Day 420 Part two.

OK, for those who have read the earlier blog post for today that I did as we passed through Petersburg, here is the rest of the day.

As we entered Wrangell Narrows beside Petersburg(you would have thought they would have called it Petersburg Narrows), we hit a 5.2 knot current throwing up into the narrows. Our speed jumped to 10.8 knots right off the bat. Unfortunately, it didn't stay there. We dropped to 8, then 7 then 6 as we went down the narrows. We still had tide pushing us, but as the afternoon progressed, it got smaller and smaller. The trick to getting through the narrows is to enter as it is still flooding inward. For some reason(I have no clue), the narrows flood from both ends at the same time and ebbs from its ends at the same time. It meets in the middle and really makes some interesting eddies for boats to pass through.

As you have read, I did my "war driving" or I guess it is more "war boating" as we passed through Petersburg and I got several posts posted on our blog. I picked up my emails and went to a web sight and that was all the time we had. One of the Alaskan State Ferries(Taku) had pulled into it's dock and was getting ready to leave and we wanted to avoid it if we could.

Off we went heading South though the narrows passing a lot more traffic heading North than we did eight days ago when we came North. We even ran into "Aye Aye Sir", one of our friends that we met a while ago at Codville Lagoon when we went to his birthday party on his boat. A nice couple. They are a ways behind us as are the rest of the group that transited up here with us.

As we progressed South, I checked the AIS and saw a boat doing 35 knots going across the Sumner Straits just to the South entrance of Wrangell. They were also 350 feet long!!! BIG and FAST!! It ended up being another of the Alaskan State Ferries--just one of their faster express boats I guess. A catamaran style ferry instead of one of their regular ferries. It really moves along at a fast clip for a boat that big. It passed us a while later doing a sedate 9.3 knots. Luckily, it was in a wider part of the narrows where I could get over. It has a beam of over 70 feet as I remember. That doesn't leave a lot of room in some of the more narrow parts of the channel.

If you read the part 1 of this post, I talked about hitting a large "dead head" as we transited Frederick Sound. Tracy was napping in the cockpit and I never saw it coming. We were in 24 knot winds(straight at us of course) and about a 3 foot chop and it was sitting low in the water. Crash, boom!! We rode up over the log and it split in two passing on either side of Zephyr as it went. I watched it move off behind us after the collision. I'd cut the throttle and put the engine in neutral just after we hit it. No damage that we have found. The bilge is dry and I don't see any water coming into the Anchor locker at the bow. We had planned to launch Puff and go around the boat checking the hull, but it is raining quite well, and since we have seen no direct effect from the collision, it may get put off to tomorrow when we reach our next stop. We''ll see if the rain stops later. (the rain stopped and we put Puff in the water--no damage we could see)

Once we pulled into St John Harbor(56 26.390N 132 57.680W) we joined another 6 boat already at anchor. There ended up being 15 boats in the harbor as of this morning. One other sail boat(we'd seen them at Matia over two months ago) and the rest are commercial fishing boats.

We left at Poratge Bay at 0830 to time our arrival at Petersburg to hit the right current in the Narrows. It was strange not being "on the road" by 0600 or earlier. We got in at 1620, almost 8 hours later. At 47.2 miles, we didn't break any land speed records but we fought the tide heading up Frederick Sound and it reduced our speed to 5.3 at some times plus the time "war boating" set us back a while. You can't just park a boat and get a signal. In a busy harbor, we just kept going in circles getting the signal and then loosing it. But hey, I got the posts out didn't I.

Once we got here, I had planned to change out the diesel injector oil again. We were just passing 50 hours so it was time all over again. It seems strange to me that they would design a diesel engine that requires something to be serviced at an interval of only 50 hours of operation. I pulled out one of my gallon jugs for the normal engine oil changes and got the 12 ounce I needed from it. Slick as a whistle. Each time, it gets easier.

Since it was raining as we dropped anchor, we were still surprised to see water on the cabin sole in the walkway to the stern cabin. Not a lot of water but still some water. The furr people hadn't had an accident so we mopped it up and chalked it up to a rain water leak. I typically take off the doors to the engine compartment to allow the heat from the engine to flow into the main cabin on Zephyr to heat up the room. As I took off the doors, there was water along the bottom jam of the door. OK, I guess the water on the floor wasn't from rain after all if there was some on the door frame. I looked farther with a flashlight and found that one of the hoses that takes the sea water cooling system in the engine and mixes it with the engine exhaust(cools it down) had a hole in it. Not a big hole, but it was spraying salt water around as the engine ran. I took off the clamp and cut off about two inches off hose and fitted it back on the fitting. It is a metal reinforced hose so I'm a bit surprised it split. Luckily, it split right beside the clamp so it was no problem getting it fixed.

Well, we will be listening to the weather forecasts for tomorrow for Clarence Strait to see what they have in mind for it. Last we heard, it was 20 knot winds(from the South of course) and 3 foot chop. Not too bad really. With luck, we will be in Meyer"s Chuck by some time tomorrow afternoon. I thinks it's another 56 mile day.