Day 74 - Southeast Alaskan Balderdashery; Rod

Wet, wet, wet. Windy and wet. Wind in the wrong direction, soggy, and wet. As much as it grieves me to report less than ideal conditions, today's primary silver lining was in the safe and successful voyage from one anchorage to the next. Alas, that is hardly anything to gush about.

Sure - the anchorage is beautiful. It's scenic, remote and we have it to ourselves. During the day the forest covered hills were shrouded in ancient, primeval looking misty tendrils of low clouds and fog. As we slid along the coast of Prince of Wales Island, purse seiners and fishing trawlers occasionally emerged out of the mist like ghosts from the past telling stories of hardscrabble lives at sea.

But as breathtaking as today was, it was a beauty we have come to expect. We're like wizened veterans of life in a remote cottage perched above the sea, hardly noticing the grandeur that abounds.

OK, I'll admit, that was a suit I was trying on more for the curiosity of fit than for the style. And I'll confess it feels a little tight under the arms. I guess we'll stay a little longer and see where tomorrow's fashion takes us.

If all goes according to plan, tomorrow we'll head in to Ketchikan for hot showers, a nice restaurant, blog uploads and full tanks.  In the words of Timbuck Three: "The future's so bright we gotta wear shades." And foulies.

Day 73 - A Whale of an Ovation; Rod

The boat is abuzz with animated discussion of the days whale watching activity. Arriving at the anchorage late in the day at high water slack, we were greeted by a pod of wales blowing and breaching - not a bad start for our new crew. One energetic whale with a flare for showing off obliged his gaping audience by throwing himself into the air in a rotating half-gainer a mere fifty yards from the boat. Bravo!

We started the day with a southbound transit of the Wrangell Narrows. While I steered the boat through a maze of navigation aids, Tom glassed the buoy numbers and Sue recorded them in a log and followed our progress on the paper chart. We timed our passage more for our arrival at tonight's bay than for the direction of the current through the narrows, so we were headed against it for most of the day. We were bucking three knots at one point.

On arrival at the anchorage, Sue went straight to work cooking thick slabs of fresh halibut on the barbecue. Encore!

Day 72 - Fishy Business; Rod

Quijote is once again rocking with new crew. Tom, Tina, Sue, Kay and I are hard at work, provisioning for the coming leg and getting reacquainted with life on the boat. We leave tomorrow for a nine day segment that includes a one night stop in Ketchikan and several days to circumnavigate Revillagigedo Island through the so called Misty Fjords.

One treat that we've (re)discovered in our time here in Petersburg is the availability of fresh seafood. Petersburg doesn't cater to tourists as much as some of the places we've stopped, especially the places where the cruise ships stop. That makes it nicer to explore and makes us stand out as the fresh off the boat tourists that we are.

Before leaving for the break we noticed a small business in town that sells, packages, and ships flash frozen seafood. We also ate at a small restaurant with picnic tables out front that specialized in king salmon, rockfish, and prawns. Now that we're back in town, we're taking advantage of both establishments: We had dinner at the restaurant last night; Tom bought king salmon for the barbie tonight; Sue will do halibut tomorrow night, and Tina will make a curry prawn dish the following night night. Awesome crew!

It rained most of the day today, so it was a good day to take care of stuff around town. Tomorrow, with the weather predicted to improve, we'll start heading south and anchor in Red Bay; an anchorage that recommends slack water and high tide to get in and out of, so we'll be leaving town at a leisurely hour tomorrow.

The crew is eager to get going though, so with luck I won't have to tie anyone to the mast to settle them down before we get under way.

Apologies for the paucity of photos - I get many requests for more photos, and we’ve taken a few, but there is honestly not many options for getting them up onto the cloud.  Ketchikan has a big Safeway with reasonable wifi, so I’m hoping we’ll get a chance to upload a few when we arrive there in a few days.

