The log of S/V Lacuna, spring and summer 2005

Chapter 10

August 10-19, 2005. Petersburg to Ketchikan via Misty Fiords.

Petersburg sunset. Le Conte Glacier to the right, Devil's Thumb to the left. (click here for a larger image)

8/10/05. In Petersburg, Ed and I chartered a Cessna 180 floatplane for a tour of Le Conte Glacier. The pilot, Butch, was a native of Petersburg who said “I knew I wanted to fly when I was one month old.” He’d been flying for 37 years.

To describe the scenery as spectacular would be trivial. Le Conte is just one glacier flowing out of a massive ice sheet. Butch told us that scientists discoverd that it’s still 2900 feet thick near its terminus.

Le Conte Glacier (click here for a larger image)

Shakes Glacier flows into Le Conte’s valley without mixing, their unique debris stripe patterns distinctive and parallel as the ice moves downhill.

(click here for a larger image)

The entry to Le Conte Bay is partially barred by a terminal moraine, a remnant of the glacier’s latest advance and retreat. The resulting bar prevents big icebergs from escaping from the bay except at highest water. Butch said they sometimes get into the piers and pilings at Petersburg and snap them like toothpicks. (When we motored into Petersburg a few days ago, we saw a grounded growler at Hungry Point next to the entry to Wrangell Narrows.) The glacier is actively calving, so there was quite a bit of floating ice in the bay and bergy bits in the nearby waters of Frederick Sound.

The foot of Le Conte Glacier (click here for a larger image)

Le Conte Bay. Dry Strait, the delta of the Stikine River, is in the distance (click here for a larger image)

Butch flew as close to the glacier as he could without getting into the bumpy wind right over its surface. We looked down at sapphire-blue pools of meltwater on the glacier’s surface, deep crevasses surrounded by spiky seracs, sinuous trails of dark talus parallel to the ice’s flow, and waterfalls at the feet of hanging glaciers. Rocky ridges, sheer cliffs, and glacier-carved peaks surrounded us. Thin vegetation clung to the cracks and crevices in the rock. In the distance, the pointed 9000-foot spire of the Devil’s Thumb dominated the skyline.

Meltwater on the glacier

As we climbed higher, Butch took us close to the rocks and ledges, but I never felt he was showing any bravado. He said he agreed with the old saying that there are bold pilots and old pilots but no old, bold pilots. He’d seen too many of his friends die in accidents and didn’t want to join them.

A hanging glacier and waterfall (click here for a larger image)

After less than an hour (but after hundreds of photos), we landed near the docks and taxied to his hangar, exhilarated and stunned by the views. We had a few hours before the tide turned in our favor, so I took care of last-minute chores, including getting groceries, taking a shower, and getting extra supplies of beer.

An epiphany struck me as I walked near the replica longboat and the Sons of Norway hall. I realized that by undertaking this voyage I was expressing my inner Viking. Growing my hair and beard long, navigating remote fiords, piloting a small boat through straits and fog, enduring and even enjoying rain and foul weather, all seems so natural and real to me after months of voyaging and thousands of miles. I revel in the hardship and challenge. Getting my drinking water from a cliffside stream, plotting a course, caring for my boat, watching the tides and the clouds, and navigating through rocky passages is so satisfying, engrossing, and engaging that it must be very deeply rooted. Half my genes come from Nordic fiords, and I must be living out my genetic destiny. All my mother's grandparents emigrated to the US from the coast of Norway. From her, I inherited red hair, fair skin, and, although neither she nor her farmer parents expressed it, perhaps I inherited a need to sail northern coasts.

I had planned a route south in Wrangell Narrows that would take advantage of the tidal currents. The flood tide flows into both ends of the 22-mile-long narrows, and the ebb flows out of both ends. Slow vessels are advised to ride the last of the flood into the channel, catch the slack 14 miles from the north entry, and ride the first of the ebb out. At 1400, we went to the fuel dock, filled up (no spills!), and took off in a favorable current. I kept OB purring along so our speed over ground averaged 5 knots, and the timing was almost perfect. We had maybe a mile of adverse current before the turn and a boost through most of the channel.

