Sincerely, Denise

CODVILLE LAGOON ~~TO SHEARWATER TO BOTTLENECK~~ TO KHUTZE INLET

Sunday, May 24^th

Our destination today actually started out to be Shearwater for one night, pretty much the last marina on our route before hitting Prince Rupert in 6 days, and was only 17 miles from Codville Lagoon. I was running low on ½ and ½ for my coffee, and Abells needed to top off their fuel anyway. Enroute John and I did some weather research and it seems that today is a better day to do our short crossing of Milbanke Sound (our nemesis from the past) which is an open to the outside waters. Today the waves are predicted to be 2’ with 13 second spacing which is about as good as it gets. Tomorrow the waves are predicted to be up to 8’ with 11 second spacing which is way too sporty for us. So we made the decision to power on past Shearwater once Abells were fueled up, our new destination being Bottleneck Inlet. While Abells were fueling I jumped in the whaler in my rubber rainsuit and motored over to the dock in search of the few items on my grocery list, and Lorraine needed limes to keep the margaritas flowing. She makes the best as I’ve previously mentioned, so we support that cause! The store however turned out to be a complete bust. Rotting produce, many bare shelves, and virtually no dairy or eggs to be had. The best I could do for coffee were 2 cans of condensed skim milk, which sounds terrible but maybe it will work. While in the store another boater said “be careful outside and don’t go around the back of the building, I just scared off a Sow and her Cub” – yikes, bear warnings already! Once back to the boat and Abells all fueled up, we continued on. One of the things in boating is that you always have to keep weather in mind and be willing to adapt your float plan to fit.

Bottleneck Inlet has a beautiful little keyhole entrance to a long skinny picturesque bay and is one of our favorite stops. However, as the morning stretched out I discovered that another flotilla was on the same trajectory as our group, and we watched on the Garmin as their flotilla of 7 boats filed into Bottleneck. Part of the wonder and beauty of this experience of traveling the Inside Passage is the remoteness of it all. We decided to skip Bottleneck and hopefully get ahead of the flotilla by a day so we could enjoy that remote feel, so off we went to Khutze Inlet, another 30 miles beyond. Enroute, the boys decided to test their navigation skills and chose a narrow passage to transit that was showing depths of 12’ on the chart in places, apparently to shave off some travel time. We actually got down to 7’ at one point! But everyone successfully made it through. I think the boys like this sort of technical challenge from time to time.

It poured all day today, and I mean POURED. On the radar it was a dense dark green island of rain on top of us. Our travel time was nearly 12 hours but if one adopts the mindset that these long days are sometimes necessary to “get there” to Alaska, then you just suck it up and go. It is a very long time in the captain’s chair though, and John and I switch off from time to time, him doing the majority most days. We finally arrived at the head of Khutze Inlet around 7:30pm and did some recon on where to anchor. I don’t think we’ve been here before or if we have, it’s been a long time. This is a very deep fjord surrounded by towering mountains with snow on top! Cascading waterfalls are everywhere, the most dramatic one being at the head of the inlet. There’s a river and estuary at the head of the inlet nearby which it is best to anchor but one has to be aware of the very dramatic depth change where the sandbar from the river stretches out – and the charts are not very accurate we’ve found! I think it’s because these sandbars change constantly and continue to grow as silt is deposited from the river. Anyway, it is STUNNING back here, even in the pouring rain. We found anchorage in 80’ of water but as we swung around we saw depths of 140’ so that tells you how fast it drops off. The winds are predicted to be very calm, so we should be fine overnight. I whipped up some teriyaki chicken rice bowls for dinner, which we finally sat down to eat around 9pm. Far Niente is anchored separately from us, and UnforgetAbell rafted alongside them, so tonight was a night off for us from group gatherings. Lorraine is hosting tomorrow’s dinner, so we will all be together tomorrow. As we got into bed I opened our porthole window so I could listen to the waterfalls all night, our very own organic white noise, so peaceful.