Through Fog, Sun and Rocks. Cruising SE Alaska in a 27 Foot Sailboat.

It’s time to move on. We said goodbye to Viviann’s friends and after the delay the next morning of getting new batteries for the boat after the motor won’t turn over we finally took off from Craig and headed north on our way toward Sitka. We didn’t get a very early start this time. I try really hard to stay far away from anything bigger than me. This is one of the barges that supply all of Southeast. We anchored that night only about fifteen miles from Craig in a little bight called “Bob’s Place” which is the site of an old Indian village. The only sign of it was the midden, which is a several foot thick layer of shells which was the “garbage dump” of the village. It was a very pretty spot and well protected.

Red posing.

The next morning we motor through the rain and mist all day, normal Alaska weather, about thirty miles toward El Capitan, a narrow passageway that runs out towards Chatham Strait. We enter Devilfish Bay and are surprised to see eight boats anchored there. There are six big Beneteaus and two Nordic Tugs apparently all traveling together. It was rainy and wet so we didn’t row around and shoot the breeze to find out their story. No one came by our little cork either. This is the most crowded anchorage in SE so far. After spending the night we had the second of only three crises on our trip. I tried to pull the anchor and it was stuck solid. I fiddled with it moving the boat fore and aft, backing down, running full speed forward all the while our anchorage neighbors left one by one. I am not sure how they could have helped but I regretted not getting to know them a little bit. I finally put the anchor rode on the genoa winch and cranked until the bow was about a foot lower than normal. What to do?

It was high tide and I figured if I waited until low tide maybe I could dive on it. The water is really cold. But that meant spending another night there. I was resigned to this but thought I would send a messenger line down to the anchor and maybe try hauling back on it. When I sent the line down with a weight attached, I did nothing else and magically the boat bobbed up and the anchor was free. So we motored off in the thinning gloom for El Capitan caves.

There are some really deep caves that have been discovered on Prince of Wales Island. The island is mostly limestone. The Forest Service gives tours but we arrived when no one was around. It is a steep climb on a boardwalk up to it and you can only go in about 100 feet before you come to a steel gate. But that is far enough to make it completely dark when you turn your lights out. It would be fun to take the tour sometime. I realized I forgot to mention the first crisis we faced. This happened about a week into the trip. We cruise mostly in Canada and Alaska, both areas where pump out stations are almost non-existent. So I have a Y valve on my head that allows it to go to the holding tank or overboard. Normally I have it set to go overboard.

We are very careful in crowded areas to do our business on shore or wait until we are well out into fast moving water. Apparently at some point last year I had set it to go into the holding tank but I had forgotten about this. So up in the unpopulated north we are just using the head like we live in the land of the free, right.

As time goes on I start to notice that it is getting harder to pump out but I figure it just needs a little lubrication or something. But one morning it is almost impossible to pump, so of course I just pump a little harder. Finally a little light goes on in my reptilian brain. I go forward to check the holding tank level under the bunk in the vee berth. No need to lift the cover that’s on it, the tank underneath is bulging to the point that the hatch cover won’t even fit anymore. The tank is swelled up like a pimple getting ready to burst, and it is full of you know what.

At this point I am like a sapper trying to defuse a bomb (yes it has an overflow vent but don’t ask me why it wasn’t working.) I think about opening the deck fitting but I can just see the pressure causing it to shoot out. FInally I realize that if I crack the Y valve part way the pressure will go either into the head or overboard. I did and it did, there was quite a brown plume arising from under the boat.

This relieved the pressure but it obviously didn’t empty the tank. So the upshot of it was we carried a full holding tank the rest of the trip.

We continue on through El Capitan and go into “Hole in the Wall.”

I have been into a number of “holes in the wall,” and this one really is a hole. It is only about 30-40 feet wide with a rocky entrance. It is too shallow for us to enter or leave a low tide (we draw 6 feet) But when you get in it is very nice. There was one other boat in there.

The next day we go into Port Protection to get gas. You have to plan for fuel as there aren’t a lot of choices. Port Protection was named by Vancouver and it is neat little harbor with a bunch of houses and a store. There is no road to it so gas was about $5.00 a gallon but who is to argue.