Wrangell Narrows has the greatest density of navigation aids that I’ve ever seen. More than 60 buoys, daybeacons, lights, and ranges mark the channel, which is at times narrow and intricate. The navaids make navigating simple during the day, when a pilot can see which navaids are closer and which more distant, but it must be confusing at night when the lights on many of the aids are glowing or flashing. In the 3.7 miles between Rock Point and South Ledge, for example, there are 4 red buoys, 4 green buoys, 8 red daymarkers, 8 green daymarkers, and two ranges (each consisting of two towers).

Buoys are floating navaids.

Daymarkers are fixed markers, on shore or on towers made of steel or wood pilings or concrete. They bear triangular red or square green panels. Buoys and daymarkers are usually identified with numbers or letters. They may be lighted. Solar panels and batteries supply the power. The lights may be red, green, or white. They may be on without interruption or may flash with a distinctive pattern of short or long flashes and dark intervals.

Ranges consist of two upright panels on pilings with a bold, vertical line on each. The rear panel is set higher than the front panel. The helmsman lines the two panels up to stay on course through a narrow channel.

Red buoys and daymarkers indicate the right side of the channel as one is riding the flood current. Usually, “Red-Right-Returning” is the mnemonic because a helmsman keeps the red markers to starboard when entering a port. But in a channel like Wrangell Narrows, where the current floods in opposite directions at the two ends, it’s an arbitrary choice which side is which. The navaids in Wrangell Narrows are set up so that northbound boats follow the convention. Heading south, we must keep the red aids on our port and the green on starboard.

At the south end of Wrangell Narrows, we turned to starboard and anchored in Kah Sheets Bay, a broad shallow expanse of water with scattered islands and rocks. There was only a mild breeze from the north, so we had a very restful night even though we were in the middle of what seemed like hundreds of floats marking crab pots. The breeze and current kept us in place and we had a short enough rode that we weren’t in much danger of tangling with a crab pot line.

Kah Sheets Bay (click here for larger image)

8/11/05. We had a long day of passage-making, often against contrary currents, down Clarence Strait. Ed, on watch, turned OB up just short of full throttle. Lacuna’s stern squatted, water came into the cockpit footwell, and I spent a lot of time bailing out the cabin.

The rudder trunk leaks slowly when the stern squats low as the motor is pushing hard. The water trickles onto the cabin sole from under the cockpit. We keep a few small towels there to intercept the water. Today, I must have wrung out those towels fifteen times. High on my list of winter projects for the coming year is fixing that leak.

Just north of Snow Passage, I heard a loud noise, almost like a rifle shot, over the sound of the outboard. I spun around, too late to see the whale but in plenty of time to see the giant splash that he left when he fell back into the water after breaching less than 50 meters from our stern. We watched him surface, breathe, and roll, his flukes straight up in the air as he slowly submerged head-first. Other whale sightings soon followed as we entered the narrows, passing fishermen's skiffs anchored in the shallows

(Ed Moye photo)

In air that smelled of forest fires and looked like Los Angeles, we motored 57 miles in 11 hours—we worked hard to maintain a 5-knot average! Aptly-named Snug Anchorage was a welcome respite. The anchorage was isolated, well protected, and scenic. The anchor set emphatically. I joked that I hoped it would come up easily in the morning.

8/12/05. Today, the currents worked just the way we wanted them to. I charted a course that would put us at the turn out of Clarence Strait and into Behm Canal just at the turn of the tide. The plan was to weigh anchor at 0800, motor at 5 knots with a boost from the ebb to reach Caamano Point at noon for the turn. Then, if all went according to plan, we’d ride the flood into Behm Canal.

The first item was getting the anchor up. It was firmly stuck. Ed pulled the rode in as tight as he could—it was vertical—then cleated it off. I put OB in gear and idled forward a few seconds. That’s usually enough to break it free, but not this time. On my third attempt, I goosed the throttle, pulling hard on the rode, and the anchor pulled free. That's a secure set!

