First Overnight Trip: 3 Days up Howe Sound; March 16-18
Seeing a forecast of sunny warm weather coming for the weekend, we decided to take Aurora out for a few days up Howe Sound, on our first overnight trip. Our good ol' friend "I" was up for the adventure (a few others were invited but couldn't make it on short notice) and keen to join. Eventually A & myself will get to the point where we're comfortable handling the vessel on our own, but for now, while we're still learning it's handy to have a third person along.
As "I" lives just down the road from where Aurora is moored, A picked him up from a Government dock with the tender and we easily unloaded his gear onto Aurora's starboard transom. He'd had a curling match in the morning way over town, so by the time he was aboard and we were ready to leave it was after 2pm. I would have preferred a longer window of time to get to our destination, Plumper Cove on Keats Island, but at least the days are much longer now and we have good daylight until 7:30pm.
We pulled off the dock under sunny skies and winds of about 14 knots, but decided not to raise the sails as we'd have to motor through the harbour anyways and didn't want to give the appearance of sailing through the harbour.
Just as we approached Lions Gate Bridge I received a text - it was our instructor Marla, she'd just left Coal Harbour in a small sea plane and motored past us at take-off!
Out past Lions Gate we hoisted the main and jib and went in search of that ever elusive wind. We found some, just enough to give us 7 knots of speed, but not for long. We adjusted angles, sail trim, over and over to try and squeak out some speed, but under the now high overcast skies we finally had to admit defeat. A does not admit defeat easily, he would have kept "sailing" at 1 knot until midnight had I not measured our remaining distance and sternly advised that in order to get to the anchorage before dark we "must" turn on the engines. Fortunately "I" typically backs me up when it comes to safety, and hard facts that you can't argue (distance + speed = time)
So on went the motors and we cruised around the south side of Bowen and to the entrance of Shoal Channel at 7 knots. The tide was pretty low over Shoal Channel, we had 8 feet under the boat and Aurora draws just under 5 feet. We pulled into the anchorage at 7:30 sharp and picked up a mooring ball on the outside, which would give us a bit more room to the nearest boat than a closer in ball.
The evening was dead calm, the skies began to clear, we prepared some dinner, hoping all the while that our diesel heater would start to kick out some heat. After half an hour of cooking in our heavy parkas and wool toques, A began investigating the heat situation. He disappeared into the engine room for long periods of time, checked the manual, put out texts to the installer, but nothing worked. Finally at 10pm he had to give up. All winter long the heater had been working, and now when we actually needed it for an overnight trip it quit. Fortunately for A and myself, I'd thought to bring a heated mattress pad along! Boy, were we ever glad for that! The temperature went down to just over freezing overnight; we awoke to heavy frost on the decks the next morning.
Not a bad view to wake up to...
As the sun quickly began to warm us in the morning, A heard back from the Espar heater installer, and after mentioning to him that he thought it might be a coolant issue, was instructed to check the coolant levels in a room in the foredeck we didn't even know we had!! The discovery of the very sizeable compartment under a hatch we'd assumed was over our cabin was quite the cause for celebration alone, more gear storage! A determined the coolant was completely empty, so filled it up with water. Turns out there was a significant amount of air in the lines. He got it all sorted out, after which it was time for some relaxing in the hot sunshine on the forward lounge.
We planned to do a couple little hikes on Keats as well, but had such a hard time getting motivated to leave the sunshine for the much cooler forest. We figured out how to operate the bluetooth headsets we'd been advised to buy, and once we'd gotten them all linked (I bought 3 sets) I got them charging and we motored to the dock for our hike.
We popped up to the top of the lookout hill, a quick 25 min hike from the marine park, and after a lunch break at the top headed back down and over to Barnabas to take in the spectacular views north of Howe Sound from there.
By the time we were back on board Aurora it was 4pm. We were intending to relocate to Halkett Bay on Gambier Island for the night, and figured we were leaving ample daylight. We got the sails up shortly after leaving Plumper Cove and managed to sail about 60-70% of the way before we were out of wind once again.
Photos below between Keats and Gambier:
We pulled into Halkett Bay just after 7pm. There were four mooring balls at the entrance to the bay, near the shipwreck that is safely well below water, and only after we'd tied up did we read on the ball that it said it was for diving only, "no overnight moorage". They were a bit far to the entrance of the bay anyways, so we unhooked and I slowly motored us further into the bay while the guys prepared the anchor. I turned on the windlass at the bridge, only to be given a message saying that the up and down solenoids were either shorted or damaged! Yikes!!! Thanks to the headsets I didn't need to yell at the guys on the foredeck, it really helps a tense situation when you can remain calm and quiet in your communications. Once again A tried a few different things as I maintained our position in the bay, but he couldn't get it to work. Well, back to the mooring ball we decided.