We have gone through Rocky Pass on both other trips so we planned to go clockwise around Kuiu Island to see something different. Crossing Chatham Strait we ran into the heaviest rain of the trip. We anchored in a small cove with a charter boat and the rain poured all night. The next morning I got up early and using the GPS to figure out where I was, I headed out of the bay in heavy fog.

I don’t have radar (I’m beginning to think I might get it) so I was pretty nervous. The fog cleared to about 1/4- 1/2 mile viability but I made an executive decision that since we couldn’t see much anyway, the extra distance to go around Kuiu Island didn’t warrant the effort so I headed north towards Rocky Pass. I listen obsessively on the VHF to channel 16 and all the big boat routinely announce their positions and I figure little boats can stay out of each others way.

But whales are a different story. I was cruising peacefully along and a humpback whale surfaced about only a boat length away heading diagonally towards my bow. My only thought was, “Do whales ever hit boats?” No time for a camera or evasive maneuvers but the whale knew otherwise. It gently sounded so close that boat went through the ripples left by its tail. Pretty impressive sight that only I was lucky enough to see. I called for Viviann but she only caught the rings left behind in the water.

As we motored along towards Rocky Pass the fog lifted and it was another glorious Alaskan Day.

Sailing Alaska in a 27 ft boat. On to Hydaburg and Craig.

The next day we head off to Hydaburg. The weather continued to be amazing. We started to see more signs of civilization as we got closer to Hydaburg. This is a Coast Guard helicopter, they must have been practicing as they buzzed a couple of fishing boats and flew off.

Viviann at the helm, one of the few pictures I’ve taken. Viviann should get the credit for the bulk of the pictures in these posts.

As we approach the town there is a long spit running off from the beach that I nearly went aground on. I am sure I was the entertainment that day. After tying up at the decrepit dock we walked the town. They are building a fancy new set of docks that are supposed to be finished this summer. Hydaburg is another small native village. And another hot, not Alaskan like day, it was in the eighties as it had been for the last few days. There were hand letter signs stapled to telephone poles every few hundred feet that said, “popsickls for sale at Cassie’s nanna’s house.” Obviously if you had to ask where Cassie’s nanna’s house was, you weren’t from around there.

We went to the little store and the first thing the storekeeper asked was were we from the little sailboat? Like I said we were the entertainment. We wanted to buy popsicles but we were told that the barge only comes once a week and they were sold out. The fellow at the store told us where Cassie’s nanna lived but he thought they might be sold out too. Luckily he remembered that he had a couple ice cream sandwiches left so we lucked out. At the fish dock the local kids were enjoying the hot weather.

Hydaburg has a large totem park where they have been replacing the reproductions of the originals. This fellow was rebuilding the base for a sacred sea otter statue. Like Metakatla, Hydaburg has an unfortunate past. Apparently early in the 1900’s three local native villages were convinced to abandon their well established and functioning villages and consolidate at an entirely new site on unbroken wilderness at the present site of Hydaburg. They were promised schools, a hospital and so on. They are still waiting for the hospital. We were told this story by the son of the first child born at the new site, in a tent in the middle of winter. When they were moving the village there were two of these ancient sea otter statues and one of them was dropped off the ship into the harbor. It is stlll there. Another post office Besides science I also teach woodshop. This spring a new student arrived with his father. Talking to them I learned they were from Hydaburg. I jokingly said that we were going to SE Alaska and we would look them up.

Well here we were in Hydaburg after all and Viviann convinced me that I really should try to drop in. I thought it a little unusual but she asked where my student lived and of course everyone knew. So we knocked on the door the next morning and reintroduced ourselves. The father was surprised to see us and invited us in for coffee. He told us the son was still asleep and we had a nice chat learning all about the goings on of Hydaburg.

After a time the father insisted on waking the son up. I wish I had had a camera to get a shot of the kid’s face when he walked into the living room and sees his teacher sitting there. It was complete shock followed by a big grin. We had a nice visit and left to catch the tide with some local knowledge of how to avoid the sandbar. The next day we made it to Craig. We were met at the dock by a fellow from the port who helped us tie up. We got showers and went out for pizza with Viviann’s friend and her husband. The next day they loaned us their truck to see the sights and we drove to Klawock where we poked around where they were replacing all the totems from their park. The old ones were all laid out in a field, it was a pretty impressive sight. We looked into the carving shed and the carver was happy to see us and invited us in. He is Ron Fairbanks and he teaches carving among other things to middle school students. Besides the whale carving, take a look at the cedar plank behind him. It is about 30 inches wide clear vertical grain and about fifteen feet long. You don’t run into wood like that very often. He is working on the last totem for the park.