Sketches by Vi 

Day 58 - Quijote takes a break; Rod

We arrived in Petersburg yesterday and have been taking care of all the normal business of cleaning and refilling for the next leg. Petersburg is a lovely little fishing town and we've hit it in perfect weather. The nice thing about this stop is that we are going to take a short two week break. Vi will fly home, Kay will meet up with her son Chris, and I'll head back to Seattle for a couple weeks. The tough thing about doing a summer long trip like this, as much as I'm loving it: it doesn't leave time for the other things I like to do with my summer. This break is a small compromise toward that need. I'm missing the Cascade trails and Seattle tennis courts.

So today I fly out and this blog will take a two week break as well. When we resume on July 25th, Tina, Sue (Bob's SO), and Tom (a friend of Tina's family) will be joining us. We can look forward to winding our way down the infamous Wrangell Narrows toward Ketchikan, Then up around Revillagigedo Island and into the Misty Fjords before returning to Canada via Prince Rupert. It promises to be a spectacular leg.

Until then…

(I'll post a few pics when I get home and have better wifi throughput.)

Day 57 - Cannon Fire on Frederick Sound; Rod

Today was another whale watching day. Vi has a list of things she wants to see while she's with us. The Aurora Borealis and breaching whales had yet to be "ticked off" the list. Both were looking rather doubtful this morning as we plodded along under leaden skies, too far from shore to see much of anything.

We'll need three things to see the Northern Lights: dark skies, clear skies, and well… an active Aurora. I read something that said the best time to see one is late summer or early fall. That might have nothing to do with the phenomenon itself and everything to do with the first two of those three requirements: earlier and it's not dark enough; later and it's not clear enough. In our case we see neither clears skies nor dark skies. So… that's not an item that Vi is likely to be able to tick off her list, on this trip anyway.

As for the breaching whales, all that was needed was a little luck. We've seen plenty of whales, blowing and rolling their tails out of the water, but none that were breaching on this leg - until today.

Shortly before heading into Portage Bay for the night's anchorage, Kay spotted blows on the other side of the sound. This was the same place that Frederic, Marta, Lavanya and Jason had seen some with us as we exited Read Island Cove three weeks earlier. As we did then, we decided to cut the engine and drift a while to see what happened; a lot as it turned out.

The experience was a lot like watching icebergs calve in the sense that we were scanning a large area watching for something to happen in the mist of a lot of sound and activity. From roughly a mile away to the closest individuals, we kept our eyes on dozens of blowing, rolling breathing whales, all up and down the channel. The sound and sight of all that activity with no one else around, was surreal.

Then, once every so often, one of them would come surging up, its entire massive body clearing the water before crashing down again with a thunderous roar that we could hear from miles away. Some were so far away that we couldn't see them through the afternoon haze, but we could hear them; the sound carried easily across the water like cannon fire. Some were much closer; one surprised us, breaching a hundred yards from the boat. Another rolled it's back out of the water within a hundred feet - close enough that Kay started banging the hull to make it aware of our presence. Close was way cool, but too close could be dangerous for it and us, so we tried to keep our distance.

In all we watched the show for a couple hours and Vi got to tick breaching whales off her list. Now if the skies would just clear and the night would get dark for a change.

Day 56 - Waterfalls and Swimming Grizzlies; Rod

We enjoyed a routine day under way today, a rather short 30 miles in two foot chop with a 12kt wind on the nose. We plodded south down Chatham Straight, around the corner and into Frederick Sound. We were back where we were two weeks ago after a circumnavigation of Admiralty and Chicagof Islands, the A and C in the ABC Islands. It occurs to me that a worthwhile future objective might be an ABC circumnavigation, adding Baranof to the mix.

After a cloudy, blustery, choppy morning, the weather and the waves settled and we enjoyed another gorgeous afternoon. We pulled into Chapin Bay around 1pm and set out to do some beach walking.

The chart says the bay has been used for log storage, but it's empty of any such use now. In fact the bay is pristine and looks like it might have a thousand years ago, though perhaps the trees were older growth at that time. In any case, it just us, the trees, and ample numbers of deer flies and jelly fish.

The bay is a long one so it was good for a sorely needed three mile or so round trip leg stretcher. Now Kay and Vi are out scrubbing the hull with a boat brush and laughing themselves into hysterics (I won't ask.)

