Ketchikan to Petersburg

May 15, 2012

Mooring in Ketchikan on Wednesday, May 2 turned out to be a really good thing!  We were just ahead of a big storm and sat in Bar Harbor Marina for seven days!  Thank goodness Beth did not come!  Our original intent was to leave on Monday, May 7…more about that in a minute.

We had a “tourist day” on Saturday, May 5, and explored the town a bit.  The north-south third avenue bypass runs above the city on the bluff and connects the marina area with the downtown area.  That was our route.  It gave us a different perspective of Ketchikan.  The photo is looking north toward our marina and you can see the airport across Tongass Narrows.

The route took us by their HUGE lovely new library, an amazing aquatic center, and even a little league baseball game.  May means baseball, even when it’s 45^o and snow is forecast!  We eventually came to a city park that included a fish hatchery (looked touristy but wasn’t open) and a totem pole center (again, touristy and closed).  We’re just a couple of weeks too early.  The museum downtown near the cruise ship docks was excellent, focusing primarily on the Tongass National Forest, which is a huge temperate rain forest.

We even went to the lumberjack show!  Again, very touristy, but this show was put on for the townspeople.  I think they were putting the “spit and polish” on this year’s performance, before the cruise ships started coming.  It was very entertaining and, even though kinda hokey; the skill of the four young men was impressive.  If you’ve watched any of those lumberjack competitions on TV, I’ll bet you’ve seen this setting.

It was a good thing we did all our exploring on Saturday because it started raining and blowing Saturday night.  We’d planned to walk down to the pretty little Lutheran church (the one we attended last year) but it was out of the question on Sunday morning.  We had gusts of wind up to 30 knots, sitting there in the very protected marina!  I’ve never seen such a deluge…and it lasted until the wee hours of Tuesday morning, May 8.  I said earlier that we had hoped to leave on Monday, May 7, but there was no hope of that!  In fact, when we talked to the harbormaster’s office we learned that snow was predicted for Monday night!  Although it didn’t snow in the marina, there was definitely new snow on the peaks above the city.

Tuesday, morning, May 8, arrived with broken clouds, rain showers, and even a couple of brief hail storms!  What weather!  Before we could depart, we went to the marine store for some better rain gear.  The gear Jerry had, which we thought was super-duper rainproof lasted about 10 minutes in the rains of Sunday and Monday before he got soaked!

A 37’ Nordic Tug came in mid-morning on Tuesday and moored across the fairway from us.  Starved for someone new to talk to, Jerry ambled over and said “hello”.  What a good thing that turned out to be!  Paul had worked for NASA, designed some Apple software in the 80’s that had made him rich, solo sailed around the world, and since 2001 has cruised Alaska taking bear photos by himself.  He was quite an interesting guy!  He came to dinner (I don’t think he cooks much for himself) and showed us some amazing wildlife photographs.  He gave us a copy of his book,  “Confessions of a Long-Distance Sailor”.  If you have a chance, go to his website to see some of his pictures: http://arachnoid.com. 

Wednesday morning, May 9, although not beautiful, dawned with little wind and just a sprinkle of rain.  Off we went, headed for Behm Canal and a favorite anchorage from last year in Punchbowl Cove in the Misty Fjords National Monument Wilderness.  Last year we had some sunshine, but not so this time.  Even so, this is one of the most beautiful places in this part of Alaska.  On our way we saw and heard several speedy tour boats, also headed for Punchbowl Cove.  As we sat there during the late afternoon, we saw several float planes come in and land.  They also bring tourists from the cruise ships to the “Misty Fjords”.

We were up early on Thursday, May 10, to continue our plan to see all of Behm Canal this year.  It is Behm Canal that makes an island (Revillagigedo Island…nope, I cannot pronounce it!) out of the section of Cleveland Peninsula on which Ketchikan sits.  As we made our way north we accompanied by a large pod of Dahl’s porpoises.  They love to chase the boat, dive underneath as we’re cruising, and jump in the bow wake.  Obviously this picture does not do their aquatic stunts justice!

At the north end of Behm Canal we passed “Bell Island Hot Springs Resort.”  At one time, perhaps 30-40 years ago, this spot was famous and was quite a happening place.  According to our map, the likes of John Wayne and Bing Crosby frequented here.  “The scenery was beautiful, the moose and bear were plentiful and the fishing was great.”  Today, it’s all but falling down in the water.  There is a story to be had!  We’ll have to find out what happened.

We anchored in a sweet little corner of Yes Bay, about 6 hours after leaving Punchbowl. We listened to the 1600 NOAA weather broadcast and once again it sounds grim.  Ahead of us in Clarence Strait gale warnings are predicted for Friday and Saturday so it looks like we’ll sit here until Sunday, May 13.  The photo at the left is looking south, out toward the outer bay.  These days have been a study in shades of gray.

Since we're not traveling much, I'm afraid this blog will rather short.  So, I'll throw in some random tidbits.  For instance, you might be interested to know that the name "Yes Bay" comes from the Tlingit (pronounced “Klinkit”…took awhile to put that together!) word “Yas” meaning mussels.  This would be a beautiful spot if it weren’t constantly raining!  