The next day we are about to take off and our batteries are too low to turn over the outboard. I had been babying them hoping that they would hold a charge. Obviously not, so I borrowed a dock cart and huffed it up to the local NAPA. The price wasn’t all that much more than at home so I replaced them both. An hour and a half later we were off.

A Tiny Cork on a Lonely Coast. Ketchikan to Hydaburg

We headed out from Ketchikan heading north in the now blazing sun. Once we cleared the cruise ships that act like a breakwater we discovered that the wind was coming from the north so we decided to go south. This was with the goal of circumnavigating Prince of Wales (POW) Island. We had originally planned this for the last part of our trip. But hey no schedule, no worries. We were able to run downwind a few miles before the wind died. I tried fishing with no luck and we headed for Metakatla, a native village on Annette Island. This is an overall view of the trip once we were on the water. We went clockwise from Ketchikan. This is a bit more detailed view of the route around south part of POW Island showing most of our stops along the way. There were lots of folks hanging out on the beach in the sun. We sat in this park and talked to a fellow who told us that he remembered last summer, and on that day everyone went to the beach too. Pretty funny guy. We tried to buy ourselves ice cream bars and they only had whole boxes at the store. So we bought a box of 8, ate two and my wife handed out the extras to the locals who were overwhelmingly pleased. Unfortunately she only had one left when we ran into a group of teenagers who were swimming. Only one of them was lucky but the others were very gracious and polite about it. Nice place My wife loves to send post cards so a visit to the local post office is always a must see. Metakatla’s history is interesting. We were told was that the original residents came from Metakatla BC, near Prince Rupert, to avoid religious persecution. Around the turn of the century the town was created when Father William Duncan petitioned the US government for land. They had apparently looked as far south as Chile. There is another Metakatla in BC east of Vancouver Island that is completely abandoned. We went there about 20 years ago and there were still the remains of long houses and totem poles on the ground. I don’t know how that Metakatla fits into this story or if it does. Some of the original homes. A shot of the boat harbor. Every town in SE has a boat harbor. We tried raising the harbormaster on the VHF and there was no reply so we spent the night for free. No one takes this sort of thing too seriously. There are lots of beautiful totems throughout SE. Alaskan sunset. Everyone told us all summer that the weather is never this nice. Though on all three trips we have taken we have had beautiful weather for the most part. I think the locals say that so that they aren’t overrun by lower 48‘ers. We did get some rain and fog but nothing like some of the summers we heard about. The next day we take off again in brilliant sunshine and head across Clarence Strait to go around the south end of POW island. Viviann trying her best to make sure she has boat “cred.” We covered about 25 miles and anchored all alone in Gardner Bay. For the next two and a half days we saw a total of two fishing boats and two sailboats. And when I say “we saw” I mean that literally, as through binoculars. They were several miles away. This is the most isolated place I have been to by boat. The next day I tried fishing and caught this nice pink. When they are fresh they are delicious, they remind me more of a trout than a salmon. We called this our $150.00 fish as that is the price of an annual fishing license. After that all the fish we caught were free. We then navigated through a tangle of islands that makes most places look like the open ocean. In this chart I pasted a 5 mile X 5 mile section of the San Juans to compare it to a 5 mile X 5 mile section of a whole bunch of un-named islands at the south end of POW. Where the arrow points is where I took the whale video. After feeling our way through a 50 foot wide pass that was filled with a tangle of kelp we stopped and ate lunch held in place by the kelp. A humpback whale arrived shortly and spent about half an hour flapping around on the other side of the kelp bed. It seemed like it was using the kelp as a scrub brush. This links to where I posted it on Facebook. Click Here For the Video We stayed that night at Tau Island in a stunning protected cove. Suffice it to say we were the only ones around. The lower end of POW is a protected wilderness area so there is no development, not even a lonely cabin. We came across this scene, the picture doesn’t capture it really. We counted 18 eagles going after herring and lots of gulls. We didn’t see any herring get caught. It is hard work to be a predator. We are now on to Hydaberg.