Alaska -> Seattle

28 Jul Alaska -> Seattle

Written by Don and Patrick

A lot has happened since we left Kodiak. After hugs and goodbyes to John and Karen, and welcoming Randy aboard, we pointed Starr toward Seward for a quick overnight run, arriving the next morning. Seward is one of those towns that makes an entrance. You come around the point and suddenly you’re cradled in a valley, snow covered mountains so beautiful that they send a chill down your back..

                                                                           Seward Harbor on a rare sunny day

Pulling in there had two purposes, and both mattered to me.

The first was picking up crew, but not just any crew. T and L are old friends, the kind you make once in a while if you’re lucky. Sharry and I met them in French Polynesia over twenty years ago, back in 2002, one of those chance anchorage friendships that cruisers know well. Life scattered us in different directions after that, the way it does, until Covid of all things brought us back together when they sailed to Hawaii nonstop, 4,600 nautical miles. We picked up right where we left off, and they’ve been close friends ever since. Having them step aboard in Seward, duffel bags and sea stories in hand, rounded out a truly solid, salty crew for the long haul back to Seattle.

While we were there for our friends, there was a second reason for Seward, and it was a quieter one. This one stayed with me. I wanted to bring Sharry back to her sister Shelia. The three of us had a hike Sharry loved, one that meant something to all of us, up at 1,800 feet where six years earlier we’d watched three bears playing in a lake below, fittingly we named the previously unnamed Lake, Lake Sharalyn. We walked it together one more time so we could spread some of her ashes in a place that felt right. It was a good day, a hard one, but a good one.

                                  Previously it did not have a name but now is named Lake Sharalyn

                                                                                  Sharry’s sister Sheila and husband Al on the trail

With crew aboard and that quiet errand done, it was time to go. We left Seward behind us, along with a small armada of cruise ships stacked up at the massive new dock, disgorging passengers by the thousands every single day. The locals are not thrilled about being outnumbered in their own town at 5:1, 15,000 tourists, and honestly, it’s hard to blame them.

                                                               Leaving Seward and the Cruise Ships behind

Next stop was Cordova. A quick run, I know, but it was a good excuse to swing by and see our good friend Rob Hurlow. Longtime readers will remember Rob from earlier passages. He took Starr from Hawaii to Fiji with us, and both he and his wife spent about ten days aboard with us in Japan. It was wonderful to catch up with him in Cordova, where he was elbow deep in some boat work of his own on Capaz, after a few problems had cropped up. Nothing like finding a friend covered in grease and swearing at a bilge pump to make you feel right at home.

Seeing Rob elbow deep in his own boat troubles was a fitting warmup, because at this point the story takes a bit of a turn of its own. As many of you know, we’ve been wrestling with our new Humphree stabilizers since the day they were installed 2 years ago. For those who haven’t followed along, the short version is the fins were supposed to be ultra quiet and ultra silent, but instead they’ve been banging loudly enough at anchor to wake us up and make guests wonder if we’d hit something. Humphree tried a few fixes, including replacing all the guts of the servo in Hawaii, but the clunking never stopped. We documented all of it, and if you want the full painful history, it’s laid out at Humphreesucks.com.

Now, since the last update on that site, things have gone from bad to worse. Both servos have had the exterior seal fail, letting water intrude straight into the boat. That was the last straw. We made the call to rip them out entirely and replace them with a far more reliable unit, only two years after they were installed, and they never worked correctly for a single day of it.

                                                                                           The “Evil Humphrees”

We decided to put in ABT/TRAC stabilizers by Innov8v, going back to old reliable hydraulic driven fins, with at rest stabilization included. No more fancy electric servos and finicky seals, just good old hydraulics doing what they’ve always done well.

So, because of all this, we’re heading to Delta Shipyard to haul out the boat, replace the stabilizers, and repaint her. Even though the paint is fifteen years old and still looks remarkably good to most eyes, Patrick and I know where she’s tired. Fifteen years of sun, salt, and good miles don’t lie, even when they’re well cared for.

Leaving Cordova to go to Sitka, we had a choice: backtrack about 50 miles around Hawkins Island and Hinchinbrook Island or take a local “shortcut” we had seen on the chart earlier but dismissed. Having talked to a local fisherman on the dock, though, he said he goes through there all the time, just at the top of the tide. Patrick and I looked at each other, smiled, and said “sounds like a good time.” As you can see from our 121 marks over a 7 mile path, it’s a very narrow track to follow, sometimes with only a few feet under the keel but it was smooth sailing with no problems!

                                                     You can see our 121 marks! very tight margins

                                          You can see the “Backtrack in Red” and the “Shortcut in Blue”

We then pulled into Sitka, where I had a plan to see some old family of mine. We had dinner with my cousins Dale and Pat Dupois, a lovely night of reminiscing over old memories. The next day, Dale took Randy out fishing and looped back to pick me up. We didn’t catch anything aside from some rock fish, but it was a great time out on the water all the same.

                                                                   Dale, Don and Pat onboard Starr

                                                      Don and randy on Dale’s Boat he built himself!

Along with my cousins, we had my nephew aboard, Keegan Marrs. Keegan is a commercial fisherman who works for himself, living and fishing year round in Alaska aboard his own boat, Chanty, just him and his lovely Shiba Inu Andes for company.

                                                                                                 Don with Keegan and his buddy Andes

                                                                          Keegan’s Full time fishing boat Chanty

Twenty miles outside of Sitka, in an anchorage called Narrows Bay (aptly named), we met up with our Hawaii friends John and Cathleen Douglas on their Diesel Duck trawler, Laysan. We rafted up next to them and had dinner together, and while we were eating we started talking and looking at the weather. All of a sudden we were looking at a high pressure system  that sat between two lows, the perfect run down. Patrick and I quickly calculated: did we want to run down the Inside Passage stopping at Petersburg, Wrangle and  Meyers Chuck,  then onto Prince Rupert, and the BC inside passage  or should we instead make a cannonball run on the outside? We opted for the latter, finished up dinner, and politely asked John and Cathleen if we could untie them and get going. Before they were back on their boat we had our engine running. We pulled away and did a nonstop run from Sitka to Seattle, close to 800 miles outside of BC.

                                                        Laysan and Starr rafted up together in Narrows Bay

                                               John and Cathleen Douglas with Randy in the background

Once we cleared the locks and moored at SBMC, we had a quick celebration dinner with the crew, a good night’s sleep, and got straight to work the next morning. There was no easing into it. Over the following two days we unloaded everything off Starr that needed to come off before hauling out, from the big stuff like canoes, tenders, and sailboats down to the freezer and the small things tucked into every cabinet. By the end of it the boat felt strange and hollow. It was exhausting work, but with a great crew aboard we got it done.

                                                                 Starr being hauled out at Delta Marine

Once we sent T and L off, along with Randy, the boat suddenly felt quieter than it had in weeks. Patrick and I took Starr down out of the locks and up the Duwamish River to Delta Marine, just the two of us, closing out one chapter of this voyage to start another. We hauled her out, and we’ve been working hard ever since. New stabilizers going in, fresh paint going on, and a long list of other projects getting checked off one by one.

Related posts:

1082nm from Los Cabos, 09d 55.00 N, 122d 54.00 W – Friday, 23nd March, 2001 Mainland Coast of Mexico: Puerto Vallerta to Barra de Navidad – December 17, 2000-January 18, 2001 Seattle to Mexico – November, 2000 Seattle, Washington – September, 2000