14 Aug 23

I went to bed at 21:00 last night and then slept until 08:00; don’t know what the deal is but I guess I’m still getting over my run-in with Covid-19. Anyway, it was a lovely, partly sunny morning and we enjoyed an alfresco breakfast in the solarium. About 09:30 we started hauling up the anchor. I decided to head west from the anchorage through Beecher Pass; the charts just show shallow water, but Active Captain says there is plenty of water. We got through on the north side of Fair Island, with a minimum depth found of 6.5 m (about 2 hours after upper LW, with 1.8 m of tidal rise), so no problem. Then, we turned south down Duncan Canal and so out into Sumner Strait, which had a very light SE wind blowing. The strait was flat, so we decided to go on across to Point Baker. We were tied up at the public dock at Point Baker, in a driving rain, at 14:20, and immediately walked over to the Liars Club, the last floating bar in Alaska. Unfortunately, it was closed and For Sale; one of the fishermen at the dock said it had closed down a couple of years ago - presumably a casualty of the Covid-19 pandemic. So, there being nothing else to do in Point Baker - except take of photo of the Post Office, zip code 99927 - we decided to move on around the corner of Point Baker to Wooden Wheel Cove in Port Protection, so-named by Capt. Vancouver, back in 1794, when they were looking for refuge in a storm. We tied up at the public dock in Wooden Wheel Cove at 15:19; the dock is in not good shape - very slick, with only a couple of inches of free-board, and with several derelict boats tied up to it. The rain was still belting down, so we decided to just stay put for the evening. We did manage to dial in the Astros v. Marlins game via Starlink; unfortunately, the Astros lost 1-5. Pretty much sums up the day, although we did make some good progress to the west coast of Prince of Wales Island.

56-19.390’N, 133-36.790’W; Log = 33.8, Sum (2023) = 2092.9 N-m; Eng hrs = 5.4, Sum = 3445.3