....--- Kailspell Island & Indian Creek Bay ---
......................................--- July 20 - 21, 2009 ---
20 JUL 09 -- Night's Anchorage -- Southwest side Kailspell Island
( N. ??o ??.???' -- W. ???.o ??.???')
Sailed/floated about 2 miles -- motored about 10-12 miles
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With the morning came what would be another good day on the water, but first came a set-back that almost brought an end to our time on the water. After breakfast I was getting ready to hoist the sails and was lowering the main boom with the topping lift. When I undid the halyard to it I pulled it a little higher and the gooseneck bracket on the mast fell off the mast and the mast end of the boom went down to the deck.
Before the trip and right before I installed the new bimini I had raised the gooseneck a few inches to help with the boom/bimini clearance. When I drilled out the old rivets that held the gooseneck bracket to the mast they seemed to be aluminum and I reinstalled it with 3/16 inch aluminum rivets. Well they had failed one by one and I hadn't noticed until the last one or two gave away on this morning.
I was first at a loss as to what I might do. I got my local brochure guide to Priest Lake and found the number for the Marina just up the lake and called them on the cell phone to see if they had rivets and a rivet gun. They didn't and calls to a couple other marinas that we could motor too resulted in the same results.
I had a bag with odds and ends screws, bolts, nuts, and washers in the tool box. I was carrying a lot more tools and such, even a screw gun with a charger for the battery and bits this time after getting caught without much on our first trip to Colorado.
I found some 3/16th inch screws and nuts left over from the bimini install and figured I could use them.
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In the picture the bottom arrows point to where the gooseneck had been. The top arrows point to where I used the 3/16th inch screws to replace the rivets that had sheared off. I was able to put screws in the holes by the track and attach nuts to them after some repeated tries at getting the nuts on. The holes further back presented a problem as I couldn't get nuts on those screws. I put screws in those holes so that they would located the bracket in such a way that it wouldn't be able to pivot up and down on the front screws. To keep the screws in I put a nut on their heads and put a hose clamp (actually two connected) over the nuts and around the mast. I also put nuts on the heads of the screws with nuts just to make the hose clamp work better. The hose clamps besides holding the back screws in also...............
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.........helped to hold the bracket to the mast. I worried a little about this fix, but it worked great for the rest of the trip on Priest and later on Kootenay Lake in B.C. Canada. After getting home I replaced the back screws with no nuts with much stronger steel rivets before the next trip, but I worry about corrosion and rust with them over time. I'll probably put an inspection hole in the mast so that I can put nuts on the back ones also and the screws and nuts will be stainless.
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With the gooseneck fixed we motored north out of Cavanaugh Bay as there was no wind and we wanted to get in the lake proper and see if we could sail down to the the very south end of the lake and the small town of Coolin there. Above is the Blue Diamond Marina which was near where we had anchored the night before and is where I made my first call trying to find rivets and a rivet gun.
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Tied to the outside dock of the marina along with a few other boats was a MacGregor 26X.
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After rounding the north end of the bay and the point where we once again joined the main lake we turned the outboard off and started drifting with just the slightest hint of wind every now and then. While we were drifting along this sailboat motored by with a number of people on board.
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Here was a futile attempt to catch some wind. We did manage to make a couple miles in this fashion before giving up and going back on the outboard for the last couple miles to Coolin. There really wasn't much to see at Coolin, but now we had at least gone from one end of Priest to the other including the length of Upper Priest also. Normally we would have probably just floated around for the day and finally anchored, but we wanted to take out the next day and we still had to go back about 12 miles north to Grandview to pick up our part that had finally arrived from Blue Water Yachts. This meant going back on the outboard and heading back up the west side of the lake. We set a course for the west side of Kailspell Island where the fishing map we had suggested that there might be shallow water. There are a couple larger islands in that part of the lake that have campsites on them that seem to be popular with power boaters who can't stay on their boats at night as easily as we can with the Mac.
