First Snow fall

Well, we are still in Port Chatham.  We have been here for four days and it will be five nights.  We have had one low after another pass through and according to the NOAA forecast there have been gale warnings and small craft advisories out everyday since we got here.  We were warned that Gore Point can be a bit nasty so ever since Cape Calevite we listen to local advice.  Our grib files, our only usual source of weather at sea, have been saying it is fine.  But true to form just before dawn the wind has been starting to howl.  Yesterday was the worst.  Our snubber shackle broke at about three AM so we set an anchor watch as the wind was howling in here. We were also getting some small refraction waves and we had a rocky lee shore.  We were pretty confident in our anchor but then we had been in the snubber shackle as well.  If it were not so cold, Mark would don the scuba gear and go look for it.  For two reasons, one it has a good swivel and devil's claw and second we could see where the shackle parted. But we carried spares and so this morning we re-configured it with the spares.  But not much sleep last night for either of us.  Anyway when dawn broke this morning we saw that all the mountain tops around us were white.  They were not the day before.  Looking at our weather station sure enough it dipped down to 1 degree centigrade in the pre dawn time and though it was raining on the boat it must have been snowing at slightly higher elevations.

But all things turn fine and about 11 AM the wind dropped, the harbor became glassy and the sea otters came out to play.  Pauline thinks there are several families as she thinks she sees little ones riding around with the moms.

It is calm today and we are planning to leave tomorrow but the NOAA automatic forecast station is down for maintenance today, so we don't know what the weather will be like tomorrow.

woke up to see snow on the mountain tops