December 30th - Saanich Inlet and Cowichan Bay (#10)

Monica and I launched NatC at the Tsartlip ramp ($14!) and went out into the inlet to drop some prawn traps. I had bought some nice large steel prawn traps earlier in the fall and it was the first test of the set. It was also the first (successful!) test of my line hauler.We dropped them in two different areas and then wen on over to Mill Bay looking for a lunch spot. Not seeing one, we carried on to Cowichan Bay where we tied up at the Government Dock and had a nice lunch at the Cowichan bay Pub. On our way back to the traps, we checked out several of the anchored empty freighters.
The prawning was pretty successful, with more than 250 prawns. The catch was pretty variable with one trap containing 133 prawns and another only 4! We were out from about 10:30 to 4:30 including our lunch break and made it a nice day on the water. The heater in NatC is very nice.
I also discovered by playing with the motor trim, that I can get almost 10 extra kph out of it by trimming the motors up (tilting the bow up a fair bit). I had to change the colorizing settings for GPSVisualiser to go from 0 to 50 kph instead of 0-40! I think we maxed out around 51 or 52 kph during the last section of the trip.

our day's track - click to enlarge

54 km