Pacific NW

Expeditions

Today was our longest-distance day yet, and was nothing short of phenomenal. We fueled up in Shearwater and to my surprise, the gas attendant told us we were not the first sailboat headed for Alaska this year, but the second! We figure and assume that it must be a sailboat crewed by three beautiful women, that we have been scanning the horizons for! Later in the day we swung into Matheison Channel, entering “Fjordland” The mountains grew higher and higher and the waterfalls more numerous and stunning as we made our way deeper into Fjordland. Massive half-dome slabs of granite 4,000 feet tall–plunging directly into the fjords, greeted us as we turned into Kynoch Inlet. I lost all GPS detail, the area was poorly charted, and the Coast Pilot contained no information on where we were. We are in one of the least known-about places on this coast, which is surprising because it is so stunning. Finally, we reached the entrance to Culpepper Lagoon right at sunset. All odds were stacked against us. The entrance of the lagoon turned out to be a tidal rapids, and was flowing against us at 9 or 10 knots. Depths in the entrance were uncharted. It was getting dark, and our slack tide was going to occur at low water and it was a spring tide, which means stronger tidal currents. Christoph, Lee and I discussed our situation, and took all measures to prepare for the entrance. Slack water finally occurred 2 hours and 40 minutes after the tide charts predicted it to, so we ended up idling around the entrance while we prepared. I felt like I used to get before a really big piano recital, forgetting about everything else but the task at hand. We weren’t expecting slack water to arrive so late, and it was totally dark out with a new moon. I reminded my crew of a quote from Ernest Shackleton: “Put the footsteps of courage into stirrups of patience”. In the end, we were very patient, extremely cautious, and successfully transited into the lagoon at a speed of 1/2 knot. Christoph and Lee did a great job monitoring depth soundings, speed, and illuminating the shore with spotlights while we were in the narrows. Once in the inner chamber of the lagoon, we were greeted by another challenge: fog. After all of our waiting we had to proceed dead slow the 2 miles to the end of the inlet, where we anchored off a mud flat at the mouth of a river, and I fell into an exhausted and relieved sleep.