Riding Out the Storm

 
We decided to stay put in Forward Harbour, B.C.   Why go out and deal with this when we can sit here fairly snuggly?

Great blog title, eh?  A further riff on last night's title...

 Everything looks so flat in photos...   It is gusting up to 38 knots (43 mph) which is the highest we will see during this storm.   BTW, Ross wanted me to point out that he had to correct my math for the conversion.   Thank you, Ross.   I'm glad that college education wasn't wasted!

We just sit here and meander back and forth at anchor in our little cove here.  Not too bad.   Every once in a while, a gust will catch us when we are beam to (sideways) and that makes a bit of a racket and heels us over a little.

We had a little respite from the wind and rain.   The salmon around here are jumping like crazy.  I've never seen anything quite like this.  I can see that some of them are Humpies (aka Pinks) when they leap out of the water.   I also see some others that aren't humped, so I don't know if they are a different type of salmon is just immature.  We don't really care for pinks as the meat is wet and mushy, so we aren't throwing a line out - and we don't have a fishing license anyway (we learned that lesson the hard way...).

Servicing the generator today.  It is a 16KVA Northern Lights unit in an extra-large sound shield.   Insofar as generators go, this is a great one to own.

I just had to add a bit of coolant to the overflow tank.  All good!

Stuck inside in lousy weather - it must be cleaning and chores day!   Yup, we have a vacuum.   These little "stick" vacuums work great on a boat - as long as you set them to maximum suck.  Their default suck setting doesn't...

Bookkeeping and running the family never stops.   Karen is busy working on those things as well as a potential Christmas thing.

She also cleaned the bathrooms (called "heads" on a boat).   Thank you.

And it wouldn't be a boat, if there wasn't a boat problem.  We have a leak coming through the Sionyx Nightwave camera.   I've mentioned this in prior posts.

This awkward photo is looking up towards the ceiling (called "overhead" on a boat) to the instrument panel above the steering station.  The water is running around the cable to the Nightwave, past the grommet, and into the wire bundle then dripping onto my dashboard. 

I bagged and taped the camera, but it is still leaking.  No problem, water and navigation electronics - what could possibly go wrong???

We are replacing the camera at the end of the season so I'm just mitigating the leak for now.   When we replace the camera, we will address the root cause of the leak then.

And then it was knife-sharpening day too.   These crock sticks are the best/easiest sharpening method I've found.  I'm sure there are mechanisms to get sharper blades, but they can't be this easy...

The nasty high-wind red parts have moved offshore taking the big winds with it, leaving us with magenta/blue (low wind).

As the storm starts to let up, a view across the bay...   By 1930 (7:30pm) the winds have pretty much died down, showing only 7 knots.   Now we just have rain.

Being a rather gloomy cold day, we opted for a hearty dish.  Irish Stew and jalapeno cornbread.  Probably not culturally correct, but mighty tasty!  Oh, and a 2021 Long Cellars Cab Franc.

Diminishing twilight looking towards the head of Forward Bay.

And the same, now looking towards the mouth of the bay.

Tomorrow, we depart at 0630 to catch favorable tides/currents and ride them all the way to Octopus Islands Marine Park on Quadra Island.  The critical factor is currents.   These currents can run as much as 12 knots, which is faster than we can motor, so if we don't have favorable currents, we aren't going anywhere.   Departing at 0630 gets us favorable currents most of the way.

Here's to a quiet, peaceful, windless night!

Good Night, My Friends.