Sh!t hits fan Bay

As I´m writing this it is 4:30 on 8/22. We are at 71 deg. 05.24N 96 deg. 38.90W motoring South through Peel Sound towards Cambridge Bay at 5.7 kts in calm seas and we are all safe and the boat is running properly. Now let me explain the hell we went through during the past 4 days. On 4/18 we left Bellot Strait and motored south. We anchored in a small bay in the Tasmania Islands 50 miles south of the strait to wait for the ice to clear ahead of us. That night was fine. 4/19 was a nice cloudy day but blowing 20-30kts out of the southeast, which was actually great because it cleared the ice away from the coast for us. Dodo´s Delight came in and anchored next to us on the 19th to also wait for the ice to clear. That night we had them over for drinks after dinner. As the night progressed the wind picked up and we started seeing gusts up to 40kts. We started to drag our anchor a little bit so we payed out more chain until we had all 100m out. While the Dodo´s guys were getting ready to go back to their boat around 1am our anchor chain snapped off the boat as the breeze clocked up to consistently over 40kts. We immediately threw the engine on and dove into getting safely out of the little bay and getting our emergency anchors out and assembled. Everyone worked fearlessly and tirelessly for a few hours as we got ourself out of danger. We then unsuccessfully tried to re-anchor as we kept dragging our backup anchor, so we decided to motor around for the night while the breeze died down. Only the owner of Dodo´s Delight was back aboard their boat and with the conditions as they were the 4 South African climbers ended up spending the night sleeping in our salon. After a very short few hours of sleep we went back into the bay to search for our lost anchor. With Hans at the helm we dragged an anchor back and forth trying to hook the chain. All the harsh forward and reversing involved in the process threw a bolt from the gear box of the engine and during the last hard reverse the drive shaft slipped in the coupling and slid out roughly 8 inches. Luckily we had the dinghy in the water and the wind was light when this happened and we were able to quickly tie the dinghy alongside and motor ourselves out into the middle of the bay away from the lee shore that we were less than 50ft from hitting...We were then able to secure ourselves with somewhat of a tripod with our 2 safety anchors and a line to a large boulder on shore. We then set directly to work analyzing the problems with the drive shaft and trying to figure out the best method to find and recover our anchor. The 4 Dodo´s climbers; Clinton, Dave, Andrew and Steve, all jumped right in to help us (they are our new best friends). These tasks turned into over 48 straight hours of trial and error work and a massive MASSIVE amount of jury rigging. We determined what had to be done with the shaft and confirmed our theories with a satellite phone call to an Argentine mechanic, Nico, who has worked on the boat before. He was in Ushuaia which is southern Chile, the complete opposite end of the America continents. We then rigged up two pulley systems to try to get the shaft back into the proper position. For those of you who know the boat, the access to the shaft and gearbox is right in front of the fridge which is at the bottom of the steps going from the doghouse just into the galley. We had one pulley system running in under the floor and out the doghouse to a pulley on the mizzen mast and then to a winch. The other pulley system was rigged up with a line around the propeller with both ends feeding to the bow of the boat, through pulleys and back to the largest winches on the boat. Xurxo had to dive to get the line around the propeller. Even in a 7mm wetsuit, a hood, boots and gloves he said it was veryyyyyy cold. These two pulley systems allowed us to simultaneously push and pull the drive shaft to move it back into place. We also then had to replace and reposition the bolts on the collar that holds the shaft in place. In the process of all this work we lost one of the nuts for one of the bolts...we couldn´t find a replacement anywhere on the boat. What we did find was 1 very large shackle that happened to be the exact size and thread pattern of an m24 nut. In order to use this we had to cut that end off the shackle...it is currently the sole reason our boat is working. That is basically the best explanation of the engine problems and solutions that I can give because I spent most of my time working on finding the anchor. Our first attempts were made by dragging a chain and grappling hook anchor across where we thought we had lost it. Of course the bottom of the bay happened to be covered in massive amounts of huge pieces of kelp which immediately fouled the anchor and eliminated this possibility. Our next option was to hope to see the anchor or chain because the visibility in the bay was amazing...however it was still about 10-16m deep where we think we lost the anchor and chain. We attached a GoPro camera to the longest pole we had on the boat (only 4m) and stuck it down but still didn´t have a clear picture. We then went back to jury rigging and I put together what basically became an unmanned submersible to use to search the bottom for the anchor. I used a GoPro camera on a headstrap mount and strapped and duct taped it onto the bottom of a "bruce" anchor. Then using the dinghy, a GPS and a stopwatch, Hans, myself and another assistant went out and trolled just off the bottom of the bay hoping to catch a glimpse of chain. We marked waypoints and the time at every turn and had the stopwatch synced to the GoPro footage so if we saw the chain we would be able to determine which way points it was between using the time. You would think that at some point we would be able to see part of the 100m of chain we lost. I spent 2 straight days dragging an anchor around behind a dinghy for 40 minutes at a time and then going back into the boat and watching the footage. Let me tell you, kelp and a rough sandy bottom look a hell of a lot like anchor chain and every time someone thought they saw the chain 2 other people disagreed. After filming basically the entire ocean floor in this bay we still had no conclusive sightings but had dropped marks in our most likely spots, most of which formed a rough line. As tempers wore thin we started fishing for our anchor where we thought it was likely to be, again to no avail. A passing motor yacht stopped for one night somewhere in here and, with a proper drysuit and the scuba gear we had on Nordwind, one of their crew, who Laura happened to know, attempted a dive where we had the highest likely hood of anchor chain based on filming. Unfortunately the cold water froze his regulator as soon as he got to the bottom and made for an unsuccessful adventure. Coincidentally Laura met Richard when the boat he was working on was fixing their drive shaft...lol. This morning we finally finished fixing the engine but we are only using forward and only at low rpms to reduce the risk of breaking anything and hopefully avoiding having the drive shaft slide back out. We then took a few more fishing trips with an anchor and chain in hopes of recovering our anchor but were still unsuccessful. By this point we were all incredibly frustrated and both mentally and physically exhausted. We finally gave up searching for the anchor and left that godforsaken bay with Dodo´s Delight close by for potential assistance. As I said at the beginning we are now headed for Cambridge Bay. There we hope to replace the shackle holding the drive shaft collar together with a real nut and potentially get a new anchor and chain delivered. As I also mentioned at the beginning we are all ok, aside from some very sore backs, myself included, and the boat is running well. As things progress I will keep you all updated but right now it seems hopeful that we will still be able to make it all the way to Vancouver. OH and our black water tank is full and not pumping right now so sh!t really is hitting the fan...