Annette Inlet to Ganges Harbour

Annette Inlet to Ganges Harbour: 4.9NM

As the light of dawn shone upon beautiful Annette Inlet on Prevost Island, we find the M/V Best of Times still floating. Low tide at 7AM still left almost four feet of water under the keel. So we’re feeling pretty good about the computer tide prediction as well as our ability to read the printed tide tables.

Unfortunately, during my by 3AM trip to the head, I was rudely awakened by my toes as they felt the cold damp carpet in the companionway. Given our experiences last year, I knew what was going on. So familiar was the feel and sound, I did not even let out the expected “Oh Shit!" I just went about my business, returned to bed realizing that the better part of valor was to get some more sleep and store up energy for the morning plumbing chores.

After taking her shower Karen, picked up the coffee pot and began to bail. By now the water was “6 inches deep”. Editor’s note: That’s about an inch in the real world. However, it is backbreaking work and all Karen’s efforts did was to keep the water from rising more.  It was not getting any shallower in the estuary known more familiarly as the companionway (from master stateroom to the main salon).

Now you have to remember that we went through this exact same problem one year ago. Therefore, it was time to jump into the Way-Back machine and see if we could come up with a fix. Off with the hatch and sure enough, in the forward bilge stood about “six inches” of water. Editors’ note, since that’s a Bob measurement, he IS talking about six inches. 

The float switch appears to be in working order. Moving the master control switch in the helm from automatic to manual brings the pump alive. After pumping the bilge dry, my troubleshooting confirms my memory that the switch is wired so that when “manual” is chosen, it is really automatic. This counter intuitive wiring was the jury rig solution the charter company came up with last year just before we departed. So after a full year, nothing has been done to correct the wiring. Confident we know now how to keep the sump and our “piggies” dry, this chapter of the D.Y.I. Boat Channel comes to a close.

We take a short hop over to Ganges, one of our favorite harbors.

Karen, a.k.a. "The Lounge Lizard" finds the most comfortable place in the pilothouse to rest up from the being the human bilge pump.

We chose Ganges as the place to meet the people who are going to rent us a two person Kayak for the trip. It is going to be an adventure, with some learning curves and some physical acrobatics to master, but they gave us a great, in-depth briefing so we have the knowledge, now we just need so see if we can apply it. (Karen’s Note: This kayak is BIG. It is over 17 feet in length and we are having one heck of a time finding a good place to stow it. Did I mention it weighs over 100lbs? Not easy for us to move.

Best of Times is not certain about the new addition of the kayak.

We had also planned to do some last minute “I forgot” provisioning” at Ganges. The trip to the local “everything” store resulted in the purchase of cream cheese, a few more boxes of Zip-Lock bags, another loaf of bread and a wet dry vacuum. Given the long list of things that need to get done, we vacuum the carpet as dry as we can, get the computer/internet/cell phone/satellite phone interfaces working, create a revised script for a client that needs to get out…so, though we didn’t plan it,  Ganges is going to be our overnight stop. We were both really tired. As Karen said; “when you start to operate only in the reactive mode, that’s when something major bad happens”. Needless to say, we did not want that to occur. 

I always like Ganges because it has almost as many seaplanes coming and going as boats.

Ganges International Airport

So we got caught up on chores, and had a nice dinner on shore at a great little bistro named Calvin’s (run by a Swiss émigré) and recharged our batteries. Tomorrow we’ll be off to have fun, on our terms, not at the mercy of the Gods of the Sea nor the gremlins of the Charter Company.