2011 Anchorages and Moorages

Below is a map of all of our stops we made along the way this year. 
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September 17-20 – The Finish Line

To close out our 2011 cruise on the morning of September 17 we headed south down Rosario Strait, along the west shore of Whidbey Island and into Admiralty Inlet. There is lots of commercial traffic in that area, so you venture into the vessel traffic lanes with a keen eye on the AIS in order to make sure you aren’t going to run over by a freighter moving at 20 knots. We will able to successfully cross without any major issue.

On account of the timing of the currents and the shorter days, we knew we needed an intermediate stop for the night between Anacortes and Winslow (Bainbridge Island). We decided to try the inner harbor in Port Ludlow. While the entrance is a bit shallow (~15 feet), it was short and straight with no current. Additionally, it was very protected from winds, a important consideration given the forecasted high winds for the next day. To top it off, the anchorage was remarkably scenic. While there were many homes along the shore, they were landscaped nicely and not closely packed.

The next morning, September 18, we elected to take a rest day and not move. The weather wasn’t terrible but docking with significant winds (15-25 kts) is not my favorite thing. The winds the next day were forecasted as light.

The early start on September 19 put us at the Queen City Yacht Club docks in Winslow before noon. We used the afternoon to start the boat cleaning process. Marcia working the interior while I tackled the exterior.

On September 20, the weather remained lovely for the final miles across Puget Sound, through the Ballard Locks and along the Lake Washington Ship Canal to our winter moorage in Lake Union. When transiting the locks we do our best to select a less busy day and time and calm winds. With just the two of us on board, we want to stack the odds in favor of an uneventful “lock-thru” and everything went smoothly. The time from Winslow to Lake Union, three draw bridges that had to open and one lock-thru was less than three hours.

The distance on this leg was 85.7 miles bringing the total trip distance to 3465.3 nautical miles. Total engine hours were 577.4 which works out to 6 miles per hour of engine time. Our actual speed is a bit faster since the engine hours include the time from when we weigh anchor or unmoor at the beginning of the day to the time when we are secured at anchor or dock at the end.

September 13-16 – Home Stretch

The winds that blew us onto the dock in Ganges quieted down overnight and our departure on the morning of September 13 was very uneventful. We motored down Saanich Inlet and entered the calm protected waters of Tod Inlet.

After lunch we paddled our kayaks the 200 yards to shore and walked 10 minutes to the Butchart Gardens. The amount of work and care that goes into providing blossoming and colorful plants the year round is impressive.

As we paddled back to the boat from shore, another kayak was paddling along the shore. As he got closer, he asked whether I was “Kurt Hanson.” I was a bit taken back but he introduced himself as Brian McCutcheon a friend of John Douglas owner of Laysan, a sister ship to ours. John is preparing to bring his boat back from Subic Bay in the Philippines to Hawaii where John lives. He asked Brian to intercept us in Tod Inlet and find out how things have been working in the long term on our boat.

It was a great visit and we wish John a safe and speedy journey across the Pacific.

The next morning, September 14, we headed across Haro Strait and reentered US waters. We’ve signed up through the NEXUS program with the Customs and Border Patrol and were able to clear over the telephone. We proceeded directly to Echo Bay on Sucia Island where we dropped the anchor.

The entire island is a Washington State Park and it has some very pleasant trails to walk. We elected to spend two nights so that we could cover them all.

An early start the morning of September 16 got us to the fuel dock in Anacortes at 10:30 AM. The only fuel we had taken on since last September was 200 gallons in Juneau. We weren’t surprised it took 1090 gallons to fill all our tanks. The 1290 gallons since last year has cover 580 engine hours, 30 genset hours and lots of furnace operation. We were in our assigned slip in Cap Sante Marina by noon.

From here we will head south to Seattle. We will probably swing by our yacht club’s (Queen City YC) outstation in Winslow for a night or two prior to transiting the locks into Lake Union. Hopefully home next Tuesday, 9/20.

Distance covered this leg is 83.3 for a total of 3379.6 nautical miles.

