Black bear with salmon in its mouth
Jul 20, 2015
where it was filmed. A private home.
Ketchikan Alaska boat marina where we hang out
Greetings. Once again I find myself struggling to post to our "blog" on a timely basis. Please forgive.
We departed San Diego on April 9, 2015, destination Ketchikan Alaska, a trip of 1900 miles. It turns out some of the roughest weather we were to encounter was right at the entrance to San Diego harbor at Pt. Loma. We really rock and rolled. Thank goodness our boat has hydraulic stabilizers! We arrived in Ketchikan Alaska on June 3rd. We are often asked how long will a trip like this take? There is no set answer for this question. The number one issue is traveling when the weather is good. So then you might ask, what is good? There is no easy answer to this question either. It really depends on your comfort level in a boat on the open ocean. There is a saying in the boating world that the boat can take more than the people on the boat. This is very true. The West coast of the U.S. can be very rough. So the one key to not getting "beat up" is to NEVER be on a schedule. If you try to adhere to a schedule, you are bound to go out on the water when you shouldn't! We traveled past Los Angeles and went into Ventura Ca. We were stuck there for over a week waiting for an appropriate weather window. While So. Ca. waters are considered tame, they were not tame this time. We learned a lot about this area before we could travel again. There is a special dangerous point called Pt. Conception, where you follow the coast in a westerly direction to this point and then turn north. At this point the prevailing NW winds and current collide and seas can be very rough. We did it at the right time, so no issue. We entered Morro Bay knowing another weather system was approaching. We were there for 10 days, again waiting for weather. Morro Bay is a nice town of about 10,000 people, and we got to know it like the back of our hand. When the weather improved, we traveled to San Simeon harbor, just below the Hearst Castle, then to Monterey, then Half Moon Bay, then 20 miles past the entrance to San Francisco into a harbor called Bodega Bay. We again were stuck here for weather, as we arrived here on 5/3 and departed 5/13. Now out of a 1900 mile trip we had made all of about 500 miles or roughly 25% of the trip and it took a month. We were thinking we might not make it to Alaska at this pace. While it was a bit frustrating we had a wonderful time in each place we were "stuck". In the case of Bodega Bay, we rented a car, and enjoyed the the surrounding area, in particular the wine country in Sonoma County.
At Bodega Bay, my good friend Gary from Seattle, flew in and Margaret flew to the Seattle area to wait for Gary and I to make the rest of the trip. We had a good weather window. We left Bodega and traveled 24 hours non stop to Crescent City, just south of the Oregon border. This trip was non eventful as we had good weather. We spent two nights here waiting for good weather and then made a 60 hour non stop trip and arrived at Roche Harbor in the San Juan Islands north of Seattle. After taking more than a month to go 500+ miles, we seemed to suddenly be in the north west. We had traveled 1,200 miles and arrive there on May 18th. About 6 weeks. On this leg we burned 1,268 gallons of diesel, a little less than 1 mpg.
The next 700 miles is relatively easy compared to the west coast, as it is mostly inside passage, not open ocean. We have made this trip many times, and could almost do it blind folded, so to speak. We departed Roche Harbor on 5/21 and arrived Ketchikan on 6/3.
Since arriving here we took a couple weeks to "recover" from our slog up the coast, then went home for two grand daughter graduations. Then back to Ketchikan where one of sons and grand daughter visited. We made a 4 day trip out of Ketchikan in-between all this where we went fishing and crabbing. Zero fish, but lots of dungeness crab! Yummy!
One of the strange things that has happened in Alaska this year, is how dry and warm it has been. S.E. Alaska is a rain forest. Ketchikan gets over 12 feet of rain a year! But in May and June it hardly rained at all and we had a week where the temperatures were in the 80's! Very hot. Very unusual.
As I type this it is raining hard, but very little wind. Rain is very important here. First, the electricity in each community is produced by hydro power. There is no master grid of electric wires, so each community is on it's own. The other issue, the streams need to run with fresh water so the salmon will return and go up the creeks to spawn and reproduce. The salmon fishing has not been good. Now that it has been raining for a week, fishing is picking up. It is not just pleasure or sport fishing, but also commercial fishing is affected. The economy here relies very much on commercial fishing! Rain is a welcome event.
