On the road again

Overcast, mid 30s calm.

It’s another lazy morning on Blue Note. We are tied to the dock in front of a Forest Service shelter next to Bohemia Creek near the northern end of Lisianski Strait. I say lazy because it feels the same as has been the norm for the last four months: the captain doesn’t get out of bed until after 8AM, the coffee maker is started, the crew goes ashore to take care of morning business, the coffee is consumed, breakfast gets eaten, and we’re ready for the day by 10.

We finally extricated ourselves from Sitka. Sitka is a very comfortable, easy place to be. As an example, Thursday night I went to an excellent concert at Sitka’s fairly new Performing Arts Center. The April Verch Band played to an almost full house in the beautiful 500-seat venue. April is a Canadian national fiddle champion as well as a very accomplished step dancer and she and her two bandmates burned the house down. If you watched the Olympic opening ceremonies last month you saw the April Verch Band.

Then Sunday night was to be another open mic at the Larkspur Café. Ted Howard had been increasing the pressure on me to get up and do a few songs. I would have had the weather not turned favorable for voyaging.

Turn favorable it did. We got away Saturday a little after noon. The morning had been mostly cloudy with a cool ten knot northerly blowing. By the time we were underway the clouds had left and the wind veered to the northeast and filled to 15 knots. There were small craft advisories posted for the outside waters through the evening. My plan was to move to Salisbury Sound, evaluate the conditions for Sunday and then either continue up Peril Strait to an anchorage on the inside in case of heavy weather or anchor in Sukoi Inlet off Salisbury Sound and continue up the outside if it were settled.

Sunday dawned cool and clear in Sukoi Inlet with the breeze out of the north at 20 knots. As we motored up the inlet I hoisted the main to the masthead. This proved to be a miscalculation. Upon entering the Sound whitecaps could be seen all the way across. Blowing a steady 25-30 we had a very exciting sail across to the passage behind Klokachef Island. Gaining the lee, I put a reef in the mainsail, but by that time it was evident the winds were being channeled through the passes and that its velocity was probably more like 15-20 knots. We motor-sailed up the outside to the entrance to the inside passage at Khaz Bay, some five miles, adjusting the sail trim as the wind veered and backed and moving up and down in the long six foot swell.

The cruise through the passage was fun, twisting and turning, only 40-50 yards wide in a few places and less than 20 feet deep near Kimshan Cove. Watching the depth finder can be such a two edged sword. You are cruising along secure in the knowledge that there is plenty of water below and that the tide is rising when all of a sudden the bottom comes rocketing up. Your heart gets an immediate hit of pure adrenalin. Time dilates. You pass over without a bump and you are left with the thought that you only get so many of those intense rushes in your lifetime. Steve on the Miss Roxanne used to call it the scare box. I’m inclined to agree.

We emerged at Imperial Passage from Portlock Harbor back to the open ocean. By this time the wind had died to variable to ten knots. The six foot seas were still rolling, the peaks far apart. The entrance to Lisianski Strait from the ocean is only 125 yards wide with a hidden reef to the east and an exposed rock to the west. The best channel lies nearer the rock. It’s an interesting conflict to know you have to hug the rock to avoid the hidden reef. One look at the scare box cured that conflict.

From the entrance the Strait becomes deep from shore to shore. It made for a relaxing run up to the dock where we are. Well except for a glitch in Otto the autopilot. He decided to take about an hour break from turning left. He’d turn right but wouldn’t turn left. When the hour was up he went back to work with nary a burp yesterday afternoon nor today.

Pelican is a little over an hour around the corner. If I can get a connection I’ll post this.

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