Monitoring Battery Activity - Part 1 - The Discharge Cycle

We installed our Lithium Ferro Phosphate (LFP) battery bank in August 2021 (Out with the Old, in with the New).  It consists of 10 Battleborn GC2 12V-100 Ah batteries arranged as two serial banks of five paralleled batteries giving us 500 Ah at 24V.  We also installed a Victron Cerbo to help control and monitor our Victron equipment (chargers and battery monitor).  I subsequently installed a Raspberry Pi single board computer running Signal K to record and display data being generated on board (Boat Data).

I’ve now been collecting the data for three years and I haven’t been doing much more than displaying real time data while on board.  As a winter project, I’ve tried to organize and analyze it more carefully.

While at the dock and connected to shorepower, the batteries are not doing very much. The AC needs of the boat (e.g., water heater, toaster oven) are supplied directly from the shore (mediated through the isolation transformer and inverter/charger). The DC needs (e,g, refrigerator, lights) are handled by batteries working with the DC charger half of the inverter/charger.  While actively cruising and underway, the alternator driven by the propulsion engine provides the current for DC loads while the AC loads are taken care of by inverter part of the inverter/charger powered through the alternator.

It is only while at anchor (or occasionally at a dock), with no shore power connection, that the batteries must do work and discharge some of their stored power.  In the three cruising seasons for which I have data (2023, 2024 and 2025), I identified 247 depletions of significance.  I ignored the small discharges that occur when transitioning from shore power to engine power when leaving the dock, and the reverse situation, engine power to shore power, when arriving at a dock. I also ignored short duration discharges associated with events where the engine is off and you aren’t on shore power (e.g., visiting a fuel dock, waiting in a temporary anchorage for currents to subside).

The first chart shows the distribution by duration of the 247 discharge cycles.  Our cruising style is one of motion and we only spend multiple nights at anchor in one spot a dozen or so times a year.  When we do, we run our generator daily to recharge the battery banks. A lot of the 20+ hour discharge cycles are probably associated with multiple nights at one site. Being a slow boat, cruising around 6-1/2 to 7 knots, we tend to put in long days to cover the same distance that faster boats do. The short duration discharge cycles often represent a 7 PM arrival at a destination followed by a 5 AM departure the next morning.

The next chart shows depth of discharge (as measured in amp-hours, Ah) distribution for those same 247 discharge cycles. The same comments as above about deeper discharges being associated with multiple nights at anchor and smaller discharges representing longer days underway apply to the distribution.

The last chart shows the power consumed by hour of the day. There are certain items on board that once they are turned on are rarely turned off.  The big examples are refrigerators and freezers (we have two of each) and all our monitoring equipment (e.g., the NMEA2000 bus). 

The data show that we consume 8-9 amps as a baseline. Because we are primarily operating on DC, while at anchor, we tend to turn on the AC inverter part of the Inverter/Charger only when we need it (e.g., using the Starlink antenna). Turning on the inverter tends to increase our usage by an additional 4 amps (we rarely use the inverter to run a large AC load like a toaster oven or electric kettle).

The last major DC load is the Kabola furnace.  On cold mornings, we often heat the boat up with the Kabola.  It will easily use 8 amps as the pumps and blowers kick on but after things warm up, the load usually drops to around 4 amps. There is a temperature dependence to our usage.  Cold weather will result in longer and more frequent operation of the Kabola while hot weather causes higher duty cycles in our refrigerators and freezers. The highest usage is in the early evening when we would have AC power on in order to watch streaming TV via the Starlink antenna and set the Kabola thermostat up to keep the boat comfortable.

When comparing our amp or amp-hour numbers, remember that we are operating at 24v DC.  The equivalent numbers for a 12v DC system would be double.

 

Monitoring Battery Activity - Part 2 - The Charge Cycle

The “yang” to the discharge cycle’s “yin”, is the charge cycle. We have three ways to restore the batteries after they have been depleted.

Shore Power – We have a Victron Multiplus 24 3000/70 inverter/charger that when provided AC power can recharge the battery.  While our boat is wired to accept 240V-50A, for simplicity, we only connect to shore power via 120V-30A

Alternator – We have two alternators on our Lugger 1066T diesel engine, one for the start battery and the other for the house bank battery. The house bank alternator, a Leece-Neville 4740JB (24V-200A), is regulated by a Balmar MC-624.

