Sometimes Leaving Is The Hardest Thing To Do
23 July 2016 | Digby Island
Tom
The plan was to head directly from MacKay to Lady Musgrave atoll, a trip of about 240 miles or in our terms two overnights. This all changed, as Kim mentioned, when at sunset on the first day we saw a mast in a inviting anchorage on Digby Island.
So this required a "new plan". As we sat at anchor enjoying the perfectly calm weather and quiet bay, we decided to head for Townsend island the next day and spend the night there. As this was a longish trip of about 60 miles, we planned to get up early and raise anchor at 6 am.
Up at 5 for departure at first light we peered our and saw ... nothing. No horizon, no island, not even the other three boats in the bay that were only boat lengths away the night before. We were enveloped in a damp grey blanket of fog. Not a great time to leave an unfamiliar bay!
But no problem, we have radar to lead us out to clear water.
About 6:15 the fog had cleared a bit, the radar showed that our electronic charts were not accurate (the edge of the island we had to go around was not charted!) but as there was a lot of clear water off the point I felt it was reasonable to head out. So we did, only to have our radar fail 10 minutes later! Luckily, by this point, we were in plenty of water, albeit with inaccurate charts, minimal visibility and no radar!
Sometimes the best plan is to do nothing so we throttled back the engine and sat stationary. Luckily a quick reset of the radar and partial clearing of the fog solved the problem. We were off.