September 4-12 – Broughtons to the Gulf Islands (Sun at Last!!!)

Boy, a little blue sky, warm sun and calm winds can really improve a cruiser’s disposition. This leg has had some of the most relaxing cruising we’ve ever done.

When we left Pierre’s at Echo Bay on September 4, we weren’t done with the Broughtons. We decided to put in two grueling 8 mile days and visit anchorages we’ve not used before. The first was Sea Breeze Cove. It is tucked in amongst some islands which offered some fun exploring opportunities in our kayaks.

The next day’s anchorage, Mound Island, was not as intimate but it too offered some kayaking opportunities and an island on which to explore.

On September 6 we positioned ourselves to transit the narrows that divide the waters of the northern section of the inside passage from the southern. A number of boats had similar ideas so there were a half dozen other boats in Port Neville that night. It is a large anchorage so no one should have felt crowded.

The sunrise on September 7, was spectacular and we made good time down Johnstone Strait riding the flood south. Rather than use Seymour Narrows as we did on the way north, we took Okisollo Channel and spent the night in Octopus Island Marine Park. We did this same path last year on the southbound leg of our trip.

An early start the morning of September 8, got us through Hole-in-the-Wall Rapids on the slack before the flood. By lunch we were anchored in Prideaux Haven in Desolation Sound.

Some might consider the area’s name to be an oxymoron since in the main cruising season it is anything but desolate but when the temperatures are in the upper 70’s, the sun is shining and the wind isn’t blowing, we become very tolerant of the 20+ boats with whom we are sharing the anchorage. The conditions on this visit were very similar to our first trip to Desolation Sound in our two person kayak during September nearly 20 years ago.

Since the weather was so nice, we decided to spend two nights at anchor in Prideaux Haven.

On September 10, we started the trip down the Straits of Georgia (part of the Salish Sea) and anchored in Ballet Bay. Our last visit here was in 2007 during a 7-week trip on our first boat. There has been quite a bit of development on the land surrounding this protected anchorage since then.

In the morning of September 11, we crossed  the Straits of Georgia from the mainland side to the Vancouver Island side. We experienced the joys of the strong westerly winds that funnel across the Qualicum gap of Vancouver Island and hit you broad side as you angle across the strait. We took a 3-hour lunch break in Silva Bay while waiting for the current in Gabriola Pass to slacken.

After restarting, we anchored for the evening in Clam Bay on Thetis Island. Many other boaters were enjoying some of the last summer weather in Clam Bay. The nearly full moon put on a stunning show for the nearly 20+ other boaters in the anchorage.

Twelve hours later, on the morning of September 12, those same boaters were greeted by a sunrise to rival the moon’s efforts.

We left Clam Bay and traveled the relatively short distance to Salt Spring Marina to catch on the basics (laundry, wine and produce). From here the plan is to spend a night or two at Tod Inlet near the Butchart Gardens and then to cross back into the San Juans.

Distance covered this leg was 239.9 raising the total to 3296.3 nautical miles.

September 1-3 – The Broughtons

The Broughtons are a popular cruising area east of Port McNeill at the junction of Johnstone Strait and Queen Charlotte Strait. It has many protected channels, bays, coves and small marinas. On account of it being north of Seymour Narrows and its cousins (e.g., Yuculta, Dent, Surge) getting here takes a bit of effort so it is less crowded than Desolation Sound or the Canadian Gulf Islands.

We left Port McNeill on September 1 and traveled to Laura Cove. The descriptions of the anchorage in the guides are glowing and describe it well. Its only drawback for us was the very hard bottom which made hooking the anchor difficult. Fortunately the winds were light so we never tested it.

Before we left Port McNeill, Marcia made reservations for moorage and attendance at the very popular pig roast at the Pierre’s in Echo Bay. It was only a short distance from our anchorage so when we left the next morning, September 2, we took a sightseeing detour into Simoom Sound to check out other anchorages in the area before tying up here.

