The Outside Passage to Canada
Thursday, July 12th – We motor into Sitka weary from 3 days of rain, fog and mist-covered scenery. On the northbound leg of our trip, we had motored in light winds for most of the way. We knew that was going to be the case, but we were cheered by the fact that, on the southbound leg, we planned to go outside the protection of the islands into the Gulf of Alaska where we could do what a sailboat is designed to do: sail! Were our hopes ever dashed! Due to poor weather conditions, we ended up taking the easier inside route for the three days of travel between Glacier Bay and Sitka. For 150nm, we motored through passages, straits and narrows in rain and little wind. Nothing had changed!
Our actual time under sail for this trip to Alaska has been far lower than we expected. Over 90% of the time, we have been runnng our motor. Raising sail consistently becomes the kiss of death to any wind. To our amazement, it doesn’t just dwindle off. Sometimes, it just stops like somebody shut the door. Like our fishing, we optimistically hope for better sailing wind. We should be “outside” and sailing for this next leg of the trip, and we are keeping our fingers crossed.
Nelson Sharp joins us in Sitka. In 2016, Nelson, a good friend from Telluride, had helped us sail Avante from San Diego to Santa Barbara. We had expected Nelson to be waiting for us when we docked, but his plane was unable to land due to the bad weather, and he does not arrive until the evening.
Friday, July 13th – We have given ourselves one day in town to do all the usual boat chores plus one repair that The First Mate really wants done before we do much sailing. The wind instruments that indicate wind speed, direction and angle (true and apparent) have failed. This causes a great deal of angst for The First Mate, as she does not have a very good natural feel for the wind. She needs a visual indicator. At the very top of the mast, there is a little arrow that points toward the wind direction. To see it, The First Mate, at the helm, has to bend over and around the 5-foot diameter steering wheel and then strain her eyesight upward to peer from under the bimini to the top of the mast. Does that sound rather contortionistic? It is. To make the reading of wind direction a little easier for her, The Captain has strung telltales on the shrouds. Having missed the all-important step of learning to sail by the seat of her pants on a small tippy boat, preferably in warm water, she instead has learned to sail relying on those instruments. He says not having them is a good learning experience. “Find me someone who appreciates a good learning experience” she retorts! She wants the electronics back in operation!
The Captain has done some troubleshooting, and the problem appears to be with a device that sits at the top of the mast. Now that we are in a quiet marina, he will go up the mast to see if he can fix it. As the two men work out how they are going to go about replacing this thing at the top of the mast, The First Mate is pondering the cost of the thing. It is not often that she is stupefied by the price of something, but this thing turns out to be the equivalent of the Department of Defense’s pricey toilet seats. $3,900 for a 3-foot length of pipe with some electronics on the end.
It takes several trips up and down the 75-foot high mast to remove the old pipe and attach the new. Even though Avante is tied securely to the dock, way up there at the top of the mast, The Captain sways back and forth with the slightest movement of Avante. Fitting tiny screws into tiny holes is a delicate, time-consuming job. Dropping a screw is just unthinkable!
.
The First Mate is off on a re-provisioning run during this operation. Returning to the boat, she steps onboard and promptly gets yelled at by The Captain on top of the mast. She didn’t jump on the boat. All she did was step from dock to boat, but that was enough to send him swaying a little. Sorry she is, but she did not know that would happen! Next time, she’ll give a warning.
.
Finally, the new instrument pipe is attached, and The Captain can descend one last time. As he does so, a Bald Eagle, sitting on a nearby mast, watches him. Experience has shown us that, though Bald Eagles are majestic in the wild, around marinas, they are a menace. Not only do they hang around the trash collection bins searching for scraps, they also enjoy the view from the top of masts.
.
The First Mate laughs at the sight of this mast-perching eagle. With its wings hanging down looking like a forlorn imitation of Dracula in his cape, is it drip-drying after all this rain? She no longer thinks it is bad luck to shoo the critters off.
.
Saturday, July 14th – The weather is stuck! Leaving Sitka this morning, it may not be raining, but it is dreary. We head out down the west side of Baranof Island. The hoped-for winds are minimal. The only good thing is that the seas have “laid down.” This is a term The First Mate kept hearing every time we mentioned to a local that we were going to be returning on the outside. “Let’s see,” they say. “Around mid-July you’ll be out there? Yup, seas should have laid down by then. Good time to go, but you don’t want to go any sooner.” The Intrepid Mariner on board was never quite sure how to take those words of wisdom, but today with no wind, the seas are like glass. They have certainly laid down. Even she is disappointed!
