18 Jun 23

We were in bed shortly after 21:00 last night and slept until 07:30 this morning; bliss. We decided to get going at 08:30 to catch the favorable tidal currents through Zimovia Strait. The wind was very light from the N & NW all day, except for a bit of gusting in the Zimovia Narrows, but we never did find favorable currents all day long. There were several instances when I was literally on top of a current gage (on the chart plotter), where the predicted current speed was 2.4 kn in the same direction as our COG, and we were getting either no push or slight foul current; weird. I checked all my various sources and they all agreed that we should have been getting a big push from the tide, but it never happened all day long. Maybe the NW wind simply stopped the flood from developing or maybe the tidal current was pushing in under the surface water (which was affected by the NW wind). I don’t know, but I would like to. The weather continued sunny and warm all day; unbelievable. There were no whale sightings all day long, although we did spot 3 Dall’s porpoises hunting a school of fish. We were tied up in Heritage Harbor in Wrangell at 16:11. As we were coming into the dock the wheel suddenly got very stiff. After we were tied up, I had a look down the binnacle, but the cables and chain all looked good. After I worked in back and forth a few times, it seemed to loosen up, so I guess I just got a piece of kelp or rope or something stuck on the rudder stock. After we were settled in, a couple of guys, Ken and Tom, from “Vega”, a Nautical 39 sailboat out of Bellingham, WA, stopped by for a chat. We ended up inviting them onboard for Captain’s hour and they stayed for a couple of hours; we talked about everything under the sun. Hope we run into them again, although they are headed south while we are still headed north. Ken was in Glacier Bay in May this year and thought that 7 days and 6 nights in Glacier Bay was plenty.

56-27.457’N, 132-23.064’W; Log = 53.2, Sum = 1112.5; Eng. hrs. = 7.8, Sum = 3287.3

19 Jun 23

Another clear, sunny day beaconed us from our slumber at about 06:30. After a hearty breakfast, we walked into town to see the harbormaster and check out the marine hardware stores; they did not have what we needed. After a quick tour of town, we walked another mile out to Petroglyph Beach; we found about 15 or 16 petroglyphs, out of the 40 that are reportedly there; we found out later that most of the good ones have been removed to various museums around SE Alaska. Anyway, we then walked back to town and had an excellent lunch at the outdoor hamburger stand, that today was selling pork carnitas tacos; we got two each, and they were very good. Then, we walked over to the Nolan Center Museum (named after a former US Senator from Wrangell, not our esteemed Admiral. It presented an excellent display of the history of the natives and the white man’s arrival in the area. We finally got back to the boat about 16:30, having walked 5 miles. I immediately set to repairing the leak on the hatch at the port side forward in the salon. I had to make a new gasket and seal it all up with silicone, so hopefully, it will work well. Then, it was Captain’s hour and lamb chops for dinner; no way we are walking all the way back into town to one of the three restaurants. We are heading to Petersburg tomorrow; scheduled departure is 10:30.