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

Chapter 5

May 25 through June 2, 2005. Prince Rupert to Petersburg.

5/25/05. I spent the day in Prince Rupert, putting on lots of miles walking around town. It felt great to stretch my legs and straighten my back. The next boat has to have standing headroom!

Rupert residents have a great sense of humor--here's the Cow Bay Old Volks Home.

I changed the oil in the outboard and generator. It’s an unpleasant task made worse by the intransigence and mischievousness of the waste oil pump’s hoses. They insist on retaining the coil they have when they are stored in a cabinet, and as a result they pop out of the crankcase or the waste oil receptacle and drip nasty stuff on everything they can. I tied the pump and waste oil container to anchor points, spread newspaper around liberally as a waste shield, got out a roll of paper towels, and breathed deeply before I began. It’s such a small space in the stern of the boat, made smaller by the mainsheet and the tiller. Every move must be deliberate and considered, because any move could knock something over, tangle a limb in some impediment, or collide a skull or elbow with something hard. I held my temper, took it step by step, and was able to change oil without spilling any into the water. It was an easy walk to the fuel dock next to the yacht club to recycle the oil. By the time I finished chores, and did the navigation for the next voyage it was mid-afternoon. Rupert is such a nice place that it was easy to talk myelf into staying an extra night.

5/26/05. Reluctance to leave a nice little town mixed with eagerness to see new sights, I left the Prince Rupert Rowing and Yacht Club and threaded my way through Venn Passage. With a large-scale chart and the route entered into GPS and the chartplotter, it wasn't too hard, but I'd sure hate to try to get through without good navigation gear.

Venn Passage (click here for larger image)

Chatham Sound was an easy passage, with a low swell that kept Lacuna's motion lively. The visibility was great--I could see mountains that might have been 50 miles away. All the lighthouses were reporting visibility greater than 15 miles. It was so hot that I had to remove my shoes and shirt—I even had to stay in the shade of the boom to avoid overheating. I was almost tempted to lie on the cabin sole.

Green Island lighthouse, Chatham Sound (click here for a larger image)

I anchored in Brundige Inlet, Dundas Island, which was recommended by the cruising guides and fellow sailors. There was a cautionary note in one guide about biting blackflies. I wish I'd paid more attention. By the time I got the anchor set and the bug netting set up, I'd been bitten on my face and neck by no-see-ums. The worst part about no-see-um bites is not the bite but the body's immune reaction. The welts itch maddeningly for a week and can take two weeks to disappear. The bites are almost painless, making me especially paranoid about them.

My watch stopped today at 3:29 PM. I didn't realize it until it struck me as odd when I made the third entry in the ship's log for the same time. My travel alarm had lost track of time the night before, so I ended up relying on my GPS to tell the time. But I didn't know whether the GPS was set on Pacific Daylight Time or Alaska Daylight time. It's self-adjusting, so when it moves from one time zone to another, it should make the change. But near the international border, who knows? The tides and current atlases are in ADT. But if my time was PDT, I'd be an hour off. (I realized later that both my digital camera and my computer have clocks set to PDT, but that realization came too late to help me that evening as I was trying to figure out the tidal currents.)

5/27/05. When I pulled the anchor up, long slimy strands were tangled in the anchor line, making it most unpleasant to hand-over-hand into the rode bag. I suspect they were jellyfish tentacles—there are quite a few of the large orange beasts in the inlet. Oh, for a winch and wash-down hose! I had to use my hands to scrape it off the anchor rode as I brought it in. Yuck! Then the anchor was so firmly stuck that I couldn’t lift it. I had set it well last night, it seems. I had to tighten the rode as much as I could then put the motor into gear and rev up to lift it out of the mud. After that it came up easily.

Lacuna's passage of Dixon Entrance could hardly have been easier. It's one of the two crossings exposed to the open ocean, and in some conditions (especially in the winter) it can be deadly. But I raised the sails and motorsailed close-hauled in an 8-knot west wind, holding one tack all the way across. When the GPS told me that I'd crossed the international boundary, I congratulated and thanked Lacuna, OB, and Ott for a good passage. Swell and chop kept Lacuna bouncing, but it was a comfortable point of sail. I kept the sails up until early afternoon, when the breeze dropped.

