Race to Alaska

Will it ever stop raining?  We have seen so much more rain this trip than in previous years.  We comment that we can count the days of sunshine on one hand.  On the plus side, most of the rain is just a drizzle and you can walk blocks without getting wet.
We set a course for Meyer's Chuck with thoughts of tying up at the dock and taking a walk ashore.  We have been to this small berg several times and it is interesting to see what has changed.  Two things keep us from executing this plan.  The first problem, the dock is full!  There is no room to park.  We could anchor out and use the dinghy to go ashore but here is the second problem, it is raining quite hard and we decide to forgo the walk and simply "drive-by" the cove.
From here we set our sights on Ketchikan.  We have some administrative things that need attention and some time ashore with reasonable wifi would help.  I end up "passing the buck" and end up asking our good friend and financial advisor to take care of an issue.  As usual, Skip and Sheryl come through.  How lucky are we to be in such good hands.
We arrive in Ketchikan just before 4 and decide to spend the night here.  The City Float is full so we request a slip assignment in Thomas Bay.  Just as we turn the corner and pass behind a huge cruise ship, Barrie spies a catamaran using recumbent bicycles attached to a chain driven propeller shaft to maneuver the boat into the harbor.  My first thought is that this boat must be participating in the Race to Alaska.  Without planning, we are here to see the second place boat arrive.
Wow! We are impressed but happy to be doing the trip on Chug with heat and showers!

KETCHIKAN, Alaska — It was a close finish at the dock in Ketchikan, Alaska.
Team Pure &Wild arrived at 3:05 p.m. Thursday, only six minutes before Team Big Broderna. Pure & Wild claimed the win for the third annual Race to Alaska hosted by the Northwest Maritime Center of Port Townsend and sponsored by UnCruise Adventures.
The annual race is done in boats without motors and without support vessels.
Team Pure &Wild, a team of three brothers from Massachusetts, finished the 710-mile leg of the race from Victoria in four days, three hours and five minutes.
Boats left Port Townsend last Thursday for Victoria, the 40-mile “proving ground” leg of the race. Boats left Sunday for the second-stage of the 750-mile race.

“We finished in half the time as year one with twice as much work,” said Tripp Burd, captain of Team Pure &Wild in a R2AK press release.
Tripp and Chris Burd participated in the first R2AK as Team FreeBurd in 2015, finishing with a world record for “open boats.” Tripp Burd returned again in 2016, but had to bow out in Victoria due to a broken boat.
However in 2017 the three brothers Tripp, Trevor and Chris Burd will leave Alaska $10,000 dollars richer.
Second place finishers Sean Huston, Nels Strandberg, Marshall Lebron and Lars Strandberg of Team Big Broderna finished after four days, three hours and 11 minutes.
The team will head home with the second-place prize, a “pretty good” set of steak knives, according to a R2AK press release.
Team MAD Dog, won the 2016 race in a record three days and 20 hours.
Asof Thursday evening, 28 teams were still making their way up the West Coast.
Team Bad Kitty, who was neck-and-neck with the two finishing teams on Wednesday was still just north of Bella Bella, Canada just after 5 p.m. Thursday. According to the R2AK tracker, the team was sailing at about 11 knots then. Anika Colvin, public information officer for the maritime center, said she didn’t know what had held up the team.
Team Bad Kitty still had a commanding lead over Teams West Coast Wild Ones and Ketch Me If You Can as of Thursday evening.
The vast majority of teams were still making their way along the eastern coast of Vancouver Island on Thursday.
Out of the teams traveling solely under man power, paddle boarder Karl Kruger of Deer Harbor, had a wide lead.
He slipped through Seymour Narrows on Thursday morning, a notoriously difficult portion of the race due to strong currents, and was camped out on Helmcken Island, B.C. on Thursday night.
Kruger attempted the race last year but his board broke just north of Victoria and he had to quit. According to the Race to Alaska website at https://r2ak.com/, Kruger is on a mission to be the fastest to paddle to Alaska and, as of Thursday, seemed to be on track for that goal.
The R2AK offers prizes only for first and second place so as of Thursday, 28 teams are racing for bragging rights.
Organizers are waiting for someone to take them up on this year’s special buy back offer.
This year organizers give every team that crosses the finish line five minutes to decide if they want to sell their boat for $10,000.
According to the R2AK press release the goal was an incentive for racers who knew they couldn’t race for first to still race competitively.
Jefferson County Editor/Reporter Cydney McFarland can be reached at 360-385-2335, ext. 55052, or at cmcfarland@peninsuladailynews.com.