There are about a half-dozen small marinas that operate in the Broughtons. They cater to cruisers and sport fisherman visiting the area during the short summer season. They operate off the grid but usually provide all of the services that folks are looking for.  At Pierre’s, the Saturday pig roasts have helped it attract cruisers.

The event is very social and the conviviality was aided but the sunny and warm (by coastal standards) temperature. People compare notes on destinations and talk boats. There is ample food (potluck side dishes) and ample pork.

From here we’ll continue the slow southbound journey, stopping in Desolation Sound for a day or two. The next likely marina stop will be somewhere in the Canadian Gulf Islands.

Distance covered this leg was 47.5 nautical miles (told you we’d slow down) bringing the total to 3056.4.

August 27–30 -Prince Rupert to Port McNeill (aka “Now its time to slow down”)

It seemed as though we’ve repeated the frenetic pace of the northbound trip in our southbound journey. We are now docked in Port McNeill after covering the 295 miles from Prince Rupert in four days. The last three days were all nearly 12 hours underway. On account of the shorter days, we started all of of our days before sunrise.

On last year’s southbound trip, because of the time of the month, we frequently encountered opposing currents. This year, we were luckier and did a better job of choosing anchorages so that we could frequently ride favorable currents for much of the day.

On August 27, we revisited Lowe Inlet, an anchorage we used on the northbound trip. We were surprised that no one else anchored here as it is a convenient distance from Prince Rupert and quite lovely.

The next day, August 28, we continued the trip down Grenville and Princes Royal Channels (the “ditch”) and anchored in Mary Cove. This was a new anchorage to us and one we would use again as it is just a short distance off the main channel.

On August 29 we positioned ourselves for rounding Cape Caution by anchoring at Green Island. We anchored here in 2007 with our first boat, Dragontail, and thought it a delightful, well protected anchorage. Our opinion remains the same.

Yesterday, August 30, after some careful deliberation, we made the trip around Cape Caution and across Queen Charlotte Strait to Port McNeill. The West Sea Otter offshore buoy is often used by boaters as a key indicator in deciding in the “go/no go” decision. The 1.7 meter wave height was a bit more than the 1.5 meter cutoff we normally use but the winds were from the NW so we thought we’d have wind waves on our aft quarter. Unfortunately, the winds were forecast to increase to 25 knots in the afternoon. Since there was no forecasted storm and we had bailouts once past Cape Caution, we decided to go for it.

The current pushed us quickly out of Fitzhugh Sound and into Queen Charlotte Sound where we dropped both of our stabilizers into the water. They made a huge difference in cutting down the rolling from the beam on ocean swells and allowed us to continue in relative comfort. Once past Cape Caution the swells seemed to increase but were now coming more from the aft quarter. As we started to lose the current swell, the wind and the wind driven chop was directly behind us. The docking at Port McNeill in 20-25 knot winds turned out fine once we were given an end side tie where the wind blew us onto the dock.

From here we are slowing the pace down. We’ve reserved a space at Pierre’s at Echo Bay in the Broughtons for this weekend’s pig roast and are looking forward to that. We are still targeting a return to Seattle the last half of September.

Total distance this leg was 295.7 nautical miles (in 4 days!) bringing the trip total to 3008.9.

August 25-26 - Thorne Bay to Prince Rupert (aka “Escape from Alaska”)

The weather on Thursday, August 25 was a 180 degree change from the recent weather. We left before dawn to calm winds and flat seas in Clarence Strait. We decided to take as much advantage of it as possible by going as far as we could.

We blew by Ketchikan, intending to get into a good position to reach Prince Rupert with the next available weather window. We next passed by our original destination, Foggy Bay, because we still had several hours of daylight. We ultimately anchor in Port Tongass after nearly 14-1/2 hours of running and with 90.1 miles under our belts.

Fair weather (or at least winds and seas) hold together one more day on August 26  and we cover the last 37.8 miles to Prince Rupert more leisurely. By using Port Tongass, we split the crossing of Dixon Entrance into two smaller sections. The exposed portion of today’s crossing was only 10 miles.

From here, we have generally protected cruising until we reach Cape Caution, the exposed area north of Vancouver Island. That will probably take a week or so. We hope the weather will improve as we head south.

