Ketchikan to Hessa Inlet – Back to the Wilderness
(July 10th, 2017)
Sunday it was time to leave Ketchikan, in the rain of course. We got up, took the last of our garbage to shore, spent a little time putting items away that were out in the cockpit, and pulling the dinghy back up on to the davits. Then we powered up and pulled out of Bar Harbor heading for the fuel dock to the north near the ferry dock across from the airport. This fuel dock is open 24 hours via credit card, but we tried three times with 2 pumps and even though the credit card reader said all the right things, we could never get a pump to work.
After giving up on this fuel dock, we motored back the other direction to fuel dock south of downtown and the young girls working there helped us tie up and get the pump going. Unfortunately, the pump was a bit fast and after about 9 gallons we had a volcanic explosion from the diesel tank, making a pretty large mess. s/v Breakaway, another Sail Alaska boat who happened to be on the fuel dock at the same time apparently had the same issue. Something about a 5-foot-tall volcano of diesel, at about 10 gallons also, that the skipper then spent about 30 minutes washing off his helm, cockpit seats, floor, and other areas.
Our mess was mostly confined to the deck area around the fill, with some running down the sides of the boat and the stern. After we got the tank full (60 gallons) and secured the deck fill cap, we washed it all down with Awlcare (the boat soap we have on board) which seemed to do well at breaking it all down and removing the fuel residue. As we cleaned up our diesel spill mess, the Coast Guard cutter came up and docked at the USCG station just a few yards away. Either they didn’t see, or they didn’t care.
We asked the fuel dock girls about some sort of clean up supplies for the water, etc but they had none, said they could not use any, and could not give anyone anything.
With nothing else to do, I paid for the fuel, then came back in a few minutes later to purchase a 12-pack of Barq’s root beer because one of our cruising traditions is to always buy root beer when we stop at a fuel dock. The girls love root beer, as do we, and we don’t buy it often in general.
- Some consumption stats so far…
- Totals since last fill up:
- Diesel purchased: 60.1gal
- Nautical miles: 300nm
- Engine hours: 42.9hrs
- Genset hours: 7.3hrs (~1.8 gallons of diesel)
- Averages since last fill up:
- Gallons per engine hour (including diesel heater): 1.36gph
- Nautical miles per gallon: 5.15nm/gal
- Totals since June 16th arrival in Anacortes:
- Diesel purchased: 166.5gal
- Nautical miles: 700nm
- Engine hours: 94.8hrs
- Genset hours: 20.4hrs (~5.1 gallons of diesel)
- Averages for whole trip:
- Gallons per engine hour (including diesel heater): 1.7gph
- Nautical miles per gallon: 4.34nm/gal
- Totals since last fill up:
Our fuel consumption has been better lately for two reasons. First, we are running at a slightly lower engine rpm while motoring, 2400-2500rpm vs 2800-2900rpm previously. Second, the heating system now uses engine heat (since I rigged that up in Booker Lagoon) when we are motoring rather than the boiler consuming its own diesel. Combined, these two changes are making a significant difference.
After our fill-up debacle we motored away from the fuel dock, southbound through Tongass Channel and into Nichols Passage, headed for Aiken Cove on Prince of Wales Island. The weather was rainy, dismal, and slightly breezy — fighting a 2-knot current for a couple hours on the way as well. We ended up not fishing and just headed straight for Aiken Cove, anchoring closer to a shoal than we’d normally like. There was not a lot of room for other boats so we offered a rafting opportunity to Sea Otter as they neared the cove and they happily took us up on it.
The girls asked for a potluck with Sea Otter’s crew and they obliged, supplying a very tasty spaghetti to go with our pork sausage nachos. Sea Otter has 3 teenage boys (their son and two of his friends) on board who wanted to see of bears we had heard about were still in the creek catching fish. So the boys (all of the boys and men on both boats) loaded up on Sea Otter’s dinghy and cruised up the inlet. It was very pretty, but no bears.
Jim decided that there wasn’t anything we could do for exploring around Aiken Cove so the fleet may as well move on the next day. Unfortunately, due to tides and currents, it meant leaving at 4:30am again. The boats promptly went to bed after that briefing.
Devon woke up early, motored out of Aiken Cove heading south down the east side of Prince of Wales Island. Near the SE corner of the island we slowed down and started trolling for salmon.. And we FINALLY got some hits. We caught our first Silver (Coho) Salmon and had to figure out what to do with it. Then number two. Then several humpbacks surfaced not more than 50ft from our boat. Crazy and Awesome! Later, while Devon worked on snacks down below we hooked TWO more silvers. FOUR nice sized Coho in the boat for the first time! We motored further south to catch up with the other boats and then slowed again. After we hooked our fifth silver for the day, we left the lines in and sped up for our destination in Hessa Inlet.
As we motored, Devon tried her hand at fileting one of the salmon we caught on the cockpit table. It made a pretty big mess of things but we did end up with two filets and that was great! Everywhere we looked there were sea otters floating around, popping their heads up watching the boats coming through the passages into Hessa. We even say a Black Bear on shore in one of the bays, eating grass it seemed. We finally anchored and fired up the BBQ for some salmon dinner.
Since we had caught five Coho and Sea Otter was skunked, we offered one to them. Later Lioness stopped by in the dinghy wondering if we had any extra butter, which we did, so we gave them a half pound and they promised to help us with our lack of jam.
Eric from Foxy called as well asking about our ability to text via satellite and wondering if he could text his girlfriend who left from Ketchikan to undergo eye surgery. Since we had the Iridium Plot working, I offered up a phone call instead and he was super appreciative. The surgery went very well and she’s doing just fine.
For us, it was another movie night, followed by bedtime, after a bit of arguing about where the girls would be sleeping. They enjoy sleeping on the dinette in a sort of campout mode, but we are trying to keep that as infrequent as possible since they seem to forget that they need to clean up their stuff in the morning so it can be our table again.
Tomorrow we head to Hunter Bay where we hope to find some sort of beach area we can have a potluck on. These last few places just didn’t quite work out for that.
