The 20th was the eighth fair day we had had successively; a circumstance, I believe, very uncommon in this place, especially at this season of the year.  This fair weather gave us an opportunity to complete our wood and water, to overhaul the rigging, caulk the ship, and put her in a condition for sea.  Fair weather was, however, now at an end; for it began to rain this evening, and continued without intermission till noon the next day, when we cast off the shore fasts, hove the ship out of the creek to her anchor, and steadied her with an hawser to the shore.

On the 27th, hazy weather, with showers of rain.  In the morning I set out, accompanied by Mr Pickersgill and the two Mr Forsters, to explore the arm or inlet I discovered the day I returned from the head of the bay.  After rowing about two leagues up it, or rather down, I found it to communicate with the sea, and to afford a better outlet for ships bound to the north than the one I came in by.  After making this discovery, and refreshing ourselves on broiled fish and wild fowl, we set out for the ship, and got on board at eleven o’clock at night, leaving two arms we had discovered, and which ran into the east, unexplored.  In this expedition we shot forty-four birds, sea-pies, ducks, &c., without going one foot out of our way, or causing any other delay than picking them up.

Having got the tents, and every other article on board on the 28th, we only now waited for a wind to carry us out of the harbour, and through New Passage, the way I proposed to go to sea.  Every thing being removed from the shore, I set fire to the top-wood, &c., in order to dry a piece of the ground we had occupied, which, next morning, I dug up, and sowed with several sorts of garden seeds.  The soil was such as did not promise success to the planter; it was, however, the best we could find.  At two o clock in the afternoon, we weighed with a light breeze at S.W., and stood up the bay for the New Passage.  Soon after we had got through, between the east end of Indian Island and the west end of Long Island, it fell calm, which obliged us to anchor in forty-three fathom water, under the north side of the latter island.

In the morning of the 30th we weighed again with a light breeze at west, which, together with all our boats a-head towing, was hardly sufficient to stem the current.  For, after struggling till six o’clock in the evening, and not getting more than five miles from our last anchoring-place, we anchored under the north side of Long Island, not more than one hundred yards from the shore, to which we fastened a hawser.

1773 May