9/5 Telegraph Harbour to Cowichan Bay, 17.4 nautical miles

Erin heard a thump at oh-dark-thirty this morning and woke me up, thinking we’d run aground or hit something while at anchor. I got up and checked our depth – we were still at 9 feet, although the tide had a few more hours to go out. All looked well and we assumed it was Tribble jumping down from the bridge making the thump. She sometimes likes to play and prowl at night.

When we got up for real in the daylight hours of morning, the tide was out and we were still afloat, although I could clearly see the bottom and the clam shells thereon. I turned on the depth sounder, but we were apparently too close to the bottom and/or the close proximity plus the bottom being muddy prevented it from getting a reading. I could tell we were completely afloat, though, because we were swinging gently with the breeze and current. For good measure, I reeled in about 15 feet of chain as we could still swing a bit more perpendicular and therefore closer to shore. The entrance to the boat canal over to Clam Bay was completely dry. Anchored behind us, closer to Thetis Island Marina, was a yellow sailboat named Big Bird. They were slightly askew, tiling about 10 or 15 degrees as their keel was on the bottom. We had passed over that area on the way in, and it was a foot or two shallower than our location. The sailboat has a keel that draws at least two or three more feet than we do as well. They had no damage, although they had a wait of two or three hours before they could leave.

We didn’t plan on leaving until early afternoon, as the tidal currents through Samsun Narrows in the morning would nearly double our travel time. Erin made us egg sandwiches with turkey bacon for breakfast, and I did a couple of maintenance chores in the engine room. The starboard engine was down a quart on oil – although it has always used more oil than the port engine it seems to be using it a bit faster. In some sort of diesel sleight-of-hand, the port engine seems to be blowing out the smoke from the extra oil the starboard engine is using. Actually, I suspect the smoke is from unburned fuel. I also added a gallon of coolant to the port engine, which could be an indication of a bad head gasket, which in turn could cause low compression which in turn could result in some fuel smoking out the exhaust. The coolant could also be low from the overheating, or from a leak somewhere in the heat exchange unit. Lots of possibilities and not much I can do about it at the moment other than keep all the fluids up to snuff.

About an hour or so before we left, a mid-sized Bayliner came in and anchored in front of us, lowered their dinghy and headed ashore. When we were ready to leave they had swung around to where they were about 20 feet in front of us, most likely over our anchor. Erin usually takes a boat hook up on the bow while doing anchor duty anyway, so I told her to be prepared to just push them out of the way if we have to. As it was, we didn’t quite have to do that – the wind swung them around a bit, and we were beside them as our anchor broke the surface.

We left Telegraph Harbour around 12:45 and headed towards Sansum Narrows and Cowichan Bay at a leisurely 7.5 knots. As we approached Maple Bay, a harbor on the north side of the narrows, we could see a number of sailboats in the distance, many with their spinnakers up. We suspected that an organized race was going on, and that was indeed the case. The course was marked with large yellow inflatable buoys, and the boats sailing under spinnakers were headed towards the buoy closest to us, which was situated just a couple hundred feet from the Saltspring Island shore. The shoreline is steep here, and we passed by on the shore side of the buoy as a couple of sailboats came from the other direction, rounding the buoy and coming about for their next leg. We got a good close-up look at the crew of a dozen or so people as they hustled to set and trim their sails while coming about. We just motored on into the wind.

Cowichan Bay is a fun little town which we visited for the first time just last year. At first it didn’t look like there would be room at the marina, the Cowichan Bay Fisherman’s Wharf, but when we radioed them, they told us to come around in the other direction and we’d see an empty dock. After getting hooked up and settled a bit, we strolled through town, visiting a few shops before they closed, and then taking a quick tour of the maritime museum. Next on our agenda was to have fish & chips at the Rock Cod Café. We dined here last year with Ray and Mary and the fare was excellent. We had a calamari appetizer, followed by our main course. Each plate had two huge slabs of cod, and one order probably would have been more than enough. We did return to the boat with three pieces of fish left over, so dinner for tomorrow is definitely taken care of.

This evening we walked the docks to check out the other boats. The majority of the boats here are local working boats, but there were a few other pleasure boats as well.