When we left Snug Anchorage, I set OB’s throttle at a moderate cruising speed—I estimated that our speed through the water was 5.3 to 5.5 knots. The stern wasn’t squatting as if we were pushing hull speed. I didn’t touch the throttle again for eight hours. We got a boost from the current, up to 1.5 knots, all the way to Caamano Point, where our speed over ground fell to 5.5 knots for about 20 minutes. We rounded the point and turned northeast into Behm Canal and immediately got a boost, which carried us all the way to Yes Bay. We made 50 nautical miles in 8.5 hours, all at half throttle or so. It was different from yesterday!

The water is big here—Clarence Strait is miles across and many miles long. Legs between waypoints can be 25 miles or longer. The country is not very interesting. It’s rather low, heavily logged, and topographically dull. We can see more vertical ahead, though, so we’re hoping for mountain views.

We pulled into Yes Bay and found secure anchorage near a tug, barge, and helicopter. They’re quiet so far—I hope they don’t have an early-morning flight scheduled. While Ed fixed dinner, I paddled ashore to replenish our water supply. When I found a blissful dearth of biting bugs, I hurried back to Lacuna, emptied the five-gallon jug into Lacuna’s water tank, grabbed my towel and shampoo and headed back to shore. After filling the water jug again, I poured cold Alaska stream water over myself again and again. It was so hot and muggy today that if felt great! I paddled back to Lacuna and finished the water transfer.

Later, Ed decided to take advantage of the bathing facilities but his timing was off. The bugs came out. They’re the same little biters, probably blackflies, that I experienced at Dundas Island near here on the way north. I itched for two weeks. I scratched myself so bad that I bled. He was halfway through his bath when he realized that he was being swarmed. He abandoned the bath, filled the water jug, and came hustling back to Lacuna.

I put up the bug net and left all the cockpit chores until later. I still have to wash my dishes and reassemble the stuff that goes deep into the hold (the five-gallon jug, water bucket, funnel, and filter) before I can re-stow everything. But I’m content to watch the sunset through the bug screen and the scores of bugs crawling on the outside.

Yes Bay (click here for larger image)

8/13/05. I woke at 0500, peered out at the world to see that the dew had settled, the day was dawning, and there were no bugs. I thought it was a good time to finish the dishes and take care of other chores in the cockpit, but instead I rolled over and went back to sleep. At 0645, when I got up, the bugs were already knocking at the door, or bug screen, as the case may be. I kept my extra-cabin excursions to a minimum while eating breakfast and making coffee. When it was time to go, we scrambled to get the anchor up and get out of the cove. We pulled a big swarm of little biters in our wind shadow. OB cranked up to hull speed, we hoped to shake them, but had to slow down soon to get through a narrow passage off the Yes Bay fishing lodge. We knew we’d pick up more when we got close to shore, but it was satisfying to outrun them for a brief period.

Ed likened the terrain to Oregon’s Coast Range, and I could see the similarity. The terrain is steep and eroded (by rain in the Coast Range, glaciers here). Conifers cover the slopes from the sea to the summit. There’s so much smoke in the air that distant ridges are indistinct blue, with nearer ridges darker, just like a hazy day near the Oregon coast. He carried the comparison further, likening the northern panhandle to the Rockies.

We didn’t have far to go today because there are relatively few secure anchorages in these waters, and we wanted to set ourselves up for a leisurely tour of scenic Walker Cove tomorrow. We anchored in Fitzgibbon Cove after 26 miles in six and a half hours of motoring at part throttle.

8/14/05. When we left the cove, the overcast was thick and low. The chart said we were passing a 4000-foot mountain that dropped right to the shore. We saw the lower few hundred feet of its slope, and I will attest that it is steep—at least the part we saw. As we motored south, we got glimpses of nearby ridges through the clouds. Ed said it was the dance of the veils—just little teases, views that promised more but were soon modestly covered once again.

