Day 319 An easy day today.

Our anchor came up all covered in grass and kelp this morning as we prepared for leaving Gambier Bay. What a slimy mess to get untangled. I've run into mud, sand, shell and had the anchor come up nice and clean, but rarely covered in the green slimy stuff. It was all through the chain too. We were up and off by 0555 to catch the out going tide to help us along on our next leg South. We'd spent the night in an unnamed cove on the North side of Gambier rather than go farther into Gambier and anchor in Snug Cove on the South side. That was an extra 3-4 miles that we just didn't need to retrace this morning. That's an extra 30+ minutes of travel time and the cove we spent the night in was just fine(except for the seaweed covered anchor).

The winds blew enough last evening to help the DuoGen make lots of amps so we could watch another two episodes of "24". We'd missed an episode the night before so we got two last night. We just fire up the Apple computer and cable it over to the TV and we're set for a nice bit of entertainment. It was strange to sit at anchor in the middle of no where and see something on TV. Then again, we don't even watch it when in a big city as our new Shakespeare antenna doesn't work too well at pulling in any signals. We've found that we don't really miss the tube that much.

As we left the entrance ot Gambier Bay, we, of course, ran smack into "Rhapsody of the Sea", a Royal Caribbean liner. They were heading up the channel at the exactly the same time we were heading out. Of course, it was the only liner we saw the entire trip today and they just happened to be right where we needed to cross. At least this time, this ship had it's AIS(Automatic Identification System) working so we knew it was coming and could take the appropriate action. SLOW down and let them pass. As I've said before, it ships, bigger normally wins.

We headed down the channel seeing the occasional fishing boats. Some with people at the wheel and some on auto pilot with no one at the wheel. I guess they think that with the channel so big, there is no chance of coming across another boat. We stayed out of it's way as it just kept on coming.

We pulled into Portage Bay(57 00.150N 133 19.370W) at 1155. An easy 6 hour trip. We did 36.3 miles or just over 6 nautical miles per hour. We've come 99.2 miles of our trip South in the past two days. After we dropped the anchor, we checked tides for tonight and tomorrow morning and found that we will be at -3.5 feet at tomorrows low tide. As we were anchored in somewhat shallow water(16 feet)at mid-tide range, we decided to take the anchor back up and move to a bit deeper water just to make sure we don't have a problem tomorrow as the low tide is just before we plan on leaving here. Since low tide would have put us at about 4 feet under the keel, losing the extra 3.5 feet of the extra low tide could have made it a bit harder to get out if we hit a place where the bottom came up instead of going down. Ah, the things we have learned over the last year. We had no idea what effects tide had until we boarded Zephyr. Now we know what to watch for whenever we anchor(or pull into some remote dock some where). Bill(previous owner)left a lead line(lead weight at the end of a line that has knots tied in it at specific intervals to tell you how deep the water is)on board. I've used it several times to verify our depth in some coves.

Today was a short day as we need to go back through Wrangell Narrows(no where near Wrangell) and the proper time for todays passage was just after 1200 hours and there was no way we could make the 21 miles from Portage to Petersburg in time for the passage unless we left Gambier at about 0300 and we're not in that big a hurry(at least not yet). Tomorrow, the tide shifts(it changes times each day) to about 1230 hours so we can leave here about 0830 and make the 21 miles and be ready for the transit at the right time. I've left us some extra time so I can go "war driving" again as we go through Petersburg so I can get these posts out for you. So today is a short day and tomorrow will be a lot longer. The 21 miles to Petersburg, then 21 through the Narrows and then another 4 across Sumner Channel to St. Johns Cove for the night. We get to avoid all the fishermen in their small boats(love to stay in the middle of the channel) that clogged the passage when we came though a few weeks ago. We'd love to go a bit farther but there are no other coves past St. John for about 20 more miles.

The current weather forecast for Tuesday is for Southeast winds to 30 knots and 6 foot waves coming right at us up the Clarence Strait plus rain. We may be forced to stay an extra day if the weather turns that bad. We might not mind it so much but our furr people really hate it. The current plan is to go from St. Johns Cove to Meyer's Chuck on Tuesday(weather permitting) and then from Meyer's Chuck, past Ketchikan, to Foggy Bay in one day. That's about 68 miles so it's going to be a long day if we can pull it off. Time and weather will see.