North, to Alaska!

I've made it to Ketchikan. It was a great trip north, with lots of sunshine and no rain, and at times, quite hot, but fun and tiring. I'm glad to be stopped now for a little while.

Before I left, I took Mom and David out sailing, and I did a lot of testing the boat out to see how it sailed and anchored and motored. I learned a lot, but I learned more on the trip north, so there is projects to work on still.

 My Crew:

I had some friends from Uncruise join me, Shane

and Ted

And of course me.

As we headed north we passed through Seymore Narrows, and I went through at a pretty high flow time and hit 15.1 knots according to the GPS. That's pretty quick. As we passed through Johnstone Strait we saw an Elephant Seal resting at the surface. I tried to get a look, but it dove before I could get closer. If you click on the picture you can zoom in on the seal. They look so funny.

Crossing Queen Charlotte Sound was good, we had some wind behind us for a while and I ran the spinnaker and also flew the kite for some pictures.

There are lots of very close channels and we saw a black bear pretty close on Princess Royal Island

And some nice lichens in the trees with the sun beaming though...

As we crossed Dixon Entrance, we passed by a lighthouse that I took a picture of from Altair when I passed by 11 years ago. It was good to see it again, and this time with calmer seas.

And our arrival in Ketchikan. Here is the city from the water.

I also hit a log on the way up and wanted to have a look. I hauled out on the "grid" to fix it, and that took about 2 hours, so I cleaned the bottom and put a new "knot meter" propeller in as well. Its a pretty neat system, just uses the tide to expose the bottom of the boat, but most people don't put sailboats on there, so a lot of folks were coming by to ask me how I did it. The grid spacing is not very wide and you need a long enough keel to sit on two beams, and Layla has a long enough keel, but only just. I did a lot of adjusting as the tide was dropping to make sure the keel lined up just right.

I dropped off my crew and now I'll spend a few days here before heading out into the wilderness for a bit.