We play a game now and then trying to remember the names of the coves we've been to in order. It occurred to us that if we had given each place a nick name that might have provided clues that would have made each location more easily recalled. Perhaps this would be Boat Brush Bay.

Last night we gathered wine, cups, and cameras and motored the dinghy out of the cove, around the point and up to the base of a huge waterfall. We parked the dinghy on the rocks in the sun and enjoyed the waterfall with a cup of wine in the waning light. On the way back to the boat, we startled (or were startled by) a grizzly clambering along the shoreline close to the boat. Running out of passible terrain, he slipped into the water and paddled across the entrance channel and into the woods on the other side. It's hard to imagine getting that close to a grizzly on land. Even being in the water in something as insubstantial as a dinghy was a little unnerving at that distance of a hundred feet or so. How fast can Grizzlies swim? We were counting on something slower than a four horse outboard.

So last night it wasn't just Ell Cove we were in (so named for the shape of the cove), but Waterfall Excursion Bay, or perhaps Swimming Grizzly Lagoon.

Day 55 - Non-Laminarity; Rod

We made fifty miles today after uncoiling our way out of Baby Bear Cove over a shallow bar on a falling tide. Then we powered our way through a current that was less contrary that the tide tables had us believe.

We have a meter that shows the boat's speed through the water as measured with a small paddle wheel under the hull. Since the water itself is moving, the actual Speed over Ground (SOG) is measured with GPS. The difference tells the the speed of the current.

Even with the tide table predictions of current, it is usually difficult to predict what the current, or the SOG, will be. This is especially true when the flow in the channel is turbulent. Channels with smooth contour lines are said to be laminar (not turbulent). The thing that makes some places so treacherous is not just the velocity of the flow, but the topography of the bottom. A lot of topological irregularity creates turbulence.

It was interesting to watch our boat knots and SOG as we headed up Peril Straight this morning. Because the center of the channel generally has a higher rate of flow, we favored a line closer to the shore. The shoreline itself was fairly irregular and the topography of the bottom was also uneven (as all channels are to some degree). Shortly after exiting our cove and heading up into the current, we found ourselves flying along at 7.5 kts SOG with 6.0 kts speed through the water. That suggests that the current was going with us at 1.5 kts. A minute later our SOG was 5.0 kts. The speed through the water remained fairly constant, but the SOG drifted around considerably, suggesting rather turbulent conditions. All in all, we didn't see the 1.5-2.0 kts against us that was predicted by the tide tables, probably because we weren't in the center of the channel. As the current slackened over time and the channel widened, we did see our SOG slowly come up to parity with the speed through the water around the time we expected to see slack water.

This is all part of the learning most of us hope to achieve: by paying close attention the particulars of the channel we're in: width, depth, bottom and shoreline contours, we can take note of the resulting turbulence in terms of its effect on our boat speed. And we can learn from it. Whether fishing around Johnstone Straight, or river rafting the Skykomish, there are people who have a lot of experience at this kind of thing and they're really good at it. They're better than I'll ever be, but it's fun to give it the attention it deserves. And being more current aware makes for safer passages.

Day 54 - Current Events; Rod

We decide to make an early break out of Kimshan Cove this morning and give ourselves as much depth as possible. High tide was at 3am, but while there was probably enough light at that hour (does it ever get dark around here?) a 3am start sounded a little extreme; we settled on 5am. At 4am though, Kay shouted something, so I assumed she was eager to get going and I got dressed. It turns out she was talking in her sleep. Still 4am was a great time to get underway and we appreciated the extra feet under the keel as we wound our way through kelp fields and submerged rocks in the circuitous Piehle Passage.

The problem with such an early start was that we arrived at Sergius Narrows four hours before slack, so we had to anchor and wait. We napped and cooked lunch on the BBQ. Our final destination for the evening was Baby Bear Cove, just a few miles beyond the narrows - another stunning pocket cove with a shallow entry.