(A did figure out the problem with the windlass a short while after tying to the ball - I'd turned off a switch on the bridge earlier that disables all the winches; having put down all the sails I thought it was prudent to do this. It also disables the anchor winch, so now we know better.)
Headsets make communications between the bridge and deck so much calmer; no more frantic yelling.
It was a dark and stormy night...
Darkness fell just after we got tied up, and all of a sudden a strong wind started to skim over the bay and hit us head on. 20-30 knot northerly outflow winds were in the forecast for the night, but we thought the bay was sheltered from northerly outflow winds. Even the Dreamspeaker guide says it is. We thought it was perhaps because we were so far to the entrance of the bay, but heard from others anchored deep in the bay overnight the next day that they'd had a miserable night as well.
I thought perhaps we wouldn't get the full brunt of the wind, but it kept increasing with every passing hour. We were constantly checking our position against the shore, checking the wind instruments, and trying to figure out how to set drift alarms on the navigation equipment we only barely know how to use. Just before midnight A successfully managed to set a GPS perimeter, should the boat drift out of this a loud alarm would sound, and as a secondary measure set a depth alarm, should our depth change plus or minus by a certain margin.
We were all extremely tired, so "I" retired to his cabin and was dead to the world until morning. His cabin was under the forward deck, which was significantly quieter than our cabin. The wind noise in the cockpit wasn't bad at all, but as soon as we went below deck to our cabin, the wind noise vibrating through all the structures overtop of us was horrendously loud. It truly sounded like being underneath a freight train.
I was extremely nervous about trusting the mooring ball, who knows how old it is, what the state of the chain is, etc, (never mind the fact that it said no overnight moorage!). There was no way I was going to sleep. A convinced me to put earplugs in and promised to stay up and monitor the instruments for an hour or so. Even though the earplugs only reduced the noise by about half, I did manage to fall asleep. A came to bed at 2am, and at 4am I awoke, somewhere between nervous and really, really freaked out. At 4:30 am I figured being awake upstairs monitoring the situation was better than lying below deck not knowing what was going on. I grabbed a blanket (and fortunately we had heat this night) and headed up. Keeping a constant eye on the wind instruments, I could see the winds averaged between 18 and 24 knots. Had I been deaf I wouldn't have been able to notice any motion other than us swaying left to right around the ball. The boat was completely stable, and the few times I lay down on the dining bench I was impressed how I couldn't really feel any motion at all. Looking out the windows the ocean looked like a whitewater river running past with breaking whitecaps.
By daybreak the gusts were reaching 30 knots, but oddly I was getting used to it and felt like I might nod off. At 7am I went back to bed, but stayed awake until we got up at 8:00. At 10am the sun was up and the air temperature was really nice and warm, so we launched the tender (which is of course in the lee of the wind) and motored to the dinghy dock. We roamed around the camping area on shore (where A and I had camped a few years ago from our little zodiac-style boat), then hiked up to lookout bluff over the bay that we knew about.
Exploring Halkett Bay Marine Park & hike to viewing bluffs:
We were back on Aurora just after noon, in time for the winds to completely die off once again! We'd hoped to sail all the way back, but the forecast indicated only very light winds. There seemed to be no wind in the Horseshoe Bay direction, so we motored over around the north end of Bowen Island and managed to pick up enough to go between 5 and 7 knots, tacking all the way to Ragged Island.
Off Ragged Island we lost the wind completely, so motored past Point Roger Curtis (Bowen Island) and picked up a bit of wind once again. Having a long way to go to Lions Gate, we thought we'd try putting up the asymmetrical spinnaker. We got that up fine and got up to over 8 knots on a heading toward UBC. Just off Spanish Banks we found ourselves on a collision course with a tugboat, so had to make a u-turn and in doing so lost the wind (which was dying down again in the late afternoon). We motor sailed toward Lions Gate, and then began taking down the sails.
Freighter traffic and Aurora receives a 'thank you'
En route to the bridge we noticed a freighter coming up behind us (don't worry, not too close!), making a beeline for the bridge. Sigh. The guys dealt with the sails while I took Aurora over toward the West Vancouver shoreline, to give the freighter lots of room and make it obvious that I was giving him the right of way. And of course I was monitoring the harbour traffic channel, 12. We then spotted another freighter coming out from under Lions Gate, so had to wait for both freighters to safely pass before heading to the bridge. Hovering just off the Dundrave seawall, I made a few "doughnuts" so as to hold our position and pass the time.
