Sitka to Auke Bay

7/24/11

After almost 2 weeks in Sitka, I was getting antsy again to explore more places before Rick and Chris were going to join me.  Of course I wanted to go around Kruzof Island to check out if there were any places to surf.  The day before I left it was beautifully sunny – the day I left it was raining and poor visibility.  Dang!

So on Monday (when the harbor masters office was open), I paid off my bill, filled up with diesel, and ventured out from Sitka to the open ocean.  Ah, the open Pacific.  Small swells and seagulls, the tangy smell of kelp – but lots of rain made it a sweet/sour experience.  After winding through a myriad of small islands and shoals, I reached Shoal Reefs – again, poor visibility made it hard to see it as a potential surf spot. It looked like it would take a big south/southwest swell, but a good paddle outside.  So I went around the south side of Kruzof Island, the southerly winds picking up enough to make it a bit uncomfortable.  Once we got around, it was downwind sailing until we reached Sealion Cove, another potential surf spot and nice sandy beach.  Being the wind was onshore, I didn’t have a chance to really check it out.  It would have been nice to have some local knowledge. 

At any rate, I round the north corner and dipped into Kalinin Bay, where many boats anchor to wait for the slack tide to go through Peril Straits.  Kalinin was pretty enough that I launched my kayak and paddled around.  There were a few big boats anchored, with a pretty and large schooner with what looked like chartered guests on board from out of Canada (it was called the Maple Leaf).

The next day, we left at the correct time for slack water at Sergius Narrows – I was determined to do it right this time.  I was on time, and I shared the journey with a number of huge yachts and one tug towing a barge.  That was interesting!  I also went by way of the normal narrows instead of the other side which I made coming to Sitka.  It was a lot easier and I didn’t have to weave around a bunch of rocks at break-neck speed.  Once is enough!

Baby Bear Bay

A friend onshore at Baby Bear Bay

Peril Strait is really beautiful, and since it was partly cloudy (in Alaska, that means sunny!), the colors of the water and trees were really dramatic.  I didn’t have to go too far when I came to Baby Bear Bay.  I didn’t visit it the last time because I was smelling the Sitka barn, so to speak, but this time, we ventured in, avoiding rocks by maneuvering slowly, and watching my electronic chart and depth sounder intently.  It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.  Once pass the dangerous areas, we reached the far recesses of the cove in a very landlocked position and anchored.  Very pretty.  Very quiet.  Eventually other boats came in and anchored closer to the entrance.  Since the weather was nice, I decided to spend another day there, exploring with the dinghy and even launching my stand-up paddleboard to do more practice standing up on the paddleboard. I'm still not very comfortable with this.  Guess I'm too top-heavy.  I also found that the paddleboard works very well as a kayak, using a kayak paddle instead of the stand-up paddle and sitting down.

Typical salmon fishing boat trawling in Peril Straits

Leaving the bay, we worked through Peril Straits to again visit Appleton and spent the night there; this time it was blowing hard the opposite direction (from the south), even though it was sunny.  I was making a great soup combination and had all of the ingredients in the pot cooking away, when the propane ran out.  Jeeze!  That was dumb.  I must have forgotten that one of my propane tanks had run out and I didn't fill it in Sitka.  Now I would be doing my trip without the stove, which made me decide that I would curtail my trip a bit and go straight for Auke Bay the next day, an 85 mile trip.  No problems - especially with the auto pilot

Mile buoy in Santa Cruz - NOT

So the next day (7/22) I left early at 5am and continued east on Peril Strait, seeing whales, sea lions, and lots of fishing boats trawling for salmon, and sticking our head out north to Chatham Strait.  Since it was blowing about 15 directly from the south, I decided to try out the whisker pole to maintain speed of 7 knots with the engine going at a slower rpm to save on fuel.  This would give me a good opportunity to mark where the lines were suppose to be and make it easier to set the spinnaker pole for wing-on-wings (main on one side, jib on the other) in worse conditions - plus make me feel comfortable about what I was doing.

t turned out to be pretty easy, especially since I had changed the big 150 genoa to the more manageable 120 jib while in Sitka.  Having the big 150 was hard for a single-hander like me to handle, plus it was really bigger than the jib winches could handle (granted, I'm not as strong as I used to be).  And in a blow, the jib was a real monster, even when roller-reefed. So going smaller was a good move.  In any winds above 15 knots, I'd be more inclined to sail, and below that, I'd motor sail.

