Cruising Several More Bays 09/01-2025

 Ten points for you if you guessed that Bill filled in the details on my blog post in a couple of places.

Mainly here: The next day, under investigation, Bill discovered an obscured, unused, redundant oil filler neck and elbow mounted at the top of the oil pan had fallen off. [Later to be discovered under the black oil in the bilge…] The 1 inch mounting hole is above the oil line, but would allow the crankcase pressure to vent. And since our last 30 minutes coming into this anchorage from Dixon Entrance we are rolling in the ocean swell as we traversed over the shallower shelf, it must have helped splash oil out the new hole… into the deep bilge [~3 quarts in the bilge out of 8 in the oil pan...] Otherwise, the bulk of the oil would have remained in the pan with just a loss of oil pressure…

I think he could have inserted his name "Bill here", and carried on with the explanations. I doubt any of you thought this sounded like me, my usual "oil thingy", not "obscured, unused, redundant oil filler neck and elbow". 😁

Onward to Hessa Inlet, they’re many places to anchor, we chose to go through the narrows, and anchor in the inner bay. It’a quite large, and there were many otters to watch.

You can see the currents swirling around in the narrows, we waited for slack tide in order to have an easy transit. (Slack tide: a brief period in a tidal cycle when the horizontal movement of the water, the tidal current, is at its minimum, appearing to be still. This brief pause in water movement happens around the time of high and low tides.)

Cormorants, and gulls resting on a floating log. 

We were out exploring in the dinghy, watching otters, and Denali Rose in the distance.

Next is Eureka Channel, this was not really a bay or an inlet, just a group of islands separating us from the Gulf of Alaska. Calm weather was forecasted, so it was comfortable for the time being. 

We had some beautiful sunsets.

Across to Elbow Bay. 

We’re doing short hops to keep the crew happy, and enjoy the area while we’re here. 

Otters are always curious as they pop their heads out of the water, but they keep their distance, also being wary. 

Back across to Mabel Bay, behind Mabel Island.

A pretty significant, and probably recent landslide in here. We don’t anchor near them, as there is usually quite a bit of debris in the water, mud, rocks, trees… we don’t need to foul our boat or our anchor in that. 

Another game of where’s the rocks?

Low tide

High tide

We’re anchored in front of this island, but not so close as to drift into it when the anchor chain stretches out. We had gale warnings, and prepped the boat for wind. This includes making sure nothing is lying loose, and Bill puts a backup bridle on the anchor chain, among other chores.

Even though we have a “water maker” a device that desalinates ocean water into clean clear water, we put out three tubs to collect the rain that was coming from the atmospheric river. 

Each one had about 9 inches of water in it the next day. Bill siphoned them into the water tank, fresh water with minimal effort or power.

Gus enjoys the sunsets also.

As always, we enjoy hearing from you, either here in comments or on our Facebook Denali Rose Sailboat page.

8/24/2025 Minnie Bay

 Minnie Bay lives up to its name, as it’s teeny tiny, with big rocks. Its definitely not a destination anchorage, but an excellent port in a storm in the N Pacific Ocean…

Looking out the entrance from inside Minnie Bay. The Coast Pilot says to hug the island on the left in photo to avoid the finger of rocks (which are underwater most of the time…) on the other side. Ouch. (The United States Coast Pilot consists of a series of nautical books that cover a variety of information important to navigators of coastal and intracoastal US waterways...)

These rocks were behind us at low tide, it was sort of like a moonscape, except this is all underwater at high tide. (Bill marks the hard bits and their edges on the chart plotter using RADAR at low tide. Many were not on the charts…)

Denali Rose is right above her anchor in the above photo.
(The lubber line to the small circle is not relevant; the green triangle extending from the bow is the forward looking SONAR indicating the depth in that direction is within our parameters for safe depth.)

After we were inside the bay, we were using the forward looking sonar to find a good spot to drop the anchor. As we were snooping around a loud alarm went off, and I went below to the salon to look at the gauges at the nav station.. The oil pressure gauge showed 10 PSI, when it should have been 60, the oil pressure light was bright orange, and the loud beep of distress were all indicators of the problem. We needed to shut off the engine immediately. I muted the audible alarm while I was below. 

Yes. All of our numerous audible alarms can be muted. 