Another random tidbit:  when we were getting ready for this year’s trip we decided we needed two more fenders.  When we bought the boat we had five fenders, three navy blue and two black.  On last year’s trip we lost one of the black fenders and four just isn’t enough.  So when Jerry was putting together his boat supply order, we conferred and chose what we thought was the color that would match our three dark blue fenders.  Nope…not even close!  We’ve got plenty of fenders, though!

When we were in Ketchikan, as we do at any moorage, we asked for a slip at the working dock.  This puts us in the marina where there is lots of fishing boat activity, rather than touristy cruisers (like us!).  Even if the fishing boats aren’t coming and going, there is always someone working on a boat, giving us something to watch and someone to talk to.  We think that the owner of the boat next to us had sold it to his son, so the dad and son were busy moving stuff off the older boat and onto the dad’s new boat, moored just across the float from us.  This dog was right in the middle of all the hustle and bustle.  She was obviously used to supervising casting off activities!  She’s even got one ear flipped back, listening for a command.

As we are cruising along, we’re always on the lookout for the unique and unusual on the water or on the sore.  Jerry is much better at the water stuff than I, and spotted several whales.  We saw a pod of humpbacks travelling north in Behm Canal as we approached Punchbowl Cove the other day.  I, on the other hand, watch the shore for things of interest.  As we travelled through the north part of Behm Canal, I spotted this tree stump that had washed up on shore.  Looks to me as if a new tree is sprouting from the dead roots of the old one…a good indication of how much it rains around here!

Okay, back to our travels!

We did leave Yes Bay on Sunday, May 13, and had almost sunny weather!  The seas were calm as we came down Behm Canal and headed north in Clarence Strait.  Soon after we turned north we were overtaken by an Alaska State Ferry, going about 20 knots.  We go 8-9 knots, so we're absolutely no competition!  We’d originally thought we would stay at Meyer’s Chuck, as we did last year.  However, it was early afternoon and we thought we’d enjoy the good travel weather.  As we made our way up Ernest Sound we were once again the center of whatever game the Dahl’s Porpoises play around the boat.  Most entertaining! 

We stayed that night at the entrance to Zamovia Strait in a quiet little bay called Thom’s Place.  It was perfect!  We had stayed here last year and knew it would protect us from the predicted NW 10 knot winds, and it did. 

Tuesday morning, May 14, we departed early to catch good currents as we traveled north through Zamovia Strait to reach Wrangell.  This is a pretty, narrow passage that has some interesting navigation.  For instance, do you see the red marker on shore and the green one in the water?  The rules say we pass between these two, keeping the red one on the right.  As we approached, it absolutely did not look possible!  As we got closer it started to look a little better, but this is one of those instances when we must trust the instruments, not what our eyes were saying!  

Here’s a chart shot of our route (the blue line).  You can see how circuitous it is.

Yay!  Wrangel!  Although this is a small fishing town of about 2,000 permanent residents, they are very welcoming to cruising boats like us and always accommodate our needs.  It was beautiful approaching the city from the south.  As you can see in the photo, they’ve got some amazing mountains surrounding them and they’re still covered with snow.  They are in the middle of a salmon tournament so we saw lots of private boats coming and going searching for the prize salmon.

They have two great hardware stores so we walked downtown.  We were prepared to see the streets torn up, since LaDonna (the official greeter and harbormaster office worker) says it looked like “downtown Baghdad!”  She was right!  They are getting new water lines but what a mess.

Today, May 15, we were up early to beat the winds in Sumner Strait and get to Petersburg.  We actually had a reasonable cruise without a lot of wind and waves in the strait.  It’s only about 35 miles between Wrangell and Petersburg, but about 17 of those miles are through Wrangell Narrows.  This partly natural and partly manmade narrow channel splits Mitkof and Kupreanof Islands.  Petersburg sits on the north end of Wrangell Narrows on Mitkof Island.  This is one of those passages where tides and currents really make a difference so we tried to take advantage of the flood on ebb currents to carry us through the channel.  Interestingly enough, the water action splits about halfway up the channel, so it’s a tricky proposition at best!  The photo shows you who we followed for 17 miles through the narrows...Western Navigator and his barge tow.  He had everything on that barge from propane tanks to an EMS vehicle for Kake Volunteer Fire Department!

He was travelling just enough faster than we were to make following him reasonable.  In fact he sort of “flattened out” the waves for us so we stayed close behind. 

I spotted this young gentleman (? Could be a lady!) keeping an eye on the traffic as we passed by, sitting on one of the channel markers.  Mile 14...we've got a long way to go.

We arrived safely in Petersburg about 1 PM.  The city is gearing up for its annual Syttende Mai – May 17th, Norwegian Constitution Day Festival.  If you want to see what we'll be doing, go to their website:  http://www.petersburg.org/visitor/littlenorway.html

I’ll save those stories for the next letter.  We’ll be here until Monday, May 21, then we’ll begin to make our way to Juneau.  We hope to visit a glacier or two along the way.

Wish you could be here with us!