Entry # 9 - Begin at Craig on August 18, 2011
This morning dawned much better than forecast. During the night it rained, and I vaguely heard a lot of comings and goings around the docks. When I looked around at about 5 a.m., the place had filled up with seiners, including five large ones that had rafted up immediately across from us. All told there were perhaps a hundred boats that had piled in and more were arriving all the time. It was a real party on the docks: crews cleaning up, everyone comparing notes about their first three days of salmon fishing in this period, and lots of wives and kids running around too. The price for “pinks”, the lowest grade salmon that are now running in droves, has risen to 43 cents a pound, which is close to a record high. For a boat that had caught 80,000 pounds of them in 48 hours, not a bad deal. So most folks were happy.
Peter and Eunice were determined to make another run at the grocery store, to fill in the interstices for their baking and cooking plans, and so I went along to supervise. This boat is already so loaded down with food that has accumulated from everyone else’s particular wants and needs, the thought of adding more was daunting. But add more we did, and the cooking so far has justified the effort. I’d tried to make up the beds for the new arrivals, and was chagrined to learn that I’d used all the wrong sheets for the bunks in question. So much for my domesticity quotient!
Joanne and Mark headed off about 10 on a tiny seaplane, Joanne riding shotgun. We heard later that they had a wonderful flight to Ketchikan. We headed off to Hydaberg, a native settlement about 35 miles down the bays and inlets, where there is a particularly nice collection of totems both old and new. Apart from the totems, which are collected in a playground area by the local school, this is a pretty depressing place. The marina is a mess – docks in serious disrepair, boats looking mostly like they had been abandoned, and a general air of decrepitude, lack of interest and activity. Apart from the totems there were two bright spots, however: first, a pickup truck stopped to welcome us and the native driver asked us if we’d like to buy some freshly caught prawns. After some negotiation, we wound up with a big bag of beautiful prawns from the back of his truck, which quickly wound up in the cooker and went down fantastically as an appetizer. Second, there is a large stream flowing through the town into the ocean, and we witnessed one of the biggest salmon runs I’ve seen yet seen.
The weather forecast was becoming increasingly dire, with a strong 45 knot southeast gale predicted within the next 36 hours. Since our direction of travel was southeast, and our intention was to cross the 60 mile wide Dixon Entrance within the next 48 hours, we clearly had a problem. In the morning the weather had turned for the worse. A south-southeast wind was already gusting to 30 knots, with driving rain. The docks at Hydaberg are exposed to the south, so we bailed and powered down the coast into the storm, to see how far we could get toward the Dixon Entrance before having to find a really secure place to ride out what was coming. By lunch time we’d gotten about half way to the Entrance, and stopped for a break at Clam Cove, which was reported to be quite secure. It was o.k. but we thought we could do better. The cruising guide mentioned a couple of places in the Barrier Islands, which are just before Cape Chacon (the Entrance entry point for us), and the chart also showed some interesting possibilities not listed in the guide. Meanwhile conditions were worsening, and JACA powered slowly but doggedly into the wind, rain, and increasing fog.
All of a sudden a whale breached nearby, and then again and again. Then it started rolling itself over and over, waving its huge flippers and slapping them in the water. It seemed to be coming straight at us, and while I assumed it could hear the motor and would avoid us, I altered course somewhat to avoid a collision. Good thing I did: it went by at close range, throwing itself out of the water and repeatedly thrashing about no more than a hundred yards from us. The weather was so bad we never got any good pictures of this awesome sight.
John Wilcox had noticed a small unnamed cove on the chart, in the area we’d hoped to be. So mid-afternoon we poked our head in, not knowing what we’d find, or whether an anchor would hold there. It was calm and smooth, and the anchor grabbed right away. We let out a lot of scope, and waited to see what would happen when the really big puffs started coming. It was a perfect place: over the next 36 hours we got gusts to 30 or so at the masthead, but we sat as still and peaceful as anyone could expect, when outside, no more than three miles away it was blowing 45 and 14 ft. seas were piling in. We also got more than a foot of rain in the process. This little no-name cove now has a name: WILCOX COVE!
