Alalska 2018 Blog Post 7 - Wrangell to Petersburg

May 13, 2018

After docking Spirit, Patrick walked the 1 ½ miles to town and found the hardware store still open to purchase a shop vacuum to clean out the Diesel Kabola heater, which had sooted up badly.  Patrick made it with minutes to spare, since everything closed at 3:00 PM.  We decided on Mother’s Day dinner  at the Stikine Inn, at the bar, since the place was so crowded for Mother’s Day.  Food and service was great, with large portions good for several meals.

Heritage Harbor near low tide

May 14, 2018

The rain returned and stayed all day, so we cleaned the Kabola Heater with the new shop vacuum; the heater now runs fine.  Patrick also cleaned the watermaker filters and did general engine checks, as well as arranging a main engine service check on May 17 in Petersburg.

Nearly Deserted main street in Wrangell

Wall Art is becoming common

More wall art in Wrangell

May 15, 2018

A sunny day in Wrangell, with walks into town and slow cooking a pork shoulder in BBQ sauce so we could have dinner with cruising friends on the Selene 53 “Tranquility”.  Rick and Pat Lennon arrived from Montana and we had a relaxing evening on board with the slow cooked pork, preceded by spot prawn cocktails.

Miriam and Lennon's sharing spot prawns

Our version of a spot prawn cocktail

May 16, 2018

The morning was sunny, but cold, only 46 degrees.  We cast off the lines at 0855 and headed west towards Vank and Sokolof islands.  The channel between Vank and Sokolof Islands has high currents.  In Sumner Strait, the flood current past Station Island increased to more than 2 knots against us..  Entering Wrangell Narrows at Point Alexander at 1158, we were boosted by the flood current, at times reaching 4 knots.  The helpful current persisted until Green Point.

We were early for docking in the sometimes-high currents in Petersburg Harbor, especially since we were assigned a slip in the newer North Harbor, closer to town but more exposed to the current in Wrangell Narrows. We slowed down and timed our arrival closer to slack water and at 1432 were tied up at slip 35 in the North Harbor, having come only 40 nautical miles since Wrangell.

Our view out the wheelhouse windows is great, north down the entrance to the narrows with the mountains and glaciers across Frederick Sound providing a great backdrop.

View from the wheelhouse in Petersburg

The “Little Norway” festival starts tomorrow and runs through Sunday, with parades, dinners, herring toss contests and generally fun for all.  The Little Norway festival is centered around May 17, Norwegian Independence Day.  We were last here for the festival in 2015.

May 17, 2018

Another sunny day in Petersburg.  We have engine maintenance scheduled at “Piston & Rudder” at 1000, near low tide.  Low tide this morning is -3.5 feet.  We left our slip at 0900 and were at the shop at 0910.  By the time the brief servicing was complete, the flood tide was flowing at 4.3 knots, too fast to even leave the float at the shop, so we waited for the current to subside and took care of other miscellaneous maintenance tasks like replacing a failed GFCI outlet on the flybridge.  By 1500 the currents were low enough that we returned to North Harbor, backing into our slip with a 3 knot current pushing into the slip.   We were thankful for bow and stern thrusters.

This boat has been lying on the beach for years, no thrusters!