Log Entry: Saturday, July 10th, 1999

Lord's Pocket to Portage Bay: 36.3 nm

Another change in plan due to sea conditions: instead of going all the way to Petersburg, we stopped in Portage Bay.  I did another dive: the only way I can stay down with the dry suit is by using the hull as a ceiling that my head is in constant contact with.  Here in Portage Bay there were other considerations: a strong current, and a full (heavier) tank.  With no air in the dry suit it functions almost like a wet suit, but I still don't have enough weight to keep myself down.  For these hull repair/examination dives, I have lots of things hanging off me: scraper, flashlight, knife, etc ...  The barnacles on the propeller shaft turned out to be about an inch thick, so I spent quite a bit of time down there scraping away.  The visibility was not as good as in Red Bluff Bay, but the water was a lot warmer!

We (I) had gotten careless with cords and cables running all over the place, and I was trying to find something underneath something behind something, and bang, down goes the laptop onto the floor with a loud clattering noise.  I am very impressed with Gateway: the only damage was to the little LCD panel which shows system status.  The machine was still turned on, and behaved as though nothing had happened!!  Lessons learned: never leave cables running across the floor.  From then on, we always ran any required cabling overhead.

This was the day the impeller on our waste tank macerator pump broke: replacing it was another pleasant task ...

After cleaning the stuff off the propeller, the engine shuddering appeared to be significantly reduced.  We also discovered that the lube oil pressure improved if the panel light was turned on! (makes pressure indicator VERY suspect!).

Portage Bay is a large shallow bay: we were not able to anchor close to shore, and we felt very exposed out in the middle of the bay, anchored in 20 knots of wind, with billions of commercial crab traps all around us, and an active logging camp on shore.   Coming into the bay was a challenge, as it fills and empties through a narrow channel which has strong currents, rip tides, and shoals which make the navigable channel only 150 feet wide.  The Coast Pilot recommends entry at high slack, but we decided to attempt it two hours before low slack.  Slow going, but doable.

More boats came in later, and the wind died down. 

Most boats were gone when I got up at 0600 the next morning.

Jane's log:

"Motored towards Petersburg, but due to the slow progress we were making against the wind and the unpleasant sea when the tide flooded, we decided to stop at Portage Bay.

"Had our best yet sea lion sighting coming out of Lord’s Pocket. His head and body came two feet out of the water to take a good look at us. A small herd of white-sided Pacific Dolphin played of our beam. 

"We may not have seen any orcas this trip but we sure have seen our share of humpbacks. Out of the 6-8 we saw today, two dived and sounded really close to the boat and we were able to get a clear view of the dorsal fin hump and the white patches on the back of the tail.

"Anchored in Portage Bay close to Stop Island: after the bogging camp and close to the hundreds of crab traps.

"The laptop had an accident today as it took a fall when the power cable was tripped over. It’s still working but the LCD panel is bust.

"The impeller on the macerator waste pump was replaced.

"Dove again to clean the propeller now that the log is working we can see how bad our speed through the water is: it wasn’t all current, as we guessed. While Ian was down there he checked the zincs and marked the location of the propeller and the skeg, to make the eventual haulout easier."