Up again at 4am (okay 4:30am) to check the 4am forecast and conditions for a Dixon Entrance crossing today. The Dixon Entrance East forecast for today looked about the same as last night:
Last night at 7pm Green Island was reporting 5ft moderate, and the wind at Grey Islet was SSE 25kts. We were hopeful that things would mellow overnight.
This morning, conditions seemed to have improved, except we were seeing some outflow from Portland Inlet …and from midnight to 5am it had been building. This is Grey Islet, where we’ve seen the outflow phenomenon happen before:
Green Island at 4:30am was NE15 and 3ft moderate. Everywhere else, the wind was from the SE. And looking at Windy’s ECMWF model for gusts, conditions looked great. But we decided to wait for the 6am update at Grey Islet to determine if outflow was increasing (still) or decreasing. Once again, Windy’s velocity predictions were off, but the NAM model at least did show some outflow winds, tapering off by late morning.
The 6am report from Grey Islet was ENE 15 (down from 18kts) so we cast our lines and left Prince Rupert. We’d keep an eye on things as we headed north.
7am at Grey Islet showed ENE 16kts, and 8am showed ENE 15kts, so not changing much, but maybe decreasing? It’s what we expected, anyway.
Green Island had not yet updated, and 3ft moderate isn’t terrible, especially if only for a short time, with the promise of smoother seas ahead.
We started getting a little chop (against the 1-2 knots of current pushing us along) as we neared closer to Portland Inlet, and figured it was probably a combination of the ebb and winds coming from the NE, mixing with the flood we were still riding where we were. It didn’t last long though, and we were soon is very comfortable seas. A couple humpbacks in the distance beckoned us to follow!
We all cleared into the US easily via the CBPROAM app, set our clocks back an hour, and continued on!
Right outside Foggy Bay there were whitecaps and a bit of wind, a whole bunch of gulls, and a few eagles working what appeared to be a popular lunch spot.
We arrived on a very slight minus tide (-0.6) so the entrance to Foggy Bay was skinny, but not bad.
We could have gone the extra 35nm into Ketchikan today (arriving around 4:30pm, but after being at a dock for a few days, I think we are all pretty happy to be at anchor surrounded by beautiful scenery, waterways to explore by dinghy, and the potential for bears on shore.
Kevin took the Mavic up for a few aerials:
In the afternoon, we met up for group dinghy exploration back to the rapids and into a few lagoons. Super fun!
It rained a little on our excursion, but generally the sun is out and there’s blue sky mixed with the cloudy parts…very welcome after a handful of rainy days in a row!
Happy hour on Airship with the group, and into Ketchikan in the morning. Yay! We’re in Alaska!