The west coast of Moresby Island -- stunning, with great sailing! Part 2

 [These longer posts about the West Coast of Moresby were sent using Winlink email on amateur (HAM) radio.]

Sunday Inlet, as we noted, is our pick for "Best Anchorage Ever". Drop-dead beautiful, wilderness (we were totally alone out there) inlet with excellent protection from all seas. And we had sun! Fishing for large black rockfish was too easy -- bringing up one on the line had several other following it to the surface.*
 

Sunday Inlet anchorage

 

Sunday Inlet anchorage

*Drop-dead beautiful doesn't mean it is without issues. Besides most being uncharted, most of the inlets on the west coast of Moresby (and, indeed, as we were to find out later, even on Moresby's "easy" east coast) can be subject to severe "williwaws" (downdraft katabatic winds roaring down from surrounding high mountains) during significant southerly winds. 

 

And almost no rain. 

So, we were VERY lucky on our west coast Moresby trip!

We only stayed 2 nights in Sunday Inlet. The wind forecast was for the northwesterly winds to significantly decrease, which would make sailing dead downwind difficult, especially in the ocean swells. We did not want to motor down the coast. So we left after 2 nights.

Our next sail was a fantastic downwind sail all the way down to Flamingo Inlet, with 39 of 45 nm sailed (all of the motoring was getting out and in the inlets). It was a long day of somewhat slow but easy sailing, but punctuated at the end by crazyness as we turned up into Flamingo Inlet: we were met with 25 kn winds on the beam with a little too much sail up. Not normally a problem (often one turns downwind or spills wind to get under control), but we had to fight this while sailing between rocks with swells crashing on them. Ten minutes of crazyness, then all was well.

 

                                                  Clip: Sailing down to Flamingo Inlet...

Flamingo is essentially the last inlet on the west coast before one turns up into areas east coast cruisers visit (and which we've visited 3 times previously). So the last unknown, empty anchorage. Our chosen anchorage was Sperm Bay, largely uncharted (and what is charted is incorrect, in a good way) but again, David's high-resolution satellite "chart" showed rocks and shallows. On arriving, to our dismay, there were already 3 other boats anchored! Unheard of on our west coast travels! One was Henry on SV Kelkara, so not a real surprise, and the 2 others were 2 French sailing vessels who we learned the next day (when they left) were hoping to sail UP the west coast.& Because winds were forecast to be light that night, we decided try to anchor away from the others in a less protected but spacious spot. No go. The anchor and chain were rattling and grinding on the bottom -- clearly a rocky bottom and not good. So, we went back to the main anchorage but in an area the (inaccurate) CHS charts indicated was a drying bay (i.e., no water at low tide). But the satellite charts showed a different story. We slowly nosed around and indeed found the whole bay deep enough (even at low tide) for us to anchor. It was tight but we had a snug, protected (though no winds came) spot with a muddy bottom.^

& The 2 French boats likely had a good trip up after a difficult first day, as the winds not only lightened, but then turned southerly.

^ While motoring into and around Sperm Bay, we recorded our depths, to later be corrected and placed on to a new satellite chart. 

 

Uncharted Sperm Bay

We spent a nice 2 nights in Sperm Bay, with just the 2 boats (Pelagia and Kelkara) on the second night. After this, we headed around into the east coast. We did a detour up Louscoone Inlet to the Parks Canada water buoy (a buoy normally with a fresh water hose attached) but found the buoy with no water and in very poor maintenance. Parks Canada should fix it, or at least inform boaters it is not functioning (their 2022 literature indicated it was present). We wasted about 15nm motoring there and back, and because we needed water, we had to add on a longer trip up to east coast to get water at the Parks Canada Shuttle Island/Hoya Passage water dock. (Fortunately. because all the charter boats fill up water at the Shuttle Island dock, it is in good working condition.)

We stopped for a night on the single mooring buoy at Rose Harbour. We called "Old Squaw" (named for the bird) on VHF Channel 6, and were pleased to find there was space for us for dinner at "Susan's". Indeed, Susan herself was cooking as Frances was off on a 10-day break. (Susan has technically "retired", and Frances does the dinners.) We've had dinner at Susan's the previous 3 visits, and this 4th dinner was excellent as always. A real treat for us. [New for these dinners is a new large separate "cook house" finished approximately in 2020 for cooking and dining. Quite lovely.] 

Dinner in the new "cook house" at Rose Harbour

Our west coast adventure was finished.% We were much earlier than expected (due mostly to being able to sail almost all of Moresby's west coast), so we had extra time for the east coast. Besides, we had to go 50 nm north to get water....

% We were very lucky with weather on the West coast. We only had northwest winds, nothing too strong (we did wait out a gale for an extra night in Security Cove), and NO southerly winds or williwaws. But as it turned out later, we could not totally escape the williwaws (Anna Inlet...).