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
Our last long day! Alaska! Getting out of boat jail! We’ve been lucky with the weather this trip and we hoped it would continue today. Environment Canada called for southeast 25-35 knot winds, which didn’t sound too promising. NOAA said southeast 25 knots, still not great. The screenshot below shows the Windy route planner, which shows the predicted weather along our route as we travel it, and the worst conditions … Read more
With our time in Southeast Alaska rapidly dwindling and a favorable weather forecast for Dixon Entrance tomorrow, we departed Punchbowl Cove this morning bound for Foggy Bay, a good jumping off point for Dixon Entrance. Along the way we passed New Eddystone Rock, a dramatic spire that rises more than 200 feet from the depths of Behm Canal. NOAA predicted 15 knot winds and 3 foot seas and inReach weather … Read more
We staggered our departure times this morning. The two lead boats headed out first at 6:00 a.m., and the rest followed, two boats at 6:30 a.m. and the last two at 7:00 a.m. This sequence would allow the lead boats to fuel up, get into their slips, and be available to catch lines for the others as they got their slip assignments. We had a beautiful, calm cruise up to … Read more