As we approached the Chickamin River, the water changed abruptly from dark, transparent green into a milky, light green. I glanced aft and saw that the propeller was turning up dark green water amid the sheet of milky green. The silt-bearing layer of freshwater was just a few inches deep over the salty, transparent seawater. (The density difference between seawater and freshwater is greater than the difference between water at its most dense, 4 degrees Celsius, and its least dense, 100 C. This results in strong stratification.) As we motored further into the fan of silty water, it became deeper and OB no longer turned up a multi-colored wake.

There was a sharp line marking the boundary between the two bodies of water as we exited from the freshwater fan. Within 30 feet, we passed from opaque, light green river water into dark green, transparent seawater. At the same time, Lacuna’s speed over ground dropped by three tenths of a knot as we lost the push from the freshwater.

As we neared Walker Cove, our scenic destination for the day, the sky opened up. The air was still hazy with smoke, but we could finally see all the way to the summits of the mountains lining the channel. Our first view when we turned into the cove was a cliff that ran sheer and polished from near the summit of a 4000-foot mountain down to the water’s surface. I motored right up to it, reading depths around 100 feet when Lacuna was only 30 feet from the face. We must have been passing over the talus pile that lies at the foot of every cliff, because the depth sounder couldn’t find the bottom when we were just 100 feet offshore. On the chart, 158 fathoms showed in the center of the narrow channel—that’s 948 feet deep. Ed commented that he’d never been to the foot of such a high sheer cliff before. I pointed out how hard it is to get to most cliffs in the mountains—a climber usually has to scramble up talus slopes to get to them.

The rock is very hard and resistant, still retaining the horizontal scars carved by the glaciers thousands of years ago virtually untouched by erosion from the 150 inches of rain that falls each year.

Walker Cove (click here for a larger image)

Never have I seen a more inhospitable shore for paddlers. There is nothing but cliffs at the water’s edge. The only landings are miles apart, where streams run through valleys and deposit alluvial beaches at the heads of coves.

Behm Canal shoreline

We motored slowly into Walker Cove, gawking at the cliffs, waterfalls, and mountains on every side. When we reached the small bight on the south side of the cove, we found that no one was on the Forest Service mooring buoy, so we motored to it and tied up, even though it was only mid-afternoon. If the late afternoon turned out to have good light, we reasoned, we’d continue our photographic tour of the cove, and if someone else took the buoy in our absence, we’d head for Manzanita Bay to anchor. But we needn’t have worried about keeping the buoy. Since we tied up, we’ve seen only one other boat, which stopped near us, put a crab trap down, and sped off. A few hours later, they came back, pulled the trap up, and motored away.

Walker Cove (click here for a larger image)

The sky clouded over, ruining our hopes for good light, but the breeze was up, keeping the bugs away, so we decided to stay on the buoy. There’s no shortage of scenery here—surrounding our little anchorage are five peaks over 4000 feet high, all of them descending precipitously right to the water. I watched several bald eagles ride the winds up over the mountain nearest Lacuna. Starting low along the cliff, they found the updraft created by the breeze blowing against the mountain. They circled tightly and soared higher and higher until they were over the summit, then cut lazy circles and figure-eights together.

Walker Cove (click here for a larger image)

At the head of the cove, a stream has left an alluvial fan after emptying from a classic U-shaped glacier valley, resulting in rare flat land..

8/15/05. Hoping for good light at dawn, I set my alarm for 0500. When it woke me, I looked outside to see heavy overcast. I went back to sleep for another couple of hours. We motored out of Walker Cove grateful for the views we had yesterday.

As we traveled south, the clouds lifted and parted enough for occasional sun and blue patches. We turned into Rudyerd Bay and were immediately struck by the view of the Punch Bowl cliff. It’s a polished surface, almost a plane, that stretches a mile and a half, thousands of feet high. Clouds wreathed the stone. A skirt of conifers edged the sea.

Punch Bowl Cove (click here for a larger image)

Punch Bowl cliff (click here for a larger image)

The Punch Bowl is almost surrounded by steep rock, whether cliffs or near-vertical mountainsides. At its head, a stream flows from a nearby (but unseen) lake. There’s a mooring buoy near the stream, which we considered an outstandingly attractive anchorage, but there were more views to see and it was early in the day. We considered hanging on the buoy for the rest of the day and through the night, but decided to take the risk that another boat might take it before we could get back after a scenic cruise. We’d seen only one other yacht in the past couple of days.