Via Wrangell

After spending a perfectly calm night at Deception Point Cove, we woke to more rain.  We lingered over breakfast while waiting for favorable tides to transit to Wrangell.  Wrangell is the but of many jokes in Petersburg -- but we find a perfectly lovely small town.  Our first stop is the fuel dock where we take on fuel.  The price is $1.00/ gallon less than when we took on a couple hundred gallons in Glacier Park.  We now have plenty for the trip home and also a reasonable reserve.  Our burn rate on this trip is just less than 2 gallons per hour.  This includes the diesel heat (and we have used it a lot given the colder and rainier weather we have had this trip) and the generator (which is also getting a workout).  The old single Ford Lehman diesel engine is a workhorse and remarkably economical.

Wrangell

Next we head up the dock for a walk through town.  Our first stop is the local hardware store where we ask about carbon brushes.  Low and behold they have a vast selection (and are so much closer to Petersburg than Juneau - what is the deal here).  We buy 4 brushes and get change from a $20 bill. 

Soon we are headed south to Santa Ana inlet for the night.  On the way we see Orcas! 

The wind is supposed to be very strong tonight and we are looking for a well-sheltered anchorage.  Santa Ana is beautiful.  We are sharing the inlet with one other boat but there is still room to spare.

Mastering the Wrangell Narrows

Wrangell Narrows

We started our morning in Petersburg with a crab cake breakfast sandwich at Cold Storage. Afterward I went in search of wifi and Barrie went in search of carbon brushes for the wayward alternators.

After a bit of head scratching and conferring with Larry D., the diagnosis is that after 30 years the carbon brushes on the alternators may have worn out.  Barrie took one of the alternators apart and there is no doubt that the brushes are worn.  Hopefully this is the only problem.  It seems odd to us but there are no carbon brushes to be found in Petersburg.  Not at Napa and not at Piston & Rudder (Petersburg's version of Fisheries).  The locals suggest Juneau (a two day trip to the north) or Seattle.  We opt to continue on our journey using the generator to charge batteries.

We time our departure for late in the afternoon to coincide with slack tide at Greene Point (the middle of the Wrangell Narrows.  We have now done this route so many times that while we are attentive, we have ceased to fret about the 60+ aids to navigation that are in the channel.  We anchor in Deception Point Cove at the bottom of the Narrows just after 8:30.

Return to Petersburg June12

McDuff the cat is better than most alarm clocks.  At first light (4 am), he is ready for breakfast and makes his needs known.  Most mornings I put a bit of kibble in his bowl and go back to bed for an hour.  This morning, I get up and put on water for coffee.  We will use these early hours before the wind kicks-up to transit the rest of Stephen's Passage on the ebb tide.  We have 60 miles to go to reach Petersburg.  Today is whale day!  One whale rises just in front of the bow.

Firmly etched in our minds is our experience with tidal currents in Petersburg Harbor.  We need to time our arrival for slack water around 4 this afternoon.  This means we have time to anchor for lunch at Scow Bay.  

In Scow Bay we have cell phone reception and are able to access the internet - albeit with a very slow connection.  I am able to update the blog but the photos will have to wait.  At the appointed hour we backtrack 3 miles to Petersburg and contact the Harbor Master for a slip assignment.  We will be in the North Harbor with easy access to town.  Just across the dock is another Kadey Krogen albeit a bit bigger than ours (55 ft).  We meet Roger and Arlene who will be spending the summer in Alaska aboard Kama Hele Kai.

We depart this afternoon to transit the Wrangell Narrows in the reverse direction.  Again, slack water is our friend.

All is well at Ford's Terror

Once again we wake to low cloud cover but this morning the rain holds off.  I take advantage of the morning to work on the boat.  I finish cleaning the teak and wash the decks.  Once the work is complete, I turn my attention to fun.  I drop my kayak in the water and paddle from waterfall to waterfall all the while looking up the nearly vertical cliffs.  I paddle far enough from the boat that Barrie says my bright green kayak is just a speck in the binoculars.  For an hour or two, I am alone is this beautiful place.  I am in awe of this place -- the waterfalls are cascading from thousands of feet in the air and flowing into the sea with such force that they push my kayak away from the shore.  The power of the glaciers that carved this valley were simply immense.  The books suggest coming prepared to spend a week or more in case of some type of unforeseen problem.  The implication is that boats in this area are few and far between.  

 I return to the boat in time for a late lunch before we pull up the anchor and make our way back up the inlet.  We execute our departure by the book with satisfactory results.  By the time we exit the bay, it is already after 4 pm.  Anchorages in this area are scarce.  We would like to get started on our southbound journey and search for a suitable anchorage that is within 35 miles (or approximately 5 hours).  We settle on Windham Bay Entrance Nook with an estimated arrival time of 8:30 pm.  We make the turn from Stephen's Passage into Windham Bay and then into the nook at the entrance on the south side.  The water in the nook is deep (200') and the tide is low.  Finally the bottom shoals and we drop the anchor in 18' of water.  The tide will rise an additional 15 feet.  The anchorage has just enough swing room for one boat and is sheltered from the south winds.  It is perfect for our needs.  Tomorrow we will be in Petersburg.

