So our Copeland Islands stern tie, while beautiful, made me a lil nervous due to the combo of being my third stern tie ever, not being in a generally recognised anchorage and having a Big Ass Rock next to us. Plus a low tide the next morning.

I’d sounded the depth under the rudder and checked the tides and all that good stuff but still woke up early the next morning after being woken after a wake hit us (which in my half-asleep state I took as running aground).

‘TIME TO GO’ I hollered at the long suffering Emma, at the unfortunate time of 05:30.

At least it was a pretty morning.

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We bopped over to Refuge Cove (a marina) and filled up our water tanks, fuel and got a breakfast bagel. It’s a cute little place.

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After filling up we headed off to Pendrell Sound, which is a long sound on East Rendono island. Motoring up there in the middle of the channel, we were both shocked when an alarm went off and registered ‘< 6 foot depth’ – i.e we were about to run aground. After a momentary panic, I figured that either the depth sounder had got something stuck on it, or it was just too deep and it had shat itself trying to figure itself out.

The approach was very pretty

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Anyway, it kind of fixed itself as we arrived in Pendrell sound. Pendrell sound is a huge bay at the end of the sound, that is very deep and has steep drop offs meaning (sigh), stern tying. However, the chart said 30 foot and the depth sound said over 100! This lead to much driving around and head scratching before figuring the charts were wrong and the depth sounder was correct. This turned out to be the right choice, but was complicated by the depth sounder playing silly buggers earlier in the day.

We aborted one location due to it being too deep and finally found somewhere else. After 5 attempts to get the anchor set in the right place it finally stuck and we tied up.

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The water is 25C! And we were in a little secluded bay. We immediately went swimming in the nude, and then spent the rest of the day and the whole next day lazing around in the sun, collecting and eating oysters, and scraping the bottom.

I also went prawning for the first time – and it turns out dropping and pulling up 300 feet of line is a huge pain in the butt.

After dropping it we checked and we had one (1) prawn. SUSTAINABLE FISHING.

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We bbq’ed and ate him, he was delicious. Then set a crab trap with his guts and caught no crabs but lots of little sea urchins – weird!

After two days of lazing around in Pendrell sound and the warm water and sun, it was time to leave. The plan was to take a couple more days lazing around in desolation sound for the ‘summer vacation’ part of the trip, however it didn’t work out that way…

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