Monday- Tuesday Sept 3-4 Moiles Harbour
When we left Norm and Elaine’s anchorage, we cruised around 25 miles and went to an anchorage called Moiles Harbour. After what we had read about this anchorage, we realized that we probably shouldn’t have anchored here. This used to be a saw mill and boy did we find this out. When they were logging way back when, they would float thousands of logs in the water and secure the ones on the outside together to make a hug raft of logs. This kept them from breaking loose and floating all over. Over time, some logs would sink or others would rub against each other and drop bark and saw dust to the bottom. That meant that the bottom could be littered with logs or the bottom could me mounds of sawdust and bark.
A couple of anchorages before, Aurora had trouble with their anchor dragging. It happened to them again. As they lifted the anchor they saw that they picked up a 20 log on their anchor. Of course we were watching what was going on and offered to drop our dink and go over and help. But Steve was able to get a rope on both ends and secure secure the log and got their anchor loose. They decided to move it to another area of the anchorage well away from anyplace a boater would anchor.
After they dropped the log they moved the boat and found a better holding ground.
The wind was really strong, so we decided to stay an extra day.
We stayed on board the boat and read and worked on pictures while Aurora took their kayaks down and tooled around the anchorage. Here is a picture of them lifting their kayaks back on their boat.
Short Vacation at anchor.
The wind was up but apparently we were hooked in really good. We always set the anchor by backing down on it for a while to make sure that it is not dragging. If the wind is blowing enough and changing directions, the anchor will reset. Well, we changed directions a number of times but did not appear to drag. Great! But since Aurora had dragging problems we were always on high alert. We would be facing one way, then another and around and around we would go.
The next day, upon attempting to leave, we pulled up our anchor and discovered that we caught a 40 foot log. Yep, a 40 footer. It was perfectly balanced on the anchor. John was only thinking about getting the log off of the anchor and didn’t think about getting a picture. Luckily, a little tug style boat was coming in pulling his dink, as we pulled this behemoth to the surface. The end of the log was so far out away from the boat that John couldn’t throw a rope loop out to it. This boat came very close and looked the log and yells out “Great Catch”. The guy in the boat realized the minor dilemma that we had and decided to assist. He had his wife tend to his boat and then jumped in his dink and rowed over to help John put a rope around one end of the log. This guy had obvious been in this situation before. He told John to only secure one end of the log with a line and way out at the end of the log. He said when we drop the anchor quickly, the anchor should drop away from the log. Well, John did that and the anchor came right off. The end of the log that was secured obviously stayed up while the other end of the log immediately sank, Then as it dropped toward the bottom, the opposite end just slipped out of the rope and the whole thing sank. The problem, after a number of “accolades” to the other boater, we were on our way.