Saturday, August 3, 2019

July 29, 2019 - Cannery Cove Pybus Bay Admiralty Island and Goose Bay Kuiu Island

After leaving Warm Springs Bay we decided on a stop to Pybus Bay.  Steve had heard that this was beautiful.  We left from Warm Springs late since we went to the hot springs in the morning.  It was a late afternoon arrival at Pybus so we did not do much except take in the view, fly the drone, and eat dinner.  Getting to Pybus Bay was a bit of a bumpy ride in Chatham straight.    The mountains were in view here as well as some neighboring boats!

Cannery Cove - Pybus Bay Admiralty Island

Looking southeast out of the bay with the many islands
We woke in the morning with low cloud cover and some rain and could not see the mountains.  Glad we arrived yesterday.  We are heading south again.  We made a short stop at Kake on Kupreanov Island to get some groceries and then continued, deciding on Goose bay (might not be a formal name).  Our plan is to run Rocky Pass tomorrow which requires careful navigating and timing of currents.  We spent time figuring out the correct time to transit so the currents would relatively calm, and the tides high.  A very late morning departure would be required tomorrow morning. 

Over the past couple days we had heard a couple big knocks/clunks while retrieving the anchor but nothing seemed to be effected and we could not identify the source of the noise.  This afternoon when dropping the anchor in Goose Bay the anchor went down very slowly.  perhaps 1/4 speed.  UH OH!  Good thing we were in 25 feet of water and not 60 or 70 feet, because it was obvious something was wrong with our anchor windlass.  If it fails we are going to have to pull the anchor and chain by hand, not a pleasant prospect.  Steve looked at quite a few things and decided it was the windlass motor, no more anchoring.  The problem was not in the cabling delivering electricity to the motor.  It was not in the gearbox of the windlass as it spins freely and all the gears and shafts look perfect.  The oil in the gearbox had no water in it, nor did it have and metal bits contaminating it.  Everything was pointing to the electric motor itself.  The electric motor cannot be repaired while on the boat.  We still have to pull our anchor in the morning and were devising plans to pull it manually in case the windlass motor failed completely.  The immediate question for us now is "can we get our anchor up in the morning?"  There is no manual override (cranking it up with a long lever) on our windlass, which some windlass's have.  We hand hoisted up the chain until the anchor sat on the bottom at 6:30 AM, low tide, with only 15 feet under us now.  Our plan was to do as much manual lifting as we could since we did not know if the windlass would last long enough to do the entire job.  We were saving the windlass for the heavy part, pulling the anchor off the bottom.  We were in luck because the windlass did indeed bring the anchor back up slowly, and completely.  Good thing as once we got to having to hoist the anchor off the bottom manually we were not making any headway.
Goose Bay
 When we entered the bay, there were several buildings at the far end that looked nice from our vantage point.  Taking the drone for a fly by shed a different light on them.



Not looking so good....


Steve in the anchor locker, laying on the chain,
 taking a look at the windlass motor and testing
the electricity.

Steve, Kevin, and I hoisting up the chain in 4 foot increments,
Cindy shoved the chain down into the locker

This little thing came up on the chain

Our cat Reebok curiosity and dreaming of walking on land again

Since we are not sure we can anchor until this problem is fixed, we cannot go through Rocky Pass tomorrow as that requires an overnight anchoring at the other end.  So, change of plans.  We are going to double back and head to Petersburg (where we can stay in the marina), about 8 hours away and see if there is an electric motor repair shop there.  If not, the motor will have to be shipped back to Steve's favorite electric motor repair shop in Bellingham:  Whatcom Electric.

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