Wrangell to Petersburg - May 13

Well, once again we have an early start to the day.  This morning we will be transiting the Wrangell Narrows for the first time on our own boat.  Several years ago, on the Classic Car Club CARavan, we took the Alaska State Ferry and followed this route.  Both Barrie and have memories of channel markers and more channel markers!  The guide books all talk about the care required to navigate the channel and we spend an hour before going to bed fine-tuning our route. 

The Wrangell Narrows is a 20-mile long passageway where the tides meet at Green Point (12 miles north of the southern entrance).  Our goal is to be at Green Point at 9:47 when slack high tide occurs.  Working backward we leave the dock at 5:00 am.  We have 21 miles to cover before we arrive at Point Alexander (which marks the beginning of the Narrows) and we need to arrive there at 8:00.  We follow the route defined by the guide books and make our passage between Vank and Sokolof Islands.  We can’t imagine what the authors were thinking.  It is a narrow passageway and we are fighting an ebb current (if we are to be at Point Alexander at 8 – the ebb current is a given) and making slow headway.  Later that day we talk to experienced Alaska boaters and learn the most people take that route only once.  The better way is to cut below the islands. 

As it turns out, our timing is perfect.  We arrive at Point Alexander at exactly 8:00 and from our AIS see that there are two boats just ahead of us in the passage.  To our port we see one more boat that will enter the channel ahead of us but he is not transmitting an AIS signal (neither are we).  Then we see another AIS signal on the chart and it is moving rapidly!  We zoom out and see Columbia (an Alaska Ferry) headed south and moving at 20 knots.  It exits the channel just as we are entering.

Navigating the channel is amazingly easy.  The channel markers are numerous but well marked.  We follow our progress both on Coastal Explorer and on Chart #17375.  Both Barrie and comment that while this is easy with computer-aided navigation and clear weather, neither of us would like to try to do this in bad weather using dead-reckoning techniques.

We arrive in Petersburg at 10:30 and the Harbor Master assigns us a “hot berth” that is very close to town.  We are soon greeted on the dock by neighboring vessels and by Knut and Gerri (a local Petersburg couple) who saw us enter the harbor.  They live aboard their Krogen 48 and came to greet fellow Kroganites!  They are a wonderful resource for information about town and the Little Norway Festival.

I learn that the Little Norway Festival includes a 7K run on Saturday morning and log onto the internet to sign up.  I have not run since leaving home but I can’t pass up on this opportunity.  We do a walk through town and pick up local spot prawns for dinner.  Before dinner we take the dinghy out and tour the harbor.  We will be in Petersburg for four days, I plan to catch up on lots of things including this blog!