In three full and two half days of constant rain, our rain meter (a pickle bucket in the cockpit) showed 3.5”+ of water. That’s a lot of water.
As we waited out the liquid sunshine and Gale force winds, we thankfully had the foresight to put the bimini up on the Riverhawk. So we tinkered about our anchorages, mapping the bottom (as the charts need help, and we can submit our data to Navionics who will then update the charts), dabbling in fishing, a little crabbing, and exploring lagoons.
The first morning after a steady twelve hours of rain, Tom said, that sounds like a river behind us. But we had gone gunkholing the afternoon before, and neither of us saw a river. Did the southerly Gale winds materialize, and that’s what we heard? We poked our nose out to try some salmon fishing, and it wasn’t the wind. A gunkholing trip later on showed us a rushing waterfall fall at the head of our anchorage. Tom was correct, there WAS a river in our backyard!
A solid period of rain like this also alerts you to the leaks in your boat, as water always has a way. We were looking like Swiss cheese; the two known leaks were leaking, and Tessa found a third in the v-berth (Tom deduced the starboard forward cleat was leaking) which also led us to see that our winch was leaking ever so slightly into the anchor chain closet, the mid-ship stateroom had a failing porthole (which led us to check every other porthole for leaks), and there was a mysterious drip above the TV in the cabinet in the salon. Nothing we could do but damage control while we had another two and a half days of rain. But glad we were aboard when we did have a serious amount of rain, so we knew the extent of the holes in our Swiss cheese. It has made us re-think the order of our major projects we have lined up for the next two years.
Day 4 started out like the last three, but it was supposed to clear mid-morning. Well, that didn’t happen. But it did clear by mid-afternoon, and boy, were all three of us in serious need of Vitamin D.
We started out in the sun stopping the leaks through the forward starboard cleat, which also led us to identifying some stainless rails that were loose that we tightened, followed by stopping the mid-ship stateroom aft porthole from leaking. And then for our poor “lettuce paddies”. There were no holes in the bottom of the planters, so they looked like rice patties. Tom had Tessa near tears laughing from his reference, as it was true. So we drilled holes in one end near the bottom and angled them so the water would drain. Even they needed some Vitamin D.
Feeling good about our productivity, we decided to take on one more afternoon task: tightening a bolt on the guest head vacuflush motor. Well folks, one bolt opened up a can of worms. It wasn’t the loose bolt, it wasn’t the duck valves (Tom replaced one for good measure), we (as in Tom) had to remove the 1.5” semi-hard plastic piping from the vacuflush motor to the holding tank and have sewage splash in his face, along with the foulest stench that initially sent Tessa running. She couldn’t open up enough portholes, hatches and doors fast enough for a cross through wind. We had a blockage compounded by an old pipe having calcified fecal material constricting the inner diameter of the tube.
Nurse, prepare the coat hanger. A combination of high pressure water, a coat hanger, a half inch diameter tube, physical force, Tessa turning up empty handed with draino, no cell service or WiFi to google homemade draino, and no spare 1.5” tubing, what do you do? A little bit of baking soda, two ounces of Coca Cola, a little time to for the reaction to occur, then repeat steps A, B, C and D. And after an hour (baking soda and Coca Cola being towards the end of this hour) of wrestling with a blockage in a 2.5ft long tube, voila! This shitty blockage is cleared!
Not exactly how we planned to spend the better part of an afternoon, in a shitty situation, but we still were able to get in some gunkholing to map this anchorage early evening.
The reviews in Navionics left by users and the information given in Waggoner’s Cruising guide are all lies. Goldstream Harbour maps mainly at 80ft of water, not 30ft. We had thrown the hook down close to shore in 40ft of water, hoped for a bite on a rocky bottom, and sat in 85ft of water. Not ideal, but with us being the only boat in the anchorage (again!) if we dragged, it wouldn’t be that big of a problem. It potentially could be, as previously noted it IS a rocky bottom, but, hopefully we’d catch our drag before we were in any danger.
Four days ago, after dragging anchor in a crowded anchorage, failing to set the anchor in another, and setting it in tight quarters between shallow rocks on an uncharted bottom, all in rocky bottoms, we would have freaked out about our current anchor situation. Now, well? Let’s see what’ll happen. And yes, Mark, we even dusted off Chapman’s to make sure we were properly anchoring. And the answer was yes, we were.