Lots of these guys, but I couldn't get close enough for good shot

This, dear non-sailors, is what wing-on-wing looks like

The autopilot has a vane mode.  Since the whole instrument system is linked to each other (speed, depth, wind speed and direction, GPS), the autopilot can then sense the wind direction and change course if the wind changes direction.  For going down wind, it’s great because I don’t have to worry about accidentally gybing (for those who don't know the definition of gybing,...look it up) – the boat would just adjust course when needed.  This worked out fine until, just after passing Tenakee Inlet, the boat all of a sudden rounded up towards the wind, essentially stalling out.  I went to the wheel and set the boat back to the correct course, but the autopilot wouldn’t adjust.  Something was broken.  Damn! (that’s worse than "Dang!" and “Jeeze!”).  Loosing the autopilot was bad news for this single-hander.  I had an idea what was wrong, but fixing it would mean pulling a lot of crap out of the lazarette, pulling out my tools, and worming my way up to the stern to fix it…which I didn’t feel comfortable doing out in the middle of Chatham Strait, especially with all of the traffic. 

So I mushed on, steering.  I was just passing Icy Strait (where Glacier Bay is) when I noticed a boat crossing from there to Admiralty Island to a spot that I didn’t notice before, which proved to be Funter Bay.  "What the heck!  I’ll go there too", I thought; and for dinner, I can microwave food for dinner.  And that’s what I did.  Once I found a spot to anchor in the large bay, I started digging out all the stuff in the starboard lazaret, dived down there with my head lamp on, and saw that the autopilot ram had come loose from the tiller arm of the rudder post.  That was a great relief, because if it were an electrical problem, I would have been SOL (shit out of luck).  So, with much grunting, swearing, sweating and maneuvering in a very tight spot, I managed to put it back together again.  Whew!  Hope it holds up.

Tip of Admiralty Island looking at Medenhall Glacier

Auke Bay

The next day, I left, rounded the tip of Admiralty Island and headed south on the other side to Auke Bay.  Auke Bay is yachting, fishing, tour boat central.  It is probably the busiest port in SE Alaska during the summer.  As all of the docks are for transient traffic, you don’t get assigned a berth, you look for it – 1^st come, 1^st serve – and I found one as close to the ramp as I could find.  When I got there, it was sunny and hot (notice I didn’t say warm, but HOT).  Everybody was wearing shorts and enjoying the good weather while it last.  Lots of tour boats were coming in and out, dropping off tourists from Glacier Bay tours and whale watching. Tour buses would come and go in the busy and full parking lot, letting off tourists from the cruise ships in Juneau to go or come back from those tours. Fishing boats were just opening up a new fishing session, and were, therefore, very active, coming in and out.  HUGE yachts were tied up on the outer breakwater (like 150 plus yachts, all shiny and spiff with their crew members making sure there was not a speck of dirt).  There was even a mega-yacht with a helicopter on top. What an interesting life to be so rich!

Auke Bay has a lot more amenities than Douglas Marina (which only just had an outhouse), but, with all of the people traffic, it’s amazing that they still only have one crapper; they have two showers, but it costs 4 quarter for 2 minutes, then another 3 quarters for another 2 minutes – highway robbery!  The area as a very small store for food and liquor, and there is a laundry place up the street a ways.  I’ll probably rent a car closer to the end of the week to go to the movies and get some stuff from the chandlery in Juneau, as well as to the Safeway – and to also pick up R&C when they come in on Saturday.

Traveling from Juneau, around Admiralty island to Sitka to Auke Bay

Today is raining, and the forecast says more all week.  I hope it gets it out of its system by the time we go to Glacier Bay.

Well, off to the local coffee shop, where they have a WiFi so I can send this blog off to Blogsville, USA.  Later!

