Day 80 - Crew Overlap; Rod

We're in Prince Rupert for a couple of nights on our way south, refilling tanks, and exchanging crew.  After a great nine day leg from Petersburg, through Ketchikan, and around the Misty Fjords, Tom, Sue, and Tina will be flying home tomorrow.  Wendy and Jerry will be with us now until we reach Shearwater.  I always enjoy the crew overlap; it's a day of chaos getting everything done, meeting up with the new and saying our fond farewells to the outgoing folks.  It's fun to have a dinner meal in town together with incoming and outgoing crew as it is usually a time filled with stories and a lot of laughs as we relive the previous couple of weeks and regale the new crew with things to look forward to.

One of the things that I've been doing on this trip is asking crew members to contribute two dinner meals a week per person.  I've asked that each of us provision, and take charge of those two meals for each week that we're on board.  I think most of the crew that have participated in this trip so far will tell you that it is a request that has been satisfied with no small amount of anxiety.  Most of that anxiety is, I suspect, a fear of the unknown.  How will it go, preparing a dinner meal for a crew of strange people on a small sail boat?  What if I crash and burn?  The anxiety created by this seemingly small request is not dampened by outgoing crews who wax eloquent about the truly amazing meals created on the previous leg.  As understandable as these concerns may be, I have to say the meals that have been enjoyed on our little voyage have been uniformly exceptional.  Everyone has put a lot of thought and preparation into what they want to do; the creative juices have flowed, and the meals have been awesome.  I'm so glad it has worked out so well and I so appreciate the effort that has gone into such good eating.  Eating well is, I think, one of the primary pleasures of (cruising) life.

Overlapping crew has created some sleeping challenges as well.  We have seven overlapping crew tonight.  When we were in Wrangell, we had eight crew for one night of overlap.  In that case, Frederic graciously volunteered to sleep on seat cushions laid end to end on the floor.  Tonight we're making use of a hotel room.  Thankfully everyone has been flexible and maintained a spirit of doing what it takes to make things happen.  Thanks guys!

I'll wrap this post up with a few of the many photos that Sue sent me.  She took them over the last week and a half; including Petersburg, Ketchikan, Prince Rupert and the Misty Fjords.  At some point I think we'll try to put a Drop Box together that will give us a place to share our best images of the voyage up the Inside Passage to Glacier Bay on SV Quijote.

Petersburg

Ketchikan

Green Island

Prince Rupert

Misty Fjords

Day n - A mathless look at tides and currents; Rod

If you ever find yourself asking how something works or why something behaves as it does, there's a good chance you are, or could have been, a scientist of some kind. I have an academic background in physics, so I have a fondness for observing oscillations in natural phenomena. When I can't understand something physical it becomes food for thought.

Such was the case when observing that the predicted time for slack current though the Chatham Narrows was two hours after low tide. That's the kind of thing that sits in my brain and bugs me. Oscillations generally come to rest at the highest and lowest points, like springs or pendulums do. Yet here is a current that continues to flow for two hours after low tide. How is that possible?

The introductory material to most reading on the subject of tides in the area will tell you that there is a lot of river outflow that reduces the predictability of tides, but that explanation doesn't satisfy me. Two hours feels like too much to be explained by river outflow.

Lying in bed on the morning we were to leave for the narrows, I had an epiphany: Imagine we have a current station at each end of the narrows and we can generate tide charts for each station (Figure 1). If the water flow supplying each end is different, then high and low tide will arrive at different times. When the tide is higher at one end than it is at the other, current will flow. When the two tides are equal, we have slack.

In Figure 2 we see the green areas where the tide is higher at station B than it is at station A - current flows from B to A; and the orange areas where where the tide is higher at station A than it is at B - current flows from A to B. Where the lines cross, the tides are equal and the current is slack.

If you look at the timing of these events though, the time from high tide to low tide is roughly six hours, so high tide to slack is less than an hour. Something else is at work that explains how the time from high tide to slack can be two hours.

Then it occurred to me that better flow to one station and diminished flow to the other can mean more than a difference in timing of the tides; it can also mean higher or lower tidal swings. Figure 3 shows what happens when one station has smaller tidal swings than the other. The effect is to increase the currents and delay the onset of slack. With that we finally see slack current that has been delayed by about two hours.

As the Greeks would say: Quad Erat Demonstrandum (QED); and all without math, which should leave Tom feeling a little unsatisfied.