Generator – We have a Northern Lights OM773LW2 – 9KW generator. This provides AC power to the Multiplus Inverter/Charger but, in addition, we have a Victron Skylla-I 24/100 charger attached to the output of the generator.

The “State of Charge” (aka SoC) is often the metric used to determine the status of the battery.  It runs from 1 (or 100%), when the battery is “full” to 0 (or 0%), when there is no power available.  For our battery bank, each 1% change in the SoC is about 5 Ah.  With a 24V battery bank, that 5Ah of energy would power the base load of our boat (8-9 A) for about 35 minutes.

For this analysis, I wanted to see the charging characteristics all the way until battery full and so I eliminated cycles that didn’t go to at least 99% SoC.  I wasn’t quite as concerned about the starting level of the discharge, though.  I ended up with 219 charge cycles that went to completion, 7 for shore power, 27 for generator and 185 for engine.  The small number of shore power charging is not surprising since upon arriving at a dock, in most circumstances, would already be full.

The chart below shows the aggregate charging profile for each method of charging. While the monitoring system collects data continuously, it only preserves the data for the long term once every six minutes (one-tenth of an hour), taking an average of the values since that last time increment.  To allow the comparison of charge cycles with different durations and different battery depletions, I used the charge cycle’s end point as a reference.  At any given time point, I averaged SoC for those charge cycles that extended to it. 

A characteristic of LFP batteries is that they accept high levels of charging current until nearly complete.  My observation is that the charging is nearly constant, limited by what the charging source can provide, until about 98% SoC.  At that point, the current acceptance rate decreases rapidly.  At 99% SoC, the battery monitor, a Victron BMV-712 in our case, may say it is “close enough” and report a 100% SoC. 

On the chart, I’ve had Excel compute the linear regression line for each category with the Y-intercept being set to a 100% SoC. The X- coefficient in the equation represents the slope of the charging curve. An average hourly charge rate can be computed from the coefficient by multiplying it first by 500 (the number of Ah in our full battery bank) and then again by 60 (the number of minutes in an hour).  For shore power that calculation suggests a 48 amps per hour charge rate. For the engine it is 96 amps per hour and for the generator 129 amps per hour.  These charge rates are lower than the actual output of charging source because they are net of the charging source’s output and whatever DC loads the boat’s system requires.

 

2025 Annual Wrap Up

Our 2025 cruising season bore a remarkable similarity to 2024, the same number of cruising days (122), similar number of engine hours (530 in 2024 versus 520 in 2025) and miles traveled (3,091 in 2024 versus 3,099 in 2025.  We did leave a bit later (May 4 in 2024 versus May 16 in 2025) and anchor out a bit more (73 days in 2024 versus 78 days in 2025).

One thing we tried to do was visit (or at least anchor) in different spots.  A new destination for us was Ford’s Terror off of Endicott Arm.  But, we also managed to use different stops while traversing mostly the same routes.  Overall, we recorded 13 new sites that we hadn’t used in past years. We may not visit them every year but we now have 384 different places in which we have either anchored, tied to a buoy or tied to a dock.  It makes planning routes and stops a lot easier with a long list of choices to draw on.

	Year	# of Days	At Anchor	At a Dock	On a Buoy	Distance Traveled	Engine Hours	Gen. Hours	Time Idling
	2010	129	57	66	5	3,221	517.1	40.4
	2011	115	81	33		3,465	577.4	31.3
	2013	151	99	50	1	3,667	630.0	53.3
	2014	141	86	48	6	4,052	720.8	34.8	48.5
	2015	104	67	31	5	3,580	629.2	28.7	42.4
	2016	141	99	39	2	3,979	700.0	51.9	68.6
	2017	140	91	46	2	3,817	656.5	62.2	51.1
	2018	112	71	40		3,170	528.6	33.9	38.2
	2019	118	82	35		3,816	649.5	16.3	56.6
	2020	63	42	12	6	2,527	399.7	32.8	11.5
	2021	110	81	26	2	3,317	554.0	66.0	27.5
	2022	139	88	47	3	3,584	613.6	19.5	42.9
	2023	139	84	54		3,024	510.4	36.0	33.7
	2024	122	73	48		3,091	529.8	24.8	26.9
	2025	122	78	43		3,099	520.2	33.3	29.3
		1,846	1,179	618	32	51,409	8736.8	565.2	477.2

As a footnote to the table above, if you add up the nightly stops (at anchor, at a dock or on a buoy), the total, 1,829, is 17 short of the total number of days, 1,846. The difference is the 15 days at the end of the trip when I don’t count the night we return to our homeport and two days in 2020 during Covid when we did overnight passages and did not stop.

