We needed some down time, so we spent another day on anchor off Sugar Island and explored in the dingy.
Exploring the Island
It was raining a little bit but we didn’t care. We jumped into the dingy and set off to explore the island.
Our trusty Honda 2.3 outboard motor is working perfectly. It’s not fast and it’s noisy. But it’s light enough to pick up with one hand, starts on the first pull and sips gas.
We leave Foggy behind as we circle the island counter-clockwise.
We discovered a few nice areas that could be possible anchorages, marked in green.
A. Is our usual anchoring spot.
B. Is surprisingly deep and sheltered. But there are big rocks to avoid. I would enter very cautiously and consider tying in your stern to prevent swinging.
C. Would be a nice spot when there’s a NE wind. We should have moved here that night.
D. Is a nice little bay that you could anchor in, again you would want to tie off your stern to prevent yourself from swinging. And it does get shallow toward the end.
Stay far away from the SE and E side of the island. It gets really shallow. Even our dingy was close to hitting bottom as we went between the small island.
We circle around and return to Foggy. She was still there waiting for us. I always get nervous leaving her alone on anchor.
Water Under the Sink
The rest of the day, I returned to my new obsession on the boat. Trying to figure out where the water collecting under the sink is coming from. I would spend 20 minutes draining all the water with a small pump and then towel dry. And then wait and search for where the water was coming from.
The water collects in the grid in the floor pan and takes a bit to completely drain out making it more difficult to track where it’s coming from.
- I was worried one or both of these seacocks were leaking. So I dried them off and sat there staring at them for a while. Ran the water, drained the sink. They stayed dry.
- I spent time tracking water back to the fresh water tanks. Completely dry.
- I tracked it back to the bathroom, under sink, head and by hot water heater. Also dry.
- I tracked under the cockpit drains, just replaced the cracked ones. Dry.
- I tracked to the two cockpit lockers. Found one issue on Port side locker. The hinges were loose and water was coming in there. I pulled the hinges off and re-bedded with butyl tape. That’s now staying bone dry.
- I then found the slow leak. The stuffing box on our prop shaft had a bead of water on it. I watched it for a few seconds and then drip… another small bead of water formed.
I searched online and saw that with the right materials and tools the stuffing box can be opened up, cleaned and new material can be stuffed in… while the boat is in the water. Nope. I’m not brave enough to do this. I’ve scheduled a time for the mechanic at Loyalist Cove to do this for me. So for now I need to manage the slow leak.
Windy Bumpy Night
We saw the forecast calling for East winds. But we thought we were protected enough and speeds were not supposed to be too much so we didn’t move our anchor at all.
That night, it picked up. We swung around and bounced about, but the anchor held strong.
We probably would have had a better nights sleep on the other side of the Island.
We really enjoyed our two quiet nights on anchor all by ourselves. It was a much needed break. The next day we were ready to somewhat join civilization again and decided we would head over to Camelot Island. We were in communication with AmaDeus and thought it would be fun to go visit them over there.
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