Pacific NW

Expeditions

A stiff Nor’easterly blew down the coast today bringing another day of sunshine. We snaked our way through an amazing series of channels, narrows, and islets in the morning. We passed abandoned Indian villages, gold-mining towns, and the occasional cabin rotting on the beach. It gets a bit eerie when every building you see sits empty in ruin. Especially on a sunny day like today. I’ll see a building in the distance, looking all nice with windows and porches. But the binoculars reveal the empty window frames, missing boards, and holes in the roof. I am at once saddened and intrigued by these places. Noon saw the wind dying off as we headed out around Cape Dearborn. The forces of the ocean could clearly be seen on the face of the cape. It is hard to fathom on a day like today, but the waves had swept the coastline clean of every speck of organic matter to a height of 125 feet above sea level. Nothing but bedrock, and that too has been scarred and deformed by the waves. The tide was much lower than I wanted for our approach into Mirror Harbor. It was a mixed blessing however because it allowed me to see more of the hundreds of submerged rocks. All we had was a hand-drawn sketch of the area, as it is uncharted. Neptune kept a good bow watch, and we creeped into the harbor at .3 knots of boatspeed. To enter the inner chamber we had to dog-leg through a 10 foot wide slot (the boat is 9′ wide) and make two 90 degree turns. Everything went A-O-K, though it was nerve-racking seeing all rock and no water around the boat. We are now in a wonderful and extremely remote and beautiful anchorage. Long “V”‘s of geese fly north high overhead. Each V contains three or four hundred geese, and their honking can be heard for quite some time before and after they come into view. We have no radio reception and are relying on the barometer and common-sense observations to predict the weather. A great sheet of high cirrus clouds is pulling its way up from the South and West, and the barometer is falling. I set the anchor well, putting the engine in full-out reverse for several minutes. We held fast, and I couldn’t help but smile as the rode became bar-tight and whirlpools made sucking noises around the rudder as the engine roared. Damned if I was going to lose any sleep due to high winds in the night if I could help it. Well, the winds did come, along with a bit of rain. And I did sleep well. I got up once to close the damper on the stove and open the hatch more to cool the boat down a bit, but that was it. Of course I also had the GPS on above my berth all night in case we dragged, but we held fast all through the night. Many landlubbers use the anchor icon as a symbol of security and comfort. Feeling the security and comfort of an actual anchor is quite a different and wonderful thing.