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Most of the significant navigational challenges along the Inside Passage (i.e., Strait of Georgia, Cape Caution, Dixon Entrance) are solved the same way. You wait for the weather to settle down, either the wind or wave height (often both since wind is the main driver of wave height), and go for it.

Halfway up Vancouver Island, however, is a challenge that requires putting together multiple factors. Coming down from the northend of Vancouver Island is Johnstone Straight. Coming up from the southend is the Strait of Georgia. Where they meet are a multitude of islands between the Vancouver Island and the mainland joined by several fiord like inlets that penetrate the mainland. There is a lot of water sloshing through here creating a dozen or so named rapids with tidal currents that will change from as high as 13 knots (about 15 miles per hour) in one direction to 13 knots in the opposite direction over a period of six hours.

The winds play a factor as Vancouver Island is a major impediment to weather systems. The channels between the islands and inlets jutting into the mainland become the routes of choice for the winds associated with the high or low pressure areas moving between the Pacific Ocean and the North American continent.

When the direction of the often strong winds oppose that of the often strong currents, the waves created by the wind will become short in period and steep. Travel in those conditions will become difficult, unpleasant or, at times, unsafe. If the winds and current move in the same direction, however, you can speed along relatively comfortably several knots higher than your normal cruising pace.

Figuring out a route, there are three main routes with several variations, becomes a puzzle of monitoring the weather forecast and timing the currents through the various rapids. We’ve traveled through here thirteen times (either north or south) and the exact route we take is seldom known until a day or two before we actually do it.

This year’s trip involved taking the middle route through the Octopus Islands then using Mayne Passage to switch to the eastern route closest to the mainland. The final leg, a fourteen mile section in Johnstone Strait before cutting up into the more protected waters of the Broughton Archipelago was a bit of a bash in 20-25 knot winds opposing current.

We hope to round Cape Caution in the next day or so and complete the second half of the route to Ketchikan and little more expeditiously than the first half.

We cast loose our lines in Eagle Harbor before 6 AM on Wednesday, April 27, for our sixth trip to SE Alaska in the last seven years.  There is a familiarity to the preparation but also an edge of paranoia.  You just know in your heart that complacency in preparation or operation can easily lead to calamity.

Our first night was in Garrison Bay on the northwest corner of San Juan Island just south of the Roche Harbor.  It provided us quick access the next morning to the Port of Sidney on Vancouver Island where we cleared Canadian Customs.  We have Nexus cards which speed our passage through customs.  After a phone call and waiting 15 minutes to allow a customs officer to show up to inspect us should they want to, we were on our way.

It had been three years since our last visit to Butchart Gardens so for our second night we anchored in Tod Inlet near the Butchart Gardens.  We dropped our dinghy and motored over to the dock down the hill from the Japanese Gardens.  Reportedly the tulips were past prime but if they were, we didn’t notice.

As I write this, we are tied to the dock at Salt Springs Marina in Ganges Harbour.  Our yacht club has leases dock space as an outstation here so it is inexpensive moorage as we do some light provisioning for those items that are prohibited from being brought in.

Our plans for this season are pretty similar to prior years.  We’ll move north pretty directly to SE Alaska arriving around the middle of May.  We’ll stay in Alaska for about 2-1/2 months until the end of July/first part of August when we’ll begin the slower journey south.  Arrival in Puget Sound will be the middle of September.

The map below shows where we stayed overnight on our 2015 cruise.  If you click on a place mark additional information (i.e., place name, distance, engine hours, anchor chain)will pop up. Map of 2015 Cruise in separate window

It turns out that 2015 was our shortest cruise yet of the five total cruises we’ve done to Alaska since we off loaded Alpenglow in January 2010.  Ignoring our “shakedown” cruise, we left on May 6 and returned on August 17, a trip length of 104 days.  The table below summarizes the easily tabulated values from the ship’s log.

With regards to average speed, I usually subtract the number of hours spent idling while fishing or sightseeing (i.e., time not underway), 42.4 hours in 2015, from the total engine hours and divide that value into the total distance traveled.  Using that method, we averaged 6.1 nm/hour.

We arrived today at our yacht club’s Bainbridge Island, Eagle Harbor outstation concluding our summer cruise for 2015.  We shortened our season on account of my (Kurt) developing a hernia during the cruise and our having the desire to get it resolved expediently before we head south to Tucson for the winter.

While we traveled through British Columbia pretty fast after finally leaving Ketchikan, Marcia did make the best of it by catching 8 silver salmon over five days of fishing.  Three of the salmon were caught in two areas Marcia hadn’t fished before which was nice addition to her knowledge base.  We also were successful prawning in two areas we hadn’t tried before.

