Craig

Wrangell to Craig

I'm sitting in the main cabin with both sliding doors open to let in air in a port town facing the Pacific Ocean called Craig. The sun is out, with sometimes bouts of a quick rain, then sunshine. The weather says it will be a nice day tomorrow, which I will take advantage of and do a quick 1-day tour of the Prince of Wales Island (POW) by car.

Craig

I am in Craig sooner than expected because Gary Groth-Marnot, who had been traveling with me for only 5 days, had to leave because of the death of his father. This left a bit of a hole in my plans, as I always like company (what can I say, it gets lonely out on the boat sometimes (and I get tired of talking to myself)) and Gary's company is especially nice (and invigorating) as we have been friends since we were kids and get along very well.   Gary's easy-going manner and sense of adventure will be sorely missed.

Something to do when I'm outside

Craig is a nice spot (my idea of a nice place is if it has nice showers, which Craig has). The people here are super friendly and it hasn't taken me a long time to get a scope of the place. It's big enough to have a supermarket, a gas station, a couple of bars, and even a community swimming pool and hot tub, to which I plan to use. Downtown looks a lot like a western town with some nice looking as well as some rundown buildings. Gary and I met a woman named Ruth Ann (about our age) who ran a restaurant on the waterfront, as well as a hotel across the street, as well as some other places of business within the town. She was born and raised in Ketchikan and moved out in the 70's to Craig to start her businesses, acquiring one business after another over a number of years, watching the fishing and timber boon in the 70's and 80's, and then watching as things ratcheted down over the last 15 years. Now there's only a relatively small fishing fleet that stays here. There are still a lot of summer business from tourists who come out here to hunt and fish, staying at camping lodges dotted all around the island. Thank goodness that there are no cruise liners.

Gary in his super stateroom

I picked up Gary at the Wrangell airport (May 16), showing him around the town and getting a bunch of food for our planned 3-week trip around POW. Of course it was raining and cold. Gary, being a southern California boy, had a hard time adapting - especially to the cold, and found himself even wearing long underwear.

Pt Baker garden

Pt Baker post offic

We left the next day and timed a nice ebb to arrive at Pt. Baker, a community that I have passed a couple of times, not knowing it was there. It's just north of Port Protection by about 5 miles, which is a larger community (population in Pt Baker is 25 - in Port Protection, it's 75). Pt Baker has a nice public dock where we tied up and walked the "town". It took us maybe 2 minutes to walk it - not much there, but we did talk to a very nice couple living in a house overlooking the cove. It had a beautiful garden in front, and we had a nice chat with the owner of the house. The people of Pt. Baker have their own community "grid", which is a simple generator that runs until probably 10pm and then stops until morning. There are no markets - they buy stuff through Amazon.com - even food. They have a US post office sitting on the dock with a lady who seems to spend a lot of time in there. Everyone has a boat of various sizes, but it's usually too far for them to go to Wrangell - if they have to go to a big town, they'll take a puddle jumper.

Hole in the Wall

Entering Hole in the Wall

We left the next morning, bound for Hole in the Wall, about 7 miles south. This place had probably the thinnest entrance of any anchorage that I've seen so far, but it was plenty deep, so I just concentrated in staying in the center of the channel. It was nice having Gary on the bow looking for any unmarked rocks. Once inside, the bay opened up, surrounded by steep, heavily forested hills, and a flat valley with a river running. Gary and I launched the dinghy and found a place to land. A small powerboat came in with four men dressed in chamo's and carrying guns, probably looking for black bear - now is the season to hunt bear, according to the guy we talked to in Pt Baker (the day before, we watched some hunters skinning a bear in Pt Baker). They saw us hiking in the southern side of the bay, so they decided to go on the northern side, figuring that we would be scaring any shootable wildlife. For the next couple of hours, Gary and I explored the forest, river, and some of the flatlands. The forest was thick, but not a lot of underbrush, and easy enough to explore. What with the heavy moss on the trees, it looked like something from the Lord of the Rings - we expected Hobbits to zip from tree to tree. We saw no sign of bears except for several big clumps of bear scat deposited in various places.

Hole in the Wall - where the hobbits hang out

We stayed for lunch, then upped anchor and went south into Shakan Bay, around Hamilton Island and into Entrance Cove where we spent a somewhat restless night, as the anchorage was not all that secure and there were heavy tidal currents shifting all over the place.

Because of the poor performance of my 44lb CQR anchor in the past, the next day, I decided to swap it for the 44lb Bruce anchor, which, except for that stormy night in Still Harbor, I hadn't used. So, with Gary's help, I exchanged anchors, and then proceeded up the El Capitan Narrows until we came to the El Capitan Caves dock.

Entrance Bay, El Capitan Narrows, and El Capitan Cave

The dock is designed primarily for dinghies, so we anchored Blue Bossa out a few hundred yard in the bay and dinghied in, armed with headlamps and flashlight. The cave is up high (370 wooden stops). Of course, Gary, being in the shape he's in, zipped up the hill without even breathing hard. For myself, I had about 3 good rest stops before I finally reached the top. Gary reminded me of a young dog who would dash up a steep hill, then dash down to where I was to find out why it's taking me so long to get up there, then dash back up to the top.

Entrance to El Capitan Cave

Intrepid cave explorer

The forest service generally has guides to take you through the caves, but their season doesn't start until May 26th. There is usually 3 tours a day. I can imagine the tour guides as being very fit, having to tramp up the mountain side 3 times a day. We could only get in the cave about 150 feet before running into a locked door to prevent people from getting in any further without a guide. It was extremely dark, with our head lamps barely making a dent, although Gary's flashlight was bright enough. It would have been death for those people who are claustrophobic, and even I was a bit nervous. Other than it was a bit damp, as well as thinking we saw Sasquatch lurking around, our cave exploration was fairly uneventful.

We continued on Blue Bossa through the rest of the El Capitan passage and out into a series of islands protecting us from the open ocean.

Sasquatch - maybe...

On the way, we saw tons of sea otters - they must have done a lot of growing in population since the days of hunting them have ended.  It's taken a long time, as their population growth is very slow.  We also saw a deer swimming across a channel, leaving one island to try out another island (the grass is always greener). Gary and I were amazed at how fast the deer could swim and how intellegent it seemed, exploring the new island coastline until he/she could find an easy way to climb up, being very cautious as to what creatures may lurk in the forest.

We eventually anchored in Cyrus Cove, a spectacular little hideaway spot. It was there that Gary, checking in how his dad was doing on the sat phone, found out that he had passed away. We made plans to go directly to Craig the next morning, so that Gary could fly out on Monday.

Heading west

 I'm planning on leaving here in a couple of days, heading south, visiting some outside islands, including Dall Island, before heading east to Ketchikan, where I will pick up some stuff that I ordered, install them on the boat, and venture forth to Canada.

sea otters - hard to get good pics of them

Gary on watch, wearing his "Alaskan Special" on his head

Wrangell to Craig