The “Time Idling” is the total of the estimated hours during a day spent trolling for salmon, servicing prawn pots, or sightseeing (e.g., whale activity or glacier viewing).  I make these estimates to give me a better idea of my true cruising speed.

Below is a map of our stops in the 2025 cruising season. Clicking on one of the “dropped pins” will pull up some information about the stop. At the top right of the map is an icon which will open a separate window that may be easier to navigate.

NOTE: – The map was updated in November 2025 to include the tracks of our cruise.  Color changes are merely to help differentiate one day’s travel from another and denote nothing special with the exception of “green” for the first day of travel and “red” for the last day. As these tracks are our actual route and not our intended route, you may notice deviations from a straight path to accommodate other vessel traffic, sea conditions, temporary stops in order time a narrows, or fishing.

The map below shows all of the places we have stopped overnight during all our cruises through 2025. It is similar in style to our yearly cruise map except that when the marker for a particular spot is selected, the data for the spot is the total number of times we’ve stayed and in which years. 

As a word of caution, the location of the mark shown on the map is an “average” of ALL the stops and may not actually represent the location ANY one stop. For destinations that are popular, we may have dropped that anchor at many different places and the average spot isn’t the best or even a safe spot to anchor.

Eating our Way South - Port McNeill to Bainbridge Island

Port McNeill continues to be a great place to transition from the relatively quiet North Coast of British Columbia and the very busy South Coast.  In recent years, several new eateries (e.g., Devils' Bath Brewing, Lata's Kitchen) have added to its attraction. It is fitting to consider Port McNeill as the start to the "eating our way south" voyage. 

An early start Monday, August 25 had us fighting ebb current in the western end of Johnstone Strait.  By staying close to the south shore (Vancouver Island side) we reduced its impact on us.  That early start, though, put us at Race Passage about the time of the turn to flood current.  From then on, the current would be in our favor and boost our speed.  In fact, we were going to reach Seymour Narrows north of Campbell River too early.  We pulled off at Otter Cove, just south of Chatham Point to wait for the current to slacken.  It being late afternoon, lots of other boats, both pleasure and commercial were also adjusting their speeds in order to reach Seymour Narrows during the window of safe transit.  We ended up sliding in behind one large fish processing boat and ahead of another.  After the narrows, we headed towards the nearby Gowlland Harbour for the night.

The next day, we again started early as we were hoping to get into the Gulf Islands. Our speed and the sea conditions were good and we able to transit Dodd Narrows, SE of Nanaimo, that evening.  After covering 95 miles in 13.6 hours, we anchored in North Cove on Thetis Island for the night.
  
It was a comparatively short hop (16 miles) the next day to Montague Harbour on Galliano Island.  While there were many (>50) boats here, the anchorage can easily hold them.  The dock at the nearby provincial park gives access to a pleasant trail and large lawn for us to play ball with Drake.  The marina in the harbor has a store offering ice cream and a restaurant (The Crane and Robin) serving food and adult beverages. We spent two nights anchored in Montague.

The Gulf Islands are compact so we traveled an even shorter distance (10.4 miles) to  Russell Island part of the Gulf Islands National Park.  In contrast to Montague Harbour, the anchoring area is compact and the bottom not particularly good (very rocky). It does have a dinghy dock and a loop trail that goes around the island.  Several nice beaches dot the north side of the island and Drake got to go wading in one of them.

The next day, August 30, we headed to Lyall Harbour on Saturna Island.  We took the "long way", 15.3 miles, around the bottom of Pender Island so that our batteries would be fully recharged. We were anchored a 1/4 mile or so south of the Saturna Island public dock which offers free dinghy access.  The BC Ferry Terminal for Saturna Island is here as well.  The incoming ferries throw a wake which bobble boats at anchor but, fortunately for the anchored boats, there are only 3 or 4 ferries a day.  During our 2 days anchored in Lyall Harbour, we ate once at the Saturna Lighthouse Pub, located next to the ferry dock, and had ice cream twice from the take-out in the same building as the pub.

On September 1, Labor Day, we traveled the 5 miles over to Port Browning Marina on North Pender Island. Coincidentally, two other boats, BarbEric (Barb and Eric) and Suzy Q (Suzy and Bob), from our yacht club also came into the marina.  All six of us dined one evening at the Port Browning Pub.  While at the marina, Marcia & I twice got some treats from the nearby Vanilla Leaf Bakery. Drake enjoyed his time here because of the large lawn and a non-muddy low-tide beach for play.

