2024-07-13 Shoal Cove Trip

Happy 17th birthday to Faraway!

I took possession of Faraway in Vancouver BC on July 13, 2007.

After a few days of training & provisioning my son Steven and I ran her up to Ketchikan for her maiden voyage.

Here is one of the first photos I ever took of Faraway, taken at the dealer's slip in Vancouver BC. Obviously, she does not yet have the enclosed flybridge. I had that done almost right after arriving into Ketchikan.

The weather forecast was just too good to just sit home this weekend. I wanted somewhere close, but still remote. I've been to Shelter Cove in Carroll Inlet 2 or 3 times in the last month, so Shoal Cove was the choice.

Here's a screenshot of my track from the Garmin InReach. It still has an annoying habit of occasionally not logging all my tracking points, and that's what it did on this trip. This is actually my track on the return trip - it is not showing my outbound trip. I've called Garmin support about this issue several times before and it is still happening. But, since I took literally the exact same route on the way out and back, it doesn't really matter that much.

As I made the turn at Mountain Point there were several boats trolling. I passed this big guy, the "Legend." Must be a transient vessel because I know all the local boats. It's unusual to see such a big luxurious cruiser trolling in our waters. I could not see its port of call on the stern as I passed.

I got lazy and did not drop any pots on this trip.

I made it to the Shoal Cove dock at about 10:30 AM. There were no other boats there, just the way I like it. Sometimes it is nice to have the company of other boaters. You can talk about boats, engines, routes, destinations, weather, and on & on, for hours it seems. But sometimes it's nice to find some solitude.

I must preface this next batch of photos with a reminder that I am a firm believer that a guy can never have too many photos of his boat. And when the weather is as stunningly beautiful as it was on this trip, the photos abound. Some of these were taken with my wide-angle lens, which I almost never use.

When I let my dog Nova off leash on the logging roads, she roams a couple hundred yards ahead of me essentially negating the possibility of seeing any wildlife. So, to mitigate that I sometimes take a walk up the road without her. This time I was lucky enough to see a doe on my sans Nova walk.

I came across several patches of these beautiful purple flowers, but I don't know what they are called. My camera has a "Close up" setting which I attempted to use for these shots.