Sincerely, Denise

SNUG ANCHORAGE TO KETCHIKAN

Wednesday, July 15^th

Today we were able to enjoy a more tolerable departure time of 7AM as conditions in Clarence are predicted to be favorable all morning. As you may recall, we had a lot of swing time on the anchor the past two days with gusts clocking over 20mph in Snug Anchorage. When John pulled up the anchor today, an impossibly large scoop of mud was securely embedded into the plow and it took a good 10 minutes to offload! Once that was accomplished, we were on our way. Clarence started out with just ripples of wind on the surface but continued to build over the morning into blowing 20mph from the northwest, which was good for us because it’s behind us. We had following seas most of the way, even with the tide change which was opposing a couple of hours into our journey, creating some stacked up waves. Then all of a sudden the last hour, the wind just died off. One never knows what is actually going to happen out here. Once again, we were fortunate to be going south as it would otherwise have been a sloppy trip. We arrived in Ketchikan and attempted to go straight to the fuel dock because fuel is $1 cheaper here than in Canada, and when you have to onboard 1000+ gallons, that’s real money. Nope – no room at the fuel dock so we’ll have to do it tomorrow. We arrived at Ketchikan Moorage, a small private facility we always patronize, and all settled into our dockage. There was big drama and scuttle on the dock – apparently the night before, or more accurately at 3AM this morning, a fishing vessel aptly named "Predator" rammed into the yacht moored next to us, nearly killing the two crew members sleeping in their forward bunks, and tearing an enormous hole in the fiberglass hull. They think the fisherman fell asleep at the wheel. To make matters worse, after punching a hole into the yacht the fisherman engaged in reverse to try and extract his bow from the yacht’s bow and ended up dragging the yacht right off the dock, snapping all the lines in the process. Now that is a LOT of pressure applied to shear off probably 4 to 5 thick braided lines. From there we were told they had to load 600 pounds of sand onto the fisherman's bow in order to lower his bow enough so it could be extracted from the yacht. The dock was also damaged and they weren’t sure to what extent, but the owner was down there, the coast guard were on site, it was a big event. The unfortunate folks that owned the yacht will have their vacation cut short, they weren’t on the boat at the time but were coming back up to continue their trip. Only the two crew were onboard when this happened. That will be a big insurance claim! Thank God nobody was hurt. We then walked up town to do some quick perusing because Connie only has a few hours today to shop as she is leaving today to fly home for a couple days. The rest of us get to hang out in Ketchikan, dine out, catch up on sleep, reprovision, and get some walks in!