Alaska Trip Day 80

9/1/11

Hartley Bay, B.C.

Miles Travelled:  41

Today we transited the rest of Grenville Channel.  We fought a contrary current until we were able to catch the ebb in the narrow part of Grenville and saw speeds of 7.0-7.5 kts.  After yesterday’s sun, we had heavy rain.

I was in the aft enclosure playing with the boys and Odin fell asleep on my lap and about 30 minutes later Lars fell asleep next to me.  I decided to let them sleep, but man did it screw naps up today.  Odin slept for about 45 minutes and Lars for about 1.5 hours.  I tried to put them down later in the day because 45 minutes is certainly not enough, and by the time they woke up from their early naps, there was far too much afternoon for them to make it without more sleep.  It didn’t work all that well either, Odin needed help falling asleep, and did just as we were approaching Hartley Bay and Lars never fell asleep.  We felt that we needed fuel and Hartley Bay had it, but we didn’t want to risk waking Odin up by changing engine rpms and docking.  We hunted in the guidebooks for nearby anchorages and eventually ended up just motoring around until Odin woke up.  Gah!  We’ve really got to get naps ironed out!  It’s really starting to impact their night sleep when they don’t get enough day time sleep, and Odin is super grumpy when he doesn’t have enough sleep!

We pulled into Hartley Bay and fueled up and learned that we could tie up at the dock for free since we had purchased fuel.  We bought a bucket of ice from a fisherman on the dock and walked past a seal that had been killed and they were cleaning.  Hartley Bay is a Native village and they are apparently having some sort of traditional feast tomorrow night and seal is on the menu.

We had snapper (thanks Dad and Lynn!), rice and broccoli for dinner.  I burned the crap out of my thumb when I was steaming the broccoli, thank goodness we had the ice, it was needed.

We’re a  wrung out from several long days in a row.  We want to get home, and get south before bad weather hits, so we are motivated to put in the long days, but we’re tired and Tor and I are snapping at each other.  We’ve decided that we need to make sure we have enjoyable days, so we are thinking about heading to Bishop Bay hot springs tomorrow.  We’ll see how it goes in the morning since Bishop Bay is a bit of a back track, but the thought of a bath and an abundance of warm fresh water for washing diapers is enticing.