Rudyerd Bay (click here for a larger image)

Misty Fiords is famous for its numerous waterfalls, but it’s been a few weeks since it rained, and only a few persist through dry weather. There’s virtually no water-holding capacity on the mountainsides—the soil, where it exists, is little more than a thin film. Rain runs off immediately. Some cirque bowls retain water, and even hold lakes; they are the source of the more permanent waterfalls.

Rudyerd Bay (click here for a larger image)

We cruised slowly through the bay and it south arm, ooh-ing and aah-ing at the views. When we got back to the Punch Bowl, we peered anxiously around the rocks to see whether the buoy was free. To our disappointment, that one other yacht (the crab trapper from Walker Cove) had it. So we headed toward our alternate anchorage.

Rudyerd Bay. (click here for larger image)

We’re on the scenic flyway. Many floatplanes have passed over us, seeming to follow the same flight path through Rudyard Bay. We’ve seen several high-speed tour boats—catamarans that can hold a hundred people but rarely seem full—and experienced their wakes.

I’m surprised that there are so few private boats here. I thought this would be a popular destination this time of year. I’m spoiled by how much we’ve had the waters to ourselves. In Alaska, most anchorages have been very private and uncrowded, rarely with another boat in sight. In the San Juans, it would be difficult to get a mooring buoy at this time of year. In Misty Fiords, there are only a few mooring buoys, but we got a prime buoy in Walker Cove and tonight, we snagged the buoy at the mouth of Ella Creek. I like tying up to a buoy—it’s a secure moorage (built for boats many times the size of Lacuna) and there’s no need to struggle with the anchor and a couple of hundred feet of line.

Looking at the chart, planning the next day’s route, I wondered what the mariners who named these geographic features were thinking. Within a few miles are Princess Bay, Grace Creek, Skirt Point, Point Eva, Point Louise, Ella Point, Tramp Point, Edith Point, Point Trollop, and Harding Point. It doesn’t take much imagination to make up a story about their mind set.

I’m concerned about the weather, even though today has been beautiful. I was able to catch a bit of the VHF weather forecast (the first time we’ve had reception in a few days). Through the static and the fading signal, I learned that a couple of 995-millibar lows are headed our way. That means rain and southeast winds. Soon we’ll have to cross Dixon Entrance, which is one of the few places on the Inside Passage where it’s Outside, exposed to whatever the Gulf of Alaska has to dish out. Our heading through Dixon Entrance to Prince Rupert is to the southeast, directly into the likely wind.

The forecast indicated that the fronts would begin hitting our area in two days or less, but that the settled weather we’d been experiencing should last until then. We could make it to Prince Rupert from our anchorage in that time except for one thing—we were low on gas. I calculated and recalculated the mileage to the various possible destinations, used two different methods to estimate the amount of fuel left, but it all pointed to the same conclusion: We’d have to go to Ketchikan to refuel before crossing Dixon Entrance. That added at least a day to our travel plans and made it unlikely that we would beat the weather to the entrance.

Ed was dismayed. He has his heart set on making it to Vancouver Island before he has to leave Lacuna to go back to work. If he were to do so, he would have completed the entire Inside Passage, given that we circumnavigated Vancouver Island in 2000. With 20 days left, staying in Ketchikan for five days might scuttle that plan. I was dismayed, too. Of all the towns I’ve visited in Southeast Alaska, Ketchikan is my least favorite. It's unfriendly, the victim of "people pollution," in the words of an opponent to a recent bond issue to enlarge the cruise ship docks. But I’d rather be stuck in the city for days than in some backwater bay if we have to wait out the weather. I have unpleasant memories of being holed up in Winter Harbor on Vancouver Island for several days, waiting for a break in the weather in a nearly-dead fishing community.