It's been a tide table intensive couple of days. Tomorrow, for example, we'll want to leave early to give us enough depth to get out of the cove and late enough that the current out in the channel won't be too fast. Getting that trade-off right involves a lot of back of the envelope figuring. Most of the tide and current stations are secondary, meaning we have to look up the tide height or current for some other primary station and then adjust the timing and amplitude for our location of interest. It takes a certain amount of exploration just to figure out what is available and applicable, but it's straight forward once you get the hang of it.

Usually it's enough to know when high or low tides will be or when slack current will be. Occasionally it's a bit more complicated. Since the tide gets lower tomorrow morning as time passes, I calculated the heights at 7:00, 8:00 and 9:00am. Then I calculated the currents in the channel at the same times. I've decided we can live with the 1.5 knot current in the channel at 7am more comfortably than we can the minus tide out of the cove at 9am, so we'll go at 7am.

The next few days into Petersburg should present us with more typical hazards than we've seen in this leg so far. It will be nice to relax a little.

Day 53 - USCG on Duty; Rod

We've been running south through the swell off the west side of Chicagof Island today and will again tomorrow. Entering the Gulf of Alaska from Lisianski Straight is a bit of a trial by fire; even in mild conditions, the "protected" route turns left out of the straight and is immediately surrounded by rocks with waves breaking over them. Cool!  We focused on the chart plotter and steered the route, appreciating the value of a good navigator, whether electronic or human.

Long ago I learned the three fundamental rules of boating that one should never forget: 1) always know where you are, 2) when in doubt stop the boat, and 3) umm… ok, I don't remember the third, but those two will usually do.  It probably had something to do with being prepared.

It wasn't long ago that coastal location awareness was primarily determined by the bearings of sighted objects: when that point is to the northeast, I can start my turn; when my bearing to the lighthouse is 270, I'll add 30 to my course; and so on. It wasn't too difficult with ample preparation and it worked well. It still does.  I can remember spending hours the night before getting it all sorted in my head, taking notes, annotating charts. There is not much in life that you can't nail by doing your homework.

Now I spend that time entering way-points on the chart plotter. It's quicker and a lot less demanding en route. Either way, it pays to be thorough; a mistake can be serious. It's also valuable to be able to use either method.

Today everything went smoothly. We followed a circuitous procession of way points between rocks and watched the waves crashing all around us. It was violent, chaotic, and serenely beautiful. The sun was out, the sky was blue, the breeze was light and it felt awesome to be out there. The swell was big and somewhat confused, so the boat rolled around loosely in a comfortable kind of way. Quijote seemed to be enjoying the feel of the sea and the ocean breeze as much as her crew.

Shortly before rounding the point into the bay where we would find flatter water for anchoring in Kimshan Cove, a Coast Guard cutter slid in a half hour ahead of us. They were apparently on patrol and using the bay to hang out in calmer waters. It is a comfort to know they're out there, especially in these places where no one else is.

Day 52 - Chili con Quijote; Rod

With Glacier Bay behind us, we called Bartlett Cove on the radio and let them know we were departing, then turned west out Icy Straight toward the Gulf of Alaska.  Had the weather forecast been less favorable, we would have been forced inland toward Chatham Straight.  We are thrilled to be able to head out to what Douglas calls the "exquisite" Outside Passage.   With ten knots wind or less forecast through the week, we'll head down the outside of Chichagof Island, hopping from cove to cove toward Sitka.  Twenty miles before we actually get to Sitka, we'll dodge inland and head toward Petersburg, where we'll take a break from the cruising life for a couple of weeks.  I'll fly home to do some backpacking and Kay will meet with her son Chris and take a ferry out to Sitka.  Vi will fly home and Tom, Tina and Sue will join us for the next leg at the end of July.

Tonight we're in Mite Cove in Lisianski Inlet (as with most places around here, it's named for some Russian dude).  We arrived early and decided to get cooking.  There was hamburger to use up before it went bad, so I fried it up with chopped onion and bell pepper, then added the result to a large pot with cans of kidney beans, black beans, pinto beans, diced tomatoes, and chili powder: Mom's chili recipe!  I grew up on this stuff (and revised it a little).  Thanks Mom!