Late during the second night of the storm the wind died and the rain let up. Hardly a ripple in Wilcox Cove in the morning. So we battened everything down and at 6 a.m. headed out toward Cape Chacon, to see what the sea and wind state would be like out there. The forecast was for a 20 kt southerly wind, which would be perfect for our long run toward British Columbia in a generally easterly direction. What we found was very little wind from anywhere in the beginning, and an 8 -10 foot lumpy sea running. JACA shouldered her way through that without any problem, and a couple of hours after rounding Cape Chacon a S-SE wind came up. That meant we couldn’t quite lay a course for Dundas Island, about 55 miles distant, but we could fetch the Wales Island Harbor area, about 5 miles further along and which I’d visited before. So for the next several hours JACA romped along in a 20-30 kt breeze, and we had a glorious sail across the Dixon Entrance. It didn’t even rain until the very end!
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| Cape Chacon - farewell Alaska! |
About half way across the entrance, I was dozing off watch in the cockpit and felt the boat slow down dramatically. Our speed dropped from about 8 kts to 4. Something was amiss. So we rolled up the jib, started the motor, stopped the boat and then I backed it down for a while. Shortly a huge mass of kelp emerged from our bow: we’d sailed into one of those awful kelp bogs and it had wrapped itself around our keel. We were back on our way at full speed shortly, and at 6 p.m. pulled into tiny Wales Island Harbor, back in British Columbia, with the hardest part of the trip behind us. Even in the ever-present rain, that was good cause for celebration.
With one day left before we needed to be in Prince Rupert on the 23rd to drop Peter Murray off at his plane, we spent much of the 22nd exploring the Dundas Island group. JACA beat her way down the Chatham Sound in a rising southeasterly. By late afternoon we were at the southerly end of Dundas Island. Our anticipated goal was Edith Harbor, which the cruising guide described as wild and serene – also with the possibility of a large fisherman’s mooring or two. It was wild indeed – the wind was now up to 30 kts again in our teeth, with Edith Harbor presenting a lee shore with waves breaking heavily on the rocks all around us. But we went in to check anyway. No moorings in sight, and while it was somewhat calmer, it was still plenty windy and the depths were well over 60 feet. So we bashed our and Baron Islands to another no-name cove that looked more promising, at least on the chart. Once in the narrow canal, we were able to bear off, roll out the whole jib, and have a calm but rollicking sail for the last few miles to the cove. It is a lovely quiet spot, with reasonable holding ground in about 60’ of water – it is so protected you could probably just drop a rock instead of the anchor anyway. A couple of streams gush into it with suitable gurgling noises. So we’ve taken the liberty of naming it JACA COVE.
Our last dinner with Peter Murray was the culmination of a week-long cook-off between two very fine chefs, neither of whom was going to be outdone by the other. Peter and Eunice both love to cook and bake, and so JACA’s cabin has been a place of extraordinary smells and caloric production unlike anything to date, even while underway in rough weather. I’m going to have to exercise some authority as skipper to reduce the cascade of tasty treats, or I won’t fit into any of my clothes. Never have I had such a display of baked goods, fine German cuisine, and multicourse luncheons!
The ride from Craig to Prince Rupert was expected to be, and has been, the hardest leg of the trip, in terms of open ocean sailing and upwind slogging generally. Also there was a certain amount of time pressure which wasn’t helped by losing 36 hours to a gale. But we have sailed more than at any other time, and it has been fun to put JACA through her paces as a sailboat as well as a powerboat. I can’t think of a better boat for these circumstances: she’s incredibly strong, solid, seaworthy, and always comfortable. Plus, she’s fun to sail in a 25-30 knot blow and 10 foot seas. It has rained consistently, and we’ve taken plenty of salt water across the deck also, but down below she is always warm and dry. Obviously one doesn’t come to these parts for fair-weather sailing, but life could be a lot more miserable if you were confined to a leaky damp boat!
Tomorrow at Prince Rupert will be boat chores, shopping, and preparing for the last leg back to Bella Bella. I’ll miss my oldest friend Peter Murray, but we’ll welcome John Eide tomorrow evening as a worthy replacement in the home stretch. The next, and final, post will likely come from Portland, or thereabouts.
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| Edith Harbor |
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| Jaca in her cove! |
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| What a trip!! |
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