We left Foggy Bay this morning for a smooth cruise into Ketchikan. Brian from Evenstar/Fleming took these gorgeous drone shots as people were getting ready to head on to Ketchikan this morning: Seas were calm, the weather was sunny, and a few whales were here and there, settling into their Alaska routine. Ketchikan is quite a shock when we’ve spent over two weeks in mostly wilderness anchorages with very few … Read more
We were up early this morning to navigate Venn Passage, possibly attempt a Dixon Entrance crossing, and make our way to Foggy Bay, Alaska. The weather was a little iffy. While conditions were good, we had one forecast for five foot swells on our beam at some point, so we made a multi-prong contingency plan. We would travel the first four hours or so out through Venn Passage, across to … Read more
We left Ketchikan yesterday morning after deciding we’d rather wait out this upcoming low pressure system (35kt winds and rain) at anchor in a pretty place with a view of trees and water, rather than at the dock in Ketchikan with a view of a very poorly maintained wooden boat (containing several dogs barking for most of the day) and a half sunk dinghy. We shopped and got enough produce … Read more
After Bradfield Canal, we spent one night in Vixen Harbor on our way to Ketchikan. The entrance to Vixen Harbor is always a fun transit…we’ve written posts about it several times before (here’s one), but the charts are wrong, and the route that looks best on the charts has only about a foot of water, and the other route looks to be intertidal (which is likely why more people don’t … Read more
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 … Read more
We left Kelp Passage near first light for our Dixon Entrance crossing. The weather forecast looked excellent — wind NW 15 diminishing to light early, seas 1 meter. We popped up early to check the 4AM update to be sure nothing had changed for the sinister overnight. It looked even a little better, and a soft fog layer confirmed that the air wasn’t moving much. On big crossings, fog is … Read more
We left Foggy Bay this morning around 7:00 a.m., headed for Ketchikan. We had some light swell at first, and a little more than light swell later in morning (and some fog) but overall it was a pretty smooth cruise. Arriving in Ketchikan was uneventful compared to past years when it takes all the concentration and focus you have to keep track of the incoming and outgoing boat traffic, float … Read more
Sleeping in this morning was difficult—something about the combination of sunrise around 4:00 a.m., several days of departing at the crack of dawn, and heavy rain pelting the deck had us up long before we should have awoken. Later in the morning, Ralph on Rubicon called on the VHF to let everyone know there was a brown bear on shore. The first brown bear of the trip! We enjoyed watching … Read more