Sitka

7/15/11

Sitka, looking from University of SE Alaska

Alaska is so different from any other states in the US.  Put aside the fact that the scenery is totally mind-blowing wherever you go, and that everywhere you look, it’s wild…and, if you go traipsing around in the wild, you are not on top of the food chain as in the rest of the US.  Transportation to most of the cities is either by plane or boat, especially in the SE area.  Except for maybe Anchorage (population 350,000), the cities are really small towns, even the state capital Juneau (population 30,000).  Sitka is the fourth largest “city” in Alaska, but its population is only 9000.  Compared that to Santa Cruz, California with a population of 60,000, which is considered a town next to the 4rth biggest city in California - San Jose, a population of 7.5 million.

So when I first looked at Sitka, I had to admit that I was somewhat disappointed that it was so small, it seemed not much bigger than Friday Harbor.  But, after living here for the last couple of weeks and talking to various people, either locals or live-aboards, it seems to have a very close-knit social network, especially apparent after tourist season, and all of the amenities that one would hope for in a very small town.

Sitka is set in a really beautiful area – more so than any other place that I have seen. It’s steeped in history, having been the home of the Tlinget Indians, a Russian settlement (fur trading), a former booming pulp mill (until they closed it down), a still large fishing industry, and a booming tourist trade without the in-your-face tourism environment like Juneau and Ketchikan.

Anything not tied to tourism is tied to fishing – there are a ton of commercial fishing boats – when I was there, many slips were empty because the boats were out fishing.  The docks are busy with activity around the fishing boats that are there, with lots of loading of food, fixing broken down equipment, and lots of talking back and forth about…fishing.  Lots of noise and activity during most hours of the day sometimes make for a restless night.  Other things is the busy boat yard full of commercial boats about 5 miles north of town.  There are a couple of fish packing plants along the road to town.

The harbor is also filled with a lot of transient traffic, mostly trawler yachts stopping to get food and walk around. Just about every boat that you see in "Passage Maker" come here, with an especial abundance of Nordic Tugs, which must be the trawler version of Catalina sailboats.  Still and yet, there are a lot of live-aboards that stay in Sitka during the winter.  I am remembering how cold it was in Friday Harbor and find it hard to imagine staying here during the winter.  Maybe it’s OK in a comfortable home on land, but the walks to the head and showers would be daunting, to say the least, in sub-freezing temperatures.  No thanks.

The ubiquitous raven

The downtown area of Sitka is about a half mile away from the harbor, so I’ve been using my bike to tour the city. I did rent a car for one day to tour the areas beyond the city (only 7 miles north and south) and to see if the boat yard was any good (and to transfer another solar panel from West Marine).  There’s a lot of trails that meet the road, none that I went hiking on. This is one port where the cruise liners do not tie up to the city.  They anchor out in one of the channels to the south and transfer tourist to land by way of their launches.  In that way, the cruise liners don’t visually dominate the shoreline and the area looks and feels much nicer.

Psst! Hey dude, check out that tasty-looking pile of fish guts!

Sitka would be a great place for a remake of  “The Birds”.  There are a million black birds/ravens, all cawing and making other noises that you wouldn’t believe come out of those bodies.  Alaska is crawling with them, and Sitka has more than its share.  There are also many bald eagles, all sitting around looking for handouts and other tidbits, usually sitting on top of fishing boat masts to get a good view all around.  I spent a half hour watching one bald eagle try to get something that was underwater, but near the surface.  It would swoop down dragging its claws through the water and, with wings pumping furiously, climb back up in the air, getting ready to try again.  Eventually the eagle gave up and went back to its treetop throne.

 I did visit a bear “sanctuary”.  By sanctuary, it means that a non-profit organization take orphan bear cubs and, I guess, raise them in a couple of acres of.  Two brothers, Killisno and Chalk, who are seen here playing with each other, were orphaned as cubs when their mother was killed after she broke into a lodge kitchen looking for food.  I quote from the "Fortress of the Bear" organization:

"The Brown bears of Southeast Alaska represent a distinct population, genetically dissimilar from any other bear. Research suggests these bears are remnants of a Polar bear population stranded in Southeast Alaska following the last ice age. They have adapted to the rain forest environment and learned specific behaviors and marvelous survival skills. They successfully hunt everything from mountain goats to seals. Their ability to adapt sometimes brings them into conflict with their upright urban neighbors. The means to deal with these bears has been limited or non-existent. Our goal is to seek a solution that is better than simply shooting them.

