2026-06-01 Port Stewart/Naha Trip

I am always watching the weather, looking for at least 2 - 3 days of little to no rain and little to no wind. It's hard to find those kinds of days in this country. If I see them then I look at my calendar to see if I have any commitments here in town that would prevent me from heading out on the water. Sometimes I have meetings that I can attend remotely since I now have WiFi on board.

The weather forecasts for Monday & Tuesday June 1st & 2nd were very good. The only minor downside was that there was a heat advisory. We don't see that very often around here. I just added a couple more t-shirts and a pair of shorts to my duffel bag.

My companion for this trip was my cat Luna. She screams bloody Mary when I put her in her carrier to make the trip from home to the boat. But then, many times while we are out on the trip she climbs right back in the carrier and hangs out there. Go figure!

She does pretty well on the boat. As soon as I start the engines, which is a pretty loud process, she runs and hides and I don't see her again until I stop the engines.

Here is a map from my Garmin InReach that shows my track for the entire trip.

The area circled in blue near the top is the "nook" in Port Stewart, which is my preferred anchorage spot in that area. The area marked with an X is the Naha USFS dock. I stopped there for a few hours on the way home.

Here is a more detailed map of the "nook" in Port Stewart.

The spot marked with an X is where I dropped anchor. There are many other spots in Port Stewart where it is shallow enough to anchor, but this "nook" is the most protected if the wind comes up. As you can see from the map there are some obstacles to be avoided on the approach to the anchoring spot. I have been here many times so it is not difficult to thread my way through them to get to the nook.

The run out there was mostly uneventful. Sometimes there is sub testing going on by the US Navy in this area. If that is the case then I have to take a slightly different route to get to Port Stewart. But there was no sub testing going on that day so I could take a direct route across Western Behm Canal.

On the way in to the anchoring spot there was a charter fishing boat anchored out in front. It appeared that he was just hanging out enjoying the nice weather. We waved in acknowledgement as I slowly passed him on my way in.

By about 10:30 AM I was securely anchored in about 40' of water with no issues. There was no one else in there and no one came in while I was there.

I deployed the raft and got the obligatory shots of Faraway at anchor.

I have recently had the anchor chain and rope replaced as well as the gypsy on the anchor winch and it has been working so much better. Before that the chain would pop off the gypsy multiple times when I was pulling the anchor, which was a real pain.

It did indeed get pretty warm in the cabin that afternoon. My thermometer was sitting in the sun on my counter. 104 F!

I opened most of the windows and switched to my shorts. I would have opened the doors to let some air flow through but since I had Luna on board I was worried about her getting out onto the deck.

I have heard that cats like to be very warm, but I've never seen her lay like this at home. I think she was feeling the heat as well.

My boat was built in Georgia and one of the options they offer is air conditioning, but of course I did not get that option. I took possession in July of 2007 and in all my trips since then I can only recall a very few times where I could have used AC.

Here's another video of the area that I took later in the day. This time of year, it is light most of the time and never really gets very dark.

In the early afternoon I pulled down my 2 crab pots and baited them. I have had mediocre success with crabs in here but it's always fun to try.

I set them from the raft, but I am currently dealing with a problem with the Torqeedo motor that I use on the raft. I typically recharge the battery when I am running back home from a trip. But on my last trip I noticed that it was not charging. I got out my rarely used multimeter and with some help from Youtube figured out how to check the charger. It seems the charger has failed. So, I could use the motor to set and pull the pots but I just had to go very slowly.

I called Torqeedo customer support and discovered that a new battery costs $1200 and they ship from Germany. But that doesn't really matter because they don't have any in stock even if I wanted to order one. Ugh! It's always something with boats. Fortunately a new charger was only about $140.

I never get bored when I am out on the boat, and now that I have WiFi I have even more options. I spent most of the afternoon and evening working on my various projects such as learning to speak Tagalog and learning to play the piano. I have a portable electronic keyboard that I brought with me so that I could continue my piano learning journey.

Here's a short video that I took a little later in the day.

