Bjorklund Log: Alaska Trip Day 37

6/22/11

Deception Point Cove, Woewodski Island, AK

Miles travelled: 35

This morning we woke to calm winds in Coffman Cove. Yesterday we’d had a small craft advisory for winds over 25 kts, and before we tucked into Coffman Cove we saw a bit of that. It was forecast to be 15 kts this morning and diminishing later in the day. After breakfast at the dock, I walked into “town” to have a peek at Clarence Strait and all was calm, so we headed out.

It was a fairly uneventful transit, but we did see a humpback whale up close! It was swimming about 150 feet from our boat and as we passed, we saw it come up to blow and then dive which meant we got to see the flukes! Super cool!

The boys woke up an hour early this morning and we left them in bed in hopes that they would fall back asleep but they never did, so that hour eventually caught up to us. I gave them and early lunch so they could get down for their nap early. It got pretty loud down below with their screaming before lunch and then they were both nearly falling asleep in their booster seats. They had a good 2 hour nap.

Not long after they woke up from their nap, we were approaching our anchorage near the south entrance of Wrangell Narrows. Transiting Wrangell Narrows is dependent on the tide because the current can get up to 4-5 knots in the channel, so you have to plan your transit well. The advice for a boat like ours to go in on the last half of a flood tide so that the currents are favorable the whole way. When we got near Wrangell Narrows, we were on a flood tide and almost decided to just do the extra 20 miles to Petersburg, but ultimately decided to call it a night since we weren’t sure we could be in Petersburg by bed time for the boys.

We anchored in a little cove just at the southern entrance to Wrangell Narrows, and I got to fixing dinner (beef stew and bread with rhubarb crisp for dessert (thanks Emo!)). Boy are we glad we didn’t keep going. We had two hungry, tired and SCREAMING boys by dinner time. If we’d kept going, one of us would have had to be piloting the boat in a narrow channel with most of SE Alaska’s commercial traffic barreling down on us and the other would have had to be down below dealing with two very upset boys.

We put the boys to bed a little early and enjoyed a sunny evening in the cockpit and were even visited by porpoises. We will get up early tomorrow morning to make the correct timing to get through Wrangell Narrows. We plan to be in Petersburg tomorrow.