We've been sailing and motoring our way up Fitzhugh Sound for the last three days, anchoring in small coves along the way. The weather has been somewhat grim the whole time: rain, drizzle, blustery winds, choppy seas; rewind, replay.
At night we turn the radio on and listen to the weather forecast. for that night, the following day and for several days after that. Listening to the reports requires patience and a proficiency that takes some time to build. Most of the report is not useful. The thing that makes the listening and the comprehension difficult is that they give a report that covers so much ground. And the report is organized by topic and not by region.
First there is a synopsis that describes frontal movements, then a report that goes region by region along the coast of northern Canada and gives for each, a forecast for the night and the following day. Then you have to wait through a long list of sea state forecasts, buoy reports, lighthouse reports, and finally an extended three day forecast for the same regions covered earlier.
The region we are in at the moment is called "Central Coast: McInnes Island to Pine Island." To get a report for tonight, tomorrow, and the next three days, You have to sit and listen for a long time and snatch what you need from different places in the report. If you get distracted by someone talking to you at the wrong time, or have difficulty listening and writing at the same time, You'll have to listen for quite a while to hear it again in the next loop.
One thing that helps is to time the stages of the report. Tonight, for example, it took six minutes between the next day forecast and the extended forecast for a given region, and the entire loop took 16 minutes. Knowing this gives me the option to do something else while waiting for what we want to know.
It has also been suggested that we can record the parts of interest to make it easier to re-listen.
There are ways to receive this information as a text file by satellite, but when I looked into the technology, I found it to be expensive for the equipment, expensive for the service, and likely to be ineffective at getting reception in a small cove.
So we listen. And listen, and listen. And it gives us a sense of what to expect out there. Sort of.
June 4, 2016
Day 20 - The Fury Cove Boat Show; Rod
The last couple of nights we've enjoyed anchorages to ourselves; blessed seclusion. Tonight we're stacked into Fury Cove like cordwood with eight other boats. This is a very popular place. It didn't start out that way. We were the first ones here at 10:30 this morning and we set our anchor well with ample rode. At that time we entertained the delusion that maybe we'd be lucky enough to have the cove to ourselves for the two nights that we planned to stay.
Then the boats started arriving, one by one all afternoon and into the evening - each seeming to use less rode than the last, until the most recent arrivals which appeared to rest their anchors on the bottom under their boats
While the other boats were fighting for space, we deployed the inflatable kayak for the first time, then paddled the dinghy and the kayak to the beach to explore the tidal pools, hike around a bit, and play some frisbee. We can report that the kayak does not handle well if you put the seats in backward; it puts the rudder at the front and serves to spin the boat in circles when you try to paddle forward. Doh!
Fury Cove has a beautiful setting. It's a small cove protected from the wind and waves of the sound outside, by a ring of small islands with drying shoals between them that offer a view of the action outside. We wouldn't have missed it, even with the crowd around us.
Then the boats started arriving, one by one all afternoon and into the evening - each seeming to use less rode than the last, until the most recent arrivals which appeared to rest their anchors on the bottom under their boats
While the other boats were fighting for space, we deployed the inflatable kayak for the first time, then paddled the dinghy and the kayak to the beach to explore the tidal pools, hike around a bit, and play some frisbee. We can report that the kayak does not handle well if you put the seats in backward; it puts the rudder at the front and serves to spin the boat in circles when you try to paddle forward. Doh!
Fury Cove has a beautiful setting. It's a small cove protected from the wind and waves of the sound outside, by a ring of small islands with drying shoals between them that offer a view of the action outside. We wouldn't have missed it, even with the crowd around us.
Day 19 - Learning the Caution in Cape Caution; Rod
We got lucky rounding Cape Caution yesterday. After a long few days of high pressure, the swells off the Pacific Ocean had dampened to ripples under a light breeze. This wasn't entirely luck, as we had proceeded with a little more haste than planned in order to put ourselves in exactly that position. Still, it was lucky to have the opportunity to make our break under those conditions. We were poking our noses out into the Pacific Ocean and it felt like a day on Greenlake - only bigger.
The planning had given us short hops to get around the cape in case conditions were rough, but we made the decision to blow by our intended target for that night and get around the cape while the getting was good. In retrospect, it would probably have been prudent to go even further than we did. What's another three hours after we've already done ten?
As it was we did one long day from Claydon Bay in the Broughtons, around Cape Caution, and into Fly Basin - then did the next three hours this morning. While we rested, the winds built up and got the Pacific Ocean rolling. Heading out into it to push ourselves into Fitzhugh Sound, the winds were moderate. The one foot chop and 3' swell was also tolerable while we were heading into it, but as soon as we were forced to turn north, we got rolled around uncomfortably by quartering seas that would have made it difficult to keep our breakfast down if we had had to endure it for much longer than the hour or two that we did.
Having a tase of it, we can see how difficult a rounding of Cape Caution could be. Ten hours of what we experienced this morning would have been miserable. The boat would have handled it just fine, but it would have been pretty tough on us. Add to that higher wind velocities, larger chop, bigger swells and it is clear that the rounding of Cape Caution is a passage whose name and reputation are well deserved.
The planning had given us short hops to get around the cape in case conditions were rough, but we made the decision to blow by our intended target for that night and get around the cape while the getting was good. In retrospect, it would probably have been prudent to go even further than we did. What's another three hours after we've already done ten?
As it was we did one long day from Claydon Bay in the Broughtons, around Cape Caution, and into Fly Basin - then did the next three hours this morning. While we rested, the winds built up and got the Pacific Ocean rolling. Heading out into it to push ourselves into Fitzhugh Sound, the winds were moderate. The one foot chop and 3' swell was also tolerable while we were heading into it, but as soon as we were forced to turn north, we got rolled around uncomfortably by quartering seas that would have made it difficult to keep our breakfast down if we had had to endure it for much longer than the hour or two that we did.
Having a tase of it, we can see how difficult a rounding of Cape Caution could be. Ten hours of what we experienced this morning would have been miserable. The boat would have handled it just fine, but it would have been pretty tough on us. Add to that higher wind velocities, larger chop, bigger swells and it is clear that the rounding of Cape Caution is a passage whose name and reputation are well deserved.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)