"In order to accomplish this mission we have established a bear habitat. We are utilizing 2 abandoned Clarifier Tanks which are 14 and 17 feet high respectively and 3/4 of an acre each. Our habitat allows for public viewing and an educational experience."

Anyway, it's next to a big recycling area and has two stadium-sized areas with big ponds, stumps, etc. that the bears can play in.  One spot had the two brothers, the other another family of young bears.  They all seemed very happy, and they were certainly photogenic, as I couldn't help but snap a ton of pics at their hijinks.  Sorry for the abundance...

Every garbage container that you see in town and in the harbor is usually massive with complicated methods of opening them, so that bears can’t get in.  I had thought garbage scavenging was a problem associated with black bears, but brown bears tend to seek human garbage and end up getting in trouble with it. Once a bear gets hooked on getting food in human towns, it's all downhill for the bear.  Only today, there have been warnings of a wounded bear (shot by cops) located somewhere near Sitka deemed "armed and dangerous".  Also I'm hearing bear sightings on some popular trails - and people are warned to be cautious.  It sounds like a Hawaiian shark watch.

Kruzof Island is to the left

Islands and lots of reefs surround Sitka.  But it still looks out to the open ocean and can get some surf.  There used to be a surf shop, but it has closed down. I learned of a couple of spots outside of town, and there's a couple of places on Kruzof Island,  a few miles northwest of Sitka. When I leave Sitka (probably tomorrow), I am planning on going west of Kruzof Island to check out some of the spots.  Not that I could do anything about it, since I don’t have a surfboard and I’m out of shape for that kind of thing anyway.  But it still would be nice to look.

Speaking of surf spot, I heard the primo spot in Alaska is Yakatat, about 100 miles north of SE Alaska, which is doable for my boat.  I think I’ll visit it next year before heading south.

I’m planning on leaving tomorrow to head back up (via Kruzof Island) towards Auke Bay to meet with Rick and Chris for an exploration of Glacier Bay.

Juneau to Sitka – via south around Admiralty Island

BB in Gilbert Bay

6/30/11 - What better time to write in my blog than when I’m stuck in anchorage awaiting the end of a series of lows that have descended SE Alaska creating a lot of rainy and windy days.  You’d think it was wintertime, except for the unbelievably long days. I’m writing this in Cannery Cove on south Admiralty Island.  When it semi clears, it’s actually quite beautiful – steep and high hills on either side of a wide bay, covered in trees with lots of birds – most notably a ton of bald eagles, which I have tried to take pictures of when I’m not reading books. There looks like 2-4 buildings on the point with a small pier with some aluminum skiffs tied to it.

Gilbert Bay

2 cruiseliners squeezing by in Tracy Arm

North Tracy Glacier

The temperature here has been lower than past rainy days, so I have not been able to do much of anything except read. Luckily I have a lot of good books, which I’ve been reading voraciously.  I’ve been really into series books lately; mysteries with a main character or characters that I get hooked into.  I’ve finished the latest of the Myron Bolitar mystery series (by Harlan Corben), which I have found to be very entertaining.  Another is a little known series of mystery stories based on an Alaskan State Trooper Nathan Active, a full-blooded Inupiat, in a far-north village in the Aleutians solving mysteries – all activities are steeped in the unique culture of today’s Alaskan Eskimos which makes for very interesting reading.  I find some series books much more entertaining than reading single books – something about seeing familiar characters in different circumstances gets me much more easily hooked into the plot.  I’m sure it’s the same with getting hooked watching dramatic TV show series.  But now that I haven’t been cabled into a TV for a while, it’s all about books for rainy days.

South Tracy Glacier

Admiralty Island is famous for its brown bears, but, as is my luck, I haven’t seen anything except for a brief glimpse amongst the woods when I was kayaking in Snug Harbor.  I know that either this year or the next I’ll see one – cross my fingers.

Tracy Arm glacier shaped valley

We left Juneau on 6/26 and, instead of going to Taku Cove, which I have already been to, I elected to go to Gilbert Bay, further south from Taku.  From what I heard from a local, it has a lot of bears. It was the right place for bears, a big open valley, lots of places that a bear would want to go, and I looked even at 0400 hours, but no dice.

