We started our 2024 cruising season on Saturday, May 4, one day earlier than we originally targeted. The winds looked to be less fearsome on Saturday than Sunday so we speeded our preparations up a bit. The first stop was Anacortes where we took on fuel and had some work done on the boat.
Because the work was done on Monday, we needed three nights in Anacortes and didn’t depart until Tuesday. We cleared BC customs in Port Browning on North Pender Island in the Gulf Islands. Our yacht club subsidizes our moorage at the marina there (it is considered an “outstation”), it has a nearby grocery store, a restaurant and a huge lawn for Drake to play on, all very attractive features.
After this leisurely start, our northward grind began. Over the years, we’ve fallen into the practice of traveling “fast” on the northbound trip to SE Alaska and “slow” on the southbound journey. When in that “fast” mode we travel when conditions allow and take advantage of all of the daylight, routinely leaving at first light and stopping at the last good anchorage before last light. This year was an example of that. From Port Browning, over the next 10 days until our next port of call we covered 713 miles in about 112 engine hours until Petersburg. As we traveled north, we realized that we could get to Petersburg in time to attend some of the best parts of the Little Norway Festival we enjoyed so much last year. The US Customs and Border Patrol’s mobile ROAM app allowed us to clear customs without going into port so we were able pass by Ketchikan without stopping.
The map below shows our route from Anacortes to Petersburg.
While we didn’t do a lot of photography on the way north, we do have two photos of us (or at least our boat) as we headed north. The first is a photo taken by fellow Queen City Yacht Club members, Lois and Geary Long, as they passed us in their Selene 62, Raven, north of Cape Caution approaching Calvert Island. The second is a photo by our friends, Kathleen and John Douglas, owners of our sistership Laysan. The photo was taken from the Alaska Airlines flight they were on to return to their boat in Petersburg as the plane was making its scheduled stop in Ketchikan. It was quite a coincidence that their plane made its landing approach as we were passing by in Tongass Narrows.
