Here’s an attempt at a brief trip report and some lessons learned. As I previously mentioned, we drove down from Eagle River to Homer on Memorial day, against the tide of traffic, but with 3 kids and a dog, needed a few bladder breaks so ended up with a solid 6 hour drive. We got the boat into water around 4pm. The wind had kicked up pretty good, but the water didn’t look that bad. My wife was concerned when folks were wondering if we were going out and they were saying it was pretty rough. We had a pretty short run to Halibut cove, and I figured since we wouldn’t be sloshing around fishing it should be ok. The wind was coming out of the West, or the mouth of the bay, so you’re protected leaving port, but once you get past the spit, the seas were 2-4’, but mostly 2-3’. I think that’s the first time I’ve run with following seas, and the boat handled it just fine. I can’t say for sure how fast we were running, maybe 17 knots, I was just concentrating on a smooth ride, which it felt like to me. On the occasional confused wave the boat would wallow a touch, but all in all it handled it like a champ. Once we rounded the corner and got out of the wind the water laid right down.
I didn’t bother reading the paperwork from the state park that mentioned only entering the lagoon at high tide until shortly before departing, and figured with our shallow draft we’d be fine. High tide that night was 8pm, and we got to the mouth of the lagoon around 5pm. My transducer is mounted too close to the prop so only reads when it feels like it, and not in shallow water at low speed. I followed what appeared to be the channel from the gps, and made it in fine. I figured what was the big deal, an attitude that got me a bit later in the trip.
We unloaded the boat up the very nice public dock.
There are two public use cabins, a campground and ranger/volunteer station accessed by the dock. We were staying at the east end cabin, for a public use cabin it’s pretty big, an over/under bunk and a larger single bunk, nice table and plenty of windows. Great fire ring and benches to enjoy a campfire in the evening.
The party in the other cabin took a water taxi and brought their kayak, so we basically had the dock to ourselves.
After a long drive, boat ride and a nice dinner we crashed out early.
The next day we took the trail to China Poot Lake and slightly past the lake to this overlook of Poot peak.
From the Lagoon the peak looks pretty close, but we were about 3 miles back at this overlook. The volunteers worked hard to cut all the beetle killed spruce that the wind had blown down over the trails last winter. Some spots of the trail were soupy, but it was mostly in great shape. There was a pretty good amount of snow up the draw we hiked to the overlook, but it was well packed so no postholing.
I'm not quite sure why, but my wife just isn't so keen on being out in salt water in a small boat. I did find a way to slightly ease her worries of something happening to me and he being stranded. I had her drive us out the next day, going over everything to power up the electronics, how the dual batteries work, vhf, gps, et al. She's a great driver and just needed some tips on slowly transitioning the power.
We took the boat out around high tide to some underwater pinnacles that are to the south of Halibut cove and slightly before the entrance to the lagoon. We hooked and released two small ling cod, and my youngest boy left his bait rig down long enough to snag an old fishing line with a 2 ½# cannon ball sinker, he was pretty stoked. I was informed a few members of the family had had enough fishing, so we headed back to port and decided to hike to China Poot Bay. My daughter wanted to drive back so I gave the go ahead. We were cruising along fine when all of a sudden the power cut out. I thought we lost electrical power, shutdown and restarted the engine. We got up on plane then lost power again. I went back to the splashwell and squeezed the prime bulb until the line was full. Long story short my fuel setup is a filter/separator that has two feeds, one line to the main tank, one line with a quick disconnect to run portable tanks. There is a valve on the line to the main tank to isolate it when running on portables. What I’d been warned about with this setup is the quick connects can cause problems. When the engine was drawing more than 6gpm, it would put just enough suction on the quick connect to let a bit of air in the line and kill the fuel draw from the main tank. The quick fix was bending the line over and squeezing with vice grips, the real fix is an additional shutoff valve I got from the gear shed at the end of the trip.
Ayhow, it seemed like at 4 ½ mile rt the hike should have been no big deal, but we didn’t bring enough water and were a bit tired from the hike the day before. The view of bay is awesome, and the kids had fun coming the beach and skipping rocks.
We drug ourselves back, fired up the faithful colman stove and started a campfire. Songs, skits and marsh mellows always make for a good time. We slept well that night.
The next morning was our last in the cabin, and while cleaning up and talking to the folks in the overlook cabin they mentioned they were leaving a day early and we were welcome to use it for the night. So much for carting all our gear back to the boat. We ran over the halibut cove to check it out. Halibut cove is mostly private homes/cabins, a restaurant, art gallery and some other store, but the only place with a sign to figure it out is the restaurant, which wasn’t open yet. The channel through the cove gets real shallow, which is noted with red lines on the gps, which I ignored and was rewared with getting stuck in the muck and taking some paint off my new prop. I tried to pole us off, but all the pole did was sink into the muck. As the tide was going out, but fortunately not ripping out, I raised the main, fired up the kicker and put it in reverse. Fortunately the ancient 8horse e-rude is a faithful little motor and did the trick. We decided to run up the head of the bay to check out another lagoon. After running ~ ½ hour to the lagoon, I could tell it had a shallow entrance and after the prop polishing figured I’d best avoid it.
We ran back to the halibut cove lagoon, and I thought I had the channel figured out. I was chatting with my wife, clipping along at 20 knots, and decided to cut slightly closer to shore, which resulted in grinding to a halt and looking back to see my main being raised up by the impact. I quickly raised the main, dropped the kicker (this drill was getting sadly familiar) and motored us into the channel. The tide was coming out pretty well, and looking at shore I doubt we were making 1 knot. As we got further up the narrow channel it looked like we were deep enough, and the kicker wasn’t getting us anywhere, so we dropped the main and followed our previous line back with no more issues, other then some vibration from a tweaked prop. Changing a prop at the dock isn’t a big deal, and I discovered my kicker mount makes a great swim step, and the kicker a handy seat.
We tried trolling a little bit that evening for king salmon, but the wind had picked up and the boat was just getting blown around, and the boys a bit confused with how a planer setup works.
While the overlook cabin is a bit weather worn, you can’t beat the view from the bench on the tip of the peninsula.
We packed up and headed out at high tide.
I believe this is looking back at Halibut cove.
A great trip and great weather. Clear the whole week, glass calm water with some wind kicking up around noon then settling down around 10-11pm. It doesn't get dark this time of year. A bit cool in the mornings and evenings. I managed a mild sunburn from the sunny hikes. I imagine we'll head back down next year around the same time, and hopefully make it to the boat show for a day or two.
On the list of items to address, relocate transducer, add valve to portable tank line, and repair the spray rails. Some ambitious docking has resulted in some damage to the spray rails. I’m thinking I’ll add some UHMW to them for a maintenance free approach after I patch up the dings. Oh yeah, while gassing up on the way home a guy filling up a Seasport came over and we started chatting. Turns out he has a widebody he had Renn build him in 93. He said he loves the boat for nice fuel friendly fishing trips. He did say that the boat is starting to show some wear and tear and you need to be on top of maintenance. He didn’t bed his downrigger mounts and water had gotten under them and then into the glass and has caused some delamination. He also said that sun is rough on the boats and they are best stored under wraps.
So while the marine ply epoxy glass construction is good, it perhaps isn’t as robust as first thought, and you definitely need to be on top of maintaining it.