We dawdled an extra day north of Cape Caution waiting for the nice conditions during the open section exposed to ocean swell. Our patience rewarded us with calm conditions and a surprisingly quick transit (for us, anyway) from Fury Cove to Port McNeill.  We covered the 66 miles in 10 hours from engine on at anchor to engine off at the dock.

Each year, as we head south we experience the “culture shock” of the crowds in the popular cruising areas.  When we entered Squirrel Cove on Cortes Island, we knew we’d have company but we weren’t expecting the 70+ boats we found there.  We squeezed in for the evening, then joined the line of boats heading south from there the next morning.

We’re not sure of our immediate plans but it is unlikely we’ll do any more extended cruising this year.  Perhaps some short trips in Puget Sound should the nice weather be too compelling to stay on the dock.  We are already looking forward to 2016, though, and returning to Alaska.

So we’ve postpone our departure from Ketchikan another day on account of the “snotty” weather.  We were all prepared to leave despite the rain and wind because the forecast was for improving conditions as the day progressed. 

All of the electronics, including the VHF radio were operating, when we heard two recreational boaters conversing on the radio.  One was just leaving Ketchikan (they were transmitting their position via AIS) and the other was about 6 or 7 miles from Ketchikan on the way to Prince Rupert as we were intending.  The vessel further out said they were turning around on account of sea conditions (“The dog was howling”).  The closer vessel said they were pushing on based on the forecast.  The further out vessel shortly thereafter called back to say they were pulling into a temporary anchorage in order to wait for conditions to improve.  Both boats had Foggy Bay as their destination for the night (same as us).

We already knew that a “Mother Goose” flotilla of six boats from NW Explorations had left yesterday for Foggy Bay with the goal of Prince Rupert today.  If conditions were poor just a few miles from Ketchikan, we thought that there was a high likelihood that they’d take a weather day rather than pound their way across Dixon Entrance.

We knew that on account of our speed, we’d likely be one of the last boats to arrive to a very crowded Foggy Bay.  We’d also be one of the last to arrive the next day to a very crowded Prince Rupert Rowing and Yacht Club marine (just about the only marina for transients in Prince Rupert).  Since the weather for Saturday, August 1 is forecast to be better yet, we’re being flexible and spending another day in Ketchikan to let this wave of boaters heading south to get ahead of us.  Of course there is another “wave” all ready building around us by that is just the way things are.

In the mean time, I am taking this opportunity and Internet connectivity to post a video of Dall’s Porpoises surfing our bow wake.

And another video of us crossing the entrance of Behm Canal as it meets Clarence Strait just north of Ketchikan. The wind was blowing SE 15-20 knots and the seas were 3 to 4 feet with a short period. We were meeting the waves on the starboard forward quarter so we weren’t rolling much, just the bow crashing a bit.

Now I don’t want to sound like a broken record or a “weather brat” but this rain is starting to get to me.  For additional “amusement”, we’re now getting a touch of wind added to the precipitation. 

It hasn’t been all bad, though.  We did harvest prawns in Hoonah Sound and Pybus Bay, and we broke our fishing dry spell by catching 3 halibut in Fredrick Sound.

We also had some of the best whale activity of the season in and around Pybus Bay.  The whales were feeding in the same area where we placed our pawn traps which caused us concern that the traps might be inadvertently dragged away by a humpback whale chowing down on a herring ball near our float and line.  Fortunately, the whales avoided our lines while they did their fishing.

While we had wind and rain, we avoided the major thrubbing we had in Clarence Strait that we experienced last year.  Rather than 30 knot winds and 6 foot seas which we mostly avoided by holing up in Meyers Chuck last year, we only had 15 knot winds and 3 foot seas.  Of course these were Clarence “3-footers” which means they were closely spaced and steep, making for a bouncy, wet ride.

We plan on leaving Ketchikan tomorrow, July 31, having spent an extra day here waiting for forecasted calmer conditions crossing Dixon Entrance into Canada.  We’re hoping the overall weather begins to improve as well. 

While I whine about the weather, the cats only whine/meow about food or its absence.  The rest of the time they sleep.

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P.S. – Our sistership, Laysan, that crossed the Pacific to its homeport in Honolulu in 2011-12, is now relocating to the Pacific NW.  Its journey can be followed at https://roundtopdr.wordpress.com/

While in Juneau we picked up Marcia’s cousins Chris, Diane and Diane’s husband, Ron, for a 2-week cruise from Juneau to Sitka with a visit to Glacier Bay National Park.  Chris and Diane have lived in Arizona for over 40 years so we warned them that Alaska weather would be radically different.  It turned out the weather was a bit more “Alaskan” than even we expected.

Below is a table showing the Juneau Airport weather summary for the first 3 weeks of July.  Our guests flew in the evening of July 7 and departed today, July 22. The highlighted dates coincide with their full days visiting.

