Thoms Place to Wrangell is a fun, easy, well-protected, 24 nautical mile route through Zimovia Strait. We were not particularly worried about the current through Zimovia, as it is more a nuisance than a hazard, so we opted for a 7AM departure. After all our early mornings, departing at seven felt pretty luxurious, and still allows us plenty of time to explore Wrangell during our one-night stopover.
The charming and friendly town of Wrangell is on the north end of Wrangell Island. It has a commercial airport, grocery stores, a marine and hardware store, a cute downtown, and an interesting museum with loads of local history. Most transient boats stay at Heritage Harbor, which is about a mile south of downtown, but an easy dinghy ride. Reliance Harbor is in town with fuel and other services, but with less transient dock space. Our group easily found room on a linear guest dock in Heritage.
Most folks dinghied over to Reliance Harbor and then walked around town to explore.
We visited the museum, walked around town, and got some fish and chips at the local 4th of July royalty contest fundraiser (two candidates are running for the “queen” title…this is apparently a local Wrangell tradition dating back to the 1950s where candidates raise money for their education. Cool!
We dinghied over for dinner at the Stik Restaurant tonight.
The portions are still enormous at the Stik, and most of us ended up taking half our dinner back in to go boxes.
Today was notable for glimpses of blue sky and periods of dry weather! After dinner several of us took advantage of the nicer weather to dinghy around the north end of the island to go see the petroglyphs at Petroglyph Beach State Historic Site.
26.9nm today
693.4nm total