Chili con Quijote

1 lb ground beef

1 yellow onion, chopped

1 green pepper, chopped

1 large (29 oz) can of kidney beans

1 small (15 oz) can of black beans

1 small (15 oz) can of pinto beans

1 large (29 oz) can of diced tomatoes

1 can of corn

1 jalepeño pepper if you like it hot

salt, pepper, and chili powder to taste

Fry the hamburger until cooked and crumbled.  Mop the liquid out with a wad of paper towel and discard.  Add the onion and green pepper and continue cooking until soft.  Transfer to a large pot and add the remaining ingredients (or start with a large electric frying pan).  Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for an hour or more stirring occasionally to keep it from burning on the bottom.  When it's thick and bubbly (the thicker the better, but don't let it burn!) , turn off the heat and stir in a tablespoon of sugar.  For best results, let the flavors meld for an hour or a day.  Serve with cornbread, tortilla chips, cheddar cheese, avocados, sour cream, or whatever floats your boat.

Lavanya's Videos

Whale Sounding

Rod Stretching

Kay Whale Whispering

Day 50 - Hiding Grizzlies; Rod

Today was a lazy day after two long days. We slept in, Vi made blueberry pancakes, we took a walk on the beach, and moseyed out of Blue Mouse Cove around mid-day. For a change we had nothing driving our departure: neither tides, nor distance, nor weather cared when we left. We even toyed with the idea of staying where we were for another night. Then I remembered the trails, showers and wifi at Bartlett Cove and decided that we should spend one night there and one night en route. So tonight we're in N. Sandy Cove (still in Glacier Bay), tomorrow Bartlett Cove (Independence Day), and we'll depart Glacier Bay, on schedule, July 5th. If this gets posted on the 4th, all will have gone according to plan.

I think I've mentioned before that it's been a running joke on the boat that there are no bears in SE Alaska. OK, maybe the one we saw on our way to Taku Harbor, but that's probably the only one and he could very well have been a ranger dressed up in a bear suit to make people think there are bears around here.

Then Vi comes on board and spots four of them in one night. First she notices a dark shape on the shore that appears to be moving. Kay and I have been looking for the elusive moving dark shape for weeks without success. The dark shape walks into the water, swims across the entrance channel and lumbers up into the trees. Cool.

A few minutes later Vi is thinking of taking pictures of the landscape. She's a picture taking machine. I sometimes think she's Jim Clinton in disguise (inside joke). So she's composing a picture in her mind and wondering about taking it from the dinghy, when she notices a Grizzly and two cubs in her composition. Soon the black bear is heading down the beach toward the grizzlies and we're wondering if the fur will fly right in front of our boat. But mama and cubs have no interest in duking it out with a large black male, so they hide in the grass and wait for the bear to pass, then mama stands up tall to get a better view of the departing bear, just to be sure it he's gone and both parties go on their way.

It makes me wonder if humans could be less violent by hiding more often. And it makes me wonder how many similar scenes have played out on this trip that we could have seen, but didn't. We do a lot of looking, but we can't be looking all the time. It just takes looking at the right time. Vi apparently has that talent, and we are beneficiaries.

Photo by Rod

Bear photos by Vi

Day 49 - Galloping Glaciers; Rod

Until this afternoon Quijote crew were feeling a little disgruntled about our view of Glacier Bay and the Fairweather mountain range. The weather has been anything but fair. We had a long, rough day yesterday with little to show for it, except to put ourselves into position for today's activities. This morning we woke to light rain and fog. Ugh.

For the first time this trip, we turned on the radar and ventured out into low visibility. Our agenda was not to be denied.

We took a spin around Reid Inlet to get a closer look at the glacier, then headed out into the fog. An hour later it was still raining, but the fog had lifted to about fifty feet off the water, enough to see other vessels if not the scenery above shoreline.