All is not lost this first day out. Just off Necker Bay, there’s a resounding zing on the line. A really nice Salmon is landed. This guy didn’t fight much on the way in, but he sure was mad when we got him on the boat, flopping wildly in the wheel well. No worries here about a sick fish. We will have 2 dinners for the 3 of us, and bait for the crabs.
.
During our entire trip, we have been trolling for salmon, but our record has been terrible. At one place where we stopped, The Captain was studying the rig on a fishing boat when the owner showed up. The Captain explained our situation and asked for any suggestions. He was told that we were moving too fast to catch many salmon by trolling, but since we need to cover a certain amount of distance each day, we are not about to slow down to change that. He was also told that the only lure that would work at our higher speed was a spoon lure and that we had to figure out a way to get that spoon lure under the surface of the water. The fishing boat had downriggers installed to set a lure at the desired depth, but The Captain is not about to install expensive fishing gear on Avante. When fisherman Tom was onboard, the two men had purchased some spoon lures and experimented with how to get them below the surface, but whenever they used a weight to get the lure down, the lure had shown a nasty habit of getting wrapped around the weight. Now that The Captain had discovered how to catch crabs using fish heads, he is really motivated to fish and fish successfully. The inventor goes to work. Using the concept of the downrigger, he puts together a piece of gear that resembles a coat hanger whose function is to keep weight and lure apart. The First Mate calls it a baby mobile. By trial and error, he comes up with the best weight and distances to keep all moving parts from tangling. It is clumsy and inelegant, but who cares what it looks like if it works.
.
The entrance to Yamani Cove off of Necker Bay is ringed by a necklace of storm-ravaged rocks whose wave-breaking protection will provide us with a calm anchorage for the night. We launch The Dingbat to explore the shoreline and those rocks at the entrance. As we approach the shallower waters near the rocks, we are dismayed at the sight of starfish. There are just too many, and we have learned that their presence doesn’t bode well for our crab trapping prospects.
.
There is no doubt that this rocky coastline has been ravaged by the sea. It is supposed to offer a great sight when the sea is up, which it isn’t, but we can still imagine the effect.
.
Anchored in Yamani Cove, Avante is peacefully at rest.
.
Sunday, July 15th – In the morning, we pull up the trap. It’s heavy. We’re hopeful, but it’s full of these multi-legged monsters we keep catching. In fact, the biggest one we have seen fills the opening of the trap and does not want to budge. It is huge and ugly. “How could Mother Nature have been so cruel?” wonders The First Mate who is not getting anywhere near the thing. They are a type of starfish called Sunstars, we have been told. That is much too nice a name.
.
We may not be much in the way of crabbers, but today sure becomes a banner day as far as fishing goes. The Captain’s kluge of a rig is working. Two really nice salmon are landed. The cook declares the freezer full. No more fishing unless somebody wants to jig for halibut.
.
Tonight’s anchorage is a small basin at the head of Puffin Bay. It, too, is well protected, and with conditions so calm, it feels like we are on a quiet pond rather than in a bay just off the ocean.
.
The First Mate’s quiet reverie is interrupted when she looks down into the water over the side of the boat. Circling the boat are the largest jellyfish any of us had ever seen. Everywhere we look there are jellyfish. In a way, they are quite pretty, but with hundreds of them on both sides of the boat, the sight is a bit disconcerting.
.
So many moving so silently, slowly pulsing, quietly circling the boat. Up one side. Down the other. “This could be a scene from a horror movie” thinks the ever-imaginative mind of The First Mate. “Circling in ever tightening circles, they mass together and squoosh up to overtake the boat, slowly oozing toward us to …. ” Well, just hum a few bars to JAWS to fill in the rest of the invasion scene.
.
Monday, July 16th – We are increasingly running into fog. Early morning fog, evening fog and just all day fog. This is to be expected as the summer temperatures heat up over these cold waters. Leaving Puffin Bay, it is out into an ocean of fog we go.
.
Fortunately, there is no freighter or cruise ship traffic out here, and we see very few fishing boats. We are alone in a grey, damp world.
.
To our surprise, the fog lifts. The wind picks up, and we raise sail. Another banner day! It is the first time we’ve had the sail up in over two weeks, and we break our sailing record for the year with 4 ½ straight hours under sail! How wonderful it is to not hear the sound of the motor!
.
By the time we reach our anchorage at Egg Harbor on Coronation Island, mist and light rain have found us again. There are caves on shore which we dinghy over to explore and, on the way, we are treated to the sight of several sea otters. There’s even a mother with a baby who quickly climbs aboard mom as we pass.
