Moving to Beals Bay

October 9th (Wednesday)
It was another beautiful, crisp, fall morning. It was two degrees in our cockpit, and we had frost on the deck, with some ice where there had been water drips. The grass around the shore of the bay was white with frost, and it was beautiful.

We decided that today looked like a good day to head out, and so with mixed emotions we started the engine to leave. We had been at Eucott Bay for almost a month, and it felt like home. 

When we pulled up our anchor, it was incredibly well set. It was the hardest for us to un-set of any time we have anchored so far this trip. It must have been so far dug into the mud. When we did get it free, I could tell by the sound of the windlass that it was coming up heavy. As it reached the surface we could see that it was a giant ball of clay and mud. We left it hanging at the surface, and scrubbed it with our pole and brush. We scrubbed, and scraped, and dug at it, and slowly, bit-by-bit, we dug away the mud and clay, and revealed our anchor. It was not surprising that we were that well set after the strong winds we had had, and it was nice to see that the bottom holding ground was so good. 

Mud on the anchor

Before leaving Eucott Bay we made use of the anchored dock in the bay to do a bit if docking practice. It had been a long time since we had pulled our boat up along side of a dock, so we figured we would practice when a dock was so easily available.
Out in Dean Channel we had the wind on our backs, and were hoping for some good sailing. However, our batteries needed a good charge, and we had water to make, and these took precedence over fun. We figured we would have time for both, but we made such good time on the trip, going with both the wind and the current, that we did not get to sail. Our trip down Dean Channel was beautiful. It was clear blue sky and we could see all of the mountains around us. Around each corner and up each valley was another majestic peak.
The thing that I was looking forward to the most about leaving Eucott Bay, was not having to worry every time I flushed the toilet about whether I would suck in a Gunnel fish. It had happened two more times since I last wrote about it, and both Jason and I had started to feel a sense of hesitation when we sucked in water to flush the toilet. We found that if we pumped slowly we seemed less likely to suck up a fish, maybe because they had more of a chance to swim out. Oddly enough, however, after we were more than halfway down Dean Channel, I flushed the toilet, and it became hard to flush. “Oh no,” I thought. “How is it possible, not another fish?” We had both flushed a couple of times since leaving the bay, and this was the first time that I went back to flushing with my normal speed. Had the fish been in the thru-hull the whole time, and been swimming out against our sucking in? Why would he not have left the thru-hull? It was odd. By the time I took the toilet apart, the poor guy was dead; the first Gunnel fish to die at the expense of our toilet.
We anchored in Beals Bay off of Gunboat Passage, not far from Shearwater. We had been hoping that the anchorage would offer good protection, so that we could spend a few days exploring the area, but it wasn’t very good. Since there was a 35-knot wind forecasted from the southeast for Friday, we made plans to move anchorages the next day. 

An evening paddle in Beals Bay.

We did set our crab trap though, but after going for an evening kayak paddle and not seeing a single crab, I was not optimistic. It was a beautiful paddle, and a beautiful evening on board. We had the sun on our boat until about 18:40 -- 15 minutes before sunset.