Shortly after we underway again I heard "Aurora" over the radio. None of us quite caught what had been said, so I picked up the radio and requested, 'This is Aurora, please repeat, over'. The freighter pilot replied, thanking us for moving out of the way and doing a few doughnuts to let them pass. I guess they see so many pleasure boats trying all sorts of things around these big freighters, so that when someone actually does give them a wide, obvious berth they find it significant enough to send out a thank you.
Shortly after passing under Lions Gate I once again receive a text message. This time from our friend "R" - he was walking over the bridge with a friend and spotted us! "R" had been invited along on this trip, but had been unable to make it, but recognized us (Aurora is "somewhat" recognizable!) and knew we must just be returning.
By the time we got underneath Second Narrows bridge it was completely dark, and the tidal ebb current was running at peak, 4.9 knots (abot 9 kmph). I radioed the train bridge (to get them to lift it, it sits very low over the water), and the closer we got to it the stronger the current ran. I began to worry that we wouldn't have the power to go against it. We were skirting the rule of thumb, to not travel a narrows when the speed of the current is more than half the max speed of the boat. "I" was on the helm and A was operating the throttles; we'd found in strong whirlpools and currents it can help to have a 2-person team, and have managed to guide the vessel through completely straight using this system. We watched our speed slow down, but could see we were still just moving forward in relation to the shore moving by. I radioed the train bridge once more, just to let him know we were coming but that we were having a hard time going against the current. Finally we made it through, pfew. I took over the helm, A went to the port bow with a strong spotlight to keep lookout for logs, and "I" went below for a snack.
Coming into the Cove we put on our headsets and the guys prepared the dock lines and fenders while I slowly brought us down the Cove to set up the boat for A to bring it into the dock. Docking went flawlessly, we packed up, and walked to "I's" house where we'd parked our car.
A successful first overnight adventure with many lessons learned!
View north to Gambier Island from Plumper Cove on Keats Island
As "I" lives just down the road from where Aurora is moored, A picked him up from a Government dock with the tender and we easily unloaded his gear onto Aurora's starboard transom. He'd had a curling match in the morning way over town, so by the time he was aboard and we were ready to leave it was after 2pm. I would have preferred a longer window of time to get to our destination, Plumper Cove on Keats Island, but at least the days are much longer now and we have good daylight until 7:30pm.
Direct delivery to Aurora: picking up friend "I" from the Government Dock
We pulled off the dock under sunny skies and winds of about 14 knots, but decided not to raise the sails as we'd have to motor through the harbour anyways and didn't want to give the appearance of sailing through the harbour.
Just as we approached Lions Gate Bridge I received a text - it was our instructor Marla, she'd just left Coal Harbour in a small sea plane and motored past us at take-off!
Out past Lions Gate we hoisted the main and jib and went in search of that ever elusive wind. We found some, just enough to give us 7 knots of speed, but not for long. We adjusted angles, sail trim, over and over to try and squeak out some speed, but under the now high overcast skies we finally had to admit defeat. A does not admit defeat easily, he would have kept "sailing" at 1 knot until midnight had I not measured our remaining distance and sternly advised that in order to get to the anchorage before dark we "must" turn on the engines. Fortunately "I" typically backs me up when it comes to safety, and hard facts that you can't argue (distance + speed = time)
So on went the motors and we cruised around the south side of Bowen and to the entrance of Shoal Channel at 7 knots. The tide was pretty low over Shoal Channel, we had 8 feet under the boat and Aurora draws just under 5 feet. We pulled into the anchorage at 7:30 sharp and picked up a mooring ball on the outside, which would give us a bit more room to the nearest boat than a closer in ball.
The evening was dead calm, the skies began to clear, we prepared some dinner, hoping all the while that our diesel heater would start to kick out some heat. After half an hour of cooking in our heavy parkas and wool toques, A began investigating the heat situation. He disappeared into the engine room for long periods of time, checked the manual, put out texts to the installer, but nothing worked. Finally at 10pm he had to give up. All winter long the heater had been working, and now when we actually needed it for an overnight trip it quit. Fortunately for A and myself, I'd thought to bring a heated mattress pad along! Boy, were we ever glad for that! The temperature went down to just over freezing overnight; we awoke to heavy frost on the decks the next morning.
Not a bad view to wake up to...