8/16/05. We slipped free of the mooring buoy and headed south, with 43 miles to go to Ketchikan. I set OB to push Lacuna at 5 knots, turned on the autopilot, and watched the scenery roll by. When we got to Smeaton Bay, the third of the three famously scenic coves in Misty Fiords, we took a short detour to look in. It looked as if the good cliffs and spectacular scenery lay in the furthest arm of the bay, and given our gas situation, we decided to turn around and resume the voyage to Ketchikan.

Many wooden trollers have been working for more than half a century.

Just before noon, while we were still 25 miles from the fuel dock, OB sputtered and quit. Not a good sign! I heeled Lacuna slightly to port (the side where the fuel pickup is) and squeezed the pump bulb on the fuel line until I could feel gas move through and into the motor, which started right up and began purring as if there were nothing wrong. Hoping (with no rational justification) that it was just a quirk, I powered up again to what I estimated was the most fuel-efficient speed, and we went on for another half hour.

When OB quit again, I knew it was time to sail or paddle. We had a one-gallon can of gas meant for the generator, which would give us at most 15 miles. I poured it into Lacuna’s tank, pumped the fuel up to the carburetor, and started the motor. Once I was satisfied that OB was running OK, I shut it off. Meantime, Ed had dug the genoa headsail out of its bag and hanked it on the forestay. We took off the mainsail cover and set sail in a breeze that neither of us would have bothered with had we not run out of gas—it was only 5 to 7 miles per hour, but it sure beat paddling.

The breeze sometimes dropped, but our speed rarely fell below two knots. We tacked a couple of times, pinched close to the wind to round Point Alava barely offshore, left Behm Canal and headed northwest in Revillagigedo Channel. We ran downwind, wing-on-wing with the mainsail on the starboard and the headsail on the port, then took a broad reach up the channel. Sometimes we reached almost four knots, but for the most part the scenery moved by quite slowly. The sound of the motor was replaced by the sound of waves lapping at the hull and the gurgling of water coming out from under the stern. Ed said conditions were so peaceful that he was almost ready to fall asleep. It was the most soothing disaster he’d ever experienced.

Our situation was ironic. We had both been complaining about the lack of sailing—so far on this voyage at least 98 percent (literally) the miles have been by motor—and had been talking about the desirability of a trawler yacht. We’d been joking about dumping all the sails and strings off Lacuna, cutting the mast down just high enough to hold the radar dome, and calling her a motorboat. Ed said she must have cut off the gas just to make us realize that the lines and sails were actually important features.

Sailing past a seiner. (click here for larger image)

The breeze was steady enough, and from a constant direction, that the autopilot did a great job steering. In fact, it did a much better job of piloting wing-on-wing than I did—every time my attention lapsed and I veered off course, the headsail would lose its wind and collapse, requiring some steering and line handling to make it full again. But that didn’t happen with Ott at the tiller.

The wind finally deserted us about 10 miles from Ketchikan, so we furled the sails and powered up to a modest speed. After a couple of miles, a breeze came up, and so did the sails. We had a pleasant beam reach for a few miles up Tongass Narrows before finally dowsing the sails and motoring into Bar Harbor, where the harbormaster had assigned us a slip over the VHF. When we got there, we found another boat where we had planned to tie up, but he was there to meet us. He directed us to another, even better slip and hustled off to get a heavy-duty extension cord so we could get electricity. His helpfulness improved my estimation of Ketchikan. After a very long day, we welcomed the reception and the respite. I was very grateful that we had reached port without having to be towed or to make a sailing entry into the marina.

8/17/05. It was frustratingly beautiful today. The sky was clear, the sun was bright, the air was calm. It was frustrating because it would have been a great day to make passage south, but the forecast still predicted an unwelcome change in the weather. Ed and I decided to take advantage of the situation by going on a hike, so we set off toward the Deer Mountain trail.

