I can only get out for overnight trips on Friday and Saturday during the City League basketball season. Last weekend the weather was good, so I went to Port Stewart. The weather was good again this Friday and Saturday, so I made a trip to Shelter Cove in Carroll Inlet, which is one of my favorite destinations.
Here's map snippet from my Garmin InReach that shows my track out there and back.
My crew for this trip was my little dog, Nova. She is becoming used to boat trips and usually does fairly well on them. She has not been in what I would call truly rough seas, so I don't know how she would do in those conditions.
Nova likes to look out the windows when we are close enough to shore to be able to see something.
The diesel furnace on my boat has been slowly dying over the last year or so, but I've been nursing it along by trying not to use it much. But at this time of year, you really need reliable heat on the boat. The furnace finally bit the dust for good on the last trip and I am making plans to replace it soon. Until I can do that, I got this propane heater to provide a little heat in the boat.
It's interesting to note that just below the floor of the cabin are 2 diesel engines and diesel burns at about 1200 degrees. One of the biggest issues with diesel engines is getting rid of all that heat and there are multiple cooling systems on the engines to do that. I recently asked my mechanic if there was some way to harness that heat for the interior of the boat. He said yes there is, but of course it takes money and time to purchase and install that kind of a system, and then it only provides heat when the engines are running. When I am out on these trips there is a lot of time when the engines are not running, and I need heat then as well.
One problem we have on boats particularly during the winter is condensation on the windows. I've tried to tell my crew that there is no unauthorized breathing on board but that doesn't seem to be helping much. Of course, you can wipe it up with towels, but it comes back repeatedly and it's difficult to carry enough towels to keep wiping it up that way.
I found this squeegee that has a built-in vacuum, and it sucks the water up into a reservoir which can then be emptied. It has a rechargeable battery, so it is very convenient. Karcher WV 50.
For this trip I was headed in a southeast direction into what would have been a sunrise. If you read my blog from my previous trip, you would have seen some stunning photos of the sunrise. On this day it was overcast with a very light rain falling so this is what a somewhat more subdued sunrise looks like.
Shortly after that the fog rolled in and I had to run on radar for a while. When this is what you can see out the front windows it's time to switch on the radar.
My GPS chart plotter has the option to show the navigation chart on one side and the radar screen on the other side, and that's what I usually use when running on radar.
This time of year, I always pilot from the lower helm because there is no heat on the flybridge and most of the time it is all iced up up there anyway and you can't see anything.
Carroll Inlet is very beautiful especially when the weather is very calm. Here are some scenic shots I took on the outbound trip. They look like I used some kind of black & white filter, but I did not. It was just a gray kind of morning.
I had my 2 shrimp pots all baited and ready and I dropped them a couple miles north of Island Point in a spot I had never tried before.
After the shrimp pots were off the deck, I had room to bring down my 2 crab pots and get them baited and ready to drop. I've done well on crabs in the past right in front of the Shelter Cove dock. When I got there, I dropped them in about 75 - 90' of water.
Not many recreational boaters are out and about in January, so I didn't expect to find any other boats at the dock, and sure enough it was empty. Hunting season is closed, and the weather is cold, so not many people are crazy like me and go out in the winter.
Here's the Shelter Cove dock.
It's a small dock, just a square. Some of the other USFS docks have a smaller float that sticks out to one side, but not this one. The USFS doesn't want you to tie up on the front so really there are only 2 spots available on this dock.
When you go up the ramp and up the road a bit it curves around to a log sort yard that they use when they are logging in the area. From over there you can get a different view of the dock area.
In this one you can see the old native fish trap. It's a circular area designed in such a way that when there are salmon in the area they get in that circle at high tide and then when the tide goes out they are trapped in there.
After having lunch, I loaded up my day pack and Nova and I took a walk up the logging road. On these walks I let Nova off leash. When I disconnect her leash, she takes off like a rocket! I worry about getting her back but after racing off a hundred yards or so she always stops to make sure I am following. Then, when she comes to a fork in the road, she always waits for me to direct her to which side to take. I keep thinking that I'll get one of those GPS tracking collars, but I haven't made that happen yet.
There's a downed tree partially blocking the road just a short way up from the dock area.
There was a little snow on the road but not much. There were lots of wolf tracks in the snow. It made me glad I had brought my pistol.
They were pretty large, but I think some of that was due to the way the snow melts. I noticed that my boot prints on Saturday morning looked a bit larger than they were on Friday.
There were also plenty of deer tracks in the snow on the road.
Later in the afternoon the light mist that was falling earlier stopped so of course I had to take a few selfies on the dock.
At this time of year, it's dark by about 4 PM so there is a lot of cabin time on a trip like this. Now that I have WiFi on board, I can use my iPad and my laptop, and I can watch movies from Prime Video or Netflix, so I never get bored. Nova and I had a great evening and night.
In the morning it occurred to me that I have had this .40 caliber Glock pistol for over 10 years, and I've never fired it. I take it with me when I hike in the woods or on a logging road. I load up a couple of magazines and then unload them when I get back to the boat. I decided to take some empty propane cannisters up the road a way and shoot that gun a few times.
The shooting session was a success, sort of. I confirmed what I already knew - that I am a terrible shot with a pistol. These hand tremors I've been dealing with may have something to do with that. In any case, I did hit the cannisters a few times, but I had to get pretty close to make that happen.
I got ready to get under way and we pulled out about 11 AM. The first task was to pull the 2 crab pots that were right out in front of the dock.
The first pot had 3 crabs in it but only 2 were legal males. The second pot was empty. When I pulled the second pot it was hanging by only 1 of the 3 harnesses that connect the pot to the ground line. I don't know how that could have happened. One theory is that someone messed with the pot. In the dark the night before the boat got rocked by waves so I know another boat passed by at some point.
When I got ready to stow the pots I noticed another anomaly. There are 2 doors on these pots, and they have what is supposed to be one-way gates on them. The crabs can get in, but they can't get out. This is accomplished by having 2 small wires hanging down on the inside of the doors. They swing in allowing entry but won't swing the other way. On one of the two doors on each pot these wires were on the wrong side of the doors. I don't know how they could have gotten that way. It allowed the crabs to get out.
I tried to point out the door and the wires hanging down, but I know it's hard to see. In this shot I have already put the wires back into the correct position on the inside of the door.
After securing the crab pots we headed over to the shrimp pots. There were exactly zero shrimp in the pots which was pretty discouraging. I have not done well on shrimping for the past year or so. Not sure what I'm doing wrong.
Here are some scenic shots I took on the ride back. Again, they look like I took them in black & white mode, but I did not.
The rest of the ride in was uneventful and we got into the slip about a half hour before dark.
Trip mileage was about 52 miles.
Where shall I go next? First stop will be the fuel dock.
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