We left early (0400) the next day to head to Tracy Arm and have another go at the glaciers.  This time, it wasn’t clogged up with bergs, and we had an easy, go-all-the-way-up-the-arm trip - lots of bergs to dodge, but not to the point that it was dangerous.  Surprisingly, there were 4 cruise ships that went up there that day.  What was interesting was that the wakes that they would leave behind would reverberate the narrow fiords – never ending, it seems. In an open area of ocean, a wake goes by, you bounce on it for a minute and that’s it.  In a narrow fiord, it bounces from wall to the next and then bounces off the next wall again and so on. BB would rock and roll for the longest time (I ended up rolling out the mainsail as a steadying sail so the boat wouldn’t rock so hard). You see one of these giant ships rounding a corner and squeezing through the narrow fiord going at 15 knots, the first reaction is to head directly to one side or the other of the fiord and hope that it misses you. But, the closer the ship gets, you find that there’s still plenty of room.  In fact, I watched as two giant cruise liners passed each other going in opposite directions – verrrrrry slowly and carefully.

Granite overhanging about 40'

Tracy Arm had some very dramatic granite rock formations and some interesting waterfalls.  And coming to within an 8^th of a mile to the north end of the glacier was pretty amazing in its huge size and cragginess, looking like thousands of years old.  But, I must admit, I am spoiled with the Misty Fiords - it probably was because of the sunny weather, which is much more psychologically and color enhancing.  I’m hoping it will be even better at Glacier Bay, coming up in August.  Hopefully the weather will improve by then, because, so far, it’s been mostly rainy days with an occasional sunny day to turn the mood around.

Weather can be so psychological in its impact on human perception.  I can have a 25-knot breeze in sunny weather and it would be a magnificent, inspiring, and exciting sail.  The same speed in wind in cloudy or rainy conditions, and I’m battling a storm.

It ended up being a pretty long day, as the way to the entrance of Tracy Arm is about 15 miles from Gilbert Bay; going to and from the glacier in Tracy Arm is about 40 miles; and, since it looked like a strong southerly was going to occur making south-facing Tracy Cove a bad anchorage, another long run of 25 miles to Mole Harbor, across the Stephens Passage to Admiralty Island and then up the Seymour Canal.  Nonetheless, that’s what we did – we didn’t get to Mole until about 10pm and by then the southerly was coming up and it was starting to rain.  Mole was kind of tricky, as it’s just a series of reefs that protect you, mostly during low tide.  In high tide, it gets a bit bouncy.  I wouldn’t recommend it.

The next morning, it was raining and cold.  I was thinking of continuing up to Windfall Harbour, but the word was that the weather was going to crappy all week, going into the next and there were no safe havens in southerly winds in that direction – so I headed south to Snug Bay.

Snug Bay was actually quite pleasant and a good anchorage where I spent the night.  In retrospect, I should have stayed there the next day during the bad weather.  But I decided to continue on southwest to Cannery Cove.  I was motor sailing with the main up and the southeasterly and rain was getting worse.  The wind got up to 25 knots (battling the storm?) and the boat was bouncing along vigorously with the short, current-enhanced chop, things getting thrown around (I’ve become much too complacent about storing stuff properly as SE Alaska has been a mill pond until now).  Visibility was not good and my radar was not working very well for some reason.  Luckily, my chart program in my computer was very accurate and I was able to wind our way around some islands and reefs and work into Cannery Cove, where we’re at now.  Cannery Cove is just one of several other coves in Pybus Bay, so I may move to another spot later.

Bears in Cannery Cove - too far away!

Except for all of the bald eagles, I have not seen any other wildlife activity on shore.  Maybe they all want to stay huddled in their shelters until the rain eases off.

Later - It’s now almost 8 pm – the rain has let off and I can see more of the island – the glacier-made valley is beautiful – and I see some bears – far off…it looks like a sow and her cubs, but there seems to be a lot of cubs for some reason.  They are about a mile away, so it’s hard to get any detail.

