PORT ANGELES TO KETCHIKAN ALASKA

Margaret and I flew to Seattle on May 16th and spent the night near the airport. On the 17th our very good friends Gary and Ruth picked us up to make the drive to the boat in Port Angeles. It was about a 2 1/2 hour drive, and we had a good time, stopping for lunch and playing tourist. We arrived at the marina and when we first walk down to the boat after being away for a while, we are always a bit anxious if everything is ok. As usual, there was nothing amiss. We spent a couple days buying groceries, mainly refrigeration items, as we had already stocked canned goods etc. prior to leaving Monterey. Our refrigerator actually pumps sea water through the system in order to cool our food. Inside the fridge and freezer are what we call holding plates. The refrigeration compressor freezes these plates, then shuts down and the plates slowly thaw out. The freezer one is frozen much "deeper" than the fridge plate. Consequently when we are gone we shut the refrigerator completely off so we can't store perishable things. We do this so that we can close the valve that is open to the ocean. The last thing you want to happen is to have salt water coming inside the boat due to a broken hose or other issue and flooding and possibly sinking the boat. The reason for the holding plate is so that when you are at anchor and don't have 120Volt electric available, you can keep food cold. Then during the day you can use the generator to produce electricity and in turn run the refrigerator. We also have an inverter where we convert 12 volt battery power to 120 volt power. This allows us to have a limited amount of 120 electricity without always running the generator. Everything on a boat is more complicated than our houses! Another example is our fresh water system. We have two tanks that each hold 130 gallons of fresh water. When we want to have running water, there is a 12 volt pump that pulls water out of the tank, sends it through two filters, then passes it over a UV light for sterilization before it comes out of a faucet! Washing dishes, brushing your teeth, washing your hands etc. this water drains overboard into the ocean. Taking a shower is another story. My brother in law describes our shower as if you are in a phone booth taking a shower! Also, the water just accumulates in the bottom of the shower, so there is a pump to pull it out of the shower and overboard. Most every pump on board we have a spare as you never know when they might not work. Then you either buy another pump or repair the old one. This is a picture of me rebuilding the shower pump as well as all the pieces inside the rebuild kit.

We also have a "water maker" where we convert salt water to fresh water. This is a osmosis process under high pressure. Without getting too technical, I'll just say we produce water that is purer than anything you can buy in a bottle. It is almost perfect water. When we run this machine it require 120 volt power, so we must run our diesel generator. We can produce about 30 gallons an hour of fresh water. Have you ever wondered how many gallons of water you use daily? Doesn't much matter at home, but on a boat it is critical, because if you're not at a dock, there is a finite amount of water before you run out! We use about 30-40 gallons a day. Some people on sailboats crossing the ocean without a water maker may use as little a 2 gallons a day.

Now you might be asking, how do the toilets work. I'll save that for a later post.

Inside passage scenery

Back to our trip. We departed Port Angeles at 0730 in the morning and crossed the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and entered into British Columbia. We pulled to a dock to clear Canadian customs and then proceeded onward. It took us 14 days to arrive in Ketchikan on June 2nd. We were stuck in one anchorage in northern British Columbia for three nights due to very high winds, up over 40 mph. In the anchorage it was quite calm and we were secure. Without detailing every bit of this trip, I will just say it was a great trip. Most of it is in the famous "Inside Passage". We never get tired of doing this as the scenery is spectacular! Some of the channels are only a 1/4 mile wide with high mountainous walls on both sides. Off these walls are usually spectacular waterfalls, especially in the spring. When we look at maps of the land, we see lakes everywhere that are overflowing from the rain and snow melt, creating these waterfalls. There are so many that after a while they seem to be the norm, rather than something special. Below are pictures from inside places we anchor. On this trip we were only at a dock 4 days. The rest of the time was spent each night in a secure anchorage.

                                     

The trip to Ketchikan was 633 miles, we ran our engines 81 hours and burned 434 gallons of diesel or about 1.45 gallons per mile. Since we haven't purchased diesel, I can't give you the cost, but it is around $4.00 per gallon.

CHUCK AND MARGARET

PS: This year we have taken quite a few videos using our I-phone and have posted them to U-tube. We think these videos give a really good feel for our adventure. If you go to:

www.youtube.com

Then type into the seach box our address:

chuckherr1

You will be taken to the videos.

