Day 42 ~ Red Buff Bay to Irish Creek in Rocky Passage

Our intention was that we were going to do our float plan this morning. Instead, we slept/laid around in bed until 9:30 and pulled the anchor after freeing it from all the kelp. To our delight, we had 125 shrimp in the pots. As we headed towards the exit of the bay, Dad noticed the chop in Chatham Straits and he decided that we need to put up the dinghy. We stopped just short of the entrance and the guys went to work lifting the dinghy, while I kept us off a nasty submerged rock.

Then we headed out into the abyss without a float plan. Princess Chief (my new nickname) was not happy!  We were getting 4 -5 foot swells our port beam and we were routinely throwing salt all over the boat. Frustrated, I asked Dad to do something other than talk on his phone while I fixed lunch. Magically, Dad went to the bridge, adjusted our course and things settled down. Princess Chief was much happier.  

The sun was beating down so hard that at one point we considered putting up the bridge top to protect us. We motored past Kake, once again forgetting to take a picture of the world’s tallest totem pole. As we got towards the end of Keku Straits we weaved our way through several of the islands. At one point we noticed an oncoming boat that was of fair size. We were encouraged because we thought that they had come from Rocky Passage which was in line to be our next challenge. We had done a great deal of reading on the passage. It was going to save us a full day of back tracking all the way to Petersburg, however, according to the author of the book that we have been using on a daily basis the largest boat that they knew of that had made the passage was 50 feet and we are 53 feet.

We hailed the boat as they passed us only to hear from the captain that we must be crazy, if we thought that he had come from Devils Elbow which is at the height of Rocky Passage.  He did tell us that a friend of his was anchored in Irish Creek just about the summit and was preparing to go through Rocky Passage tomorrow. Shortly we arrived at Irish Creek which is in Rock Passage just short of the Summit, the first major challenge. We zigzagged our way into a narrow slot and anchored the boat. At first, the horseflies were attacking us but thanks to the electronic bug zappers we were able to protect ourselves.

Once settled, we went on a recon mission to investigate the passage. We started by visiting the folks on the ‘Sitka Bear’ to see what local knowledge we could gain. They were delightful people with two large black labs on board. In fact, the female of the pair jumped into the dinghy with us. As it turns out, Dad knew someone from the past that they knew from Ketchikan, six degrees of separation is so true. They were geologists and seemed more interested in retrieving crystals and agates off the beach than the passage itself.

The tide was low which allowed us to confirm each navigational aide and rock. Our exploration convinced us that we could make a safe passage. Back at the big boat, we had all 125 shrimp for dinner – yummy. The rest of the evening was spent updating the blog. The moon was up and the skies were beautiful colors.