Day 79 - Miles to go; Rod

We enjoyed a great hike in Punchbowl Cove today. It was advertised as a muddy scramble to a lake and it was definitely all of that with a slippery, moss covered boardwalk thrown in for good measure. The payoff, aside from the heart pumping exercise and the beautiful trail through lush, mossy forest, was a gorgeous freshwater lake beneath towering cliffs. The trail was reported to have a lot of bear activity, so it was fun to think of creative ways to make a lot of noise while hiking. Thankfully we saw plenty of scat, but no bears. With all the noise we were making there was probably not a bear within ten country miles.

Returning to the boat, we pulled up the anchor and headed around the corner from the cove to see a bird rookery and check out a scramble route to a ridge that our buddy John H told us about.

The rookery turned out to be a verdant cliff towering over the the water, covered in moss and shrubbery, and dotted with nesting sea birds. It was an active, cacophonous community. We drifted below the maelstrom for a short time and imagined what it would be like to live among them, perched in a small indentation in the cliff face, looking out over the sea and protecting our young.

The scramble route around the corner to the rookery looked inviting. With another day to tarry, we'd have loved to find our way to the top. As it was, we were compelled to make our way out of the inlet and get going to the next anchorage. We have flights to keep and miles to go before we sleep.

Photos above by Rod; Photo below by Sue

Day 78 - Breakfast on Quijote; Rod

Morning is a favorite time; it's calm, peaceful, introspective. Sea birds pass by; the tips of their wings tap the glassy surface of the water leaving a line of expanding rings. Cloud puffs traverse the forested hillsides along the passages. Bright silver threads of sunlight wander through the overcast as the morning matures. We're surrounded by rippled reflections of hills and sky. A crisp morning breeze created by our motion caresses our skin and chills the fingers, compelling us to zip up jackets and put hands in pockets. The smooth hum of the engine pushes us onward as the dinghy rustling and slapping, endeavors to keep up.

Tina digs fruit out of the cooler for breakfast. Kay studies the day's chart leading to Punchbowl Cove in Misty Fjords National Monument. Sue, Tom and I watch the water ahead for hazards, warming our hands on tea mugs. The crew is quiet and reflective.

Breakfasts on board Quijote are occasionally elaborate - eggs, or pancakes - but for the most part they are simple, consisting of oats, cream of wheat, or Kay's home made granola. We pile on a lot of fruit, usually some combination of apples, peaches, or berries. We'll add raisins or dried cranberries, sprinkle on walnuts, pecans, or pumpkin seeds. Some of us will sweeten the concoction with brown sugar, honey, or maple syrup and top it all off with a large dollop of creamy Greek yogurt. Mingled with taste buds on a pristine morning in Southeast Alaska and it's a perfect way to start the day.

Photos by Sue

Day 77 - When is a trail not a trail? ; Rod

The first of two anchorages in Yes Bay were occupied by a junk barge full of derelict motor boats and a motor-cruiser from Anacortes, so we made our way deeper into the bay and found the seclusion and pristine scenery we sought near the head.

While Sue made up a curry, veggie, tofu masterpiece for dinner, Tina and I headed out in the dinghy to find a trail reported to be in the bay by the US Forest Service. We found pink flagging where we expected the trail to be, and even a light trail of sorts, but it was so log strewn, overgrown and muddy as to be all but impassable. That's saying rather a lot coming from this quarter. Trail or not a trail?

Yes Bay

Photos by Rod

Day 75 - Winds Made Good; Rod

Finally a day of wind and weather suitable for sailing. We left Ketchikan this morning at a reasonable hour and headed up Behm Canal for the first day of our circumnavigation of Revillagigedo Island. The clouds over Ketchikan were so low that the constant stream of float planes entering and exiting the city were practically skimming over the water to maintain (sort of) visual flight rules.

As we proceeded further from town, the clouds began to lift until we found ourselves winding through the small islands of Clover Passage under partly cloudy skies and occasional sun breaks. From there the day only got better.

The thing about winds that turn to follow and build to something worthy of sailing in is that they sneak up on you unnoticed. The winds hide themselves in the boat speed. It had been so long since we've seen good sailing weather that I almost didn't recognize the sunshine, let alone the following wind. Finally Tina noticed it and wondered out loud if we should be sailing. Damn straight! We shook out the sails and cut the engine. What fun! What a relief to be making way without the engine. The sailing and sunshine lasted most of the afternoon - definitely a good day.

Tofu Curry by Sue

Chicken Tacos by Tom

Photos above by Rod; Photos below by Tina