Friday, May 19, 2006 - Last night's forecast was for light winds for Dixon Entrance East and we decided to go for it and hope for a reasonably smooth crossing. Advice given was to leave early in the morning when the winds were the lightest and we cast off from the dock at 5:20 am for the 80 mile run to Ketchikan, AK. If the seas were high we would stop at Brundige Inlet on Dundas, Island which was about a 35 mile run and would position well for crossing Dixon Entrance. We were "buddy boating" with IMB and Kelley Bay, a large charter trawler that we met briefly last night. We took the short cut through Venn Passage, which was a interesting experience, and ventured out in the direction of Dixon Entrance. We must have good karma as there was very little wind and seas were almost flat. We decided to make it another long day and made the entire run to Ketchikan arriving at 4:40pm Alaska time (we had to set back not only our watches an hour but the chart plotters and GPS as well). We were tired but jubilant when we called the Ketchikan Harbor Master, requesting moorage for a few days. The most desired moorage is Thomas Basin in the heart of town but there were more boats than usual for this time of year and we were lucky to secure moorage at Bar Harbor. We had a large slip but no power. But we were back in the states - no more Loonies, liters and Imperial Gallon conversions to deal with. We had trekked 700 miles, the furthest distance we had ever been in any of our boats, and it was a major accomplishment. We called for Customs Clearance with all the necessary reams of paper ready to validate our existence. I had called before we left and was told that we would be boarded (mandatory for all incoming vessels) and needed to have current passports, pet certificates for the cats and a list of declared items. The good news - since we departed Seattle, the Ketchikan Division of Homeland Security, a.k.a. US Customs has agreed to accept I-68 Clearance for Puget Sound boaters. The agent I spoke with had a great sense of humor - upon hearing the name of our boat, she asked if we had any Russians aboard. She then asked if Sean Connery was traveling with us because if he was, she would be down to personally inspect the boat. We were cleared for arrival in Alaska.
Saturday, May 20 - Monday May 22, 2006 - Decided to sit back and relax and take in some of the sites in Ketchikan and work on a few more boat projects. We had internet, cellular and rented a car. Jim and Karen Eisberg joined us as we set out to be tourists. The first stop of course was to the Marine store for miscellaneous items and Bob was looking for a second GPS to interface directly with the laptop and the Coastal Explorer charting program. We navigate with both a North Star (raster charts) plotter and a Raymarine plotter and purchased the Coastal Explorer to use primarily for planning. The Coastal Explorer is by far more user friendly. After the Marine store we were off to town for site seeing and lunch. We soon learned that store hours revolve around the cruise ship schedules. No ship was scheduled for Saturday and most of the small stores and galleries were closed. We had a wonderful lunch at Annabelle's in the historic Gilmore Hotel on Front Street and took in the Southeast Alaska Discovery Center as it was one of the few things open. Sunday afternoon we did the Downtown Walking Tour and waited a bit too long to get stated. The last cruise ship of the day was to leave at 4:00 pm and a lot of the stores and exhibits began to close at 3:00. We were going to drive out to the Salmon Falls Resort for dinner (highly recommended by the local residents) only to find that it was not open until June 1st. It was somewhat of a deja vu feeling walking down the streets along the waterfront. You felt like you were in the Caribbean (exception of it being 25 -30 degrees cooler) with Little Switzerland and all of the jewelry stores. They have constant "sales" to attract the cruise trade and have put some of the local artisans with quality pieces out of business.
