I must admit that I am kind of a loner. I really enjoy the solitude of making a trip alone and getting out there to a remote location and just enjoying the boat and the surroundings. But, at the same time, from time to time it's fun to link up with another boat and do a "Buddy Boat' trip. We boaters tend to have similar problems and it's good to have someone to talk to who most likely has experienced the same or similar issues with their boat that I have. It's also nice to compare notes on places that we have visited and places that we want to visit.
With that in mind the trip this weekend was with my buddy Eddie and his wife Jodi on their 32' Bayliner the Samana Jewel. I had a boat very similar to Samana Jewel for 6 years so I am pretty familiar with their boat. They also had Arianna (5th grade) with them, and their 2 dogs Cali & Margo.
Our destination this weekend was to be Marguerite Bay. We had hoped to be able to leave on Friday, but the weather forecast said otherwise, so a Saturday morning departure was planned.
The Samana Jewel is considerably faster than my boat, so we didn't actually run side by side on the run out there. We just coordinated and we both made plans to meet out there.
Here is a map snippet of the track out there. My InReach sort of failed me on this trip. Even though I had tracking turned on; it did not log my trip on the map. So, this map snippet is from a different trip, but it's the same route we took to get out there.
It's about a 27-mile run to get out there from town.
My usual practice in the winter months is to leave the harbor very early, in the dark, so that I can get a good start on the way to my destination before it gets light. And that was my plan for this trip.
I pulled out of my slip in the harbor at 5:30 AM in the dark and in moderately heavy rain.
Radar is not much good in the close confines of town, but there are so many lights on shore that it's not really needed. Once you get out and away from town where there are no lights on shore to use as reference points, the GPS chart plotter and the radar are my close companions. You can't see a darn thing out the windows, so you have to learn to trust your electronics.
When I am running in the dark, I cannot see logs and other debris that may be in the water, so I run much slower than I would in daylight. We have been having extremely high tides in the last few days and that tends to float more logs and other debris off the beaches, so there was more around than there would normally be.
I had only been underway for about 30 minutes when the worst happened. I slammed into a log at about 4.5 knots. The impact was sickening. It was severe enough that it shut down both engines which caused several alarms to start blaring. The log must have hit one or both rudders because the rudder angle indicator suddenly went to almost 20 degrees. That made the autopilot very unhappy, so it too started blaring alarms.
So, there I was with no engines and alarms screaming at me and drifting without control of the boat in pitch darkness. Somewhat traumatic.
First, I shut down the autopilot to give it a rest and shut off some of the alarms. Then I went through the shutdown and restart procedures on the engines. Thankfully they both started right up again and seemed unharmed by the event. After a minute or two I restarted the autopilot and also thankfully it came right back up. I did have a little trouble getting the steering wheel (and hence the rudders) to straighten out, but with a little effort I got the rudders straight again.
I was concerned that the impact may have damaged the shafts and perhaps allowed water to leak into the engine room, but the indicator lights for my bilge pumps never came on, so I was reasonably sure there was no water coming into the boat.
Amazingly, it seemed the boat was back on track and ready to proceed. But I must say that until it got daylight, I ran extremely slowly, like in the 3-knot range. And I even went into neutral from time to time to bleed off some speed. You could say that I was a little gun shy.
My buddy Eddie on the Samana Jewel was planning to pull out in the dark as well a little later than I did, but when I texted him about the log impact he decided (wisely I might add) to wait until daylight before pulling out of the harbor.
The rest of the run out there was pretty uneventful, especially after it started getting light enough to see the surface of the water. I stopped briefly in the entrance to Clover Pass to finish the baiting and prep my 2 shrimp pots. I wanted them to be fully ready to drop once I entered Traitors Cove.
When I got into Traitors Cove, I dropped the shrimp pots in about 400' of water. From there I could see the dock in Marguerite Bay, and I could see that it was plugged with boats. So, I made preparations to tie onto the mooring buoy which is anchored very near the dock. You can't really see the mooring buoy until you're right near the dock so I couldn't tell if it was available, but I just hoped that it would be and made my way slowly in that direction.
The mooring buoy was open, so I got myself secured to that with no issues. Shortly after that Samana Jewel came into the bay and briefly tied up alongside me. I got my crab pots ready to drop and I went out with them to drop them.
The very front of the dock is marked as a loading and unloading zone, with no mooring allowed. But sometimes in the winter especially, when there are no float planes coming in, some of us "cheat" just a bit and tie up there for a night or two. We decided that I would tie to the front of the dock and the Samana Jewel would raft onto my side because they wanted to leave in a few hours and run out and do a preliminary pull on the pots. So, this is how we initially set up on the dock. This is our little flotilla for our stay here.
Here you can see some of our neighbors at the dock. After a short time one of the other boats left so Samana Jewel was able to fit into that spot that he vacated so he didn't have to raft to my side.
The rain stopped in the early afternoon, and it turned into a good weather day. The evening was even better.
Traitors Cove and Marguerite Bay are just so beautiful when the weather is nice. Here are some shots of the area that I took in late afternoon and into the early evening.
Yes, I realize that some of these shots are essentially the same shot. But they were taken at different times and the sky changes as the evening deepens and it gets closer to dark.
I was on a trip here one time and I just set up my camera on a tripod on the dock facing out. I had a remote control for my camera, and I just shot multiple shots using the remote as the evening morphed into darkness.
Eddie set up his crab cooker on the dock and cooked the 8 crabs we pulled from the pots earlier in the afternoon. Arianna and Jodi popped the heads off about 155 shrimp that they pulled from their 3 shrimp pots in the afternoon. I'm told Arianna is the expert head popper of the group.
We had a very pleasant evening on the dock.
Jodi prepared an excellent dinner, and I set up my fire pit.
We visited some with the people from the other boats.
Everyone was tired due to the very early morning departure, so we didn't linger very late on the dock.
In the morning, we mostly just hung out, cleaned up our gear off the dock and prepared for departure.
I pulled out at about 11:40 AM and Samana Jewel pulled out shortly after that. We both had pots to pull so we took care of that. I only got 1 keeper crab and 17 shrimp. They got over 300 shrimp so clearly; they are doing it better than I am. I made some notes on some things I'm going to change in my shrimping protocol.
As we headed back to town for a time we were running directly into the glare of the sun. Visibility was very limited until our course changed enough so that we weren't heading into the sun.
The rest of the run into town was uneventful. There was a following sea which makes the boats roll around a bit. My autopilot couldn't keep up with it, so I had to pilot manually for a while until we got out of the rough area and got into more protected waters.
Samana Jewel passed me up and got into town quite a while before I did.
I got into my slip right 4:30 PM.
I logged a little over 54 miles on this trip.
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