Taking in the warm morning sunshine
As the sun quickly began to warm us in the morning, A heard back from the Espar heater installer, and after mentioning to him that he thought it might be a coolant issue, was instructed to check the coolant levels in a room in the foredeck we didn't even know we had!! The discovery of the very sizeable compartment under a hatch we'd assumed was over our cabin was quite the cause for celebration alone, more gear storage! A determined the coolant was completely empty, so filled it up with water. Turns out there was a significant amount of air in the lines. He got it all sorted out, after which it was time for some relaxing in the hot sunshine on the forward lounge.
We discovered an entire small room we didn't even know we had!!
We planned to do a couple little hikes on Keats as well, but had such a hard time getting motivated to leave the sunshine for the much cooler forest. We figured out how to operate the bluetooth headsets we'd been advised to buy, and once we'd gotten them all linked (I bought 3 sets) I got them charging and we motored to the dock for our hike.
We popped up to the top of the lookout hill, a quick 25 min hike from the marine park, and after a lunch break at the top headed back down and over to Barnabas to take in the spectacular views north of Howe Sound from there.
Getting the tender ready for transport to the marine park dock
Pretty cool site for us on a personal level, having spent so much time on Keats via our 14' RIB
View south from the lookout peak on Keats
After a tough night of 8 hrs sleep, it's time for a break!
View from Barnabas on Keats (shortly after we spotted some orcas swimming past). Notice anything strange in the photo? Look at "I" - he seems to have sprouted a 3rd leg! He was walking past as I was taking a panorama photo.
By the time we were back on board Aurora it was 4pm. We were intending to relocate to Halkett Bay on Gambier Island for the night, and figured we were leaving ample daylight. We got the sails up shortly after leaving Plumper Cove and managed to sail about 60-70% of the way before we were out of wind once again.
Photos below between Keats and Gambier:
We pulled into Halkett Bay just after 7pm. There were four mooring balls at the entrance to the bay, near the shipwreck that is safely well below water, and only after we'd tied up did we read on the ball that it said it was for diving only, "no overnight moorage". They were a bit far to the entrance of the bay anyways, so we unhooked and I slowly motored us further into the bay while the guys prepared the anchor. I turned on the windlass at the bridge, only to be given a message saying that the up and down solenoids were either shorted or damaged! Yikes!!! Thanks to the headsets I didn't need to yell at the guys on the foredeck, it really helps a tense situation when you can remain calm and quiet in your communications. Once again A tried a few different things as I maintained our position in the bay, but he couldn't get it to work. Well, back to the mooring ball we decided.
(A did figure out the problem with the windlass a short while after tying to the ball - I'd turned off a switch on the bridge earlier that disables all the winches; having put down all the sails I thought it was prudent to do this. It also disables the anchor winch, so now we know better.)
Not the sort of message you want to see on your windlass when you're about to drop anchor on the cusp of darkness! (turns out it's tied into the winch switch which I'd turned off earlier)
It was a dark and stormy night...
Darkness fell just after we got tied up, and all of a sudden a strong wind started to skim over the bay and hit us head on. 20-30 knot northerly outflow winds were in the forecast for the night, but we thought the bay was sheltered from northerly outflow winds. Even the Dreamspeaker guide says it is. We thought it was perhaps because we were so far to the entrance of the bay, but heard from others anchored deep in the bay overnight the next day that they'd had a miserable night as well.
I thought perhaps we wouldn't get the full brunt of the wind, but it kept increasing with every passing hour. We were constantly checking our position against the shore, checking the wind instruments, and trying to figure out how to set drift alarms on the navigation equipment we only barely know how to use. Just before midnight A successfully managed to set a GPS perimeter, should the boat drift out of this a loud alarm would sound, and as a secondary measure set a depth alarm, should our depth change plus or minus by a certain margin.
We were all extremely tired, so "I" retired to his cabin and was dead to the world until morning. His cabin was under the forward deck, which was significantly quieter than our cabin. The wind noise in the cockpit wasn't bad at all, but as soon as we went below deck to our cabin, the wind noise vibrating through all the structures overtop of us was horrendously loud. It truly sounded like being underneath a freight train.
I was extremely nervous about trusting the mooring ball, who knows how old it is, what the state of the chain is, etc, (never mind the fact that it said no overnight moorage!). There was no way I was going to sleep. A convinced me to put earplugs in and promised to stay up and monitor the instruments for an hour or so. Even though the earplugs only reduced the noise by about half, I did manage to fall asleep. A came to bed at 2am, and at 4am I awoke, somewhere between nervous and really, really freaked out. At 4:30 am I figured being awake upstairs monitoring the situation was better than lying below deck not knowing what was going on. I grabbed a blanket (and fortunately we had heat this night) and headed up. Keeping a constant eye on the wind instruments, I could see the winds averaged between 18 and 24 knots. Had I been deaf I wouldn't have been able to notice any motion other than us swaying left to right around the ball. The boat was completely stable, and the few times I lay down on the dining bench I was impressed how I couldn't really feel any motion at all. Looking out the windows the ocean looked like a whitewater river running past with breaking whitecaps.