The distance traveled this leg was 127.9 bringing the total to 2713.2 miles.

August 12–23 Juneau to Thorne Bay (or “September is two weeks early this year”)

I’ve been using pretty bland blog post titles so as to not to detract from the more journal style entries I am doing this year. The weather we’ve experienced recently its impact on our itinerary and schedule cannot be ignored, though.

After our friends, Sharon & Craig Rowley departed on August 11, we busily reprovisioned at Costco and Safeway for our trip south. Our intent was to head south through Wrangell Narrows and head into the town of Craig on the west side of Prince of Wales Island. From there we’d revisit Cordova Bay, round Cape Chacon at the tip of Prince of Wales Island and then head across to Prince Rupert, B.C., to clear into Canada.

The next day, August 12, after adding 200 gallons of fuel to serve as our reserve for the trip home (we’ll do a total refuel when back in Puget Sound), we headed out. The weather kept improving as the day wore on and by the time we pulled into Tracy Arm Cove the clouds were breaking up. We even had a lovely full moon over the mountain towards our south.

The weather remained good on Saturday, August 13, as we went to Cannery Cove, although the crossing was lumpy on account of the interaction between the brisk wind and current in Stephens Passage. We launched the dinghy, set two crab pots and went on the hunt for halibut in Pybus Bay. As we made our way between a couple of islands into the main bay, that same wind and current interaction occurred again. Since we were in the dinghy and not wanting to deal with much if any chop, we beat a retreat and Marcia tried her luck in more protected waters. No luck though. Back at the boat, though, we did catch a glimpse of a brown bear sow with three offspring.

Before we left on August 14, we retrieved the crab pots placed the afternoon before and managed two keeper crabs. Since the weather forecast was for a storm the next day, we decided to try an anchorage that offered good protection, a sticky bottom for the anchor and lots of swinging room for the boat in case we needed to hunker down. As it turned out, Portage Bay on the northend of Kuprenof Island only provided the last two items.

During the morning of August 15, the weather deteriorated as was forecast. The five other boats in the anchorage the night before all cleared out as the morning wore on. We stayed put assuming that while we might have some fetch bringing wave chop as was mentioned in the guide book, it wouldn’t be too bad.  The wind started in the 15 to 25 knot range but picked up to 20 to 30 knots.

What really made it unpleasant was the current that swept past our boat depending on whether the tide was rising or falling. When the tide rose, the wind and current were fighting each other causing the wind driven waves to steepen and become closer together. Additionally, current was strong enough that it pushed the boat upwind. Our boat was the little stuffed animal being pulled (pushed in this case) apart by two children. The worse moments were when we had 3-foot choppy waves hitting the boat broadside because the current was pushing us one way while the wind was pushing us the opposite.

As the tide changed and the current with it, the battle was over and they both pulled us hard against our anchor. Fortunately the bottom was good and the anchor well set. Since everybody else had bailed that anchorage we certainly didn’t worry about swinging into anyone.

The next day, August 16, was a little bit better but not so good that we wanted to head out and fight conditions to either a new anchorage or uncertain docking in Petersburg. We stayed another night in our private purgatory.

At last, on August 17, the weather was much improved and we headed out on a rising tide (did I mention that the entrance to our anchorage was shallow with a dog-leg turn and had a propensity for fast current during tide changes?). We passed Petersburg and went straight in to Wrangell Narrows. This was our first southbound trip through the narrows and it looked different.  Fortunately, we are gaining confidence and while we remain very attentive we aren’t stressed the way were on our first transit through Wrangell Narrows. We made for the very convenient anchorage in St John Harbor, just four miles south of the south entrance to Wrangell Narrows.

The next morning, August 18, we decided to do as many miles as we could since the forecast was for another storm to come through in a couple of days. The ultimate destination kept changing as we rode a favorable current out of Sumner Strait. We ended up the day at Kaguk Cove, an anchorage east of Sea Otter Sound and only 27 miles from Craig, what we intended to be our last town visited before heading into British Columbia.