Decisions, Decisions June 10

We awaken to calm.  No wind, no ripples in the cove.  Plenty of fog, so much that it makes the idea of viewing glaciers and cliffs almost laughable.  We decide to see how the day unfolds and depart just after 6 am to retrace our route from Taku Harbor to the entrance to Endicott Arm.  Ahead of us by almost an hour is Steel Eagle a 6 knot sailboat and a faster (20+ knot) pleasure boat.  We listen to their conversations on the VHF and learn that Endicott is socked in with fog.  The fast boat declares that there is nothing to be seen and agrees to meet the slow boat at the public float at Hobart for coffee.  They will continue on to Petersburg without seeing the glacier. 

We arrive at the entrance to Endicott an hour later and the fog is starting to lift.  We have clear visibility at sea level and can see the ice bergs.  It looks as if the ceiling will lift and we decide to "go for it".  We start to pick our way between the many small bergs and almost as many large bergs.  Some of the bergs are huge - as much as 3 or 4 times as long as the boat and tall!  According to the books, slack tide (TTE) occurs at the entrance to Ford's Terror 10 to 25 minutes after Juneau.  In order to enter safely, we need to be positioned at the entrance at 3:10.  This leaves us time to explore Endicott but not quite enough time to reach the face of Dawes Glacier.  We continue to pick our way through an ever increasing field of ice bergs (and see seals on them) before finally reaching the north arm of Dawes which is just the remains of the receding ice floe.  We are still an hour away from the face when we turn around to return to the entrance of Ford's Terror.  It is tricky navigating between all the ice as some of the bergs are just barely visible.  With a single screw boat, we can't afford to damage our propeller.

Ford's Terror

We enter Ford's Terror and look for the landmark waterfall that will help us chart our path through the narrow opening.  At low tide, this entrance is a waterfall that is 7 feet tall.  At high tide, there is no evidence of the danger.  There are so many cliffs and so many high waterfalls that it takes us a few minutes to locate the landmark waterfall.  Once we find it, everything falls into place and we soon we are in the isolated deep canyon.  The water here is so deep that the depth sounder which can read to 600 feet fails to register.  Perhaps the closest analogy would be a fjord in Norway - the inlet is perhaps a 1/4 mile wide and several miles long.  At the bitter end of the inlet, we find Honu, a Nordic Tug, is already at anchor.  We park next to them at the base of yet another waterfall.  Our opportunity to exit this beautiful place is tomorrow afternoon at high slack - about 4 o'clock.  Meanwhile, our neighbors are stand-up paddle boarding around the boat.

It seems that our second alternator has failed and Barrie spends the remainder of the afternoon looking into the issue and considering our options.  For now, we will use the generator to charge batteries and carefully monitor our usage of electricity, but it is mystery why two alternators would fail on this trip.  Not much can be done in this remote location.  From here we will head to Petersburg where more services are available.

Tracy Arm Cove June 9

Last night's wind was not forecast and this morning's forecast now calls for winds from the south at 15 knots.  Southern winds coupled with this morning's ebb tide make for a lumpy passage as we head northeast.  Our objective is Tracy Arm Cove which is the closest reasonable jumping-off point for getting to Ford's Terror tomorrow night.  There is something about a place with the name "terror" that catches my attention.  The only anchorage at the head of Endicott Arm is 250 feet deep - yikes!

We arrive at the entrance to Tracy Arm just after 2 pm and find seven large ice bergs blocking our path.  We also read that with a south wind, these ice bergs are likely to be blown into the cove we have identified for tonight's anchorage.  Some of these bergs are several orders of magnitude larger than Chug and somehow the thought of large ice berg crashing into the boat in the dark has us concerned.  We consider alternatives but this is Alaska and anchorages are often far apart.  About 10 miles north there is another cove but it too is exposed to the south wind.  The good news is that there will be no ice bergs in that cove.  Finally, we set our sights on Taku Harbor which is just over 20 miles (or 3 hours) away.  The tide has turned and now we have a south wind and a flood tide on our stern carrying us north.  There are still a few white caps but our ride is comfortable and soon we are tied up to the public float in Taku Harbor.  We are not alone.  Steel Eagle calls us on the VHF asking for a report on sea state.  They are headed south, ducked into Taku and tied up to the public dock (across the harbor) to get out of the chop.  We share the dock with a sailboat and as evening falls, Mist Cove anchors nearby.

Mist Cove

Perhaps tomorrow we will be able to reach Ford's Terror.