After two nights, on September 3 we crossed the border back into the USA. Our first stop was at the Deer Harbor Marina on Orcas Island. Here, our culinary desires were satisfied by Mathews Smokehouse and Island Pie.  For our decadent treats we relied on Lopez Island Ice Cream served up at the marina's store.  Each evening of our three night stay, we took a walk south from the marina to a viewpoint from which we watched the setting sun over Deer Harbor and the many islands of the archipelago.

From here, we headed to Garrison Bay on San Juan Island.  We stopped briefly at Roche Harbor to pick up some fresh produce and indulge in ice cream before anchoring for the night.  English Camp has an excellent dinghy dock and a nice trail system.  We'll often go to shore three times a day for walks and ball play.  One of our walks took us over to the Westcott Bay Shellfish Company for lunch at their shoreside restaurant.

To hit favorable currents, on the afternoon of September 9, we headed through Speiden Channel across the north side of San Juan Island and then up President Channel along the east shore of Orcas Island.  Our destination was Echo Bay on Sucia Island.  Echo Bay has no dinghy dock so we used our kayaks to go to shore.  The excellent trails on Sucia Island allow most of the major bays on Sucia to be explored on foot.

After two nights in Echo Bay, we headed towards Anacortes our final stop before returning to Bainbridge Island.  In the Spring we had arranged to meet friends, Peg and Roy, from our climbing days with the Mountaineers club at Cap Sante Marina in Anacortes. Roy and Peg take trips from their home in Portland in their RV.  Cap Sante Marina recently added an RV park next to the marina so we our respective traveling homes were within walking distance of each other.  We invited another climbing friend, Craig, to join us for the visit.  We made a pilgrimage to the summit of Mt Erie, an Anacortes City Park, where we had participated, taught and led a variety of Mountaineer field trips more than forty years earlier.

For the final day of our trip, September 14, we traveled the "inside" route through the Swinomish Channel, past La Conner, down Saratoga Passage joining Puget Sound south of Whidbey Island.  We arrived at the Queen City Yacht Club Bainbridge Island dock shortly after 5 pm.

Leg Statistics - 21 Days, 360 Miles, 57.7 Engine Hours

Ketchikan to Port McNeill

This being our 15th cruising trip, you would have thought we'd have at least heard of the Ketchikan Blueberry Festival (its 50th), if not attended it. It is held on the first Saturday in August.  As an excuse, I offer up that at the end of the season, our time in Ketchikan is focused on getting in and getting out ASAP.  This year, with nice weather forecast, we hung around for the Blueberry Festival. It turns out it is a kind of a street fair with several streets closed off to traffic and and booths selling crafts, art and food.  Despite the presence of passengers from three cruise ships (actually a modest number by Ketchikan standards), the event seemed very community focused.  If we are in Ketchikan on the first weekend in August in the future, we'll definitely try to attend.

We did leave Ketchikan on Tuesday, August 5. We stopped on the way out of town and fueled up.  It turned out the fuel price in Ketchikan was about 50¢/gallon cheaper than the price in Washington, so we took on about 750 gallons to take us south and possibly back north next Spring. We anchored the night in Sitklan Passage Cove which is conveniently located for crossing Dixon Entrance and entering Canadian waters.

The next day, August 6, we headed into Prince Rupert staying at the Prince Rupert Rowing & Yacht Club (PRRYC) marina.  We had an usual event at the Safeway grocery store where Marcia did shopping for produce we couldn't bring in from the USA and I waited outside with Drake.  The store was quite busy and it was taking Marcia more time than I and Drake wanted it to.  Drake was very good at making eye contact with people going in and out of the store and responding enthusiastically when the eye contact was reciprocated.  Later, I was a confused and flummoxed when a customer came out from the store and said "Here, a man in the store asked me to give this to you to buy a toy for the dog," and then handed me $3.50.  There had been a pan handler outside the store's entrance earlier but he probably left when he saw his competition, a cute and friendly dog.

We left at first light the next morning, but not before a quick walk to the Tim Horton's for some morning treats and cheese tea biscuits for later.  We put in a full day and did the entire length of Grenville Channel before anchoring the night in Hawk Bay on Fin Island.

