2013 Alaska Cruise-May

May 2013
It has been so long since we posted, that I'm not sure I even know how to work the site anymore. In 2012 we spent the entire summer in Ketchikan, mainly because we really wanted to get to know the community and have more time for Chuck to fish with his Ketchikan Friends. We left there mid August, arrived Seattle area early September after an uneventful trip thru British Columbia. We were back home in September in San Diego.

After being stored inside a building in Oak Harbor, Wa.

out of the weather, I departed Oak Harbor (Margaret was in San Diego) on April 25th to the San Juan Islands in Washington State for a "shakedown" to be sure all systems were working well. I thoroughly enjoyed three days in Roche Harbor Resort. Check out www.rocheharbor.com. We have always enjoyed this very nice resort. My brother-in-law Lee from North Carolina joined me and we departed U.S. waters and entered Canada on May 1st to clear customs. This is done by going to specified docks where there is a direct line phone and you call customs and answer various questions seeking permission to have a boat and to travel thru Canada on our way to Alaska. They reserve the right to board your boat, but so far in doing this many times, we have never had them board us. Our goal was to reach Alaska prior to May 22nd Lee's fly out date. So we headed out right away traveling north. On May 2 and 3 we transited the large open water section of Strait of Georgia. This can be rough because it is so large, but this time, over two days, we had relatively calm weather. This is about 100 miles long.
We arrived in the city of Campbell River where we did some grocery shopping and had dinner out. We were only there one night and departed to head up into Johnstone Strait. Again calm winds were with us and bright sunny days. Lee and I enjoyed an excellent dinner that night at anchor.

 

 

We then went thru the Broughton Archipelago where we stopped at Kwatsi Bay and spent the night at Sullivan Bay marinas. There were literally no other pleasure boats around. We were quite alone. You can check out www.kwatsibay.com and www.sullivanbay.com. We moved on out into Queen Charlotte Strait for a short run due to rough weather ahead and spent a very quiet night at anchor in a bay called Blunden. There were about 6 other boats with us. The next day we moved north again to an anchorage called Allison Harbor, which was about 10 miles south of Cape Caution the first open water passage which can be quite rough. The rounding of the Cape was quite easy as we timed the good weather correctly. We anchored in a place called Green Island, which is protected quite nicely. We were joined by a commercial fishing boat and one other pleasure boat. You could look out thru an opening and assess the channel conditions before proceeding.

You can see our Ketchikan Yacht club flag on the bow pulpit.

 

On May 9th we proceeded from here to an abandoned cannery called Namu, where we explored for a couple hours and then moved up to a place called Ocean Falls. You must Google this town in British Columbia. There used to be a pulp/paper mill here that was shut down a number of years ago. There are still some people living here, mostly summertime visitors. The population is less than 100. It is a "ghost town" as there are many buildings sitting empty from when this used to be a company town. There is a HUGE lake above the town and a dam had been built many years ago with a hydro-electric facility which still produces electricity for the surrounding area. It is quite a spot. On May 10th we moved to a dock at a fishing resort call Shearwater which is adjacent to a "first nations village" or "Indian" in U.S. talk. There is actually an air strip there with daily once or twice a day service from Vancouver. Margaret and I had been apart enough so she flew from San Diego to Seattle to Vancouver where she spent the night, and then into Bella Bella where the strip is located. She arrived on the 12th. We departed on the 13th heading into the "boonies", really remote territory, on the inside passage to Alaska.

A view inside one of our anchorages



 

One of the neat things about traveling the inside passage north in the spring are the beautiful waterfalls coming off the mountain where there are lakes overflowing due to rain and melting snow. The water cascades off the mountain into the channels where we travel.



Aren't these just beautiful?
We arrived at our destination, Ketchikan Alaska on May 17th. We had an easy trip, no bad weather, no mechanical issues, everything was good. When docking, we were in a very heavy downpour of rain. This has happened every year. Ketchikan receives over 200 inches of rain annually and is literally a rain forest. We had a severe lightning and thunderstorm the other night (very rare for here) followed by a beautiful rainbow. I'll let the picture speak for itself.

Some statistics:
We traveled from Oak Harbor, Wa. to Ketchikan 735 miles and ran our engines 103 hours for an average speed of 7.13 knots. We used about 529 gallons of diesel fuel for an average of 1.39 MPG. I think our actual speed was faster, more like 8 knots since the engine hours include idle time.
Finally, a sunset view from our boat from the Kethikan Yacht Club docks where we are proud members. www.ketchikanyachtclub.com.