Goodbye Ketchikan

July 22, 2010

Hello from Ketchikan again. We arrived here yesterday after leaving Thorne Bay with a non eventful passage in moderate seas and light wind. The sunshine is gone now with the days having a heavy overcast and intermittent rain. This is typical SE Alaska weather but we did have 3 days that had a lot of sunshine especially the day we where in Wrangell.

ICEBURG IN CHANNEL OUTSIDE OF PETERSBURG

LEAVING PETERSBURG WITH FISHING FLEET

SCENERY SHOT IN WRANGELL NARROWS

After leaving Wrangell, we where going to Thorne Bay but as the voyage progress, we decided that it was too far to go so we stopped in a bay called Santa Anna Inlet and dropped the anchor. While there, another boat came in that happened to be a fellow yacht club member who are also cruising Alaska. Small world, eh? They came over in their dinghy to say hello and give us an update on their travels.

THORNE BAY

From Santa Anna we traveled across Clarence Strait to Thorne Bay. The town itself doesn’t have anything that makes it special but we enjoy the place anyway. There is a shop that does laser woodwork and we always buy some piece of art every time we are there. The boat has a couple of pieces hanging on the walls. There was a fisherman on the dock cleaning his catch of the day and we got to talking to him which was very interesting but he gave us a filet of halibut that we enjoyed that evening. Thorne Bay was once the largest logging operation on the west coast but that has all gone away. One interesting thing was when we where at the dock, right in front of us was a 50 foot boat that was a traveling veterinarian. He would go to all the out of way places around there and offer his services. There was a steady stream of people bringing their dogs and cats to him and he even conducted an operation neutering a 6 month old dog.

THE VETERINARIAN BOAT

We left Thorne Bay early the next morning and headed into Ketchikan. When we arrived we topped off the fuel tanks taking on about 120 gallons and than got a slip at the Ketchikan Yacht Club like we did on the way up about 2 weeks ago. Tomorrow morning we plan to head out of here and spend the night at Foggy Bay. Foggy Bay is the normal staging area for boats about to cross Dixon Entrance and is about half way between Ketchikan and Prince Rupert in Canada. Boats stay there waiting for decent weather to make this open ocean passage. So far the weather report hasn’t been encouraging with predictions of high winds and seas but we are still hopeful. If you don’t hear from us in a month or so, it means we have to stay in Alaska until next summer. (Just kidding.) But it can take a week or two before a decent weather pattern set in again. Hope that is not the case this time.