Ketchikan (click here for larger image)

I entered Tongass Narrows about 5:00 PM. There was lots of traffic, mostly small fishing vessels and outboard-powered sportsfishing boats. By 6:40, Lacuna was tied up in Bar Harbor, Ketchikan. I called Customs and let them know where I was. The agent said to wait with the boat; he'd be there in 15 minutes. Almost an hour later, he showed up with apologies--a fish boat came in that took longer than he thought. He looked at my passport, Lacuna's registration, and my driver's license, then chatted about sailing--he has a McGregor 26 motorsailer.

US Coast Guard Station, Tongass Narrows

5/28/05. A lay day in Ketchikan. It's too busy for me. There's lots of boat traffic in the harbor, float planes flying overhead, and cars on the highway.

I spent today walking from one end of the city to the other (twice—once in the morning and once in the afternoon). There’s an amazing amount of traffic for a road system that doesn’t connect with the outside world. My first impression of Ketchikan was unfavorable in comparison with Rupert, where motorists stop if it looks as if you’re even thinking about stepping into a crosswalk. In my first hour on the streets of Ketchikan, two drivers used me as a slalom pole as they entered parking lots. The west side of Ketchikan is pretty junky—many buildings are closed or abandoned, few are well maintained, and they show the weather badly. It’s industrial—there’s a big marine freight terminal near where Lacuna is moored, and when they shuffle the containers around it gets pretty noisy.

Ketchikan cruise ship dock (click here for a larger image)

The east end of Ketchikan is very different—upscale tourist shops by the dozen near the cruise ship docks. Half the shops, it seems, were jewelers; the other half, souvenir and novelty shops.

Ketchikaners are proud of their whore-house heritage. Dolly's has been rehabilitated as a tourist attraction. (click here for a larger image) To my mind, the city now whores to cruise ships.

Ketchikan stairs are not for the faint-hearted (or weak of heart!)

There’s no level ground in Ketchikan. It’s built on pilings or rock cliffs. The Forest Service headquarters is built over the water near the boat basin. Many businesses are on wharfs or pilings. Homes are built on the cliff sides; multi-story stairways (with street names and mailboxes) climb to the heights. One lane of the main street goes through a tunnel because there isn’t enough width for two lanes past the rocky point.

Ketchikan stairs have street names and signs (click here for a larger image)

 

Ketchikaners are fond of eagles

The tide range is so great and boat hauling facilities so few that many boaters use tidal grids to paint their boat bottoms.

5/29/05. I headed to the gas dock early, but had a long wait behind two motoryachts that were holding position, waiting for their turn. I had to circle in tight quarters for twenty minutes or more before they got their turn, finished, and moved on. This time, conditions were right and I was able to fill both the boat tank and the generator without spilling a drop. Finally! I was especially motivated because there were lots of jellies in the water. Now, every time I see an anemone or jellyfish, I wonder what it's thinking.

When I left Ketchikan, I considered exploring the west end of Behm Canal for a day, but there were so many sportsfishing boats that I decided to wait until the return trip. Misty Fiords recreation area comprises the eastern arm of the canal and is high on my list of places to visit. I motored north in Clarence Strait, entered Ernest Sound and set anchor in Vixen Harbor. The entry to Vixen Harbor was very narrow and the little biting bugs found me before Lacuna had come to a stop. The first order of business after setting the anchor was setting up the bug net.

5/30/05. When I weighed anchor in the morning, it came up tangled with an old crab pot and its line. I had to cut its line loose to finish raising the anchor. Again, I had to power up to break the anchor free. It's a minor annoyance compared to the security that a good anchor set gives a boater.

As I was motoring through Seward Passage, three or four Dall's porpoises came to visit. They played around the boat, diving under the bow and surfacing for breath alongside. None made eye contact like the Dall's that Lacuna met some years ago at Turn Point in the San Juans (an unforgettable experience!), but it was great to see them. I've been disappointed that I haven't seen more cetaceans. I've seen quite a few seals but few porpoises and no whales. But hope springs eternal. If I don't see them in the waters where Lacuna is headed, I might never.

