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!