5/19/2024 As we leave Pruth Bay we have a short “parting of the ways” as we head to Codville Lagoon and Kinship and Second Verse head to Shearwater Resort. This parting is driven by power management issues with Kinship. They are experiencing low voltage alarms after only a few hours on battery. So they are headed to a resort that offers power at the dock and a marine shop close by. We will spend a night in Codville Lagoon and then catch up to them a day later.
Codville Lagoon, King Island - Fisher Channel. This is a provincial park and is a beautiful, but challenging anchorage. The lagoon is very deep, 300 feet deep in most of the center channels. The main anchorage at the East end of the lagoon has limited anchoring spots ranging from 40 to over 100 feet. However, there was a group of four boats already anchored there when we arrived.
So we ventured over to the North end of the lagoon and anchored in a sort of shallow spot about 30 feet deep. As we tried to set the anchor it was obvious that we were anchoring on top of a big rock as the anchor and chain skipped and drug making an unsettling amount of noise. We got a good bite and sat for a while to see if it was going to hold. Brad put the dinghy down and depth-surveyed the little cove nearby. As he was doing this, the wind shifted 180 degrees which increased the likelihood of dragging anchor. We decided to back in to the little cove and stern-tie, which was also better for the wind direction. A large tree had fallen across the end of the cove which made a perfect stern tie point.
5/20/2024 Shearwater Resort
We had a very calm night in Codville Lagoon. We made the three hour trip to Shearwater and rejoined Kinship and Second Verse.
We spent two nights tied up in Shearwater waiting for windy weather to blow by. We were tied up to the windy side of the dock and the boat got pushed around quite a bit.
5/22/2024 Phil and Annette departed early this morning (5am) to head back to Port Mc Neil. The conclusion is the house batteries are just worn out and need to be replaced. After a number of calls, Phil decided his best option was to Go back to get this fixed and then catch up to us as soon as they can.
St. Florian and Second Verse are pressing ahead with Bottleneck Bay as our next anchorage. As we were leaving the dock we heard a horrible screeching noise that was coming from our stern thruster. After a bit of investigation as we hovered just off the dock, Brad concluded we must have destroyed the stern thruster gear box. Maybe a stick or something got jammed in there by the storm surge we endured over the last day. Maybe it is just boat gremlins punishing me for eating a banana on shore. Anyway, we have decided to push on and investigate options for repair along the way. Worst case is Brad has to learn how to dock the boat without a stern thruster.
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