One of the reasons for putting in a long day was so that we fish the early bite off at Turtle Point on the NW corner of Gil Island.  We joined a couple of sport fishing boats also working the area.  Marcia caught and released a couple of pink salmon but never even got a hit she thought was a silver or king salmon. We returned to Hawk Bay for a second night.

Rather than try fishing the area further, the next day we elected to continue our southbound journey and headed towards Bottleneck Inlet in Finlayson Channel.  Initially conditions weren't too bad even though the winds were 15-20 knots but later in the day they edged up a notch to 20-25 knots and we had pretty choppy head seas. The protection offered by Bottleneck Inlet was a welcome relief for ourselves and the three other boats with which we shared the anchorage.

The next morning, we had light rain and poor visibility but the winds weren't too bad initially.  We elected to exit Finlayson Channel into Milbanke Sound and Seaforth Channel rather than cutting off at Jackson Passage and using Mathieson Channel / Perceval Narrows into Seaforth.  Unfortunately the seas were building and we were hit by 3-foot short period seas on our starboard beam as we approached Ivory Island which caused us to roll unpleasantly.  It was about five or six miles of that so we decided to put our stabilizing fish in the water to dampen the rolling.  We continued through Seaforth Channel to Gunboat Passage and anchored in Forit Bay that night.

Next morning we fished near Rattenbury Point at the NW corner of King Island in Fisher Channel.  Nothing but a few pink bites for our efforts.  We headed south in Fisher Channel, dropped a couple of test prawn pots in the entrance to Evans Inlet then explored the head of Evans Inlet for an anchoring site.  We found a couple spots that were doable but they were deep (75' to 90') and exposed to westerly wind and chop.  We decided to go with the known quantity of Codville Lagoon for the night's anchorage.

The next day, we headed back north up Fisher Channel and fished the west side of the channel along the shoreline of Denny Island about a mile south of Gun Boat Passage.  Again, only a few bites from pink salmon. From here we headed back to Evans Inlet and retrieved the prawn pots we dropped there. More disappointment, when we pulled empty pots.  Since we were pretty close to Codville Lagoon, we dropped the two prawn pots in a popular prawn site. By this time, we were getting close to the afternoon salmon bite so we crossed Fisher Channel, entered Lama Passage and fished (with no luck) the SE corner of Denny Island from just west of White Point to about a mile north of Start Point.  We finished this meandering by returning to Codville Lagoon and anchoring at its north end.

We were getting a bit tired of fishing with no catching so with a very early start on August 13, we first retrieved our two prawn pots with several dozen (yay!) mostly small (boo!) prawns and headed up to Ocean Falls.  Even though we arrived before 10 AM, the notorious Ocean Falls winds were blowing us off the dock.  Fortunately, there were other boaters on the dock who got our lines secured and the boat tied to the dock.  Later that day, fellow Queen City Yacht Club members, Ann and Craig Wilbour on Shot-8, tied up on the other side of the dock from us.

We ended up spending 4 nights at Ocean Falls. There are not many shoreside services but the road running from the top of the dam behind the town to the community of Martin Valley gives you a chance to stetch your legs a bit.  The docks are in good repair, the power ample (the power plant at the dam is less than a half mile away) and the water is clean.  We did have rain (heavy at times) for about 2-1/2 days and some gusty wind a few times but it was more pleasant than spinning around on an anchor and not being able to leave your boat.

Finally, on August 17, continued south into Fitz Hugh Sound. Our destination for the night was Bitter End Cove at the far southeast corner of Fish Egg Inlet.  On the way in, we dropped three prawn pots. It was a quiet night by ourselves.

The next morning we headed out and started fishing the shores of Addenbroke Island north of the lighthouse.  There were other boats from the local fishing lodges fishing as well.  The action seemed to be mostly pinks but near slack current, Marcia hooked and we landed a King salmon, our first salmon of the season. We called it quits for salmon fishing and headed back into Fish Egg Inlet to check our prawn pots.  Unfortunately two of the three pots had octopus in them.  The octopus enjoy the easy pickings of the prawns already in the pot and deter anymore prawns from entering the pot.  While we did harvest a decent number of prawns, we elected not to reset the prawns as we judged the possibility of continued octopus predation as high. The two octopus returned to the water to hunt again and we headed back to Bitter End Cove for the night.

