Wednesday, 1 September
Mac departed Ketchikan in the rain, via the Alaskan Marine Highway ferry, leaving Dorothy, Rusty and me on our own for the first time since mid-June. To celebrate, we did some boat chores. We expect to see Mac back soon - hopefully he'll bring his partner-in-crime Dave (Christmas Boy) Yule with him... to teach him how to fish.

Thursday, 2 September
More rain, as we looked for boat parts in town. Rusty perched looking down the dock, searching for his missing crew members.

Friday, 3 September
Started the morning with actual blue sky and sunshine, and a departure time of noon. Dorothy took care of grocery shopping and settling up with the harbormaster's office - the folks at Ketchikan harbormaster have been helpful and easy to deal with since our first contact with them last year. I got the boat ready to go and there was still time to deal with a couple of projects that've been waiting a sunny day, the right parts, the time and energy.

Underway at noon, headed down the Tongass Narrows along the Ketchikan waterfront, past the 1000 foot-long cruise ships (including the ones with the fake jet engine cowlings up at the top of the superstructure), to the fuel dock south of town. Now it decides to rain - and I do the entire fueling in the rain on the foredeck with a tarp over the fuel fill to avoid contaminating it with water. I was soaked! The skies cleared again while we were underway, and we anchored at Judd Harbour N54º52.49' W131º15.27' (Duke Island), a pretty good place after all - I was not liking the looks of the approaches to this anchorage when I looked at it on the chart a couple of days ago.

Saturday, 4 September
Duke Island southbound into Chatham Sound, crossing the international border between USA (Alaska) and Canada (BC). A 1 + meter bump, and light wind was the only weather we saw and in the area of Green Island N54º34.10' W130º42.40 the whale show resumed. Dozens of humpbacks, and then we saw it, several times - the mass surfacing / feeding behavior of a dozen individuals at once. I've seen photos of this before and it is a stunning sight!

We entered Prince Rupert harbor through the "back door" (Venn Passage N5419.58' W130º29.11') and tied up at the Prince Rupert Rowing & Yacht Club dock in Cow Bay. Coming in we saw the sailboat with the Chilean couple we've run into everywhere since Elfin Cove and met some new folks also: Peter & Ginger have just completed a 4-year circumnavigation in their sailboat Marcy out of Seattle. They did it the hard way, via the capes - no wimpy Panama or Suez canals for these folks! We enjoyed chatting with them - one of the great things about cruising is the people you meet - and hope to see more of them.

Sunday, 5 September
We departed Prince Rupert, southbound down Arthur Passage to Ogden Channel to Petrel Channel. As we left the dock, it started to rain lightly, which picked up as the day wore on, developing into gale force headwinds in Petrel Channel opposing an outgoing tide. DE took it all in stride and we anchored in Newcombe Harbour N5341.83' W130º06.16'; a very narrow entry to a well-protected bay. Rusty and I took the dinghy to the beach for a bit of a run-around - a good stress reliever for our little buddy, after hours of being cooped up on the rocking and rolling boat with the wind howling outside.

Monday, 6 September
0900 - 1630hrs from Newcombe Harbour (Petrel Channel) we proceeded to Principe Channel (Banks Island) and thence to Estevan Sound (Campania Island). One to three mile visibility in fog and rain, but very little wind. Our destination anchorage was Weinberg Inlet N5306.85' W129º32.76' (Dunn Passage), which appeared on the charts to be an interesting anchorage with lots of crenulations, passages and islets but turned out to be a big frustration as we couldn't get the anchor to set on a rocky bottom. After five tries we rafted up to Alpenglow, which was able to get a set in a one-boat anchorage.

Tuesday, 7 September
0630 wake-up for a 0700 start out of Dunn Passage / Weinburg Inlet (Campania Island) N53º07.51' W129º30.96'. A pink and gold sky morning at low tide as we idled out into Estevan Sound. Just off the shore, inside the channel, it's foggy, but as we turn southbound down the channel, we can still see the gold rays from the sun filterd through the trees on shore, and mists in the channel. The fog quickly burned off - only long enough for half a dozen cycles of the automated fog horn - and we cruised out of Estevan into Caamaño Sound which is exposed to Hecate Strait, the Queen Charlotte Islands being another 80 miles west.

Surprisingly, despite the minimal protection, Caamaño Sound was smooth and virtually windless. Dorothy checked in with the Great Northern Boaters Net (3.870 mhz lower side band) on the HF / SSB / ham radio. The folks who operate these nets - Darlene (KL0YC) out of Ketchikan AK and Barbara (VE7KLU) out of Sydney BC - provide a valuable service tracking cruising vessels, passing messages, and making a community out of people who are physically far removed from each other, but close neighbors in regards their livestyle (live-aboard cruisers).

Like cormorants hanging their winds out to dry in the morning sun, after many days of wet, wind, rain, drip and fog; Rusty, Dorothy and I hung out in the warmth of the morning sun on the portside deck --- until wind and swell came down on us from the NE. We tried getting the sails up, but the wind was unreliable, so we gave up, but put the p-vane poles down, and eventually dropped in the port-side fish / stabi to smooth things out a bit. The NE swell disappeared as we entered Laredo Channel, leaving us now with a following breeze of 10-15 knots; "my kingdom for a whisker pole" but we broke one in Subic Bay, and lost two more overboard in the passage from Hong Kong last summer, so no wing-and-wing for us today.

1330 hrs we entered Meyers Passage (bottom of Princess Royal Island) on the ebb tide (opposing us with 2.7 - 2.9 knots of current). If we waited for the current to go to slack, it would be at low tide in the Narrows, where there would not be enough water for DavidEllis to pass. We pushed ahead into the current; which I much prefer (in narrow passages) to being carried along with current. This area looked a lot like a small Sierra Nevada lake... except for the occasional strand of bull kelp. We made the passage with no difficulty and continued around the top of Swindle Island and past the village of Klemtu. From the water we could see some interesting things going on in this area - what appears to be a small hydro-electric plant just outside the town; barges which appear to be installing pilings south of the hydro plant; and a spectacular tribal big house on the bluff. There is a single public wharf, and we considered going in, but it looked tight for room, and just as we were angling in for a closer look, we were almost taken-out by a float plane taking off... we took it as a sign, and continued on down the channel to an anchorage at Clothes Bay N52º34.37' W128º30.83'; Alpenglow rafted alongside.

It had stayed clear and sunny all day, a perfect day really. We took Rusty to the beach in the dinghy. He's switched his preference this summer, from preferring to poop on the boat, to off the boat. Tomorrow a 4-5 hour run to Bella-Bella / Shearwater.