After a night in the Friday Harbor marina we sailed north the Stuart Island, anchoring for the night in Reid Harbor and taking a short hike to the small school that serves the island (which has no public power or any other utilities). The next morning, before Satomi and Julian were out of bed I weighed anchor and motored around to the north side of the Island, to a place called Prevost Harbor. It was there that I made my mistake and met up with the rock.

What happened was just a dumb error -- I had paid attention to the warnings (in a cruising guide) of two shoals inside the harbor entrance. Fixating on those, I failed to note that the navigation chart (the proper source of information) also noted a shoal just outside the harbor, on the northwestern side. It was nearing low tide (a minus tide, in fact) and this shoal was lurking some two to six feet below the surface. Akari draws six feet, and by the time I saw four feet on the depth sounder it was too late, and the keel hit something hard, stopping the boat in its tracks with a very loud "bang" and a horrible lurch that probably threw Julian and Satomi right out of bed. I backed away, then turned to escape and "bang", struck another rock. This impact was less severe, but threw Julian, who had tried come up the companionway ladder in his pajamas, into the floor. He cried, Satomi took him to the front of the boat (she also hurt herself, scraping her leg on something in the rush to help Julian) while I got us into the harbor.

The rest of the day was better, other than my constant worry about the condition of the keel and hull. We paddled the dinghy to an exposed island of low rock and searched for oysters (Satomi cooked up a few) and we played on the beach for a bit. I tried a few times to get a look at the keel through the water, but there was nothing I could see without going under. The keel bolts looked fine internally, the boat was lying normally in the water and the bilge was dry so I tried not to worry too much about it. I figured a haulout in a couple of weeks would allow any keel gouges to be repaired and all would be well.

In hindsight I should have called off the cruise immediately and asked for a haulout and inspection at Anacortes. Probably a bad decision, but the boat didn't sink that night. We returned the next day to Friday Harbor for fuel, then to Anacortes where we were given a ride home by our friend and her two boys, who had kindly volunteered to drive our van up to get us.