Luna and I had a pleasant but somewhat restless night. It was dead calm so I didn't have to worry about the anchor dragging, so that was not the issue. The problam was that I sleep on the couch, which is a pretty narrow single bed. Of course, I am in a sleeping bag. I tend to move around a lot during the night, including getting up multiple times to answer the call of nature and to check the GPS for our position and depth. Luna tends to want to snuggle up very close to me and she gets very disturbed when I move around, which is even more difficult in a single bed and in a sleeping bag. But we made it through the night and were up early at about 5:30 AM.

I always run the generator for about an hour first thing in the morning. I just want to make sure the batteries are fully charged and I also run the hot water heater, so that I have hot water to wash dishes.

Once breakfast was done and the dishes were cleaned up, I went out in the raft and pulled the crab pots, one at a time. The first pot had 6 crabs in it and 3 were legal sized males. The second pot had 4 crabs in it and 2 were legal males. So, I ended up with 5 crabs to take home. I filled up my cooler with sea water and put them in there. During the day and on the trip back home I drained the water a few times and put in new water so that they would stay alive. I have read that crabs need to be cooked within a fairly short time after they are butchered, so I try to keep them alive and healthy in the cooler as it would be many hours before I was able to cook them.

My plan for the day was to pull anchor and depart the cove by around 10 AM and head for the USFS dock at the Naha and to have my lunch there.

In the summer I almost always pilot from the flybridge. I had the flybridge enclosure built so that the side panels can be opened for ventilation when needed. With so much clear vinyl up there it sort of turns into a sauna when it is sunny. It is not often that I need to open a side panel but today was such a day.

I also slathered on some sun block to prevent sunburn on my arms, which I rarely do. But then I thought, I've had that sun block for quite a long time. I checked the expiration date, and it was back in 2024. So, I'm not sure how effective the sun block was.

As expected, I arrived at the Naha Bay area just before lunchtime. Here is a map snippet that shows more detail of the Naha USFS dock area. The area marked with an X is where the dock is. On the left as you enter you pass the very small village of Loring. There are about a dozen buildings, most of them either abandoned entirely or only used occasionally in the summer. There is a public use dock there as well.

Here is the obligatory shot of Faraway at the dock.

This dock was just completely rebuilt last summer, so it is in very good shape now.

As expected, as soon as I shut down the engines Luna emerged from her hidey hole. She likes to sit on the back of the couch cushions.

After lunch I took a short walk up the trail.

There is a big message board at the head of the trail with a map of the trail and other information. There is supposed to be a log book there so that hikers can log their presence and make comments about the trail. There was no such log book there this day.

This trail sign has been here since I first walked this trail in 1978. When they renovated the trail last summer they left the original trail sign and I'm glad they did.

The skunk cabbage is out in full bloom at this time of the year. It gets just huge!

The poor skunk cabbage, the bears dig up the roots and eat them and the deer nibble on the leaves. Fortunately there is so much of it around I don't think it is in any danger of disappearing.

We are not alone! Multiple piles of bear "scat" on the trail, some of it very fresh.

It has always been said that there are no brown bears on our island. But recently I saw a post on Facebook with some photos that purported to show a brown bear nearby. I don't recall the exact location but it was on our island. I don't yet know if that was true or just a doctored photo.

I walked up to the picnic shelter where we have had so many family gatherings over the years. It is a bit sad to be here alone with no family anymore. Of course, I do have family, they are just not here with me most of time. But I have the memories, and the photos.

I took a short video of the lagoon running out into the salt water here.

Here;s a shot of Roosevelt Lagoon. The Naha River runs into this lagoon and then this connects to the salt water.

Unfortunately it was time to head back to the boat and then eventually to head back to town. All good trips, and bad ones too, eventually come to an end.

I pulled away from the dock at about 2:15 PM and headed back to town. When I got to town I stopped in at the Petro Marine dock to pay my dues for enjoying my boat so much. Fuel was at $5.40 per gallon now.

I got back in my slip at about 5:30 PM with the help of a friend who happened to be nearby. When coming into the slip alone it is always nice to have someone there on the dock to help grab my lines as I come in.

I logged just a hair over 60 nm for this trip.