It was another calm day, though an 8 kt SE wind sprang up after lunch that enabled some boats to sail. We weighed anchor at 10.30 AM and said goodbye to Don and Heather as we motored out. We then turned south and entered Captain Passage, rounded the SE corner of Saltspring Island at Beaver Point, with N. Pender Island to our port, then headed SW down Satellite Channel, and passed between Portland and Moresby islands. Soon we could see Sidney Spit to our port and the large town of Sidney to our starboard. The entire area seemed like on big and busy aquatic playground with all sorts of boats plying the waters, including ferries. Brenda agreed that the San Juan/Gulf Islands region has to be one of the best cruising grounds on the planet - not to mention the nearby fjord destinations to the north. The Whitsunday Islands of Australia are world class but they cannot match this area for scope and variety. We rounded James Island and soon dropped anchor in 13 meters of water.
We almost dropped anchor in 2 meters of water (i.e. almost ran aground). We went to the southwest of the bay instead of southwest of the spit and at 10 meters I put the engine into reverse for a few seconds to stop the boat then ran forward to drop the anchor. Just before I dropped the anchor I asked Brenda the usual question: what is our depth? It was 3 meters. "Reverse fast" I shouted. By the time the boat reversed its direction I saw 2.3 meters of depth. That was a close one. I did not pay enough attention to the contour gradient in that corner of the bay. We worked our way to deeper water (13 meters about 50 meters from the 5 meter contour) and all was well.
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