Father's Day Perfecto!

Another beautiful morning in paradise!    We departed Green Island Anchorage about 0700.   That's sleeping in for us lately.   The water was glass-smooth, and lovely.   It didn't feel like the 39 degrees that it was.

This little anchorage has a lovely flat mud, sand, and gravel bottom at about 30' which is perfect for anchoring.   The entrance seems daunting, but it's actually pretty easy.   It is very narrow and winding but sufficiently deep, even on a minus-tide it never sees less than about 12'.   We only draw 6.5' so, we are good.

Karen took us out while I tended to the anchor, stowed it, and cleaned off the foredeck.   That's our usual routine.

And look what adorned my coffeemaker!   A Father's Day card.  How sweet!  Exactly the spot where I could not miss it!  Clever.

And I did get calls from my kids today.   Life is good.

Then breakfast underway, my favorite, sort-of Huevos Rancheros-ish - yum!   Thank you, Karen.

Here we are rounding the lighthouse at New Bella Bella.   The Old Bella Bella town burned and they rebuilt the entire town across the channel at this new location, hence the name New Bella Bella.

Our original destination was Lockhart Bay, about 10 miles from New Bella Bella and about 5 miles inland from Milbanke Sound.   We were there by 1330 (1:30pm) and it was too early to stop.   So, we kept going.

And we had a few visits from whales today.   Mostly humpbacks, including a mom and calf.  Unfortunately, there are no pictures as we stayed away from them.  Not as much fun, but way better for them.

We weren't sure how far we'd go today, but as we had a good weather day, I wanted to get around Milbanke Sound.   Milbanke Sound is open to the N. Pacific Ocean for about 15 miles.  3' swells on 4.3sec period was tolerable as we were mostly beam to and then running with them as we rounded the corner and headed up Finlayson Channel.   We both had visions of last year when there were 6'-7' swells on a 4sec period right on the nose plus 40knot winds; fortunately, that worry was for not.  Easy-peasy today.

Here is the lighthouse at Robb Point, Milbanke Sound.

Next, we wanted to get past the rapids at Hiekish Narrows.  But we wouldn't have arrived at the rapids until 1845 (6:45pm).    While it was a reasonable goal, we were just too tired to push that far.   And there is no good anchorage near there, so we'd have to travel another 3-4 hours north.   Not happening.

So, we diverted to our backup favorite anchorage, Bottleneck Inlet.  Bottleneck is just gorgeous and easy to anchor in with a nice big 25' deep mudflat & sand bottom.   And, we are the only people here; the entire anchorage, just for us.

No sooner had we dropped the anchor and settled-in, it started raining (really a light drizzle).   That's OK, it saves me from having to rinse the salt off of Blue Redd.

One challenge today.   I ran the reverse osmosis BlueSea watermaker for the first time this season.  I know I should have checked it earlier, but there was no clean seawater back at the docks in Anacortes.  I flushed it twice with fresh water and then tried to make fresh water.   NO GO!   I received an error message: Low Product Flow, which says there isn't enough fresh water being produced for the amount of saltwater coming in.   Either my filters are clogged or there is a membrane problem.   It's not the filters as those are all new and clean.   Bummer, as changing the membranes is not trivial and I don't have any spares.   Hmmm.   Guess I'll deal with that issue tomorrow.

Dobrou Noc...