I made a pass through the little cove that's the landing for the Anan Creek bear observatory, but there were no bears in evidence. From my reading, it seems that the salmon run that they exploit occurs in July and August. Maybe we'll stop there on the way back south.

Blake Channel cirque bowl. As a skier, I find it disorienting to see cirque bowls at sea level. (click here for a larger image)

I anchored in Madan Bay with some trepidation. I'm now in a region where charting is often incomplete or absent. On both the paper chart and the chartplotter, no detail was shown except the shoreline. It makes a skipper a little nervous. I turned off the chartplotter--I could see the shore. I kept my eyes on the depth sounder and found a good anchorage in 25 feet of water close to shore at the head of the bay.

5/31/05. I motored from Madan Bay to Wrangell, where I needed to make some phone calls. I've finally been driven to the point of buying a new autopilot to replace the one I bought at a swap meet. Caveat emptor! It has an annoying problem that could be dangerous. At unpredictable times, it will suddely withdraw its actuator completely, making Lacuna take a hard turn to port. It gradually finds its way back to the pre-set course, but rounding back takes too long except at the highest workable rudder-gain setting, which is one step short of uncontrollably twitchy. The unit, and Autohelm ST2000, is over-sized for little Lacuna; it's made for boats twice as heavy and several feet longer. As a result, the optimum rudder gain setting is the lowest setting, and like most machines, it doesn't work all that efficiently at the edges of its operating range. But at the lowest setting, Lacuna goes way off course after an uncalled-for port dodge, so I have to set the gain way too high to get it back to course quickly. I'll have to send the unit in for re-programming and then sell it to someone with a larger boat.

I've tried every setting and adjustment possible, and every combination of inputs on both the power source and the Seatalk/NMEA data bus. Nothing that I've done has had a measurable effect on the syndrome; it must be an innate software code error. Sometimes it will happen three times in 15 minutes (then I shut if off in disgust and hand-steer); sometimes it won't happen for a couple of days. It's embarrasing when there are other boats nearby, especially when they're passing on my port. It's dangerous in a narrow channel or when sailing. A port dodge when running on starboard tack would mean an unintended jibe.

About 10:00, I anchored in Highfield Anchorage, off the Wrangell airport, to make some calls on my cell phone. I wanted to have a new tillerpilot sent by air freight to Petersburg, where I'll be meeting Jill, Miles, and Dima. I called the harbormaster at Petersburg, who tried his best to help but in the end had to give me little hope because the US postal service was the only delivery to town; no UPS, FedEx, or DHL Express. I called West Marine. They had an Autohelm ST1000+ in their South Carolina warehouse, but it would take five to seven working days by USPO to get to Petersburg. That won't work. I called the harbormaster, Brian, again, but we couldn't come up with any reasonable alternative, so I called West Marine again and had the unit shipped to my home. I didn't want to have Jill burdened with it on her flight here, but it's the only way it would work.

I skipped landing in Wrangell and motored west. To the north, there's a broad expanse of water known as Dry Strait. It's the most direct route to Petersburg, but it's passable only at high tide and only with local knowledge, according to the cruising guides. The deep rocky channel carved by glaciers has been filled with silt from the Stikine River. The water is almost opaque, a tan-green color from the fine sediment still suspended in the water of the deep channel.

Dry Strait (click here for larger image)

The river is filled not only with sediment but with fish, apparently. I almost crossed a gill net, to my surprise and the distress of the boat's skipper. Fishermen use round orange floats to mark everything--crab pots, shrimp traps, longline ends. I'd seen many and passed close to several throughout the waters without incident. But I guess it hadn't been gill net season yet, because this was the first I'd encountered. The fishermen put an orange float at both ends of the net when they set it perpendicular to the shore. The boat holds station at one end of the net or the other until it's time to pull the net--until some bozo like me comes along and looks as if he's going to cut across the net--bad business for boater and fisherman alike. I like to cruise close to shore when the water is deep. Fishermen set their nets close to shore. I saw this little fishboat charging at me at full speed--not all that fast; with deep displacement hulls they can't plane but they can push a big bow wave when they're driven hard. It caught my attention at just the same time that I saw the little white floats that hold up the net. I pulled the tiller hard over, waved at the fishboat, and headed around the orange float that marked the seaward end of the net. Later, I felt better when I heard calls on the VHF to boaters who were headed toward nets--including one that was obviously to a fishboat skipper that the net-setter knew. "Nordly, you're headed for my net...Nordly, do you have your radio on?... Nordly, my net! Jim, Nate, are you awake?" From then on, I watched for the floats at both ends of the net and took a wide course early to reassure the fisherman that I was aware of his set.