We turned down into Johns Hopkins Inlet and did a drive-by of a couple of the larger glaciers that were cool to see, but didn't display any activity. The iceberg dodging kept us alert, so there must have been some calving going on in the inlet. On the way out, we rounded the point and slid past a massive Holland America Cruise ship going the other way. Next up on our agenda was Tarr Inlet where the cruise ships go and where this one had no doubt come from. The ranger told us they only allow two in the park per day.

The Grand Pacific glacier at the head of Tarr Inlet has pushed up a lot of dirt in front of it, giving it the look of a low, dirty hill side. but the Margerie Glacier entering from the side was spectacular. It is the the calving glacier that people come to see. I saw it once from the deck of a cruise ship and as cool as it was, the experience didn't do it justice. There is something about seeing it close to the water from the deck of a small boat with no one else around that just brings out the WOW!

Shortly after our arrival, we were still jockying around the icebergs looking for a clear spot to cut the engine and drift, when we watched a massive section of the glacier unloose and calve into the bay with a roar. It came crashing down as though we had come to film for National Geographic and a gigantic wave surged outward. Kay looked back at me with something resembling panic, but we were about about a mile away so we were well beyond danger. The scale of the glacier made it look like we were a lot closer than we were. Even so, it was an impressive swell that surged under the hull and lifted us up.

In all, we were there watching the calving go on and on for about three hours. The power of the experience just never seemed to get old. A large tour boat with a deck load of tourists pulled in for about forty minutes of that, their engines droning way, drowning out the sounds of sea birds, the lap of waves against the icebergs and a light breeze on the water. Eventually they left and we had the bay to ourselves again. A pristine couple of hours followed that was in stark contrast to the experience while the other boat was there.

Inquisitive seal pups with big eyes came to check us out. What be this silent thing that watches us, but is content to drift; not swimmer and not iceberg. When seracs calved at the outer edge we could see and hear, from a couple of miles away, large waves racing along the shoreline. The glacier itself was a deafening beast. Even when there was no calving, it was constantly cracking, popping, roaring and groaning. The glacier was about a mile wide and sound arrives later than sight, so unless we happened to be looking at the right spot, we could hear a section of ice go, look over, and see nothing but splash. We learned not to rely on the sound, but to scan and catch movement out of the corner of our eyes.

As the afternoon matured, the weather slowly improved until we were watching in sunlight, which made the show all the more spectacular. Suddenly we were seeing towering snow covered mountains all around us. Wow upon wow.

Day 48 - Wet One; Rod

We're in Reid Inlet tonight - the northernmost anchorage of the trip and the first time we've anchored in a bay with a glacier spilling into it. There are fresh sections of blue ice on the end of the glacier where it appears to have calved recently, but it seems pretty stable otherwise. We'd dinghy over and take a closer look, but it is pouring outside and no one is very motivated to venture out into it and leave this warm, cozy cabin. We'd have to climb back into already wet rain gear and, what the heck, it looks impressive enough from here.

It was a beautiful day today with spectacular mountain-marine scenery. Glacier Bay is 65 miles or so long, so to get up to the head of the bay where the better glaciers are, we have to put some miles under the hull. The wind blew pretty hard and the rain drove into our faces the whole way. It's been a long, wet, blustery, grim kind of day; scenery notwithstanding. We did see puffins; that was pretty cool.

And we're well positioned to hit the best glaciers tomorrow and see some calving. It'll be a long day tomorrow too. We're just hoping the weather improves.

Dodging Cruise ships; Photo by Vi

Day 47 - Room to Swing; Rod

We left Funter Bay in a driving rain and two foot chop this morning shortly after 5am. If I've learned anything about Southeast Alaska though it's that if you don't like the weather, wait an hour or move a mile. With that in mind, I told Kay that when we got to the other side of Lynn Canal and up Icy Straight, we'd find light wind and glassy water. The state of the conditions at that moment though were rough enough that all she could do was laugh and say: "In your dreams..."