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We found a really nice anchorage spot and put the Bruce down on the bottom off the bow and then I took a stern line ashore. I had read about bridles that could be used with a shore line so that you didn't have to go back ashore to untie the shore line. I wasn't sure how they were made, but came up with an idea and wanted to try it out. Above the white line is the old anchor line that we were now using as a shore line and the yellow poly line is a trip line that goes to the bridle around......
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..........the tree and is used to trip the bridle free so that you can pull the shore line and the trip line back to the boat without going ashore. It worked great and we used it a couple more times on the trip when I felt comfortable doing this. I have a more detailed description of how I made it and how it works on the site (HERE). I must stress that this may or may not be how others do this and only use this idea if you have tested it and feel comfortable with it. It takes a minute or two for it to release, so if there is an emergency where you need to get off the stern line like "right now" be sure you can disconnect from it quickly at the boat end and return for it later.
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Here you can see the stern line (top arrow) that is pretty taut and the trip line (bottom arrow) that is floating on the water.
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While on shore attaching the stern line I was rewarded with a nice sky above and beyond the Kera Jane and.............
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...........this picture is for Ruth's two daughter's Kera and Jane to prove to them that yes their names really are what we named our Mac.
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For part of dinner we re-heated the chicken from Cavanaugh's and it was great.
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Another nice sunset on our second to last night on the lake and ..........
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..........a final picture with Ruth's pop-top cover on just before we turned in for the day. This was summer in the north and the days were longer than what we were use to in southeast Utah.
21 JUL 09 -- Night's Anchorage -- Sided bay off Indian Creek Bay
( N. ??o ??.???' -- W. ???.o ??.???')
Sailed about 6 miles -- motored about 6 miles
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In the morning we were visited by a number of dragonflies that didn't seem to be particularly modest while mating in front of us. So if this kind of thing bothers you skip the next few picture, but for those of you who are interested here is how dragonflies mate in case you didn't already know.
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As you look at these pictures you will see that the female in this case is in almost total control of the situation. Above she takes her tail or whatever it is called and clamps the male right behind his head.
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Then she lifts the poor guy up and drags him towards him. This must not be too exciting for him as he is kind of limp here.
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As she brings him into position, kind of like a tanker aircraft hooking onto a fighter plane for refueling, he starts to rotate the required body part into position.
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And finally contact is made. Of course at this point I quit taking pictures and we of course diverted our eyes.
O.K., back to sailing or trying to.
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After getting off anchor and tripping the shore line without going ashore we tried sailing for an hour or so, but with no wind it was pointless. We fired up the outboard and headed north towards Grandview Resort to pick up our part we had ordered. On the way the wind picked back up or in this case finally started.
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We flew the Genoa and after reaching the area of Grandview Resort sailed around that area for an hour or so, but chickened out on trying to dock under sail. For the first time Ruth manned the outboard and tiller while we docked and did a great job. This was much easier as all I had to do was jump on the dock and tie up the Kera Jane. We went ashore and picked up the turnbuckle and since they wouldn't take anything for their trouble we had a drink at the bar. Nice place and nice people.
We returned to the boat and backed away from the dock on the outboard without difficulty and raised the sails again and headed.....
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....towards Indian Creek Bay and the ramp there at the State Park where we wanted to take out the next morning.
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We sailed about 3 miles before the winds died again and.......
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........ then went on the motor for the rest of the way in. We were hoping to anchor just south of the ramp, but the bottom dropped away too fast in that area and we had to give up. There is a long spit of land that sticks out into the bay west of the State Park and we headed for the inlet that is behind it with shallow water there. What we didn't like was that this.....
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.....small bay off of Indian Creek Bay was lined with.............
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........... with homes almost all the way around it. We went to the very end of the bay into shallow water as you can see in the picture and found a spot where we weren't right in front of someone's house. We anchored with no shore line of course and had our final dinner on Priest Lake and had another good night's sleep.
The next day it would be take out and head for Canada.
