As had been our pattern so far this trip, we had absolutely no idea where we were going as we left Ganges.  But off we went.  One fun thing, as we were leaving Ganges, a seaplane took off right next to us (see pictures on the Ganges page).  After leaving Ganges, we turned left to keep Prevost Island to our right and then turned left again to go north.  Again, it was a gorgeous day.  After the first couple days of this trip, the weather has been gorgeous.  There was no current of note and no wind so we just motored along into the early afternoon.

After some research, Donna suggested that we investigate Wallace Island.  There were two notable anchorages that we could check out... Conover and Princess Coves.  Conover Cove seemed to have a sketchy shallow entrance while Princess Cove seemed more inviting.  However when we looked in at Conover, while the entrance was indeed shallow, with our 4 and a half foot draft, it was easily managed.  However, it was crowded and I decided to head further north to look in at Princess.  Of the two, Princess seemed like a better choice however because of that, I expected it to be even more crowded.  But when we arrived, we were startled to find only about five other boats parked in the cove.  This was too good to be true!  We anchored and performed our first stern tie of the trip.  I dropped the hook  and Jack rowed the dinghy to shore with a line to tie us off to a tree.  Everything seemed okay.  I would have liked a little more scope out on the anchor but it seemed okay.  Decided that I was worrying too much.

Soon we all headed off to shore for a bit of exploring.  The island was fun.  We took a trail that went along a bluff that overlooked the water all the way down to Conover Cove.  We stopped at a little beach along the way to skip rocks and also do a little rock stacking.  Spencer even made a little pyramid (see picture below).  Continuing down the trail, we came upon this group of buildings off of Conover Cove.  Apparently this was an old resort.  We discovered one building where folks on various boats that had visited the cove over the years had left driftwood markers in various shapes and sizes with their boat names, the date of their visit, their names and sometimes a fun little message.  Some of the markers were pretty old.  It was fun to read.  I was a little troubled because one, we didn't have a fun piece of wood to write on, two, we didn't have anything to write with, and three, I wasn't feeling especially energetic (couldn't understand why I was feeling so lazy).  Woulda been fun to leave a little something with Kerendi's name up there on Wallace Island.  We vowed to do it next time.

Eventually, after some back tracking, we found our way back to the boat.  The sun had passed overhead so now our anchorage was in the shadows.  It was getting to be evening.  We had dinner... played Spades and went to bed.

Sometime in the night, the wind started to pick up.  It was blowing in a southerly direction right down the cove. I got up to check on the anchor.  When I popped my head out of the companionway, even in the darkness I could immediately see that things weren't quite right.  The anchor had dragged.  Kerendi had been taking the wind broadside and this must have been too much sideways load for the anchor.  Shit!  And there was a boat right next to us!  Shit!  What to do... what to do.... I didn't want to make a lot of commotion and wake everyone up.  Was there anything quiet that I could do?  Thought I'd try to take up on the anchor.  Maybe it had caught on something on the bottom and I could just pull the bow back around to get us pointed in a better direction.  So I performed the manly feat of pulling in on the anchor chain.  However it quickly became apparent that the bow wasn't moving around.  In fact, we seemed to be drifting even closer to the boat next to us... Oy!  I kept pulling though.  Maybe there would be a miracle!  However that hope was dashed when the anchor broke the surface.  The bow was now completely free!  The boat next to us was looming ever larger as we drifted down onto them.  Now I was not only going to be waking everyone in our boat but their boat too.  We had to get outta here!  I dashed back to the back of the boat and started the engine.   Then I uncleated one end of our stern tie line and put the engine in gear.  By this time the boat was almost completely perpendicular to the boat next to us.  We were in the perfect position to T-bone them now.  I cranked the wheel hard over and hoped that we would quickly get enough way on to turn the boat before crashing into our sleeping neighbors (they may have still been sleeping but I was making quite a bit of noise so who knows).  Little bit by little bit, the bow swung around until finally it looked like we were going to miss them.  Yay!  We cleared em by a couple feet as we slid by in the darkness.  My sphincters were more than a little puckered.  I totally didn't want to deal with all the weird social issues that crashing our boat into theirs was going to precipitate.  I just wanted to go back to bed.  Anyway... Donna had been awakened and had come up topside by now.  And so had Jack.  So I had company.  But the hard part was over.  Now we just had to anchor and not drag into any other boats.  I was pretty nervous now so anchoring again was done very carefully with lots of scope.  I also drove the boat in circles watching the depth gage to make sure the bottom didn't have any surprises.  After way too much nervous motoring, I dropped the hook again and let out enough (but not too much cuz the shore was nearby) scope.  Everyone except me, went back to bed.  The wind had not died down so I stayed up as an anchor watch until I felt that all was well but finally went back to bed myself.  But it was a nervous few hours before the sun came up as I kept checking to make sure that everything was still okay.

The next morning, I popped out of the hatch and found that everything was as I had left it.  It was another lovely morning.  However I did get to see the look on the face of our neighbor of the night before as he noted that we were now out in the middle of channel and not tucked next to him.  But he never asked about it and I was ready to move on.

We went about our morning routine and at around 11:30 left the anchorage to go further north.