Ginny and I have been happily married for 50 years , have 2 sons and 6 grandchildren. We have been avid boaters since the mid 1970's. We have sailed in various parts of the world making 'bareboat' charter trips in the Washington and Canadian San Juans and Gulf Islands, Maine,the British Virgins, South Pacific's Moorea and Tuamoto's and New Zealand. We owned and raced a J-24, Laser, and cruised a Newport 30 before buying a long range trawler in 2003 and cruising the waters of the Pacific Northwest and the 'Inside Passage' of British Columbia to SE Alaska for the last 10 years. After first owning a 2000 Selene 47, and 2002 Selene 50 (both named 'Ina Marie', we now, in the 'bell lap' of our boating days, own, operate and thoroughly enjoy 'Ginny C' , our 2007 Selene 42.
JULY 27 TO August 1: KETCHIKAN to CRAIG, ‘Never in a Thousand Years’
JULY 27 TO August 1: KETCHIKAN to CRAIG, ‘Never in a Thousand Years’
For the entire next week weather is predicted clear with temps in hi 70's and low 80's. Never in 1,000 years would I have expected this!!!!!
Tuesday, July 23 to Friday, July 26, 2013, caching up in Ketchikan
Our guests for the next 12 days, Dave and Stephanie D’Alessandro from Ft. Lauderdale arrive on Friday from Seattle. In hindsight we are glad to have had the unanticipated 3 extra days here to get caught up on laundry,fuel, provisioning and routine maintenance before their arrival.
Tuesday it rained hard all day. We went into town and had lunch on Tuesday watching 6,000 passengers off 3 huge cruise ships mill around and thru all the tourist trap gift shops along the waterfront. It reminded us of St Thomas and St Martin on our April Cruise....same exact vendors/stores with same names, many supposedly owned by the Cruise ship lines. Wednesday and Thursday are spent on the above stated chores. Our guests arrive midday Friday missing one bag and pretty well jet lagged so we have lunch, do the safety and systems orientation and relax while I updated this blog. The missing bag arrives about 5 pm off the next flight in from Seattle. We went out to dinner at the Bar Harbor Grill and then off to an early bed time. Weather is clear and predicted to stay that way for next several days
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Conditions are right for rounding Cape Chacon on Sunday, one of three places we will face the open ocean on this extended trip up the inside passage. So we are up and out of Ketchikan by mid morning for our 35km run into Gardner Bay on the SE side of Prince of Wales Island, just 8km from rounding the cape. We arrive mid afternoon and share this pretty cove with 5 other big Purse Seiners. The weather is clearing up tremendously and it is actually getting warm-no hot-High 70’s. Just as we are arriving at the entrance to the bay, we spot a huge Humpback Whale. We slow down and watch him for a bit. He roles twice within 70 yards of the boat before he dives and is gone. What a way to end our first day out of Ketchikan!!!
We are up and off the anchor at 5:15 to make our rounding of Cape Chacon. We do not want to go when wind direction is against tide direction. Plus winds usually calm down or die overnight, seas calm and then both build back up mid to late afternoon. There is not a cloud in the sky and we are in SE Alaska the largest rain forest area in the US if not on earth. As we round the Cape and transit about 15 miles of Dixon Entrance seas build to a long 5 foot swell with no wind chop on top of them which makes the trip very easy. We are in these seas for only about 1.5 hours and we head north out of the swell into Eureka passage for a smooth trip the balance of our 45plus km day as we cruise into Kassa Inlet for the night. We play along with another whale for about 45 minutes just south of Kassa Narrows This is a beautiful big safe bay and we share it with only one other boat. We drop the Tender and Dave and I set a prawn trap a mile away in a 280 foot hole we spotted on our charts on the way in. Ginny and Steph hit the Kayaks. Salmon are jumping all around us --have been all day--so we troll back to the boat. Dave has the rod and hooks a nice small yellow eye, but no Salmon. It is 80 degrees and nasty deer flies come and go. Dave and i take a quick dip in the chilly 63 degree water and take an outside shower,before settling down to a great dinner and quiet evening. We play a few hands of Pitch and it is off to bed.
We are up early heading out at 6am to pull the prawn trap and proceed on to Hydaburg, an Alaska Native village with a famous totem park and carving facility and then heading on to Port Refugio Bay for the night. It is another jackpot day, no clouds ,temp in high 70’s, low 80’s. The prawn traps yield 88 huge prawns and we arrive in Hydaburg to visit with the carvers and take some pictures of original and restored totems. The salmon are swarming at the mouth of a small stream in the village. we watch the village boys snag salmon out of the stream on our way to visit the carvers.
We just missed a totem raising by two days. There was a huge 3 tribe celebration and Potlatch feast of Salmon and deer and other native foods. Darn!! We leave Hydaburg in time to reach Tlevak Narrows at slack water tide change in order to make a safe transit through this tricky area. As we exit Tlevak we spot 4 more whales.
This is a short 14 mile day from Port Refugio on into Craig for a day layover. Port refugio is a bomb proof anchorage about 3 miles from Waterfall Lodge, a Mercedes grade fishing resort set up in a restored fishing cannery. Gorgeous spot!! Willamette used to entertain customers here in the good old days. We pull our first successful crab catch- 3 keepers- just fair size from this anchorage. Black Bears are usually on the beach meadows here but we do not see any. We wait for some early morning fog to burn off to another glorious cloudless day, exit the cove and slow down to salmon fish for an hour at Port Estrella point. We pick up a nice ‘pink’ or ‘humpy’ salmon in about 10 minutes but nothing after that. The lodge guides and commercial seiners are here in droves, so we get one of the last spots on the docks in Craig’s south harbor. Dave cleans the fish and I cook the crab while Ginny, Steph, and Dave scout this interesting fishing village. We cap the day off with an incredible dinner at Stevens Point Fishing Lodge, just a 10 minute walk from our slip.
Today, will be spent like most layovers, enjoying Craig, buying fresh produce, etc. Showers for all as there is good water here to top up our tanks before we leave. As I write this I am sitting at Pac Air’s float plane docks waiting for its 1pm flight from Ketchikan. With the help of a local outboard dealor here I have arrange for a new out board start key to be flown in from Ketchikan. We havea spare, but we lost one two days ago and we are ‘up the creek’ if we lose the spare, so we arranged for this ‘air freight’ in about 10 minutes. It is amazing how these people up here are so helpful and ‘can do’, and self sufficient. No Honda dealer here, so its competitor, Yamaha dealer, spent his time and effort to help me get this done even tho he knew there was not a dime in it for him and he would never see me again. Makes me grimace when I think of the ‘what are you going to do for me’ attitude of so much of our country today. As soon as the flight comes in I will be off to the library to hopefully get this posted.
Next update will be in Sitka about 10 days away if all goes OK.
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