.
Tuesday July 17th – We leave Egg Harbor enshrouded in fog. There’s no wind at all. However, in the early afternoon, the wind picks up to 10 knots from north. The mainsail is hoisted, and then the guys raise the spinnaker. What a jubilant feeling! Our jubilation, however, does not last long. The wind dies to 5 knots and starts shifting around. Down comes the spinnaker and on comes the engine. We alternate between motorsailing and sailing in an undecided wind.
In the early evening, a fog bank lies ahead of us as we begin a very difficult approach into Bob’s Place. There are rocks and shallow areas we need to identify and navigate around, making things dicey when the visibility is less than 1/4 nm. With relief, we drop anchor at 2045. There is supposed to be an abandoned First Nations village here, but we see no sign of it along the shore. Most likely it has been long covered over with vines and other vegetation. Unless we know exactly what to look for and where, it would be easy to miss, for it is amazing how quickly and completely the forest can cover up man’s attempt to tame it.
On a boat, one problem fixed usually only means another will soon take its place. Wind instrument failure, now fixed, has been replaced by cabin-top winch motor failure. This is the winch used to raise the 150-pound mainsail. This is not an easy task if it needs to be cranked up by hand. “No problem,” think the men aboard. They know they can he-man it up the mast, and The First Mate, looking at the other winches on the boat, thinks she could rig up something to get that sail up, too, if she had to do so. Since there is nothing we can do to fix the potentially burned out motor, it is decided that we will worry about how to raise the mainsail the next time we have occasion to do so.
Wednesday, July 18th – Again, we creep out of our anchorage in fog and motor several hours to Craig, the only town along this outside passage that we plan to visit. Craig is a hard-working fishing village with minimal tourist orientation, and we all like the feel of the place. After mooring at the public dock, we walk into town, do a little shopping and treat ourselves to pizza and ice cream – two treats we do not get on the boat!
.
Leaving Craig later in the afternoon, we motor on to anchor in Port Refugio. Minke whales swim in to feed along the shoreline. We sit quietly on deck listening to them gently blowing out air as they feed.
Thursday, July 19th – We don’t see any of the ugly starfish here, and we get our first crab in a while! We now have the ritual of killing, cleaning and cooking crab down to a quick science. The crab is soon dispatched, steamed and in the refrigerator to be served as an appetizer with mustard mayonnaise later this evening.
Since leaving Sitka, we have been traveling down the coast of Alaska with land on the left and ocean on the right. Though the rocks on the shore are ravaged and worn by the sea, the land and mountains rising up from the coast are benign compared to those we saw along the Inside Passage. To our surprise, there are no rugged snow covered peaks or upthrusted rock mountains. Instead, we see beach areas that would not look out of place with a few thatched huts and palm fronds. However, the air temperature is far from tropical, for we are passing these imagined idylls layered in fleece and bundled in storm gear.
The weather is overcast with little wind and occasional light rain. For miles and miles of motor-throbbing cruising, we are making our way down the coast. Miles and miles, land on the left, ocean on the right … as far as the eye can see …and even further. It is numbing, and finally, The First Mate declares that she has had enough. We need to stop for a lunch break. There has got to be a place to duck into somewhere up ahead. The Captain is not pleased, but sure enough, 4 miles ahead is Waterfall Bay. What a neat surprise it turns out to be! “Thank you, First Mate,” she would like to hear! We motor down several miles of fiord-like wilderness passing two waterfalls. Aquatic birds can be heard and seen flying along the shores.
.
Reaching the end of the bay, we anchor below a waterfall with an inviting beach area to walk. Lunch is served on deck. Sitting there, it is wonderful to listen to the many aquatic birds on shore rather than the thrum thrumming of the engine. What a great break in a dreary day of motoring! We should do this more often,” suggests The First Mate.
.
How she would love to launch The Dingbat and and go exploring, but we have “miles to go before we sleep”. Miles and miles. The guys are enjoying this wild coastline. They love traveling down it all day, each day. So, does she. She knows that we have a fair distance to travel, but her body and spirits yearn for the opportunity to stay in one place for a while and to explore. The Captain is unsympathetic and in exasperation, tells her that the next passage is all hers to plan. Okay, Captain, Sir, just you wait!
.