As a result of the sedimentation in Dry Strait, most of the boats on the Inside Passage (smaller than the biggest cruise ships, which take a more seaward route) travel through Wrangell Narrows. Unlike Tongass Narrows, the current can be substantial. I was ahead of schedule, so I decided to stop for a couple of days in St. John Harbor on Zarembo Island, only five miles away from the south entry to the Narrows. It was conveniently located and touted as the best anchorage in the area, so I was looking forward to it. But I had some reservations. On the chart, the surrounding islets didn't look as if they'd provide much protection to the north and west.

Unfortunately, the exposure to the NW made for an uncomfortable afternoon after I anchored because the wind set Lacuna sideways to the swells that sneaked between the islands. Even with the riding sail up, she tacks at anchor, and at the extreme of one tack, the boat was beam-on to the swells, rocking enough to knock things off shelves and countertops. I scanned the harbor for a more protected spot but couldn't see anything worth moving to. Fortunately, the swells abated around sunset and I slept comfortably, but the memory of the discomfort, and hearing on the weather radio that the wind would be 25 knots from the west the next day, was enough to make me want to move as soon as I could. When I went to bed, my tentative plan was to set anchor in another harbor south of the narrows.

St. John Harbor (click here for larger image)

6/1/05. I’ve been trying to re-program my sleep habits to work more with the sun than with the clock. The sun rises at 4 AM and sets about 9:30. I was up before 5 AM, planning to paddle Bratwurst around St. John Bay for a while before moving on. But before breakfast I got out the laptop and looked up the currents for Wrangell Narrows.I saw that if I left the harbor by 6:00, I could get a good ride most of the way. It didn’t take long for me to decide to head north. Like a few other long, narrow passages (Grenville Channel among them), the rising tide flows into both ends of the channel; the currents meet somewhere in the middle. The ebb tide flows out of both ends of the channel (don't ask me to explain--it's water). The trick is to catch the rising tide and time the passage so that the boat is at the turning point at high slack, then ride the ebb out the other end. It worked like that for me today, but I was a bit too early and had an hour or so of adverse currents in the middle.

Wrangell Narrows may be the busiest waterway in Alaska. In the 22 miles, I was passed by a northbound and a southbound ferry, numerous small commercial fishing vessels, an Alaska Fish & Game trawler, and several other boats. Fortunately, when I met the ferries I was not in the narrowest reaches.

 

Lacuna shares Wrangell Narrows with the ferry.

Not all the ships sharing the channel were bigger than Lacuna. This boater and I matched speed for miles.

Petersburg (click here for larger image)

By 11:00 AM, Lacuna was tied up at a slip in Petersburg's North Harbor. At the northern end of Wrangell Narrows, is a nice little town. It’s called “Little Norway,” and it’s obvious that the citizens are proud of their heritage. My Norse-blooded mother would feel right at home with all the rosemaling on the signs and storefronts. Although the Alaska weather (mixed perhaps with a bit of poverty) takes its toll on buildings here as in Ketchikan, Petersburg is clean and well maintained overall. It’s not a port of call for the cruise ships, so there’s no jewelry and fur district.

This longship has a place of pride in Petersburg.

Even the speed bump signs celebrate Norse heritage in Petersburg.

Rosmaling decorates many buildings.