Bill says that once we are notified, alarms only increase anxiety and interfere with thinking and communications, so mute them immediately. (The mute buttons glow red to indicate an alarm is still sounding…) 

I have heard such an example listening to a real Mayday on the radio when the commercial boat that was sinking couldn’t clearly understand the Coast Guard or 2 responding Good Sam vessels on the radio because of their own alarms…

With our alarm muted, Bill steered toward the center of the little bight and deployed our 99lb Spade anchor as we glided by the drop point, then immediately killed the engine; hoping for a good soft anchor set from the boat’s momentum.

This is a complete departure of our anchor setting protocol [but wasn’t the first time; years ago we had to do the same when the engine suddenly overheated…] Normally, we map the edges of our desired anchor spot, noting depths and obstacles, deploy the anchor, and chain in the desired spot, backup to “soft set”, drop more chain, put on the bridle, and put the engine in reverse upping the rpms to set the anchor hard and test it. We did almost none of that this time in order to get the engine shut down before any damage occurred. 

We were relying on the breeze to push Denali Rose back against the anchor and chain, and hopefully the anchor would dig in enough to hold us in place. There wasn’t much maneuvering room, and lots of hard bits around the perimeter. My brain was in “yikes” mode, imagining all kinds of horrible scenarios of how to get out of this bay without an engine, and how to get to the largest nearby community. [Ketchikan @ 58 miles or Craig @ 66 miles- both requiring careful full time navigation.]

Fortunately, Bill is a problem solver, and he doesn’t go into panic mode. He sits down to piece the puzzle together. It was evening, And the engine room was hot.  Bill found oil in the bilge but no apparent cause upon quick glance. The engine was too hot to safely explore the source of the oil leak in such close quarters as our engine room. So after shutting down the maintenance bilge pump [to keep the oil contained in the bilge] we decided to have dinner and address the issues in the morning after everything cooled down.

The next day, under investigation, Bill discovered an obscured, unused, redundant oil filler neck and elbow mounted at the top of the oil pan had fallen off. [Later to be discovered under the black oil in the bilge…] The 1 inch mounting hole is above the oil line, but would allow the crankcase pressure to vent. And since our last 30 minutes coming into this anchorage from Dixon Entrance we are rolling in the ocean swell as we traversed over the shallower shelf, it must have helped splash oil out the new hole… into the deep bilge [~3 quarts in the bilge out of 8 in the oil pan...] Otherwise, the bulk of the oil would have remained in the pan with just a loss of oil pressure…

The 1”  hole exposed in the oil pan…

The fix [from our collection of various rubber plugs…]

Whew. The engine hadn’t blown-up.

As you already know, Denali Rose is chock a block full of extra fluids, filters, and parts, and he had Big Red up and running within the day. [With an earlier than scheduled oil change to boot.] Whew! Worst case scenarios discarded, and anxiety level back to normal. I couldn’t live this lifestyle without Bill as knowledgeable, calm, and competent as he is.

Just in case you were wondering where the bilge oil went; our oil change transfer pump- in addition to permanent lines plumbed to both the main and generator engines- also has a long hose for sucking oil/fuel from anywhere it can reach- including the bilge. We pumped the oil and water mix in the bilge into empty oil containers for future disposal at a harbor recycling facility. And  Denali Rose carries a full complement of “oil diapers”  (and other absorbers.) Lay them down and they soak up the oil/fuel, keeping it contained onboard. (Remember Bill killed the maintenance bilge pump the night before as a precaution- despite the fact that the bilge maintenance pump solid state switch will not activate with oil or fuel; only water; another safeguard against inadvertently pumping oily waste overboard. )

If troubles run in threes, we’re done now. First the new battery issue in June, then the generator overheating, and now the engine oil leaking [dump]. I’m glad that’s over with.

Normally, we don’t anchor where the depth gets so skinny at low tide, that’s 6.5 ft under the keel, so in reality, with the depth of the keel, the water depth is about 13 ft. Still a bit shallow, but this is a very protected bay, and no inclement weather is expected. 

We had visitors one morning walking the edge of the rocks.

A doe and her fawn walked along the waters edge, they didn’t appear to be fleeing anything, or searching for something to eat. After a bit, they disappeared into the foliage. 

Gus likes to keep an eye on things, and make sure all is in its proper place.

As always, we enjoy hearing from you, either here in comments or on our Facebook Denali Rose Sailboat page.