Windy Bay to Horsefly Cove (Green Inlet)
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As suspected, we awoke to light rain. It always seems to rain when I have to haul anchor! For the first time in a long time, we saw some targets on the AIS, tugs headed both north and south in Tolmie Channel. So there is boat traffic up here somewhere, hmm?
We had an uneventful trip through Hiekish Narrows, which was no big deal and easy to navigate.
Shortly afterwards, we turned into Green Inlet and headed in .6 miles to Horsefly Cove. The buzz on this anchorage was mixed, with some saying it was too deep and small to anchor comfortably without a stern tie. We decided to check it out for ourselves.
It’s a nice intimate spot, where you look back out at Green Inlet between a few islets. As we measured depths in our potential anchor spots and searched for the optimal place to drop the hook, we saw two gray wolves swim from one of the islets to the main body of land. We clearly surprised them – they froze when they saw us, and we watched each other for a long while. They eventually disappeared into the woods, never to reappear.
Finding that anchor spot was a challenge. It is deep, about 100 feet, and it’s not easy to back down enough to set the anchor without running into the shore. So we decided to stern tie, and thus the stern tie dance began. We actually set the anchor in about 70 feet, dropped 150’ of chain, and got close enough to do the stern tie without too many problems (and without having to leave the dinghy – no mountain goating for me this time). It was chilly and damp, and we were happy to get the boat secured. Not long after we were done, a sailing vessel exited the Inlet. We do not know where it had anchored, but it was clearly further down the inlet towards the rapids and lagoon.
I wanted to dinghy down to see the rapids when they were flowing, despite the rain and wind, so I convinced Bob to take the excursion. It was a cold ride, and our eyes were definitely watering as we headed to the rapids. They were running hard, you could see all the boulders and from our perspective, it looked like a 2-3’ drop from the lagoon down to the inlet. These rapids are marked in the books as “unnavigable” – hard to say, but maybe you could portage the kayaks over the rocks off to the side and then paddle inside the lagoon? Too cold and wet to give it much thought.
On our way back, we stopped briefly at the small beach and creek across from Horsefly Cove, enjoying the sight of old pilings at low tide. We were happy to get back to the boat and warm up. As we were heading back to the boat, we did see one pleasure boat heading down the major channel outside of Green Inlet. It was the 2nd pleasure boat we’d seen in days.
Aboard, we decided to watch “Black Swan”, which was well acted but definitely creepy. Bob made meatloaf and we enjoyed it with mashed potato casserole. The Sat TV worked again to bring us the Comedy Channel, which is how we get our news. Apparently the Weiner scandal will NOT go away.
As we went to bed, we heard loud scraping noises, which had us jumping up to see what was going on . The shift in the wind and current had moved us so that the anchor chain scraped rocks on the bottom. All looked good, so we went to sleep about 11:00.
The anchor alarm sounded about 12:30 am. Frankly, it’s most often a GPS anomaly, so I let Bob handle it. When he did not come back to bed right away, and I saw flashlight glare outside the cabin window, it was clear that I needed to get up as well.
The anchor alarm was just an anomaly. But the current had changed, and there was a tremendous amount of pressure on our stern line, and we had swung quite far to starboard, putting us closer to shore than we liked. Pulling up some anchor chain wasn’t helpful, as the stern tie was so tight. It took a lot of elbow grease to loosen that tie enough to let the boat swing to a better spot. About an hour later, the current died down and the boat went back to its preferred lie, but we were both uncertain about how the rest of the night would go. So Bob slept on the couch in the saloon with the anchor circle image on our computer angled so he could see it. I think I got back to sleep about 3am. Oh yes…and it was raining.