On the morning of August 19, we again headed out to Addenbroke Island hoping for a repeat of our prior day's success.  Again the action was disappointing until near slack current when Marcia hooked and we landed a coho salmon.  At this point we felt that Drake needed some shore time so we crossed Fitz Hugh Sound and entered Kwakshua Channel towards Pruth Bay.  We anchored near the head of the bay with good access to the docks of Hakai Institute.  They are kind enough to allow public access to their docks for transiting on their trails over to the broad sandy beaches on the ocean side of Calvert Island.  The beaches are considered the finest beaches along the inside passage and provide welcome relief from confines of the boat.  We spent two nights anchored in Pruth Bay and went to shore five times.

After one last beach visit on the morning of August 21, we stored our dinghy back on our boat deck and exit into Hakai Passage and made our way to the NE corner of Hecate Island where we fished along the shore of Hecate Island outside the entrance to Goldstream Harbour.  Marcia caught another coho salmon before we called it a day.  We went into Goldstream Harbour where Marcia cleaned her salmon and we had lunch.  Afterwards we proceeded to Safety Cove along east shore of Calvert Island to anchor for the night.

Since fishing was slow, we decided to take advantage of the fine conditions (light winds, low seas) and head south around Cape Caution on August 22.  Depending on your route, you have 30 - 40 miles in which you are exposed to ocean conditions.  If ocean conditions are good, the route is no big deal.  If conditions are bad, you could die or fear your imminent demise.  In between are various degrees of unpleasantness that depend on your tolerance or misfortune.  We always try to stack the odds towards "no big deal" by choosing benign conditions.  While we had fog most of the way, we only had modest rolling waves out of the WNW and did not put our stabilizers in the water.  Our speed was good and we arrived in Port McNeill about 10 hours after departing Safety Cove.
  
Leg Statistics - 18 Days, 569 Miles, 107.2 Engine Hours

Juneau to Ketchikan via Sitka

As mentioned in the previous blog post, reprovisioning was a major purpose stopping in Juneau.  While the stores are 4 or miles away from the harbor, Juneau has a pretty good bus system on which to ride.  In previous years we'd rent a car for a day to do our shopping but, because of having competition from cruise ship passengers, it became expensive ($200/day), even for a "rent-a-wreck" service, and require reservations weeks in advance.  For Costco, we take the bus to get to the store (or at least within walking distance) and then a ride share service to get ourselves and our Costco-size groceries back to the harbor.  For the Fred Meyer store, the bus stop right  is right next to the store and carrying the groceries (mostly produce) in shopping bags is fine.

When we arrived at the Statter Harbor in Auke Bay, the purse seine boats had been out fishing.  But their opening had closed and many seine boats returned to the harbor.  Since moorage was tight, on our last night at the dock we allowed a seine boat to raft to us.  Fortunately they were leaving early in the morning to head out for the next opening.  So, shortly after 5 am on Wednesday, July 16 we headed southbound in Stephens Passage.  The currents and wind were generally favorable so were able to get to Hobart Bay, a distance of 78 miles.  We dropped prawn pots in the outer bay before going into the protected cove where we anchored the night.

The next day, after pulling prawn pots (okay, but not as good as we hoped), we headed to Pybus Bay at the SE end of Admiralty Island, where we dropped the prawn pots.  We anchored in the cove created between the San Juan Islands, east of Pybus Bay. Marcia put down a "meat hook" to see if she could entice a fish to bite. In the early evening, we noticed the rod pointing downward and after some effort we had a 34" halibut on board.  We had a fright when we heard snuffling and realized that some sea lions from acolony on the island south of the nearby West Brothers Island were cruising by. Marcia quickly got the halibut on the cleaning table and fileted it.

Following that success, the next morning we were hopeful as we pulled the prawn pots set the previous day.  Hopes were dashed by the poor results we had.  We decided to brighten our day by heading to Honeydew Cove and its excellent dog play beach. 

At this point, we decided to head back to Sitka to spend a few days with the forecasted good weather.  Sitka is a lovely town and our earlier visit stop had been hampered by rain.  We left early the next day, Saturday, July 19, headed up Chatham Strait, turned NW at Peril Strait then timed the evening slack at Sergius Narrows.  We anchored the night in Schulze Cove, just south of the narrows.

We arrived back to Sitka in the sun the next morning, and immediately took Drake to the nearby dog park. We also walked to the Harbor Mountain Brewery for our lunch of pizza and a salad.  The flowers in the meadows through which the trail runs were in full bloom. The next day our friends David and Mary Kay from the Diesel Duck, Shearwater, returned to Sitka and they came over for appetizers in the evening. For our last day in Sitka, we got our ice cream fix from milk shakes at the classic-style fountain in the Harry Race Pharmacy.  We also picked up a fourth prawn pot at the LFS Marine Supply store.

