Alaska Trip Day 92

9/13/11

Campbell River, B.C.

Miles Travelled:  21

How’s this for one of those tricky word problems for a math class?

You have two 16 month old toddlers who go down for a nap around 11:30 am and hopefully sleep for about 2 hours.  You don’t want to disturb their nap, but you are living on a small 32 foot boat that needs to be underway while they nap to transit Seymour Narrows and you don’t want to anchor or wildly change engine rpms while they are asleep.  Seymour Narrows is a channel where currents can reach 16 knots and your boat speed is 5.5 knots.  Slack water, today 9/13/11, is at 12:45 and will be turning to flood after the slack. Slack water lasts up to 11 minutes.  The maximum current before your chosen slack is 11.2 knots. You are anchored 10.5 miles from Seymour Narrows and you must reach the Narrows at 12:45 which is during the toddlers’ nap time.  The passage to Seymour Narrows, Discovery Passage, has strong currents, 0.3 or 0.4 times the current in Seymour Narrows.  The tide will be ebbing while in Discovery Passage and those currents will be against you.  What time do you leave the anchorage?

We tried to figure out the best time to leave last night, and decided the right answer was early and conservative to allow lots of time to get there.  We weren’t sure what to expect for currents in Discovery Pass because there is usually a back eddy on the edges where the current isn’t nearly as strong, and can even go the other direction.  We’ve never done Seymour Narrows before and wanted to be sure we wouldn’t have any problems.  We left around 9:15 and it was certainly more than enough time.  We kept the engine rpms down and averaged about 3 knots the whole way to the Narrows.

We ended up challenging the Narrows by about 20 minutes because we were standing by and watching other similarly sized and similarly powered boats go through without problem.  It was truly nothing to worry about.  We were at slack water (or very close to it) and the most we saw was a decrease in boat speed and some turbulence.  No big deal, and we have to say, it is SO easy in comparison to doing a series of other rapids that individually may not run as quickly, but you have to do several of them, over at least 2 days, and the route needed to pass through is far from direct.  When your goal is to make tracks and dawdle as little as possible, Seymour Narrows is definitely the way to go.

We pulled into Campbell River and tied up at the Discovery marina.  We went to the grocery store and it was completely OVERWHELMING.  It was huge and like nothing we’ve seen in the last 4 months.  I guess we really are making our way South and to population.

For supper we had burgers and fries at A&W.  The boys gave us their rootbeer and ice cream from their kid pack meals, we were very grateful (that or we're mean parents!).

Heading into Campbell River, Lars was still napping

Lars shows how goldfish crackers MUST be put into the winch hole before they are eaten!

Do you know how HARD it is to get both of them in the frame when trying to take a photo these days?  Sheesh!

Shortly after the previous photo was taken, Odin had a stick in his mouth, so I went to remove it...I ended up pulling this slug out of his mouth.  DISGUSTING!  I still have the heebie jeebies.