Alaskan Sea-Duction: Port McNeill to K-Town

This section of the trip is always exciting and scary all at the same time. Crossing Cape Caution can be a ball buster if you don’t pay attention to the weather. Big swells come from the west or the North west this time of year right off the Pacific Ocean. Because of this we delayed our departure a few days for better weather. When we departed, we had calm following seas up the Straits of Georgia. As we turned toward Cape Caution, we had swells from the NW which would hit the boat on the Port Stern side. This created an issue which I will explain later. Our destination was Pruth Bay, some 94 miles from Port McNeill. Pruth Bay has a wonderful white sandy beach which we love to rediscover and sink our toes into. Oh and picking up sea shells for our granddaughter Kinnley.

The issue we had was “hydro-locked” the generator. This means sea water was forced up the exhaust of the generation and filling one of the cylinders. Not a good thing as we need a generator to work the boat. Without it our trip is down. Dang aft beam seas got me again! This is an issue we cannot have in the future. It took me about 2 hours to remove the fuel injectors and spin the motor to force the water out. I sprayed everything with lubricant. Started right up, but lots of smoke.

After Pruth we anchored up in Bella Bella/Shearwater. Whenever we visit this place, we drop the hook because its free. Staying at the marina is over $100 a night. There is a nice restaurant here, grocery and marine store. The food is always awesome. We had a decent cell service too. I ordered an exhaust check valve for the generation to be delivered in Ketchikan (K-Town).

We left Shearwater for an overnight stay at Bottleneck inlet. We were joined by Doug and Rob from the “MY Overdrive.” Awesome place as a Loon would sound off and it would echo down the inlet. I really enjoyed my Scotch and cigar this evening. We also had one crab in the pot. The next stop was Kutze Inlet. One of our favorite and special places. Overdrive was also here and it made for a great social hour. Found out Rob likes Monkey Shoulder! We planned to stay here for a few days gathering crab and watching bears. We would see folks rotating in and out of the inlet. Some don’t like taking the 5+ miles to get to the anchorage, so we have to place to ourselves sometimes.

We were disappointed with the crabs. We only gathered 8 crabs during our stay. We normally load up here, within the regulations of 6 each a day. Bears, that is all together different. There were bears everywhere. In particular we fell in love with a sow brown bear and her 3 cubs!!! The cubs were awesome and they didn’t seem to mind us much. We would take the dinghy up the two rivers and watch brown bears eating grass, napping or just wondering around looking at the humans and waiting on the salmon that were soon to arrive.

On one of these trips up the river Kay and I had a bear encounter! As we were heading back to the boat down one of these rivers, it was low tide. So, I had to lift the motor to get through the shallows. As we came around the corner there was the sow and her 3 cubs. She seemed to be looking to cross. Oh oh…… She then changed her mind and went down river a bit and came out onto a point. This put her much closer to us and the dinghy!! I told Kay “Get some good pictures!!” Kay was getting very nervous as we floated down river with the bears only 20 feet away. I told Kay “have my hand on the throttle if I need it!!” Yeah right. All that bear had to do was jump into the dink for a ride. The sow just stood there waiting for us to pass. Kay says she could see the sow’s eyeballs and smell her. Once we passed, the sow jumped into the water and swam across. Cubs didn’t like it, but they followed mom. Kay also stopped shaking. We had been here for 5 days and it was time to move on to Prince Rupert. When we reached Butedale we have a bunch of porpoises on the bow. They are always fun to watch.

One of the things Kay and I wanted to do on this trip was to try new places we had not been before. Lowes Inlet was one such place. Just inside the Trench (Grenville Channel) Lowes Inlet is a beautiful place that can get very crowded. We had the place to ourselves. There is a river that empties here and we anchored the boat just below the waterfall. The current from the river meant we would not swing during tide changes. The next day we arrived in Prince Rupert. The weather report for our next major crossing, Dixon Entrance was light to no wind and seas 2 feet or less. Awesome!!! We will leave the next day!

While in Rupert we met up with the “Overdrive” crew again and the crew of the “S/Y Sleighride” Scott and Judy who we had met in McNeill. There was a nice pub up the road where we all had a good time. Afterward, we gathered on Overdrive for more libations. As we wondered back to our boat around midnight, I came to the conclusion, we were not going anywhere the next day and went to bed.

My head popped up at 5 AM and I told Kay, lets go, I see day light!! A little fog, but calm seas. I actually felt really good (a false feeling), so we untied the lines and said goodbye to Rupert for the 97-mile track to K-Town. We took the shortcut out of Rupert and soon we were crossing the 14 miles of open ocean called Dixson Entrance. The last crossing, we would have to make. Dixon can get really squirrelly on you. One thing was for sure there was always beam (side) swells that make the crossing uncomfortable at times. We were not disappointed. We had beam seas for about 45 minutes. No worries, we had seen much much worse. At least on this crossing no scotch glasses got broke, but I had a bad hangover.

Once we had crossed over into Alaska, the fog set in to less than a ¼ mile, so I slowed down took my time all the while glued to the radar screen. One thing for sure there are always “idiots” out there that make navigating in the fog special. For what ever reason, there were folks racing to get to K-Town. They maintained speeds of 10kts or more, crossing your bow ½ mile ahead. It was just stupid.

The fog finally lifted a few hours later and had a clear run to K-Town. Well almost. As we entered Tongass Narrows, an orange boat with flashing lights pulled up behind us. Coast Guard boarding…… Kay took the controls and I answered questions and showed them around the boat. A lot of oooo and ahhhhhhs on the boat. They just wanted to see the yacht coming into town and there were trainees on board. It was a lot of fun and the USCG was always friending and professional.

So, we are tied up in K-Town where I have been doing some boat maintenance. Kay is at Safeway getting the required food items. We have noticed hardly any floatplane activities due to the two recent plane crashes here. With the King salmon season shut down, the fishermen are still in the docks. Until today, the entire trip has been sunny, warm and really nice. Folks here in SE Alaska are praying for rain as it has been very dry here.