Leaving the Salish Sea

 Well you leave the Salish Sea and you leave behind Arbutus trees, Gary Oaks , Holly and crowds of people. What you get as you move north is colder weather and wilder anchorages.

But first I travelled to Jedediah Island where I waited out some North winds and enjoyed some beautiful sunny weather. While there I had a little adventure. While re anchoring I had trouble maneuvering and managed to run over my shore line and wrap it around the prop. Dead in the water, I dropped the anchor just before I was blown on the rocks. Then I went diving on the prop. I have a skimpy wet suit but the thief stole my wet suit gloves, that made things a little nippy on the hands. Once again I avoided disaster. Hopefully I will  be a little more careful in the future. 

On what turned into a very calm  day I motored up to Campbell River. Here I resupplied and headed further north through Seymour Narrows . I was enjoying the calm sunny weather and thinking about taking some clothes off when all of a sudden a dark cloud rolled up. Soon it was blowing 15 knots on the nose and starting to hail. At one point I had an inch of slush over the whole boat. It was impossible to look forward and I took the next opportunity to duck into an anchorage despite having the current working in my favour for a change.

The next few days I woke up at 0400 or 0500 and made progress with a favourable current and avoided the strong north wind. 

My next adventure started one day out from Port Mcneill . I was relocating to a better anchorage before a strong north wind arrived. I bashed up Johnstone Strait for 15 miles and was just entering and inlet when my engine alarm went off. I limped into a cove and anchored . Then I opened up my water pump and found out the impeller had broken. That was a quick fix and I thought my problems were over. 

Next day in calm weather, I headed out into Johnstone Strait. After an hour the engine alarm came on. I shut down the engine and put up the main sail to keep off shore. I revisited the the water pump but impeller was fine. So then I took off the alternator to get at the back of the engine cooler. When I opened that I found some debris cleaned it out and thought my worries were over. I reassembled everything and started up the engine again. Once more the alarm. This time I took a closer look at the engine alarm light. It was signaling low engine oil pressure. I checked the dipstick and found almost no oil. I had a few liters of oil so dumped that in and changed the filter in case that was leaking. I started it up, no alarm but after a while I noticed a spray of oil . And much too my amazement found a hole in my engine block where there used to be a bolt or plug.  I whittled a piece of doweling and wrapped it in tape and plugged the hole. Then at low speed I limped to Port Mcneill checking the plug every fifteen minutes.

 This morning I found this flimsy plug which if it doesn't fall out keeps all your engine oil from spraying out. When I get back to the boat I am going to glue it in place with high temperature gasket cement.  After that I should be trouble free until the next challenge. Planning on going to Port Hardy Friday.