Petersburg harbor (click here for a larger image)

Petersburg is a fishing center. Almost all the boats in the harbor are commercial fishing vessels, many of them small, one-man operations. Even small open aluminum skiffs sport bold commercial permit numbers on their hulls. On one side of Lacuna's slip is the aluminum troller of an active fisherman—he’s been in and out of the dock a couple of times today, getting ready to go longlining for halibut. On the other side is a retired fishing vessel, a former pleasure craft about 28 feet long converted to a troller and now being used as a getaway. It’s covered with miscellaneous tarps, some canvas, some plastic, that may have been there for years. There’s kelp several feet long growing on the hull below the waterline. An elderly gentleman stays on board all day long, sometimes chatting with friends, mostly just hanging out in the cabin. I doubt that his boat has moved from the dock in years.

As I've been traveling, the jellyfish of Roscoe Inlet continue to occupy my mind. When I saw their gathering, as I realized later, their awareness and ability filled in a link missing from a chain of thought that I’ve been working on for years. I realized with some surprise that I had been asking a bogus question and that most scientists studying consciousness, even great innovators and researchers including the late Francis Crick, are misled by the wrong question, and thus will be forever frustrated in their attempts to understand consciousness.

The question they ask (and that I myself had puzzled over before I saw the jellyfish ball) is: What level of neural organization is necessary for consciousness to emerge? The jellyfish showed me that the question is nonsense. With their simple nerve nets, scientists had assumed that jellyfish were more or less automatons, responding to immediate stimuli in very limited ways. Not so, says Bob the jellyfish, who got the invitation to the Ball, decided to join the party, followed the signs without getting lost, and joined his comrades for a big gathering in the middle of the waters of Roscoe Inlet. Think of what that takes.

First, Bob has to have the mechanism and the ability to recognize the call to join the party. Was it chemical? It would be the simplest explanation for the invitation. Did some alluring young thing wearing too much perfume set off a cascade of attraction, perhaps stimulating nearby jellies to release some attractive pheromone into the water?

The pheromone would diffuse and be carried by the currents. Bob the jellyfish smells it and thinks, A party! Given how many jellyfish there must have been at the Ball, jellies might have come from miles away. How did they find their way?

When a male moth smells the pheromones released by a sexually receptive female, he can follow the scent upwind for a couple of miles to find her. He has the advantage that he can see which way the wind is blowing by watching the terrain around him. If he flies directly upwind, he’ll find her. He needs to remember, moment by moment, how strong the odor is. As long as it’s stronger this moment than it was a moment ago, he’s on the right track. If it’s less strong, he turns a bit off the wind, tacking back and forth until it is again increasing in strength. But Bob the jellyfish can’t do it that easily. He’s in 300 feet of water. There are no landmarks against which he can judge the direction of the current. He has to depend on his ability to smell. He’s moving very slowly compared to the male moth, and to detect changes in a pheromone gradient he must be able to remember exactly how strong the smell was for quite a while before he’s traveled far enough to make a difference in the concentration of the pheromone. He must be able to orient himself to follow the gradient, and must be able to propel himself in the direction that he wishes to go.

Bob the jellyfish demonstrates many, most, or all of the characteristics of consciousness. He made a decision, based on outside evidence and innate tendencies ("instinct"), to travel to the Ball. He knows which direction he wants to go and how to control his orientation. He remembers from moment to moment how strong the pheromone concentration is. He has the will to pursue the goal and pushes on, perhaps for days, to get there. What does he have? Volition, memory, intention, perception, and a host of other features that characterize consciousness. And if emotion is nature’s way of motivating and manipulating us to make the right choices to survive and propagate our genes, Bob must feel emotion, too.

I have long been fascinated by paramecia, the microscopic single-celled protozoans that look like fuzzy slippers. They look fuzzy because they are covered by cilia. Where a foot would fit into a slipper, they have a structure that functions as a mouth, connected to another structure that functions as a digestive tract. They swim rapidly, the beating of the cilia finely coordinated to direct their path through the water. They react to light, attractive and repulsive chemicals, and a host of other stimuli. They can be trained to respond to novel stimuli by Skinnerian conditioning. They have complicated sex lives—some species have a dozen mating types, only some of which can mate with any one type. And we think having two sexes complicates things! They perform all the life functions that we do but they do it without any nerves at all. And even smaller are the motile bacteria with their amazing capacity for directed movement. They must have will, memory, intention, experience, and motivation as well as the ability to sense and respond to their environment.