We hope for the next two or three weeks to travel around S.E. on our boat fishing and just enjoying the beauty of the area. We will head south around the last week of August.
Chuck and Margaret
We departed San Diego on April 9, 2015, destination Ketchikan Alaska, a trip of 1900 miles. It turns out some of the roughest weather we were to encounter was right at the entrance to San Diego harbor at Pt. Loma. We really rock and rolled. Thank goodness our boat has hydraulic stabilizers! We arrived in Ketchikan Alaska on June 3rd. We are often asked how long will a trip like this take? There is no set answer for this question. The number one issue is traveling when the weather is good. So then you might ask, what is good? There is no easy answer to this question either. It really depends on your comfort level in a boat on the open ocean. There is a saying in the boating world that the boat can take more than the people on the boat. This is very true. The West coast of the U.S. can be very rough. So the one key to not getting "beat up" is to NEVER be on a schedule. If you try to adhere to a schedule, you are bound to go out on the water when you shouldn't! We traveled past Los Angeles and went into Ventura Ca. We were stuck there for over a week waiting for an appropriate weather window. While So. Ca. waters are considered tame, they were not tame this time. We learned a lot about this area before we could travel again. There is a special dangerous point called Pt. Conception, where you follow the coast in a westerly direction to this point and then turn north. At this point the prevailing NW winds and current collide and seas can be very rough. We did it at the right time, so no issue. We entered Morro Bay knowing another weather system was approaching. We were there for 10 days, again waiting for weather. Morro Bay is a nice town of about 10,000 people, and we got to know it like the back of our hand. When the weather improved, we traveled to San Simeon harbor, just below the Hearst Castle, then to Monterey, then Half Moon Bay, then 20 miles past the entrance to San Francisco into a harbor called Bodega Bay. We again were stuck here for weather, as we arrived here on 5/3 and departed 5/13. Now out of a 1900 mile trip we had made all of about 500 miles or roughly 25% of the trip and it took a month. We were thinking we might not make it to Alaska at this pace. While it was a bit frustrating we had a wonderful time in each place we were "stuck". In the case of Bodega Bay, we rented a car, and enjoyed the the surrounding area, in particular the wine country in Sonoma County.
At Bodega Bay, my good friend Gary from Seattle, flew in and Margaret flew to the Seattle area to wait for Gary and I to make the rest of the trip. We had a good weather window. We left Bodega and traveled 24 hours non stop to Crescent City, just south of the Oregon border. This trip was non eventful as we had good weather. We spent two nights here waiting for good weather and then made a 60 hour non stop trip and arrived at Roche Harbor in the San Juan Islands north of Seattle. After taking more than a month to go 500+ miles, we seemed to suddenly be in the north west. We had traveled 1,200 miles and arrive there on May 18th. About 6 weeks. On this leg we burned 1,268 gallons of diesel, a little less than 1 mpg.
The next 700 miles is relatively easy compared to the west coast, as it is mostly inside passage, not open ocean. We have made this trip many times, and could almost do it blind folded, so to speak. We departed Roche Harbor on 5/21 and arrived Ketchikan on 6/3.
Since arriving here we took a couple weeks to "recover" from our slog up the coast, then went home for two grand daughter graduations. Then back to Ketchikan where one of sons and grand daughter visited. We made a 4 day trip out of Ketchikan in-between all this where we went fishing and crabbing. Zero fish, but lots of dungeness crab! Yummy!
One of the strange things that has happened in Alaska this year, is how dry and warm it has been. S.E. Alaska is a rain forest. Ketchikan gets over 12 feet of rain a year! But in May and June it hardly rained at all and we had a week where the temperatures were in the 80's! Very hot. Very unusual.
As I type this it is raining hard, but very little wind. Rain is very important here. First, the electricity in each community is produced by hydro power. There is no master grid of electric wires, so each community is on it's own. The other issue, the streams need to run with fresh water so the salmon will return and go up the creeks to spawn and reproduce. The salmon fishing has not been good. Now that it has been raining for a week, fishing is picking up. It is not just pleasure or sport fishing, but also commercial fishing is affected. The economy here relies very much on commercial fishing! Rain is a welcome event.
We hope for the next two or three weeks to travel around S.E. on our boat fishing and just enjoying the beauty of the area. We will head south around the last week of August.
Chuck and Margaret
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