Thursday morning has me waking up in the hands of bandits. Little furry four legged bandits wearing masks. I’m counting a dozen raccoons pillaging the beach this morning
I left Anacortes yesterday at 9am. The water was calm but sometimes nearly foggy. A sort of thick spooky haze though I had visibility of nearly six miles. Not bad. I found myself fighting the current and burning unplanned fuel through the morning as I wound my way through Thatcher pass, past Upright head then squirting into San Juan Channel through Wasp Passage. The thick haze continued across the open expanse of Boundary Pass where my timing of commercial traffic was perfect as a freighter just rounded Turn point out of view as I crossed. There is good network coverage at the South end of Boundary so I used shipfinder on my iPhone to look for any upcoming AIS targets out of sight and found none, radar confirmed the same so away I went.
I was able to clear Canadian customs in Bedwell without fanfare. I bet I was not tied up at the docks for more than 15 minutes before being on my way again. While the currents eased up the trip wound up at around 7.5 hours.
Conover cove is a pretty tight and shallow spot. Jollymon, Enough time, and Go Dot were at the dock. I took the last stern tie to the west and anchored up. Steve Monrad was nice enough to come out in the rain and run out my stern line for me. That was fantastic. I thoroughly sounded 10 foot of depth around my anchorage before getting secured. I looked up tide for chemainus and found we would only be losing 4 feet of water. Later dock talk suggested the real number was 7 feet, leaving her keel in the mud. I sunk a lead line before going to bed and found I actually had 12 feet under my keel and those two extra feet matter. This morning I lead line about 5 feet. Wondering what is going on with tides and currents pro which shipped with Nobeltec I investigated further this morning. I found two different tide stations for chemainus, one agreed with other nearby stations the other was clearly wrong. Both shared the same lag/long. The moral of this story is to check more than one station as clearly mistakes in the information are possible.