MONTEREY, CA to PORT ANGELES, WA.
Chuck arranged with his friend Gary, from Seattle, to help him bring the boat from Monterey to Port Angeles, Wa. If you all recall Gary and Chuck brought the boat south to Monterey last October. The trip NORTH along the west coast is problematic. Most boaters describe it as "going uphill". The reason is that the prevailing ocean swell is north to south, the wind is north to south, and the ocean current is also north to south. It can be a very rough trip. The key to making it as pleasant as possible is to look for a weather "window" of calm wind and seas. We started watching the weather reports from the NOAA internet pages in February and March, and it was really rough. Usually the earliest you can head north is early May, ideally late May or June. On Thursday, April 19th, it became apparent that there was a good window starting on the 21st, Saturday. Sometimes these windows are only 1-3 days but if this forecast was accurate we had almost a week of good weather. A quick call to Gary, he flew into Monterey on Saturday morning. I picked him up from the airport and that evening at 5PM we departed. It is almost 800 miles to Port Angelesand our estimate was a 5 day, NON STOP trip, only going into port for fuel. This trip would be longer than the trip south since we were working "uphill" and our speed wouldn't be as good as we had going south. WELL, what a surprise but our weather reversed the normal trend. Wind, waves and swell all from the south. The wind was always less than 20mph and the seas were relatively calm. We started making really good speed. Saturday night we passed by the entrance to San Francisco. This can be exciting as the large ocean going ships are coming and going, but that night we only had one large tanker to contend with. Our only issue, which we knew in advance, was sleep. We would each sleep 2-4 hours, one person driving, one sleeping. Once into a routine this was not that difficult. On Monday morning at day break we pulled into Crescent City, Ca. where we took diesel fuel and then went right back out. Most of the time we were hugging the coast, no more than 5-10 miles out. From the Oregon border to the top corner of Washington State the coastline curves east and because we made a straight line, we were 25-35 miles offshore. We also hired a professional yacht weather router who was advising us about conditions as we progressed. Up at the Northwest corner of Washington state is Cape Flattery. After rounding this cape we turned east and motored on the Strait of Juan de Fuca and into Port Angeles. We rounded this cape at daybreak. Around midnight, we had our only bad weather heading to the cape. Winds were in excess of 35mph, but all from the south. The boat rolled a few times quite hard, so we were grateful for our hydraulic stabilizers. We had anticipated 120+hours to do this trip, but pulled into port after 92 hours, just shy of 4 full days. We went 800 miles, burned 755 gallons of diesel, 1.05mpg, at a cost of $3252. All in all a very good trip. Chuck flew home to San Diego and of course Gary was almost home since we were not far from Seattle.

Chuck and Margaret

                                         Off West Coast

                                          Gary Driving off West Coast

                                          At the dock in Port Angeles

June 16, 2012
It has been quite some time since I have posted on our blog. The winter months passed uneventfully in Monterey where we kept the boat. Unfortunately, our plans of spending considerable time enjoying Monterey did not work out as well as hoped. It just seemed we were too busy to drive/fly to Monterey. Funny how that is even though we are pretty well retired! The marina where we kept the boat, Breakwater Cove Marina, was very nice and they also had a boat yard. We had hit a log during our trek south through British Columbia so I decided it was best to have the boat taken out of the water so an inspection could be done. Floating logs are quite a big danger, and in a worse case scenario boats can actually be sunk by logs penetrating the hull. Usually though hitting a log results in propeller damage. This is easily discernible by feeling vibration when the boat is moving. We had not felt any vibration so I was hopeful there was no damage. Unfortunately, one of our propellers had a bent blade. For non boaters, we have two engines, so thus two props. They are each three bladed and 30 inches in diameter. Propellers need to be tuned periodically, even if you do not hit anything, in order to get the most efficiency from them. This is a function of how many engine hours a boat is actually used. For us this is probably every three to four years. UNLESS, you hit something!Our boat has to be out of the water, the propellers removed, and sent to a propeller repair facility where the blade(s) are straightened and the propeller is balanced to be sure when remounted there is no vibration. Here are some before and after photos of this process:

                                          This is how the boat is taken out of the water

                                          Blade at top of photo is slightly bent.

                                          Prop fits on tapered end of 2"diameter stainless shaft

                                          Mounted propellor after refurbishing. Note two nuts.

                                          Underwater hull. Note the stabilizer fin sticking out
                                           in middle and hole at front is the bow thruster

                                          Otter floating next to boat in Monterey. Cute.

I realize this was mostly a technical blog, mainly for those of you interested in those sort of things.

Chuck and Margaret