We anchor in a cove near the head of a huge bay called Port Bazan. Our anchor is well set in an extremely sticky mud bottom, and Avante is not going anywhere tonight, no matter what Mother Nature throws at her. The Captain declares this a martini night. The Captain only treats himself to one of those when he feels absolutely secure. The next morning, Nelson pulls in 9 crabs. Nine crabs! Wow! Unfortunately, only 2 are male, but we’re still delighted with the haul. More crab appetizers tonight.
.
We spent the morning motoring the rest of the way south along Dall Island. Once again, it was overcast with light wind. The sea in the notorious Gulf of Alaska was only lightly rippled, definitely “laid down.” Skies appear to be lightening up, and the constant rainy drizzle has ceased. We even broke out sunglasses just before noon. It is getting warmer, and after anchoring in Nichols Bay, we actually sit out on the deck in cotton shirts enjoying the late afternoon sun. Things are looking up. Maybe, just maybe, both sun and sailing tomorrow. Hey, it doesn’t hurt to hope – even with the barometer falling!
Saturday, July 21st – We do get to raise sail again, and, without the electric winch, it’s a job maybe worth thinking twice about. Sitting happily below, warm and cozy, The First Mate hears the commotion of preparation-to-raise-sails noise going on above. Oh, no, here we go … “Do you need my help?” she asks with forced enthusiasm. “No, we can handle it,” comes the manly reply. The Captain runs the main sheet back to the primary electric winch. Guess he really doesn’t think cranking the sail up by hand would be all that much fun. But using the primary winch is not working well. The angle at which the sheet goes down to it is too great and the line keeps slipping upwards and binding. A solution is going to be needed to reduce that angle, but, for now, he decides to get that sail up the old-fashioned way. He is going to crank it up. The First Mate springs into action and lends a hand. There is not much space between the winch handle and the dodger, and it’s an arm-breaking task. Inch by inch, the sail creaks up. Finally, it is declared to be “good enough for government work.”
We leave Alaska and enter Canadian waters. On the charts, we cross our track from our trip north six weeks earlier. What a convoluted feeling that is! The Alaskan part of our trip is over. We traveled to the land of glaciers and as far north as 59 Degrees North Latitude, and now we are returning. We feel triumphant and sad at the same time. What a grand voyage this has been. It can’t be over yet, and it’s not. Not ready for this voyaging to end, The First Mate is happily thinking of the days still ahead.
At the moment, we are back in familiar waters, and heading for Brundige Inlet on Dundas Island. There is something nice about returning to an anchorage or a harbor that we have been to before. We know where to go and whether or not we can really rely on the charts. The first time we had entered Brundige Inlet 6 weeks ago had been at low tide, and we had threaded our way through a shallowing, narrow waterway. We tell Nelson what a challenge the entrance is, but this time, we are at high tide, and there are no issues. That first time we had trouble setting the anchor. This time it bites in quickly. Everything is easier, better – except for the Black Flies. All thoughts of enjoying the warm evening on deck are quickly squashed as the nasty little biting pests drive us below.
Sunday, July 22nd – As we head for Prince Rupert, the fishing fleet is out in force. The many boats with their huge nets out make an interesting maze for us to motor in and around.
.
Once again, Rainy Rupert lives up to its nickname. Will this rain ever stop? The boat is beginning to mold. We are beginning to mold. Will we and Avante ever get dried out?
.
We are able to get a spot in the Prince Rupert Rowing and Yacht Club. Connected to shore power, we get the heat going in the boat and start to dry things out. What a joy that is! One of the effects of living on a boat is that a person becomes thankful for some really small things: Dry socks, warm hands, windows that don’t drip with condensation. Who cares what’s happening in the world at large? Her feet are dry, her hands are warm, and we have stopped the growth of mold. Could there really be other things, at this moment, more important in her little floating world?
.
.
Comments taken from the initial website:
Fleming, Tom and Marilyn: Welcome back to civilization! We leave for Telluride tomorrow August 5th. Hope to see you there and hear about trip first hand. Tom and Marilyn FlemingAugust 4, 2007 at 4:10 PM
Anonymous: Reading your latest entry made me homesick for the boat and Ketchikan area. I loved Craig – cycled there from Klawok for the day. Did you have a gooey bun at Margie’s Cafe? And did you find the cemetary with all the young people killed in car wrecks and lost at sea? (Was that an indelicate question??) Sign me on for the First Mate’s Trip – the shore explorations make the motoring worthwhile. And the Alaskan towns I got to all had such character. And, Sue, your writing is fantastic! Do you keep a diary when you’re not sailing?
Cheers, JaneAugust 5, 2007 at 8:58 PM