Todd Inlet

We’re anchored behind Butchart Gardens, stern tied in more or less the same spot we were in a year ago during Don & Darlene’s visit.  Its a pretty good spot which is why we came back to it.  I’m surprised that this basin isn’t full of derelicts – there’s enough of them close by that I would have thought they would have this place filled up as well.  As it is there’s only two boats here that look unattended and I wouldn’t call either of them a derelict.  Brentwood Bay on the other hand is chock a block full of boats that should be on the bottom of the ocean and that’s just around the corner.  You enter Todd Inlet at the bottom of Brentwood Bay and even the channel into Todd Inlet has several boats that are long past their best before date.

We ended up spending an extra day in Coles Bay because Tuesday was just such a miserable day.  We would have had to lift the traps in wind and rain so it was easier to just stay put.  As it was we had to lift them in a fair amount of wind yesterday but it was manageable.  There are a lot of traps in the area where we dropped ours which meant a lot of floats to dodge while we pulled our traps.  There was one particular white ball with blue writing on it that Gray Hawk seemed to regard as a homing beacon no matter where we started out.

Todd Inlet is a very sheltered spot but even so the wind was whipping through it yesterday.  Its sheltered enough that there are never any waves but the superstructure of the boat acts like a sail so we got bossed around a lot.  We had both the anchor and the stern tie to hold us in place so we didn’t move much but the sound of the wind whistling through the rigging was fierce.  We haven’t had a chance to talk to our neighbour yet but we think he dragged his anchor at dusk.  All of a sudden we heard his engine start and saw him pulling his anchor.  It seemed like a goofy time to be leaving but in the end he reset his anchor and when he shut down appeared to be in approximately the same spot he was in when we arrived.

I don’t think it was us that was moving.  Aside from the fact that we are stern tied, we have two GPS anchor monitors.  One sits beside the bed so I can wake up in the middle of the night and worry about our position  Last time I checked it said we were about 60 feet from where we dropped the Sarca.  Since we’ve got about 150 feet of chain out that seems believable.  The other one is in the picture above – our nav software, OpenCPN.  Its way over-zoomed but it sure doesn’t look to me like we have moved.  We’ve roamed around a bit on the end of the anchor chain but we’re pretty well right back where we started out.

We’ve got just about enough cell coverage to get online and make phone calls.  Both our phones work sporadically but not necessarily simultaneously.  The onboard booster that I spent so much time and money installing two years ago is a dismal failure.  I should yank it out and install a Wilson booster like we have in the bus. If anyone is considering a MaxSignal cellular booster DON’T.