It took us a couple of hours to cross into Icy Straight, but the further we proceeded, the smoother it got, until my forecast proved true. The pendulum rarely stops swinging however. By the time we entered Glacier Bay it was raining again and the wind was rising. Thankfully we would soon be out of it and into the bay. But first we needed permission from Parks:

"Bartlett Cove, Bartlett Cove, Sailing Vessel Quijote, one-six over.
"Vessel calling Bartlett Cove, go one-two, over"
"Bartlett Cove, Sailing Vessel Quijote on one-two, over"

"Quijote, Bartlett Cove, go ahead."
"Bartlett Cove, Quijote, requesting park entry, we have a permit, over."
"Quijote, permission granted, proceed to the public dock for orientation at 14:00; stay center channel on entry, over."
"Roger that, Quijote monitoring one-six."
"Bartlett Cove monitoring one-six."

And with that, we were in. The orientation was nothing we hadn't already read and printed off their web site; most of it restrictions designed to protect wildlife. We were able to fill our water tank at the dock, fill our bellies at the lodge restaurant, and fill our inboxes with the park WIFI.

Our intended anchorage, the so called south bite of the north bay of Fingers Inlet is fifteen miles from Bartlett Cove, so it was after 7pm before the hook was finally set in the deepest anchorage of the trip so far: we let out 250 feet of chain in 70 feet of water. Thankfully we don't have to share the anchorage with anyone, so we have plenty of room to swing.

Day 46 - Living the Dream; Rod

Tomorrow We enter Glacier Bay on the 47th day of our journey. I'm pretty excited about that.

The misty, murky passage of time has obscured my first inkling to make this trip . I do remember reading a newspaper article, a special section of the Sunday edition of the Seattle Times, that described kayaking in Glacier Bay. That kindled whatever desire I already had for making the trip in a sailboat. I taped the article with a map to the inside of my kitchen cupboard so I would never lose sight of the goal. Life has a way of throwing curves in the road and I didn't want to forget what was important to me. Over the years I would see that article every time I opened the cupboard and I'd remember: someday when I have time and a boat I'm going to make that journey.

Someday is always so far away. The mists spread as indelibly into the future as they do into the past, but our future passage into Glacier Bay looks a little clearer today than it ever has.

A lot has gone into making it happen and it's that that gives this trip its real value. All the work, the learning, and the people I've met who have helped make it happen have been exceptionally rewarding. I feel so incredibly fortunate to have had this experience. From dream to seen, Glacier Bay itself is just the tip of the iceberg.

Day 45 -Trucker Tricks; Rod

(some of my previous day numbers are askew; I need to go back and fix them) Day 45 was a getting out of Dodge kind of day. After saying our goodbyes to last week's gang (you guys are SO last week); Kay, Vi and I cut our lines and headed south. South?! Yes, back under the Douglass bridge and down the Gastineau Channel for ten miles before turning the corner and heading north up Stevens Passage.

The Douglass Bridge connects Juneau with Douglass Island. It's a fixed span (doesn't open), and the chart records its height at 45.5 feet. Quijote's mast is 54 feet above the waterline. Add another couple of feet of stuff on the masthead: wind-vane instrumentation, Windex, and VHF antenna.

Somehow we managed to get under that bridge. There's an old trucker's trick that allows them to go under a bridge that is a little too low: they let the air out of the tires and pump them up again on the other side.

We got under the bridge by filling the hull with water until we were almost submerged, then drifted under the bridge and pumped all the water out. Piece of cake! The seat cushions are still drying as we speak.

A smarter way would have been to wait for low tide. The bridge height listed on the chart is 45.5 feet above high tide. The tide tables are with respect to low tide. The difference is probably 14 feet or more. That means I can go under the bridge at low tide and maybe I won't hit it. Leaving nothing to chance, I Googled the Douglass Bridge and found that it's 60 feet above a zero tide. That means I just have to time it right and all is (hopefully) well.

Going under we saw a tidal gauge in place that displays the height of the bridge above the water for any depth. It looked to be more than 65 feet - plenty to spare. Going under we saw five or ten feet of clearance above the mast and proceeded to our anchorage just twenty miles away. We didn't go very far because low tide to get under the bridge was at 2pm. That didn't leave us much time under way.

We put Vi to work in the kitchen right away and she cooked up a delicious cod baked in the bbq. Nice!