Dear Chubby Fans,

I'm stuck in Craig one more day, waiting for this rather boisterous storm to pass through so I can go to sea. I'm taking the extra day to finish the story which I started yesterday.

I felt a bit a relief to extricate myself from the claustrophobic confines of this tightly enclosed little cove and community. At 4 pm I rode out with tide into Sumner Strait and headed southwest thinking that I would sail all night and arrive in Craig mid morning of the next day. We were making good time, motoring in calm seas and then sailing a bit as a westerly started up. The Strait was full of kelp rafts, though, and the thought of trying to dodge these tangled masses at night dissuaded me from the night sailing idea. We started thinking about an anchorage for the night that we could reach before dark, now only 3 hours off. The days are starting to shorten significantly with sunset now at 8:30 pm which is starting to limit our coastal sailing options and the length of our daily runs. The nearest feasible anchorage seemed to be at Warren Cove in Warren Island which lies at the mouth of Sumner Strait where it empties into the ocean. Even though we were making 6 knots on the ebb we had 20 miles to go so we were doomed to our second nighttime entrance in a row to an unfamiliar anchorage.

As night fell and we approached Warren Cove all pretense of avoiding kelp was abandoned and we just sailed on, oblivious. The vague outlines of the steep ridges of Warren Island gave little hint of distance and perspective and I found it quite difficult to identify the cove entrance. Luckily I had an exact Lat and Long for the entrance out of the guide book. Trusting my impaired vision rather than the GPS, I started turning into the wrong bay. I was not the first to make this error, apparently, because the bay was aptly named False Bay. Sensing our error at the last moment before running up on the rocky point, we veered out to the open channel again, cleared the point and found the proper entrance to Warren Cove just around the corner. There were two fishing boats anchored in the Cove, and their anchor lights gave me a bit of range with which to work my way. I glided between the two vessels and anchored in 30 feet. I set the anchor hard which turned out to be critically important the following morning.

Warren Cove, surrounded by mountains of 2000 feet or more had a large valley which led down to the cove. As I found out, westerly winds coming from the open ocean spill over the crest of the island and funnel into the valley, spilling into Warren Cove with great force. This is the classic topography for the creation of williwas, as these accelerated gusts of wind are called. I was awakened at dawn by the furious flapping of my boom tent and the slapping of the halyards. The williwas were upon us with great enthusiasm and Chubby was jerking at her anchor with some violence. The water was whipped into a froth as clouds of spray were torn from the surface and went rolling toward the rocky point at the entrance to the cove. Staying put did not seem like a comfortable option because, the anchor had not dragged even an inch during this onslaught, I didn't feel like this was a situation to wait out passively.

I removed the boom tent, took off the big jib and replaced it with the small one, and got ready to set sail. I would only have a couple of minutes between the time I broke the anchor loose until Chubby would be blown up on the rocks, so the escape plan had to come off without a hitch. The wind was quartering across the cove which would give us a broad reach straight out the mouth of the cove. I figured we could do that easily on the jib alone, particularly since I would not have time to raise the main and reef under these conditions. Waiting for a lull in the gusts, I started pulling the anchor as fast as I could haul. The anchor came away clean and I dumped the rode, chain anchor right into the cabin to get it out of the way. As soon as the anchor cleared the bottom, Chubby took off at a couple of knots under bare poles. I hoisted the little jib and we shot out the cove and into open water. As we cleared the point, the gusts moderated and settled to a steady 20 kts from directly off the open Pacific. The waves were running about 5 feet with breaking tops. I raised the main with two reefs and off we sped, making close to 6 kts, toward Craig, 35 miles to the east.

We had two narrow passes to clear on the way to Craig, for which I was lacking the detailed charts necessary to navigate them without guesswork. For both passages though, I was blessed with good fortune. As I approached the first, a tug pulling a large timber barge caught and passed me heading for the first narrows. He went through just a half mile ahead so I had no problem following him as he maneuvered through. The same thing happened at the second narrows. Just as I entered between the rock shoals, a tug boat, this time without a tow, passed me and I obligingly followed. As we cleared the last rocks and the massive kelp beds lining both sides of the channel, we entered into San Alberto Bay and saw our straight shot to Craig, 6 miles to the east. As I entered the second narrows, I saw a large sailing vessel far astern. By the time we got the Craig harbor entrance, Shadow Catcher, a 53 foot ketch had caught up to us and we tied up side by side at the same time. In introducing ourselves after securing the dock lines, Larry and Rhona and I started comparing our pleasant experiences in Glacier Bay, the cloudless days, the Aurora filled nights and based on the string of similarities, found that we had both been anchored in Reid Inlet in Glacier Bay on the same night. We were the only two boats in the Inlet that night but being anchored a mile apart, had not establish any contact. I clearly remember seeing the large ketch anchored at the foot of Reid Glacier as I pulled into the Inlet at dusk to anchor on the far shore.

Larry is a retired helicopter pilot. He and Rhona have been living aboard Shadow Catcher for the last 12 years, having cruised Mexico, Central America and Hawaii on their way back to their home port of Sydney, near Victoria on Vancouver Island. Half their time they spend wandering the US and Canada in their motorhome. Their house in Sydney has been leased out for years. Larry had a lot of experience with cruising the west coast of the Queen Charlottes and Vancouver Island so he was able to give me a lot of valuable information about the sea conditions I could expect on my next leg.

Later in the afternoon a couple of fellows came by Chubby and introduced themselves. One of them, Bill, said that he started his sailing career with a West Wight Potter 19 and he had to come over and check out my Potter. He was now sailing an elegant 70-foot schooner built in Maine in 1924. It was one of 13 identical schooners built for wealthy New Yorkers to race with. The schooner was in very good condition with the original wooden masts and boom. I had greatly admired this gracefully narrow, long, low freeboard yacht as I entered the harbor, as it was tied up right at the entrance. Bill was an experienced blue water voyager having sailed his schooner down the West Coast to Mexico, across to the South Seas then back through Hawaii to Alaska. He too was landless, living aboard his schooner. His son is a senior at Stanford and lives aboard a wooden 41-foot sloop built in 1944. The sloop is in the Redwood City yacht harbor and Bill was looking for Bay Area sailors to sail the boat and look after it, after his son graduates and moves out. He put me on his list. He was headed down the coast on the outside, headed for San Francisco on his way around the world. As with Larry, we discussed the various options and I was fortunate to enjoy the voice of experience before embarking on the next leg. Which brings us to new plan.

After noting the general deterioration of the weather, the rapidly waning days of August, and the edge in Naomi's voice when we discussed the length of this voyage and my schedule for getting back home, I decided to accelerate the trip south by making a long ocean passage from Craig to Neah Bay in Washington, a distance of 620 miles. Even with only a few days of favorable winds, this option would save perhaps ten days over the return route through the Inside Passage. Weather reports for Thursday and beyond are starting to sound favorable, so if this current storm passes through by this afternoon, as promised, I will leave on the ebb tide tomorrow morning, headed for the open sea and Neah Bay. The passage will take about 6 to 10 days depending on how many southerlies I'll have to do battle with on the way. The advantages are less kelp and logs to dodge, no rocky bays to enter in the fog in order to anchor for the night, and no tidal currents to buck. The disadvantage, of course, is the possibility of meeting up with a full blown Gulf of Alaska southeasterly gale. Even in that case, the west coast of the Queen Charlottes and Vancouver Island have many deep bays that offer excellent protection. Anyway, that's the plan and I'll let you know how it all works out in ten days or so.

Love...Bill