Deer Mountain, Ketchikan

It took an hour to walk the city streets and paths from Lacuna to the trailhead, so we already had a good workout by the time we got to the trail at 500 feet elevation. From the trailhead, the trail climbed 1000 feet over the next mile to a lookout point, where we got great views of Tongass Narrows and nearby waters. Learning from the experience of overdoing a hike at Sitka, we decided not to attempt the 3000-foot summit (two miles of trail) but to turn around at the lookout. Getting the workout helped ease the edginess that I felt from not being able to set out on passage.

Tongass Narrows and Nichols Passage (click here for a larger image)

Once we got back to the city, we visited the Totem Heritage Center, where several totem poles from the nineteenth century are preserved.

Although the tradition in the native culture is not to maintain totem poles but to let them weather and decay naturally, I was grateful for the opportunity to see these original works preserved. There are many replica poles and newly-carved poles in Southeast, but there are few old poles that can be seen.

A modern totem pole

Fog Woman Pole tells the story of how Raven (at the top) married Fog Woman (at the bottom), who introduced Salmon to the people. When he abused her, she left and took the fish with her.

(click here for a larger image)

We walked along Ketchikan Creek, where a fish hatchery sits. A heavy-duty but temporary weir was set up across the creek above the hatchery to prevent fish from getting past the hatchery to spawn upstream. Crossing a bridge below the hatchery, we saw thousands of fish loitering in the current waiting to go upstream. The hatchery was probably overwhelmed by returning adults. They need only a fraction of the fish as spawners for the next generation, and probably have nothing they can do with the excess returns.

Salmon in Ketchikan Creek ( click here for a larger image)

I did laundry, cooked dinner for myself (Ed has rented a motel room and prefers dining in restaurants), and took advantage of a dockside Wi-Fi service to log onto the internet from the comfort and convenience of Lacuna’s cabin. Although the connection is rather expensive, it’ll be good entertainment for the next few days. I want to do some research and update the web site, so it’ll keep me amused when I’m stuck inside by the rain.

8/18/05. The headline in the Ketchikan Daily News shouted: "Likely killer whale attack aborted." In a story that's the talk of the town, A 12-year-old boy, Ellis Miller, playing and splashing in four feet of water was apparently mistaken for a seal by an orca. Seeming to recognize its mistake, the orca aborted the charge at the last instant and turned aside, bumping the boy, arching around him, and sending him sprawling but leaving him unhurt. There has been only one documented case of an orca biting a human, and as one expert put it, “If it had wanted to take him, it would have.”

Experts said that the orca was probably a member of a transient pod rather than a resident pod. The two types are genetically and behaviorally distinct, with the latter feeding largely on fish, using sonar extensively, and traveling through a relatively small home range. Transients prey on mammals ranging from sea otters to great whales. They are stealth hunters, rarely using sonar, and are usually on the move. One of their hunting tactics is to charge into the shallows to snatch a seal or sea lion who has retreated to the shelter of the shore. On a shoal beach, the orca charges with such speed that he pushes up a pressure wave that floats him into the shallows and back out again after he has grabbed his prey.

When the orca returned to deeper water, another six animals surfaced near the beach. They swam along the beach for a hundred yards and returned to where the boy and a friend were standing. They swam up and back several times. On the last pass, the largest whale rolled onto its side and smacked its pectoral fin on the water surface five times, then hit the water with its tail. The others followed in a line and began doing the same. The friend, Kathy Arntzen, said “It was like the whole bay was boiling…they were up and down and making noise. It was like they were signaling us.” Of course one can only speculate, but they might have been warning young Ellis not to act like a seal. Undeterred, even excited by the encounter, he planned to participate in an open-water swim the following weekend with his team, aptly called the Killer Whales.

8/19/05. A big storm hit last night after I was in bed. The wind drove rain under the boom tent, past the edges of the companionway cover, and into my face as I lay on the quarterberth. The tarp I'd put over the forward hatch began flogging. I went out into the driving rain to get it under control--the wind had untied one of the corners and had driven rain under it, so it was worse than useless. I took it into the cabin, dogged down the hatch, and snuggled down in my sleeping bag once again. For some reason, I find big storms refreshing and relaxing (as long as I'm not trying to make passage) and I fell into a sound sleep until 0900.

--Dennis Todd

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