Cannery Cove - eagle cruisn'

Next day – now July 1 – it’s rain and wind - again.  I’m going to headout anyway.  It looks like Chapin Bay is a nice shelter.  So I pick up the anchor, roll out the mainsail, and motorsail out (ahem, making sure that things are better stored below).  It turns out that it’s light breeze (early at 8am) and the wind and waves don’t start coming up until I’m almost there.  All this time, it’s raining hard.  From what I can tell, Chapin Bay is quite dramatic, narrow, and supposedly has good bear activities.  I’m waiting until it clears up to take out the kayak and do a bit of exploring.  In coming in, I got a bit of signal from my cell phone with some phone messages.  I try to use my sat phone to make some calls, especially since I have a lot of unused minutes, but the cove is surrounded by steep hills that are so high that it blocks out most of the sky, so whenever my phone has a satellite pick-up, it only lasts for a minute or two.  I wonder, if I had to use an EPIRB, would it even work here.  All in all, Chapin Bay is still a very spectacular place.

Chapin Bay - Kayak cruisn'

Next day – rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain etc.  I’m finally getting cabin fever after finishing my umpteenth book and decide to put on my dry suit and go kayaking even if it’s raining.  – As it turns out, that was a good call – with my dry suit and dad’s floppy white hat that I inherited, I was actually quite comfy while circumnavigating the bay, hoping to find a bear foolish enough to venture out in the rain (I’m sure they do it all the time!).  No such luck on the bears, but I did see some bald eagles, though not near as many as there were in Cannery Cove.  The sad truth is those beautiful bald eagles are scavengers and hang out where there is a possibility of a tasty treat with remnants of fish guts etc. from fishermen.  So it’s probably no surprise.

Before I got into this enclosed place, I had a couple of voice messages on my cell.  This is the perfect excuse to up-anchor and head on out to Warm Springs Bay, which is across Catham Strait on the east side of Baranof Island.  Because of the south wind, maybe I’ll get a nice sail.

7/3/11 – Now I’m sitting in a beautiful, small, completely land-locked cove called Ell Cove, because it’s shaped like a backwards “L”.  There are lots of bald eagles and it’s really quiet - no other boats here right now.

Warm Springs Community

Boardwalk in Warm Sprgs

Those branches look nice and warm

Yesterday (7/2) I made it to Warm Springs Bay with a great tail-current and not much wind.  Warm Springs has a couple of other coves attached to it plus it has a small community all connected by boardwalk.  It’s famous for having hot springs above a massive waterfall as well as a nice hike to Baranof Lake. And it also has a couple of public baths that pipe the natural hot springs down to the cove.  It also has a public dock, which was full of boats when I came in. There was even a Cal 40, which I wouldn’t have thought would be a viable boat here in the cold NW.  Apparently it is – I mean it’s all about comfort, isn't it? Some people like comfort more than others.  I like moderate comfort (ie: comfort that I can afford).

Baranof Lake - waterfall is to the left

I elected to anchor at Schooner Cove, in Warm Springs Bay, which was very nice and quiet.

Watch out for the first step-low tide

7/3/11 - I got up that morning and launched the dinghy (in heavy rain, of course).  I blasted over to the docks at Warm Springs and walked up to Baranof Lake (singing or whistling some jazz and blues songs  – didn’t want to run into any bears) on a very well kept path and some boardwalk.  Baranof Lake was beautiful – no pile-up of logs, the water was absolutely clear.  If I had a bathing suit I would have gone for a swim (no, not really – water was icy cold). The lake runs off into the giant falls that runs into the cove, creating a lot of little chop and noise around the boats that are tied up on the public dock.  The folks that live in the tiny community live in nice tidy houses all connected with the boardwalk; I’m sure the noise of the waterfall is just background noise to them. 

Hot tub! Longer than it looks

When I got back from my walk, I decided to try out one of their free public baths – which is a big painted steel tub filled with the hot water piped up from the hot springs above enclosed in a little room with an open view of the waterfall.  The tub is more than big enough for two people, and is almost a swimming pool with one.  I was in heaven…other than the slight smell of sulfur and being not as warm as I would have liked, it was very nice.  When I ever move to land again, I gotta get me one of those tubs - a full 6 feet long and nice and high (or a regular hot tub will do...).

Ell Cove - finally a bit of sunshine!