With the early forecast on Friday, August 19, we knew we needed to get to Craig as quickly and as soon as we could since gale force winds were forecast that evening.  Rain showers were already starting but the winds were still in the teens until we started to head into more open channels, then gusts in the upper 20’s began to buffet the boat. About the same time we picked up a radio transmission from a commercial fishing boat to the Craig Harbor Master. It sounded like everything was filled and the boats were beginning to raft up. At that point we were still 17 miles from Craig and decided to cut our losses and head back to anchorage that we knew was good. After a 20 mile trip to nowhere, we anchored again in Kaguk Cove to wait out the storm.

The winds picked up during the evening as forecast and continued into August 20. It rained a lot and we spent a lot of time trying to keep the interior windows from fogging up. We monitor some basic weather conditions with the instruments on the boat. What struck us was the dramatic pressure drop during the storm and the rapid temperature rise. The temperature rose during the night from the mid 50’s to the low 60’s. It felt like one of those “Pineapple Express” storms that Puget Sound gets during the winter where a tropical storm from the central Pacific comes barreling into the area.

It was while waiting out this storm and listening to the upcoming weather that we decided that the weather pattern for Alaska had switched to a more autumnal mode and that the storms would be stronger and more frequent than seen in the summer. It was time to abandon every other goal except heading south. For us that meant heading north through (generally) more protected waters back down through Ketchikan and cross Dixon Entrance, the unavoidable open section of water separating Alaska and British Columbia, at the first weather window after positioning ourselves for the crossing.

On August 21, we motored north through El Capitan Passage out into Sumner Strait and headed for Hole-in-the-Wall on the northwest corner of Prince of Wales Island. I became enamored with the description of its entrance and protection as described in the guide book. While everything turned out fine, the entry was nerve wracking as I had to pass one submerged rock on the right then one on the left while ignoring the breaking waves from the following seas on either side of the entry. While the initial entry was as narrow, at one point further in, we concluded it was only 100’ wide. Ultimately, we had a lovely anchorage with very little wind and only a tiny bit of swell working its well through the entrance.

The next day, August 22, the exit from our anchorage was not nearly as stressful as the entry. We continued north around Point Baker, along Sumner Strait and south down Clarence Strait. The winds were forecast at 20 knots but we generally saw winds in the low teens instead. That is, until we turned the corner at Clarence Strait. At that point, winds are in the low 20’s and gusts to the upper 20’s. Since it was on the “nose”, it is more a nuisance than an issue. As we got into the more open sections of Clarence Strait, the pounding got worse but we persevered and pulled into Ratz Harbor for the night. It was a surprisingly protected and comfortable anchorage.

Once again the forecast was for gale force winds on the night of August 23. Until that time, the forecast was for SE 25 knots with 5 foot seas. We got a 0430 start in the dark (it is nearly the end of August after all!). Our goal is to tie up in Ketchikan by early afternoon. Things went well for the first 1-1/2 hours until we started into the central part of Clarence Strait. At this point we start pounding in very short duration 5 foot seas. The bow pitches up and then comes crashing down, nearly burying the anchor (8 feet above the water line) in the water. Fortunately there was a nearby bail out option and by 0815 we are tied up to the transient dock in Thorne Bay.

Later that day, we are joined on the dock by the sailing vessel Noah from Point Roberts Washington. It being the small world it is, we had gone through the Glacier Bay National Park boater orientation with them in early August. Its owners, a very nice couple, Kellie and Terry, concluded similarly to us that while, yes, the boat might be able to handle pounding like we experienced in Clarence Strait there was no reason to do it voluntarily. We spent a pleasant evening talking boats and plans.

Today, August 24, we remain at the dock planning on departing tomorrow in forecasted SE 10 knots with 2-foot seas. We will take advantage of those conditions and go as far as we can get. Hopefully we will be in Prince Rupert, BC this weekend.

Distance covered in this leg (including our “sightseeing” trip of about 20 miles) is 404.3 bringing the total distance traveled to 2585.3 nautical miles.