This was a long trip, 13 days out. I left on 7/24 and returned on 08/05 and logged 286 miles traveled.
I made the trip out and back alone, but once at the destination 4 other boats eventually arrived. The people on the other boats were friends, former co-workers, and assorted kids.
Here is a map snippet that shows my track from the Garmin InReach tracking. I took exactly the same route on the way out as the way back, and I overnighted in the same cove on both legs of the trip.
I must warn any readers that there are a couple of photos of dead deer in this post. If you are anti-hunting and against that sort of thing, you may want to bail out of this post.
Marking a line on a chart is easy to do. It's much harder to actually make the journey. From looking at the chart above it isn't immediately clear that most of the 143 miles are in very exposed waters (Clarence Strait & Sumner Strait) which can be extremely rough, even life threatening at times. For my journey I was lucky and had pretty much calm seas for about 85% of the trip out and back. I did hit some moderately rough patches on the way out, but they were not dangerous, just a little uncomfortable.
On the way out and on the way back I anchored up for the night in a little cove called Exchange Cove. When I was leaving at first light on the way out, I was greeted with a beautiful sunrise.
When I got to the destination dock there was another boat already there. Thankfully the man from the other boat came out and grabbed my lines when I came in because it was very windy at the time. Running a boat solo is pretty easy when you are out on the open sea. But it can get dicey when coming into a dock or a slip when alone and in a stiff breeze.
As you can see the weather was sunny and warm.
The other boat at the dock was a 32' Ranger Tug owned by Tom & Ginny Dost. We had some nice chats and took a long walk up the road together. Their boat is named "Little Elsie." They are from California but keep the boat in Seattle. They were going to be doing some fishing at the fishing lodge that is nearby.
I got there a few days before my buddies, so I had some time to kill. I took several long walks up the logging roads. I saw several does and fawns. This is the first group that I saw in my wanderings.
Because of the long mileage on this trip, I decided I needed to carry extra fuel. Theoretically I could have made it without doing so, but there was the possibility that I might have to backtrack and escape bad weather which would have burned extra fuel.
I decided to carry two 15-gallon fuel drums and also four 5-gallon jerry jugs. I also needed to engineer a way to get the fuel from the drums into the tank. They are too heavy to carry, and they did not fit close to where I fill fuel. I bought a manual fuel transfer pump and attached a regular water hose to it to reach from the fuel drum over to the fill spout on the side of the boat. I was worried that this process would get messy, so I had lots of absorbent pads at the ready. But it turned out to be an easy and somewhat sterile process with almost no spillage.
I also had to get the fuel from the four 5-gallon jerry jugs into the tank. They had these relatively new eco-friendly pour spouts on them.
Once I read the directions a few times and finally figured out how to work the spouts I found that the fuel barely trickled in. I had brought along a siphon hose with a bulb pump which I thought I could use to siphon the fuel from the jerry jugs into the tank.
The directions said the fuel source should be at least 11" higher than the destination. So, with great effort I came up with the following solution.
Don't laugh, it would have worked, except for one unforeseen problem. The jerry jugs had an internal plastic filter inside the neck that went down about 3". That prevented the siphon hose from going all the way down into the jug. I tried pulling it out with needle nose pliers, and then tried to punch a big hole through it with a big screwdriver, but neither of those efforts worked. In the end I took the eco-friendly spouts off and used a big funnel over the fill spout, and that worked flawlessly with no spills. KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid)
There were 2 US Forest Service people on the island when I got there that were mapping the many caves on the island. Their project was over and a USFS boat came in to pick them up. This was one of the very few visitors I had during my stay there.
I was of course on foot so I could not get very far up the logging road, but I did get some good shots of the little "nook" that was just up the road from the dock.
On my many walks I did see several more does and fawns.
This is the quiet before the storm. The "Little Elsie" had left the dock and the other 4 boats had not yet arrived. While I was looking forward to seeing my friends again, the solitude was nice too.
This is the first boat to arrive, my buddy John. He had his buddy Jake The Dog with him on this trip. I helped him run this boat up from Seattle when it was first new, along with others. John & I have been sharing boating adventures for decades. It's nice to have the opportunity to visit with old friends.
John took me for a ride on his 4-wheeler. His dog Jake came along as well. Jake was King of the 4-wheeler.
The next boat to arrive was Todd. He just got this boat within the last year. He had his twin daughters Ahna & Kali with him and his brother Luke.
The next to arrive was Bill, with his son Tom & Tom's kids Isaac & Sean. Bill has been coming here literally for decades.
And last to arrive was another Mike with his son Rocky and Rocky's daughter Ryan.
The gang was now all here.
This was our initial setup at the dock. We changed it later on.
Deer season opens on August 1st, and that's what they all came for. I came just for the fellowship and to catch up with old friends.
The first to arrive back in camp with a deer was Rocky's daughter Ryan. She was pretty excited about it.
Then soon after, Todd's daughter Kali came in with a nice buck.
On August 2nd the other Mike ran his boat over to Craig to get fuel and to take his granddaughter Ryan to catch a float plane back to Ketchikan. I went along for the ride.
Craig is a hopping place during the peak of the fishing season. This is a shot of some of the boats anchored out in front of the harbor in Craig.
Most boats don't carry enough freshwater for people to take showers, so sometimes people will jump in the salt water after a few days of hunting in hot sunny weather.
I was the first boat to pull out to head for home because I am the slowest and would take the longest to get back home. Here's a view of the boats at the dock as I pulled away.
There were a lot of Sea Otters in the area, and I tried to get a good shot of one of them.
On the way home I once again stopped in Exchange Cove for the night. As I pulled out at about 4:30 AM the next morning on the final leg back to Ketchikan I was once again treated to a beautiful sunrise.
I stopped at the fuel dock on the way in and filled up. I burned 193 gallons of diesel on this trip and used about 50 gallons of freshwater. It was a long but very enjoyable trip.
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