So here I am in Ell Cove – the sun actually has come out in-between the rain clouds, so I’m actually getting some charging from the solar panels.  Nice.

Kasnyku Falls-near Ell cove

Later that night, it got a little windy, but the cove is so land-locked that it didn’t amount to anything.  I left the next day (7/4/11) meaning to go to Cosmos.  The SE wind started picking up and Cosmos was not as protected as I would have liked when I went in to check.  Since the SE wind was going my general direction, I decided to guide us to Appleton Cove, which was about 15 miles away.  So, continuing up Catham Strait with sails up and then jibing into Peril Strait, which circles around the north side of Baranof Island, we ended up in Appleton Cove, the wind continuously building.  By the time we got there, the wind was blowing a good 25-30 knots.  There was about 3 boats anchored, and I selected a nice spot and put down my anchor, which held very well.  The wind continued blowing hard all night.  I’d get up every 3-4 hours to check that I was still anchored in the same spot, and that everything was ok. During the evening, another 3 boats came in to anchor – including a commercial fishing boat.  I found out later that the winds had come up in some places at about 40-45 knots.

In between rain squalls - Appleton Cove

This morning (7/5) I’m planning on leaving at the right time to get to Baby Bear Bay, located on Sergius Narrows, at high tide.  The wind has gone down a bit.  I debated about hanging out here for another day to wait for the wind to come down, and I was reminded of the time that the whole Wright family, Mom & Dad, Bill, Rick and I, were nailed to Cape Colnet on the west coast of Baja for I think 3 days on the Siwash, waiting for the NW winds to ease off so we could head north back to Ensenada.  The waves created by the heavy winds would roll around the cape, often violently rocking the Siwash and making it hard to do things below, like playing dominoes, which we did to amuse ourselves in the long hours of the day (I’m sure it was hard to cook too, which emphasizes Mom’s ability to get by under duress).  It was so windy that we couldn’t use our dinghy to explore or do anything.  All we could do was just listen to the wind whistling in the rigging, watching the surf, and rolling our guts out, beam to the seas (as the wind was blowing straight off the point).  I forget if we put out a flopper-stopper.

Here, in Appleton Cove, it’s different.  I can take the dinghy out if I wanted to, and there are no seas to roll in.  No rain now with slightly less cloud cover, so my solar panels are trying to boost my batteries.  Just wind, and Peril Strait is pretty enclosed.  So I will leave when it’s appropriate, probably about 1 pm.  I should get there by 5, when the high tide is at its peak.  The bay is very tricky to get into, so having as much depth is a good thing.

The dorsal fin seems pretty big, so they might be killer whales(?)

7/8/11 – As it turns out, I didn’t go to Baby Bear Cove.  I had a favorable tail current, so the tide was too low to get into it and I went faster than I should have, and it turned out that I could get through Sergius Narrows (a place best passed during slack high tide) at the right time.  So I forged on, winding through the Peril Straits heading for Sergius Narrows, narrowly missing some rocks that I had misinterpreted on the chart, shooting out of the narrows doing 11 knots over the ground.  Guess I didn’t get the currents right after all.  When my boat was safely in Salisbury Sound, it took about a half hour before my adrenaline slowed down.  Yikes!  And I have to go back through it when I head north to Auke Bay.

So now I’m tied up to the Eliason Harbor marina, in Sitka.  I have found out that town is a good walk away, so I’ve been using my bike.  I also find that getting a slip during the wintertime may be a real problem, as space is tight if you want an electrical outlet, which I do.  Getting storage for Blue Bossa is becoming more of a challenge than I thought.  There is a place near Juneau called Hoonah, where I read that a lot of boats winter there because they have excellent facilities, it’s a bit warmer than inland ports like Juneau and Wrangell, and that the harbormaster watches over the boats during the winter.  Might be a good place to check out.

To get to the West Marine store, you have to cross the bridge close to the airport – I ended up taking a taxi. I can’t believe the only place they found for a store is way out of the way to all of the transient traffic.  It’s no wonder that West is going to close the store down in September for lack of business emphasized by the high cost of rent for the building.  Apparently, real estate in Sitka is pretty high, according to the lady who cut my hair when I was in town.

I have a lot of boat projects to do this week.  More about Sitka next blog.