Cowichan Bay - Anchoring Skils 101!
10 May 2017 | Ron
Cowichan Bay
(Notes: A few things here. I am starting to combine a few days into one post. Some days are just too boring to put up alone, or I'm just too busy to write every day. Connection issues (phone / wi-fi) to the site are also a concern so less frequent posts may occur. Also you may notice the map is a straight line. It shows where we anchored or docked and not our path. We may try a different technology as we get farther north. Finally, I'll try to post up some more pictures in the gallery. I can only put up one for each post - so be sure to look in the gallery. Hovering the pointer over the photo gives a little title.)
We had moved from Genoa Bay to Cowichan Bay proper to avoid the wind fetch and get a little less wave action. We ended up anchoring in 82 feet of water - the deepest we had ever anchored before. It was necessary to couple our 2 separate anchor rodes together to have a long enough scope (ratio of length of anchor rode you have out to depth of seabed from the boat). The coupler is strong enough, but does not pass through the chain gypsy - the windless on the front that lifts the chain and anchor up. We had to devise a way to lock off the rode and move the coupler around the windless and then put it back on. That done - we put out @ 260 ft of rode.
Then the wind picked up and shifted a little. So much for weather forecasts! We did have a short fetch, but the wind topped out in excess of 25 knots. We were pretty watchful, and grateful. The wind was forecasted to die off after midnight, but it was actually @ 7:00 pm and still light when it started dying significantly. That was a relief to us as even though we had anchored outside of the mooring field (these things are everywhere up here!) the wind had been pushing us around pretty good and at the height, ended up closer to a few boats than we would have liked. When the wind died, Just Lucky settled more over the anchor/rode as did the other boats and we slept soundly.
We went into the town of Cowichan Bay the next day and poked around a bit. We ended up going to the small chandlery (boat store) in town, as well as a cheese shop and a bakery. We headed back out to the boat as the wind picked up a bit and got ready to go to Ganges Harbor on Salt Spring Island.