewing. We headed out to the outer and more open side of the land as we were curious to see what different things we might see, but we found that there was so much kelp that we could not get close enough to shore, and when we could, all we saw was many types of kelp. It was neat to see all the different types and colours, but it was not so good for viewing other things. We headed back around to the more protected side where there was less kelp. The animal that we have been calling a Marten, we are no longer sure if it is in fact a Marten, it is possible that it is a Mink, or even a Weasel. Either way, we saw a couple of them today.  Marten, mink, or weasel?  One of them was coming down the rocks on shore to look for food, and I stopped paddling just as he looked at me. He sniffed the air and stared, and then as I was silently drifting closer he carried on with...

August 1st (Thursday) Hard to believe it was three months ago today that we left Vancouver. We headed out for an early morning paddle this morning. The tide cycle had come around again so that we were getting the very low tides. This is a time we really like to go out exploring by kayak and look into our saltwater aquarium.  Sheya in the kayak at low tide. Sheya in the same position at high tide. Today was no disappointment! We saw so much cool stuff. In some of the sandy shallow areas there were hundreds of shrimp. This is something we had not seen before, so I imagine that maybe they were congregated to breed. If they were startled in the shallows they would jump along the surface of the water to get away.  Most of the time, however, they were quite unconcerned by our presence, and we could drift over in our kayaks and they would not bother moving. As a result, we got a good look at them, and we identified them as Coonstripe Shrimp. We were also seeing a lot o...

July 30th (Tuesday) Today was a project day. It was cloudy and rainy so it was a perfect time for inside projects. We mounted a winch on the coaming of our cockpit for our foresail roller furler, and we planned out placement of our inside teak handholds for when we are offshore. Once we new the placement we drilled holes up into our headliner, and then began backfilling with thickened epoxy so as to give us a very strong surface to mount them to. We mounted our large CO2 fire extinguisher, which is specifically for our engine room, and we did some other odds and ends. We also did our Spanish lesson cds, which we try to do frequently, as it would be nice to know more Spanish rather than less when we get to Mexico. In the afternoon Jason played around with using our SSB radio, and for the first time we were able to make contact with land stations and truly test our system. Jason installed the whole system last winter and our major wish for the system was to be able to get weather faxes,...

July 28th (Sunday) It was a beautiful sunny morning when we pulled up anchor and headed to our next anchorage on Stryker Island. The water was glassy calm as we motored down Codfish Channel. It was just a short move of only about 6 nautical miles, but we were very glad it was glassy calm as the surface of the water was almost literally covered in a mixture of kelp, weeds, and logs of all sizes. It was like manoeuvring through a minefield.  After rounding the tip of Stryker Island we headed up into the anchorage inside the heart of the Island and as we went we placed a line of marker pins on Navionics on my phone based on the actual depth readings in certain locations from our depth finder on our boat. We have found that this is the best way to find suitable spots for our prawn traps so as to avoid dropping it down in an uncharted hole that turns out to be too deep for the length of our rope. It’s really annoying when we have to pull it back up to put it somewhere shallower. Luck...

July 25th – 26th (Thursday and Friday) It rained a lot and was windy on and off, but we found that our little anchorage was quite well protected. Our anchorage was often glassy calm and then we would get the occasional gust that would rocket down upon us and do spirals around us. Our boat would barely have time to react to the gust before the wind was making our flag blow back on itself, and then it would disappear altogether and leave us in the calm once again. We found the brightest period between rain and hard drizzle that we could and went out to set our traps. We put one prawn trap in close to 400' of water in the hole inside Hochstader Basin, and one crab trap inside the basin as well. We put our second prawn trap in about 330' of water outside of the entrance to the anchorage area. We tried some fishing spots and explored our new area a bit before coming back home to get out of our rain gear and get a fire going. July 27th (Saturday) It was a much nicer day than the pre...

July 23rd (Tuesday) We were up early and left Codville Lagoon at 05:30. It was a beautiful morning to be out on the water, although not the windy morning they had forecasted so we did not get to sail.  On our way across Fisher Channel to Lama Passage we saw some large splashes in the distance. With the binoculars it became very clear that it was a whale. The whale was lifting its whole back end out of the water, almost vertical, before slapping its tail back down into the water. It did this over and over and over, lift and splash, lift and splash. I wish that we had been closer to see it, but even at a distance it was amazing to watch. When we got to Shearwater we anchored in the bay out front of the town, and spent the day doing chores. We did our shopping, filled up on our three fuels, dealt with all our stuff, and took in our recycling. Shearwater is the first place that has taken our recycling, except for beverage cans, without wanting to charge us. Shearwater just had a lar...