Pacific NW

Expeditions

Early departure in the snow! Christoph and I awoke in the pre-dawn hours and got the boat under way to make the tides. Every morning Christoph faithfully hauls the anchor and scrubs the mud off it without complaint. It is a chilly early morning chore and I am lucky to have such good crew. Throughout the morning the snow thickened and we saw several pods of dolphins amongst the blizzard. We made our way past Anon Bay Bear Preserve, which has 25 resident grizzly and 40 resident black bears, and then we swung into the fabled “Eastern Passage”. The Eastern Passage is the least-travelled waterway between Ketchikan and Wrangell, and also the longest distance. We were rewarded by seeing the most incredible string of towering snow-covered mountains from one end of the passage to the other. At its north end, we came out by the Stikine river delta. The delta is so massive it took us 5 hours to sail across its mouth. Under the mainsail alone, we had another great tack westward across Sumner Strait and into Wrangell Narrows. The snow got really thick and we were hitting boat speeds of 9.5 knots in the strait. Wrangell Narrows looked like Christmas: green evergreen trees, red underbrush and seaweed, and white snow. It was very pleasant, and produced in me a deep feeling of contentment. We anchored behind a series of islands and reefs about 5 miles into the narrows. The wind and snow picked up to a fevered pitch later in the evening, and we named our anchorage “Lee’s Breezeway”. Tonight we are sitting close by the wood stove, it is a comfortable 75 degrees inside the cabin as the snow swirls outside. Christoph produced the most amazing dinner tonight! I was dozing off into a good dream when he placed before me a steaming plate of “Swimming Rama”. It was restaurant-quality, and I savored every bite.