Day 75-Lowe Inlet to Hartley Bay

The rain from yesterday is gone!  I woke up to lifting clouds and sun, which is a nice change.  The bears were still milling about, and I kayaked around a bit to try and get a closer look.  No dice, the bears were just too skittish.

Heading back to the woods with breakfast

Great anchorage

Awesome weather 

Thanks to the lovely weather, I stuck around Lowe Inlet until noon.  It was just too nice a day.

Unfortunately I discovered another potential problem.  I had forgotten to switch of the inverter when I anchored yesterday afternoon and the batteries were run down to about 50 percent by the morning.  I wanted to start the Wallas with plenty of voltage so I fired up the engine and revved it to about 1800 rpm.  While I was doing this I grabbed the eggs from the cooler and noticed water pouring out from around the oil drain plug on the outboard.  I lifted the cowl and couldn’t find a specific spot where the water is leaking from.

I’ve never noticed this before and I think it is likely related to the impeller change in Ketchikan.  I’ll figure out if I need to have the boat looked at by a Honda tech when I can get a cell connection.  If I do it would be a huge irritation, necessitating a trip back up to Prince Rupert, or if it could wait, down to Port Hardy.

Departing Lowe Inlet

Anyway, the trip down to Hartley Bay was wonderful.  Blue skies, warm temperatures, calm seas.  I grabbed one of the last spots on the dock and later on a family in a 36 footer came in looking for a place to tie up.  I offered to move and let them tie to the dock and then I could raft off them.  They were grateful and gave me the password to their wifi in exchange, hence why I can post this blog entry.

I also got the anchor rodes swapped out, and the windlass works great again.  I wish I had a bit more chain on the backup rode (only 20 feet), but it should be adequate.

The plan is to head over to Bishop Bay Hot Springs tomorrow, but that may get nixed if I need to find a Honda mechanic.  I emailed Les at EQ and he’s on top of figuring out what the problem might be and how urgently I need to get it repaired.

22.2 nm today and 2,586.4 total