Powerless in Punchbowl

Fitzgibbon Bay is stunningly beautiful.   It has rock walls, deep blue/green milky water, verdant shorelines, and loads of terns (or at least I think they were terns...).   And our boat sits in this emerald bay all alone and without a functioning generator.   We are partially powerless.

Here's another picture of the bay...   Just look at that water.

The batteries can charge up via the engines, but that takes a long time, and we have to be on the move for that method to be effective.   We don't have solar and there is no shore-side powergrid to plug-in to.

We were down to 69% overnight.   We can probably drop to 30% on the house lithium bank, but that would give us no margin for error.   I usually try to keep us over 70%, so 69% is really OK.   What the heck, we will deal with it.

I had an early morning business meeting, and once that was complete, I woke up Karen and we started our day.   A warm (not hot) shower, a breakfast of spinach quiche, walnut cinnamon roll, and some fresh berries.

Playing things a bit conservatively, we elected to push on to Punchbowl Cove today rather than Walker Bay, which was our scheduled stop.   Punchbowl Cove as a destination tonight puts us within 55 miles of Ketchikan if we decide to head there tomorrow.   Ketchikan has shore power...

The downside of only a 40-mile ride is that we didn't go sufficiently long to charge-up the battery banks all the way.   I expect tomorrow we will be in the 50% charge range, maybe even 40%.

There are two other downsides to not having a functional generator.   One, I can't run my desalinization watermaker so we will eventually run out of water.   And two, I can't run the water heater.   It will be cold showers in the morning.

It was just a 40-mile ride today, punctuated by some playful Dahl's porpoises.   They didn't stick around long, but they were a welcome site, nonetheless.

Here is Ross pointing at them as they departed.

So, Punchbowl Cove looks like someone flooded Yosemite Valley.   High glacier scarred rock cliffs tower all around the bay.   Maybe that's why they (whomever "they" are) named this place "Punchbowl Cove".   It is rather appropriately descriptive.

The back end of the bay has what looks like a basalt columns - perhaps one of you who is more geologically inclined can tell me what kind of rock formation is in the picture, above?

We are just sitting here, enjoying the views and reading.

Tonight, Karen is making pan-fried chicken.   I'm pairing it with a 2020 Long Cellars Yakima Valley Malbec.

I don't generally like Malbec, but this one I like, a lot.