By daybreak the gusts were reaching 30 knots, but oddly I was getting used to it and felt like I might nod off. At 7am I went back to bed, but stayed awake until we got up at 8:00. At 10am the sun was up and the air temperature was really nice and warm, so we launched the tender (which is of course in the lee of the wind) and motored to the dinghy dock. We roamed around the camping area on shore (where A and I had camped a few years ago from our little zodiac-style boat), then hiked up to lookout bluff over the bay that we knew about.
Exploring Halkett Bay Marine Park & hike to viewing bluffs:
View over Halkett Bay, Gambier Island. North Shore Mtns in background (Lions, Mt. Harvey, Mt. Brunswick) Hood Point on Bowen Island at far right.
We were back on Aurora just after noon, in time for the winds to completely die off once again! We'd hoped to sail all the way back, but the forecast indicated only very light winds. There seemed to be no wind in the Horseshoe Bay direction, so we motored over around the north end of Bowen Island and managed to pick up enough to go between 5 and 7 knots, tacking all the way to Ragged Island.
Off Ragged Island we lost the wind completely, so motored past Point Roger Curtis (Bowen Island) and picked up a bit of wind once again. Having a long way to go to Lions Gate, we thought we'd try putting up the asymmetrical spinnaker. We got that up fine and got up to over 8 knots on a heading toward UBC. Just off Spanish Banks we found ourselves on a collision course with a tugboat, so had to make a u-turn and in doing so lost the wind (which was dying down again in the late afternoon). We motor sailed toward Lions Gate, and then began taking down the sails.
Raising the spinnaker off the south coast of Bowen Island
Sailing downwind at 8 knots in 10 knots of wind
Freighter traffic and Aurora receives a 'thank you'
En route to the bridge we noticed a freighter coming up behind us (don't worry, not too close!), making a beeline for the bridge. Sigh. The guys dealt with the sails while I took Aurora over toward the West Vancouver shoreline, to give the freighter lots of room and make it obvious that I was giving him the right of way. And of course I was monitoring the harbour traffic channel, 12. We then spotted another freighter coming out from under Lions Gate, so had to wait for both freighters to safely pass before heading to the bridge. Hovering just off the Dundrave seawall, I made a few "doughnuts" so as to hold our position and pass the time.
Shortly after we underway again I heard "Aurora" over the radio. None of us quite caught what had been said, so I picked up the radio and requested, 'This is Aurora, please repeat, over'. The freighter pilot replied, thanking us for moving out of the way and doing a few doughnuts to let them pass. I guess they see so many pleasure boats trying all sorts of things around these big freighters, so that when someone actually does give them a wide, obvious berth they find it significant enough to send out a thank you.
Shortly after passing under Lions Gate I once again receive a text message. This time from our friend "R" - he was walking over the bridge with a friend and spotted us! "R" had been invited along on this trip, but had been unable to make it, but recognized us (Aurora is "somewhat" recognizable!) and knew we must just be returning.
By the time we got underneath Second Narrows bridge it was completely dark, and the tidal ebb current was running at peak, 4.9 knots (abot 9 kmph). I radioed the train bridge (to get them to lift it, it sits very low over the water), and the closer we got to it the stronger the current ran. I began to worry that we wouldn't have the power to go against it. We were skirting the rule of thumb, to not travel a narrows when the speed of the current is more than half the max speed of the boat. "I" was on the helm and A was operating the throttles; we'd found in strong whirlpools and currents it can help to have a 2-person team, and have managed to guide the vessel through completely straight using this system. We watched our speed slow down, but could see we were still just moving forward in relation to the shore moving by. I radioed the train bridge once more, just to let him know we were coming but that we were having a hard time going against the current. Finally we made it through, pfew. I took over the helm, A went to the port bow with a strong spotlight to keep lookout for logs, and "I" went below for a snack.
Coming into the Cove we put on our headsets and the guys prepared the dock lines and fenders while I slowly brought us down the Cove to set up the boat for A to bring it into the dock. Docking went flawlessly, we packed up, and walked to "I's" house where we'd parked our car.
A successful first overnight adventure with many lessons learned!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please do not forward posts, or copy text or images without blog owner's written permission