We left Sitka the morning of July 23, retracing our route from a few days before. The stretch down Chatham Strait to the entrance of Takatz Bay (our anchorage for the night) was a real grind as we had head winds and an adverse current all of the way.

The next day had us heading further south to Gut Bay.  We dropped prawn pots in our usual spot and anchored in the south cove.  The winds coming from offshore traveling over the mountains of Baranof Island found their way into the anchorage until the late evening.

The next morning, July 25, we hauled up a mediocre numbers of prawns in our pots, decided not to reset and headed over to Honey Dew Cove. Once again, Drake applauded our decision when he got a couple of play sessions on the gravel beaches there.

From Honey Dew we timed our entrance to go into Wrangell Narrows on the dying flood current.  Shortly before the southern terminus of the Narrows, we pulled off and anchored on the SW side of Keene Island.  It was a new anchorage for us and came recommended by David Cohn on Shearwater.

The following morning we exited Wrangell Narrows, and made our way down Zimovia Strait along the west shore of Wrangell Island.  A gill net opening was scheduled to start at noon and we managed to get south of the area before the gill netters started to string their nets across the channel.  We dropped prawn pots before we headed into Thom's Place for the night. The weather was sunny but it also came with afternoon sea breezes that stayed a steady 15 knots until the sun began to set.

The next morning's prawn harvest was pretty good but we were in our "homeward bound" mode and so headed south to Santa Anna Inlet.  Prawn pots were dropped in Sunny Bay and on the south side of Deer Island before we anchored for the night.  Clouds had moved in so the afternoon sea breezes were absent.

We retrieved a disappointing number of prawns from the four pots we had set the day before, but being hopeful, we dropped two pots in Vixen Inlet.  After the pots were down, we anchored nearby in a somewhat exposed open bight.  Despite some early evening winds, the weather was kind to us and conditions were good overnight. 

With a very early start and retrieval of the prawn pots (a "so-so" haul), we headed down Clarence Strait to Ketchikan.  We arrived in Bar Harbor about 11:30 AM on Wednesday July 30.

Leg Statistics – 15 Days, 586 miles, 100.1 Engine Hours

Sitka to Juneau via Glacier Bay

The early summer weather in SE Alaska has been a real disappointment.  Even SE AK residents are apologizing for the weather rather than dismissing us lower 48ers as "weather wimps".  Fortunately, despite the weather, we got all our chores done and reprovisioned for the next leg in our cruise, but we did keep one eye on the doppler radar to evade the major showers that came through.

We left Sitka on July 1 and anchored that night in Kalinin Bay on the north side of Kruzof Island.  The next day, with a forecast for generally modest winds, we elected to travel an offshore route along the west side of Chichagof Island, cutting back inside via Lisianski Strait between Yakobi and Chichagof islands.  Sea conditions were good with a steady 10 knots of wind from the west and 2-3 foot seas, mostly slightly port of bow. John and Kathleen, with whom we had buddy-boated into Fords Terror, told us about the USFS public dock at Bohemia Creek on Yakobi Island.  The dock is associated with a USFS shelter on shore and in front of the shelter is a bit of "lawn" on which Drake could play ball.  

We headed towards Icy Strait and Glacier bay because we had obtained a permit in February for a July 9-13 entry into Glacier Bay National Park. The NPS operates a permit system because the number of private vessels allowed in Glacier Bay at a time is 25 (commercial vessels have different limits) with an individual's permit being no more than 5 days (4 nights) in length.  As we left Sitka, so that we could lengthen our stay in the park, we began putting in applications for a permit (you are allowed to have two permits at a time) to precede our original July 9 entry.  Obtaining a permit is a bit of "the luck of the draw" because starting in 2025, they are allocated through a lottery system.  On our third attempt, our application was picked such that we successfully received a 2-day permit starting July 7.

From Bohemia Creek we headed east into Icy Strait. As it turned out, Kathleen and John were in the same area of Icy Strait, having come the from opposite direction after dropping off some guests in Hoonah. They were fishing (successfully!) for halibut in Mud Bay. Rather than join them, elected to anchor a few miles north on the shallow stretch of water on theeast shore of Lemesurier Island.  Since the forecasted wind was for westerlies, the island did a fine job of sheltering us for the night.