Somehow, though, I had a disconnect in what I now recognize as a continuum. I realize now that it was the assumption that consciousness is a function of the nervous system. The insight that I gained, one that makes so much fit together, is that the nervous system is the product, not the cause, of consciousness. Some élan vital, some life force, some vitalist essence, gives rise to the nervous system, but only in some organisms. Most organisms don’t need nerves to do all that they need to do. The spirochete bacterium, the amoeba, the paramecium, the lily and the sequoia don’t need nerves. Just because we have nerves, we have consciousness, and we can lose our consciousness if our nervous system is damaged, we assume that a nervous system is necessary for consciousness.

Biological science is so mechanistic (both its strength and its weakness) that its practitioners have great difficulty in thinking beyond the mechanism. They assume that the mechanism is primary and that higher-level organization, such as mental activity, stems from the mechanism. With the ascendancy of molecular biology and its explications of heredity and metabolism, the mechanistic view has become even more firmly entrenched. In my view, they have the cart before the horse.

My belief is that physicists will lead the way to a more complete understanding of consciousness and what the ineffable essence of life is. Ironically, it was physicists who pioneered molecular biology when many of them left physics after inventing the nuclear bomb. The same field of study that led to nuclear weapons, quantum physics, may lead to a greater understanding of the organizing principle that we call life. In quantum physics, the observer, the consciousness that collapses the probability wave, plays a central role. If physicists can develop a more complete understanding of the observer, we may well be on our way to understanding the essence of life.

6/2/05. Despite forecasts of 15- to 20-knot NW wind, I left the Petersburg harbor for a day of sailing and sightseeing. I headed into Frederick Sound, headed SE to see ice from Le Conte glacier. Near the east shore, I had a nice easy run downwind (with no motor running for a change) until I got close to Le Conte Bay, which is barred by the Stikine River shoals at the north end of Dry Strait. I knew I wouldn't get close to the ice, but it was a thrill to see it. I approached until the water was 25 feet deep. The chop got unruly after hitting the shallows after the long fetch and it got a little bouncy, so I turned and made for the east shore.

Icebergs from Le Conte glacier.

After an excellent hour of 6-knot sailing, the wind almost died, but the chop didn't let up. I got close to shore and set anchor in the shallows, in a little bit of protection behind a small point upwind, to take a break. It was a rough ride on the rode but I was so tired that I slept for half an hour. I brewed a cup of tea and set off again. I had to hustle to get the anchor up because Lacuna was close to a lee shore. I got everything ready, started OB, put on my most secure-footed deck shoes, and got out on the foredeck. As soon as the anchor was in its chock, I wound the chain temporarily around the cleat, left the rode bag on the foredeck, and hustled back to the cockpit. I put the motor in gear, revved up, and beat feet into deeper water. I set the autopilot to take the easiest heading through the waves and went back on the deck to retrieve the anchor rode. As the bow plunged up and down in the waves, I timed my return to the cockpit so that I'd move the heavy rode bag only when the boat was falling from a crest--the bag was light and easy to move until the bow rose in the next swell. It took three waves to get back into the cockpit with the bag.

As I had expected in the morning when I heard the weather forecast and planned my route, the return to Petersburg took me directly into the chop for a couple of hours. There was too little wind to make sail, and the town was directly upwind. It was splashy, with spray coming over the bow and shooting meters to each side when Lacuna's bow plunged into the face of a wave. When I got close to the entry of Wrangell Narrows, I had to change sunglasses once I was sure the splashiness was over--I couldn't see into the sun with my salt-encrusted glasses. When I got to the docks, I motored directly to the loading dock where there was a water hose. I rinsed off the jib, which had been sprayed and splashed many times, filled the water tank and containers, and rinsed Lacuna before running the labyrinth back to her assigned slip.

I'll stay here through Sunday, when Jill, Miles, and Dima will join me. I could get to like Petersburg. The people are friendly, the work is honest, and there's a good NPR affiliate, where I heard an extended discussion about the use of fish oil to power generators in outlying areas. Only in Alaska!

--Dennis Todd

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