Mats Mats Bay

Day 2 took me from Port Madison to Mats Mats Bay. This was my second time to this enclosed bay surrounded by hills. If you can avoid the rocks outside and follow the range markers through the narrow, doglegged channel, you will find a very protected anchorage inside. Don’t worry, it gets a little less scary after the first time. First image below. 

I got a 5am start in an attempt to catch the full flush of the ebb. However, my plan required some wind, which didn’t show up. Most folks would turn on the engine, but I held out. Did it pay off? I would say yes, but not by getting me to my destination quickly. I’ll explain. At Apple Cove Point, the ebb turned to flood and the very light north wind had me slowly zig-zagging back and forth with very little forward progress. Second image below. Then I saw a whale surface in the distance. Ok, cool, it will need to resurface at some time, right? Sure enough, it surfaced about 100 years behind me, startling me quite a bit. It was a humpback whale and when they exhale through their blowhole, it is quite loud. This whale continued to dive in the riptide off of Apple Cove Point for about 45 minutes while I went nowhere fast. I tried to get a good picture of the fluke, but alas, this was the best I came up with. Third image. So the whale watching was the pay off. Unfortunately, the sailing and the picture taking were not the finest.

Eventually the north wind picked up and I was able to get up around Point No Point, but the breeze was not found all that long. As I realized I was going to run out of daylight, I “motored up” to make sure I got into Mats Mats Bay before dark.

Before I left on my June trip, I set up some chafe gear on the bowsprit and on the bobstay. Practice had shown me that the anchor rode and anchor can rub on these places and the chafe gear is an effort to preserve both the line and the sprit. Through my trip, I found this to work successfully. However, one drawback of Mats Mats Bay is that it is an old logging bay. This is actually true of many bays in the northwest. You are never really sure if there isn’t 100 year old logs or logging gear abandoned at the bottom of the bay to foul your anchor and chafe your anchor rode. When I pulled up the anchor the next morning, I discovered that I had likely found some of this debris. The bottom 30ft of my anchor rode had some evidence of chafe. This is a good reason to have an all-chain rode. One drawback of having such a small boat is that having 300ft of anchor chain is too much weight to carry that far forward in the bow. I have compromised with 30ft of chain and 270ft of 5/8″ nylon line. The line is a bit oversized to give an extra safety factor which worked in this case. The chafe is not too bad so it is not a worry at this time and because it is on the end, I could always trim it off if I needed to. I had no further issues on the trip, but duly noted. Chafe is your enemy.

Stats: TO – 29.53NM, MS – 5.4kt, MA – 2.1kt, TT- 16hr, 2min, AD ~ 18ft, 100ft of scope.

Misc. – Ran the Spinnaker lines for faster spinnaker set up, practiced light air sailing with success by adjusting the genoa twist with the car placement and the mainsail twist with the traveler placement. Spent a long, slow day in the sun.