While our local weather as we cruised certainly varied from that of Juneau, this isn’t a bad representation of what we saw along the way. Fortunately, they heeded Marcia’s warnings and brought their rain gear.

We ended up cutting short our visit in Glacier Bay by two days (using 5 days of our 7 day permit) because Marcia & I felt we had hit the highlights given the weather we were experiencing.

The left photo is Chris, Diane & Marcia at the Bartlett Cove NPS dock.  The right photo is Chris, Diane and Ron at the end of Tarr Inlet with the Margerie Glacier in background.

Fortunately, wildlife viewing isn’t adversely impacted by rainy weather. The birds around South Marble Island were abundant and we had a wonderful “whale dance” outside of North Sandy Cove.

From Bartlett Cove we headed to Sitka via Chatham Strait and Peril Strait.  Along the way we stopped at some of our favorite anchorages.  We shared anchorages with other boats, adding to our impression that this has been a busy cruise season in Alaska.  In Douglass Bay in Hoonah Sound, the other boat there was David Cohn’s Diesel Duck Shearwater which he brought across the Pacific on its own bottom from China in 2013.

The weather began to clear a bit as we headed into Sitka from our last anchorage.  Low clouds hovering above the hills outside Sitka provided a dramatic back drop as we headed into to conclude Chris, Diane and Ron’s cruise with us.

From here, we’re starting our trip south to Puget Sound.  For a number of reasons, we’ve decided to wrap things up early and hope to be back around the third week of August.

So we left Petersburg with high hopes for equaling last years fishing results in Fredrick Sound.  As we entered Pybus Bay on the way to Cannery Cove, we dropped three prawn pots in the same location as we did last year that gave us good results.

After a quiet night at anchor being the sole boat, we headed out to the fishing grounds on the west side of the West Brother Island. First we stopped to reap a disappointing prawn harvest. Probably it was the hubris of taking the area for granted and putting three pots down instead of our normal two.  We reset two pots in a different area using the tried and true method of looking where somebody else, hopefully better informed than us, placed theirs.

When we arrived on the fishing grounds, Marcia began her utmost to repeat her 2014 performance.  As Marcia joked, she must have caught the two stupid halibuts last year because the wily fish underneath our boat repeatedly stole the herring and octopus off of her barbed circle hooks.  The worst offense occurred when one fish (or perhaps a “gang”) took all three chunks of herring from each hook of a treble hook.

Eventually we called it quits and headed back to Cannery Cove for the night.  Perhaps it was the forecast for wind and rain that prompted boats to head for the protection of Cannery Cove, but in any event, there were four other boats in the anchorage that night. 

The next morning, after a rainy and blustery night, we headed out and pulled our two prawn pots from the previous day.  We had been sufficiently humbled by the prawn gods so they rewarded us with a nice haul, sufficient for a couple of meals.  The halibut gods, though were not appeased and the fish remained elusive.  The night was spent in the nook between West Brother Island and the small islets on its west shore.  A very scenic anchorage but not one we’d want to weather a storm in.

From there we continued up to Gambier Bay and some more disappointing fishing, both for halibut and prawns.  We tried a new (to us) anchorage behind Good Island.  It too was scenic but not one we’d want to be in during any significant weather.

The next day we crossed Stephens Passage headed for Port Houghton and Sanborn Inlet.  We dropped a couple of prawn pots near the entrance just in case our luck had changed.  The next morning upon departure for Tracy Arm Cove we were pleasantly surprised to find dinner waiting for us in the pots.

As we approached our destination, Marcia saw what she first thought was a log or dirty piece of ice floating in the water.  As we got closer, we saw it was a moose swimming in Holkham Bay.  We were quite far from shore and its origination or destination weren’t totally clear.  Currents are pretty swift there so it could have easily been taken well off its intended course.

From Tracy Arm Cove, you can visit either Tracy Arm and the Sawyer Glaciers or Endicott Arm and the Dawes Glacier.  We’ve been up Tracy Arm twice but had never been up Endicott Arm.  We decided to try the new (to us) area and headed out the next morning. 

As we started down Endicott Arm, the ice chunks in the water were large but infrequent enough they were easy to dodge.  As we got further in, smaller chunks of ice were common and often difficult to see in the filtered light from the cloudy sky.  At the head of Endicott Arm was the Dawes Glacier, the source of the ice in the water.

Our original plan was to do Tracy Arm the day after Endicott Arm but a weather forecast for 30 knot winds persuaded us to head for the public dock in Taku Harbor and wait out the blow.  Other boaters had similar ideas and the dock was pretty full when the winds started to pick up.

From Taku Harbor we made our way to Juneau and its Statter Harbor Marina in Auke Bay, where we were fortunate to find a spot without a lot of searching.  From here we’ll pick up Marcia’s Arizona cousins whom we’ll take first to Glacier Bay National Park and then to Sitka where they will depart on July 22.