Alaska Trip Day 69

7/24/11

Point Baker, Prince of Wales Island, AK

Miles Travelled:  25

Alice and Steve from Second Wind like to stop at Point Baker when they are in the area (they’ve been cruising northward from their homeport of Anacortes every summer since 1997, they don’t always come as far as Alaska, but they have lots of cruising experience up here).  We decided to join them after transiting Rocky Pass. 

The transit of Rocky Pass was no big deal.  We made good use of the electronic charts we have on the computer with me down below checking our progress as Tor navigated the boat using the paper chart in the cockpit and the navigation markers.  It was a piece of cake, though it is strange to have a chart with soundings in feet and not fathoms (one fathom is 6 feet).  Once we were out into much less constricted water we did have a little bit of a scare when Tor got distracted listening to the weather forecast on the  VHF radio and doing a log entry, something made him take a quick look at the depth sounder and it said 8 feet.  He had enough time to do a quick 90 degree turn and we got back into deeper water.  Whew!  We almost had a summer cabin in Alaska!

A 25 mile day is tough for us because of nap schedules.  If we leave at our usual time of around 7:30, we can do a 15 mile or a 40 mile day very easily.  Since today’s plan was for 25 miles and we had to leave at our usual time due to high tide, we ended up slowing down and doing only about 4 kts all the way across Sumner Strait to Point Baker so we could let the boys have a good long nap without worrying about waking them up when we tied up at the dock. 

We were excited about Point Baker for a chance to get ice and maybe a meal at their restaurant.  Unfortunately we didn’t take into account that it was Sunday and it turns out everything was closed.  Oh well, we made good use of the community hall and the boys crawled ALL over while we visited with Alice and Steve.

For dinner we had the last of the salmon from Scott with sweet potatoes and the last of the broccoli I bought in Sitka.  We are looking forward to getting some fresh stuff in Wrangell.  We are planning on making the approximately 40 mile trip to Wrangell tomorrow so that we will be in good shape for getting to the Anan Bear Observatory on the 28^th (we hope to secure permits to visit Anan tomorrow morning before we leave Point Baker).

After the boys went to bed we set up the baby monitor and were able to visit over on Second Wind.  We had a lovely evening and stayed up way too late.  We will part ways with Alice and Steve tomorrow because they are heading further south towards Craig and we are heading towards Wrangell, but hopefully we will run into them as we continue homeward as the summer winds down.