The next morning we headed over to the spot where John & Kathleen had successfully caught halibuts. We were equally successful.  At the end of the fishing session, our two boats headed west towards North Inian Pass.  Our original destination was Mosquito Pass but we were concerned that other boats were already anchored there so elected to go into Inian Cove for the night.

The next morning, Laysan left early to catch favorable currents and conditions in order to head out Lisianski Strait and make their way into the protected anchorages Chichagof Island's west coast.  We had a more leisurely departure and made the 2-1/2 mile trip over to the anchorage in Mosquito Pass, where the boats from the night before had departed.  Besides being a lovely anchorage, it has a lovely beach offering Drake some fine ball play. While there, a flotilla of 6 sport fishing boats, presumably from one of the lodges in the nearby community of Elfin Cove, came over for picnic on the beach.

After two nights at anchor, on July 7 we got an early start east towards Glacier Bay.  We were delayed a bit when our anchor came up completely encased in bull kelp.  We were able to get it out of the water but the kelp prevent the anchor from being pulled into its secure position on the bow.  It took about 15 minutes, most of it while underway as the anchor was out of the water, to pick away at the kelp with a boat hook to clear the anchor.  Once in the park, we immediately went to the public dock in Bartlett Cove so that we could attend the annual boater orientation program required by the NPS.  That time on the dock also allowed us to top off our water tank and take Drake down to an area offering quite good ball play.  We were able to leave in time to catch the last of the flood current through Sitakaday Narrows.  Our anchorage for the night was Shag Cove in Geikie Inlet.

The next morning we headed up the west arm of Glacier Bay towards the Margerie Glacier.  At the head of Tarr Inlet, the Margerie glacier is the only tidewater glacier in the park fully accessible to cruise ships.  It probably has more photos taken of it than any other feature in the  Glacier Bay National Park.  We had been told at the visitor center than that it had recently calved a large piece of ice. There was a great deal of ice in the water but it was widely spaced and pretty easy to scoot around.  The area immediately in front of the glacial face was mostly clear of ice and we thought that face had receded significantly since we started visiting the park in 2010. After leaving the ice we anchored the night along the mainland shore NE of Russell Island.  This was new to us but we had seen other boats anchor here in the past.  Not an anchorage you'd use in a storm but in the settled conditions we had it was quite scenic.

From here we first passed by Gloomy Knob looking for mountain goats where we managed to spot four (we had also seen goats here the day before).  We then took a side trip down to South Marble Island to see the sea lion colonies and the bird nesting in the cliffs.  We headed north and went up the east arm of Glacier Bay.  We anchored the night off of a stream exiting from the south shore of Wachusset Inlet about 1-1/2 mile west of the where it joins with the east arm.  On our previous visit here in 2022 we saw two brown bears here but nothing this time.

The next day was a relatively short trip (17 miles) down to North Sandy Cove.  The forecast had rain and slightly elevated winds and North Sandy is one of the most protected anchorages in the park.  The small cruise ship Sea Wolf (https://seawolfadventures.net/) was anchored when we arrived but left a few hours after retrieving its guests from their kayak paddle.  After Sea Wolf left, we had the anchorage to ourselves.

For our last night in Glacier Bay we returned to Bartlett Cove.  When we first arrived we went to the public dock and took Drake to his ball play area.  We spent about an 1-1/2 hours on the dock so that we had time left on the "dock clock" (the NPS asks that you not spend more than 3-hours on the public dock in a 24-hour period).

On our last day in the park, July 12 (our original permit had us in the park until 7/13 but with the two extra days on the front end we amended the original permit to 4 days), after pulling the anchor we went to the public dock, took Drake for a ball play session then headed out. We managed to ebb out of Glacier Bay and hit the turn to flood current shortly after we turned east to head towards Juneau.  That night we anchored in Funter Bay on Admiralty Island.

With another early start, we left Funter Bay and arrived at Statter Harbor in Auke Bay about 8:30 AM on Sunday, July 13.  With both the seine and gill net commercial fishing boats having openings, and people taking their sport fishing boats out during the weekend, we've found that Sunday morning increases the probability of finding a space in the chaos of the open transient moorage of Statter Harbor. Our tasks in Juneau mainly involve reprovisioning at Costco (the only Costco store in SE Alaska) and Fred Meyers. Playing and walking Drake will fill up the rest of the time (mostly).

Leg Statistics – 13 Days, 379 miles, 64.3 Engine Hours