7/27 Sidney Spit to Cadboro Bay

We awoke to another calm morning, with clear skies and flat water.  Looked like another perfect day in paradise.  Trav and I went around the bay in their dinghy to gather up our crab traps.  We eventually found all four, and only one had a single crab in it.  It was a keeper, so I guess we can't complain.

 

Our plan was to cruise south and around the "corner" to Victoria.  It's a place we've all been many times before, but neither Trav and Barb nor Erin and I have ever cruised in there in our own boat.  The tides and currents were such that an early afternoon arrival at the Straits of Juan de Fuca would be best, with a slack or slightly ebb current for us.  With this in mind, we lazed about the rest of the morning, planning for a noontime or thereabouts departure.

 

Leaving Sidney Spit, we headed for the northwest corner of James Island and turned south through Cordova Channel.  The seas were calm and we were proceeding at a little over 7 knots, with a 1 knot flood current still against us.  The ride was uneventful and we continued on past Cordova Bay and Arbutus Cove.  At times we had some gentle rollers, but as we approached Ten Mile Point the wind from the west increased and we could see some weather building around the corner.

 

We had two escape routes should the straits prove to be not to our liking.  The first was Cadboro Bay, a good anchorage but without a marina, other than the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club.  The second was Oak Bay, a smaller harbor with a marina.  The wind was strong as we passed Cadboro Bay, and we decided to head into Oak Bay to see if we could get moorage.  We took a beating the last half mile or so into the bay, with salt water drenching the boat from top to bottom.  As we entered the breakwater we contacted the marina on the radio to find that they had no space for the Potentate, but they could assign a slip to the Bar-T-Na.  We decided to anchor while Bar-T-Na took the slip.  It didn't work out that way.  The wind was whipping around quite a bit inside the harbor and the fairway to the dock was narrow, making it difficult for Trav to maneuver.  He decided to abandon that attempt, and we both anchored outside the marina.  There were a lot of local boats on buoys so there wasn't much swinging room for us, and we weren't comfortable with it as an anchorage long term, especially with the wind gusting to over 30 mph inside the harbor.  We decided to head back to Cadboro Bay, which is listed as the best anchorage spot in a blow by some of the cruising guides.  With the wind and seas at our back it was a much better ride going the other direction for the mile and a half to our current anchorage.

 

We gave our windlass some extra exercise today to make up for all the days at docks in the past couple of weeks.  In Oak Bay, we were blown back further than planned before the anchor got down, leaving us too close to a boat behind us, so we pulled the anchor up and reset it.  Now, after getting all settled in Cadboro Bay, we noticed a crab buoy just 15 or 20 feet behind us as we swung back and forth in the wind.  That was okay, but I wanted the option of letting out more chain – so we hoisted anchor, relocated a bit and anchored again here.

 

Our anchor chain runs down through the hull on the starboard side through a hawse pipe.  Being a little off center, the boat tends to swing back and forth even a little more than usual in high winds.  Somewhere at Oak Bay or here, the chain caught on the chrome trim strip that runs from the bull nose bow down to a bit below the waterline.  Erin noticed it was a bit loose below the waterline when she last set the anchor.  When I went out later to let out more chain, the chain managed to get behind that piece, pulling it out even further and stripping out a few screws up two or three feet above the waterline.  It wasn't a serious situation, but every time we swung back into the wind, the chain would catch that piece, then twang it against the bow as it would break free when we swung back the other way.  We decided to see if we could secure it somehow, so both Erin and I got in the dinghy and went around front, armed with a screwdriver and a pocket full of screws.  We quickly decided it would be much more prudent to just take the thing off, so Erin backed out the screws while I stood in the dinghy holding us against the bow.  We had to let go a couple of times as the wind caught one end of the dinghy and blew us away, but we eventually removed all the screws except the very top one.  We then got back on the boat and removed that from the bow, lifting the piece onto the boat for later repairs.  It was a successful team effort and we'll have a somewhat quieter night for it.

 

We'll see what tomorrow brings.  We're only a little over 8 miles from Victoria, but we're not about to take a major beating if the weather doesn't play nice.  Hopefully it'll clear up, but if it doesn't we'll either wait it out or head back the way we came.