Sunday August 15 – I got up around 7:30am and knowing that the wind would shift to the west and then pick up to 15 knots, I wanted to get going early. I spent some time preparing pancake mix in our little shaker bottle. When Kathi finally got up around 8:30am, had coffee, we listened to the Roy Show (Little Current Cruiser’s Net on VHF 71) and did our check-in. I did a couple relays again including another one for 4th Dimension who were now in Gibson Cove at the northeast tip of Fox Island.
After the show, I made us banana pancakes. Kathi had hers with yogurt and I had mine with Canadian maple syrup! Afterwards we packed things up quickly, although Kathi needed her morning swim. I decide I needed one too as it was still pretty humid and I felt hot. I also needed to wash my hair. When we were done and finally prepared, I followed our tie-up line to shore and untied it. To make sure we did not swing into the guy next to us, I had Kathi pull in anchor line to about 50ft while I gathered the tie-off line into the dinghy. We had no problems pulling up the anchor – once the end of the 35ft of heavy chain makes to the windlass it is usually an easy crank getting it up. We were off the hook and on our way by 11am, heading for Sturgeon Cove. As usual, it was tricky exiting Croker Island and getting out past Secretary Island, but no mishaps or issues. We pulled up the main once we were past all the rocks.
We were hoping to sail, but the wind was directly behind us and not very strong. It was shifting around and did eventually pick up, but we motored sailed the whole way (kept us at 7 knots and allowed refrigeration to run and for us to charge batteries). As we approached the entrance to Sturgeon Cove we pulled in the headsail and then when .25 nautical miles from our turning waypoint, turned around head into the wind and dropped the mainsail.
The route into Sturgeon Cove is very very tricky! You have to approach between two rocks at 155° magnetic, then look for the white diamond range markers on shore to port, turn and follow them until you see the circle range markers and line them up, turning significantly to starboard. All this to avoid the shoals that extend out from the land points on the East and West of the cove entrance – and it worked perfectly as expected! Thanks to Shelley Harvey on Mast Transit for giving us a diagram detailing this set of directions. She was quite an artist!
Once in we headed for the Western edge of the cove. The wind was forecast to build to 25 knots tomorrow morning. There was only a small sailboat anchored in close to the shore. We anchored a bit further north of him and after viewing the “yellowish” spots closer to shore (shallows and rocks) I found a good position that should keep us safe if we swung a full 360°s. After awhile four powerboats joined us: first one (who eventually left after snorkeling around for about an hour), and three other Michiganders. It was clear that most of them did not know what they were doing as far as anchoring. One of the guys moved, on my recommendation to a location near us – but not like my recommendation, a little too close. Hopefully we don’t have a swinging problem in the middle of the night. It looks like the wind has already picked up to 25 knots out in the bay north of us!
Corn, hotdogs, and baked beans for dinner - and probably some salad, we need to get rid of things that can go bad if we completely run out of ice. We plan to head into Little Current next, but if that is tomorrow or the day after we will see what the wind does. I ain’t going out that tricky entrance if it is still blowing 25 knots!
More later…
The evening entertainment started just after dinner. We were on the western edge of Sturgeon Cove, and the remaining powerboats and Cajun Magic ,a small sailboat, were still in here towards the southwestern end too. The three powerboats were evidently together and only one seemed to have known to put out a lot of anchor line. Interestingly, he uses a duck decoy as his anchor marker float – hum, not sure if a black and white decoy alerts people to your anchor position or just blends in with the other birds and ducks in the area? There was a large (~40ft) older Chris Craft, the one that anchored too close to us, another about 32ft, and a smaller one about 28ft. With all of them, their anchors, chain, and line seemed a little small for the size of the boats – all were Dansforth anchors. Evidently they had all gone over to the smaller boat for dinner.
The action started when all the males – one on the big boat and two each in their motorized dinghies – decided to expertly anchor the big boat. All the women had stayed on the smaller boat. I am sure there was plenty of drinking prior to completing dinner and starting off on this endeavor. The smaller boat had anchored in an area near Cajun Magic.
Now, this anchorage is strange with its zigzag entrance and water behavior in high West winds. The cove is rectangular in shape with the long edge going east and west. A strong West wind seems to blow on the water on the north side of the cove, making little 1ft whitecaps visible. This must push the water to the end where it curves around and comes back along the southern side moving to the East. Were we were anchored it seemed that we were in an eddy as we were always swinging around in all directions but not pulling hard on our anchor line. I think that Cajun Magic and ourselves had chosen the best spots to anchor, but we also had Bruce anchors and significant heavy chain (we have 35ft) on our rode, not a small Dansforth with 6ft of light chain.
We watched as the dinghies buzzed around the big boat and tried to direct him to the best anchoring location. Suddenly we hear a whistle blowing and looked over to see the small boat dragging on anchor heading for Cajun Magic! The three women were panicked and whistling for the men who were busy buzzing around in their dinghies. Now, we had seen the wife on the small boat do the driving while anchoring, but suddenly now she had no idea what to do. Of course you need to get a man to come to the rescue! Eventually, one of the men saw there was something wrong and sped over, but it was too late! The smaller boat had dragged directly into Cajun Magic and we could hear the ‘crack’ when his bow sprint hit the smaller powerboat.
There was a lot of yelling and angry words from Cajun Magic (justified in my mind), but in his anger he decided to pull up anchor and head to the opposite end of the cove to get the away from these guys. This of course turned out to be a bad idea with the wind and waves most intense at that end. He eventually made his way back to near his original position amidst a frenzy of multiple powerboat re-anchoring. Eventually the big Chris Craft decided he had enough and headed out the dangerous zigzag at twilight! He seemed to make it without incident. It was long after dark when the smaller powerboat finally performed his final anchoring attempt. The wind had calmed down, so there was less danger of him dragging again and he claimed he was going to put out two anchors.
It is required in Canada that you have a light on you boat at anchor. We have three LED garden lights, and Cajun Magic had one too. Of the two boats, the one that dragged and was the most likely problem had no light on at all for the whole night! Things did remain calm, so the action was over and we felt more secure with them off a ways from us – but poor Cajun Magic could still have been a target!
We stayed up pretty late – 11:30pm – and watched the distant flashes in the sky where a large band of thunderstorms must have been active. We saw a few meteors, had a nice half moon for a couple of hours, and could see the Milky Way very clearly. I was also able to pick out Jupiter. But as usual, no Northern Lights. Kathi had me set my watch alarm for 1am, but no luck then either. The sky remained clear all night.
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