Leg 2 Sitka to Prince Rupert - 310 nm

Leg 2: Sitka-Prince Rupert, BC

            After an awesome week of long boarding, hiking, swimming and getting projects done around Sitka, Dad and Carmen, who had come down to say goodbye, having missed the Seldovia departure flew out and the wind was swinging around for the short hop down to Canada. The only minor glitch occurred when, two days before leaving Sitka, I realized that I had somehow left on a world trip without my passport! Luckily my mom was able to ship it out with the next Alaska Airlines flight, so a near-disaster was avoided, and now, (I’m pretty sure) I’ve got everything I need.

            On departure day, the wind was already blowing, and since I was anchored instead of at the dock, I didn’t even need to turn the engine on at all, and within a couple of hours I was once again rolling to the Gulf swell and cruising along at six knots with the wind over the port quarter. Unfortunately, unlike the first part of the gulf crossing, this leg would be parallel to shore, and just the day before the entire fishing fleet had left the dock and were strung out all along my route. All day, I had to keep adjusting course to steer clear of the fishing vessels and their long trolling lines, until I managed to break free of the majority of the fleet around 10 nautical miles offshore.

            That night, due to the proximity of shore and the ever-present fishermen, I stayed on a strict 10-minute sleep schedule, which it turned out was not nearly so bad as I had imagined it would be. I soon got into a rhythm of getting up, poking my head outside to do a quick 360-degree horizon check, then resetting the alarm before falling instantly asleep on my bunk. (Luckily it was dry out, because putting rain gear on every time would have made the process unbearable.)

Day 2

At dawn, I was actually surprisingly rested, but still got a longer nap in during the day when it was more likely that any boat that came too close would see me. However that afternoon was when I began to get mildly worried about the batteries, which were by now down to 11.9-11.7 volts, and the solar panel and wind generator seemed unable to bring this back up despite having plenty of wind and sun.

            The second night I lengthened my sleep period to a luxurious 15 minutes in bed, as there were much fewer boats around, but I ended up spending several hours on deck that night anyway, because shortly after the incredibly bright moon-rise, a pod of orcas passed within a couple of boat lengths, so close that every time I heard one of them blow, I thought it was about t hit the boat! Then, after the Orcas left, I kept hearing chirping sounds all around the boat, and when I finally dug out a flashlight to see what was making the noise, it turned out to be dozens of small brown bats circling the mast and sails! I suppose they must have been attracted to the masthead running lights or something, but I was extremely surprised to see animals normally associated with caves or forests 5 miles from the nearest island!

            Day 3

The final day, sailing up Dixon entrance, crossing the imaginary line in the water that marked the border, and raising the red-and-white Canadian courtesy flag passed under a thickly overcast sky and the first rain since leaving Seldovia. Then navigating through the rocks and reefs of Brown passage alongside several cruise ships and a container vessel was a bit stressful, but on passing through, things quickly calmed down. Then they continued to calm down, until by midnight I was flopping along at less than a knot with two jibs and the full main up, 15 miles up an narrow channel from the docks at Prince Rupert. At that point, I dropped the sails, started the engine, and pulled into the nearest cove to anchor for the night.

            At 1:30 am, I decided I had better call Canadian Customs to leave a message saying that I ha arrived in Canada but wasn’t able to make it to the customs dock until morning, just in case the coast guard got curious. What I wasn’t expecting at all was a very tired and annoyed heavy French-Canadian accent to answer! I instantly felt bad about calling so late, but I couldn’t really hang up then, so I think I was checked into Canada with probably the least exchange of words possible, not even my passport number, and in five minutes I was given a number to display in a window and the line went dead!

The next morning, I motored up the channel and tied up to the dock, where I immediately plugged in the dangerously low batteries to shore power, and went ashore, on foreign soil after only one stop in Sitka; I felt like I was moving incredibly fast, a feeling which I had no idea would be completely obliterated in the next few hundred miles.