As I've mentioned in previous posts during the City League basketball season the only days that I can get out for an overnighter are Friday and Saturday, so I'm always watching the weather closely for those 2 days. This week the weather looked stunningly beautiful so I could not resist making an overnight trip.
On these cold and clear winter days the sunrise in the East can be quite beautiful. I was headed Northwest, but as soon as I got out of the harbor and before I really got underway to my destination I stopped and took several photos of the sunrise behind me. I could not decide which of these was best so I'm just going to post all of them.
I had been wanting to get out to Port Stewart for some time, so that was my chosen destination for this trip. It is in western Behm Canal. Here's a map snippet from my Garmin InReach that shows my track out there and my return trip.
The US Navy has a sub testing station in western Behm Canal and a few times a year they bring up nuclear subs for sonar testing of some sort. I've marked a blue X on the chart showing the approximate location of the sub testing station. Here's the notification that was published about that.
When a vessel is transiting in the general area of the sub testing, they want you to contact them on the VHF radio. If you don't contact them, they will most likely see you on their radar and they will contact you. If they are actively testing at that time, they may ask you to stop and shut down your engines. In my case they just directed me to take a slightly different route than I would normally have taken.
I dropped my shrimp pot out in front of Port Stewart in about 380 -400' of water.
Here's a small map snippet that shows the entrance to Port Stewart, and the little "nook" on the right where I anchored. The red X shows where I dropped my shrimp pot, and the green X shows where I anchored.
The temperatures in town were cold, but not excessively cold, so I was not expecting to run into ice in this anchorage. The areas out in front of the "nook" were clear of ice, but there was indeed ice in the area where I wanted to anchor. It was not very thick, so I just went very slowly and motored through it. When I haul out in April for bottom paint and other maintenance, I'll be able to see if the ice cut into the gel coat on the hull.
As soon as I entered the "nook" I saw that there was a sailboat already in there. It was quite close to shore in pretty shallow water. It looked like he had towed a small section of a float in there and somehow got it anchored. He wasn't anchored, but he was tied to the section of float. I saw a guy moving around the boat from time to time during my short visit here. It looked like he was here for the long term. I noticed that he had a Starlink antenna, so if it is active he has access to WiFi.
I launched the raft and set my two crab pots in the area. My raft has a fiberglass floor, which was good because I had to break through the thin sheets of ice to get to the spots where I dropped the pots.
Later in the afternoon when the sun got a bit higher most of the ice left the nook for a few hours. I went out in the raft when the sun was on the boat and got some photos.
Of course, at this time of year the sun goes behind the hills pretty early in the afternoon. It was almost full dark by 4:30 PM.
The ice came back in the evening, and it was quite noisy in the boat. The sheets of ice would flow past the bow, making a crunching noise as it passed.
I got up several times during the night and walked all around the boat. I took my long boat hook and tried to break up any ice that was forming up against the hull. I'm not sure if that was helpful at all, but I did it anyway.
Up at the bow where the anchor line entered the water, the ice sheets were flowing right around and past the anchor line. I was a little concerned that the line might be damaged, but there wasn't anything I could do about it other than worry about it. So, I went back to bed, to make the circuit of the decks again in a couple of hours.
I put a thermometer on the back deck, and I checked it every time I went out during the night. It never went below 32 F, so it wasn't really all that cold out.
In the morning as soon as it was light, I went out in the raft and pulled the crab pots. I got a few crabs, but none of them were of legal size to keep, so I got skunked on crabs for this trip. Bummer. That was one of the main reasons that I wanted to come here, to get some crabs.
This is what one of my crab pot buoys looked like after getting chewed up by the ice all night. It looks like it went through a blender. I guess I'm going to have to repaint it.
While I was out in the raft retrieving the crab pots the sunrise behind the boat was stunning, but by the time I could race back to the boat and grab my camera it had diminished significantly.
I was surprised to see so little ice in the nook in the morning. Surprisingly, when I got ready to leave at about 10 AM on Saturday the ice had started to form again.
I pulled my shrimp pot in almost dead calm conditions out in front of Port Stewart. I only got about a dozen shrimp, which was very disappointing. I'm not doing well on shrimp lately and frankly I'm getting a bit discouraged. I spent a long time and a bit of money making up a batch of "special" shrimp bait. But it seems not to have worked very well.
On the way home I stopped at a spot nearer to shore and did some bottom fishing for about an hour, but I got no hits at all. However, I did manage to lose a very expensive rig, so the stop wasn't wasted, I guess. After I got home, I learned that halibut fishing is closed for the month of January - I didn't know that. I guess it's a good thing that I didn't get one because I surely would have kept it, and I could have gotten in big trouble for doing that.
Conditions were calm on the way home. I've figured out how to connect my phone to the stereo system on the boat via Bluetooth, and that allows me to play my Apple Music playlists on that system. Running on autopilot listening to my favorite tunes - not a bad way to pass the time on the 3-hour run home.
I got into the slip at about 3:45 PM just as it was getting dark.
Mileage for this trip was 57.8 nm.
Hmm, where shall I go next?
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