The plans were to head back south again, with the destination of Goose Bay at the mouth of Rivers Inlet the target. Heavy rain during the night and we had a bit of a sleep in. Forecast has SW winds - a bit unusual this time of year. Up anchor at 9:15 am.
We planned the route via Spider Anchorage versus the more direct route of Lama Passage and Fitz Hugh Sound - a bit longer but far more interesting.
We had a nice run up through Hunter Channel and through Sans Peur passage again - beautiful as before, and then right at the exit of Sans Peur passage it happened - the port transmission started acting up. A dive into the engine room revealed that the transmission oil was not in the transmission but was now washing back and forth on the engine room sole, only kept out of the bilge by the engine stringer. Damn! The closest spot to stop seemed Cultus Cove, noted by Douglass as a reasonable spot and used by fishing boats. We dropped a lunch-hook in 60' of water pretty close to the shore. I would not want to stay there in a foul weather but it suited us fine.
We run old-school Twin Disc transmissions and a great feature they have is a 'get home' lock that can be engaged if the oil system fails. Rather than go straight to that we cleaned up the ~1.5 gallons of oil (a hugely messy job, but happily we could get the oil-change pump sucking up the majority, followed by a huge number of oil absorbant pads) then refilled the transmission to see if we could see where the leak was. Firing it up again revealed a gasket leak on the oil cooling pump cover plate. We cinched everything down tight and hoped for the best. After 2 messy hours we were underway again. Happily that resolved most of the issue, and a strategically placed oil absorbant pad dealt with the few drips that remained.
Back rolling again we noted how nice Kayak Cove - just inside the south entrance of Cultus Sound - looked and put it 'on the list' for next time.
Into the ocean at 2:30 pm with 8 knot SW winds and a low SWerly swell. All good. Through Spider Channel, through the Stopper Group, and then through Brydon Channel kept us on our toes but was beautiful and uneventful. We crossed Kildidt sound and then through Nalau Passage and down Ward Channel to keep things interesting. A winding route down and we were really happy we did it.
Hakai Passage at 4:30 had a bit of swell but nothing like we experienced the week prior. Running down Fitz Hugh sound we were back to just getting the miles in. We spotted a humpback whale mid-sound. At 7:30 we spotted another whale and shut the engines off to drift and watch. Looking at the track log it was interesting how far/fast we drifted back.
Past Duncanby Landing and down to the bottom of Goose Bay we dropped the anchor just past the old cannery at 9:00 pm
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| Old Goose Bay cannery (now in private hands) |
A long day - 68 miles with a maintenance stop in the the middle.
Click to follow route in Google Maps