Day 55: Goose Bay to Hamilton Island

Rocky Pass today, which means our schedule is dictated by high water slack. It’s best to arrive at the middle of Rocky Pass—The Summit and Devil’s Elbow—right around high water slack. This ensures that there’s plenty of water underneath the boat and that strong current doesn’t push the boat out of the narrow channel.

 

A narrow section of Rocky Pass.

Rocky Pass turned out to be easier than I remembered. Really, just follow the buoys.

After leaving Rocky Pass I set a course for Port Protection, but didn’t like the weather forecast I was hearing for tomorrow and the next day. Sumner Strait was a bit choppy today, with 15 knots of southerly breeze. But the next two days were predicted to have 25 knots from the south.

We poked into Port Protection but decided to continue on. I didn’t want to get stuck in Port Protection for several days if the weather forecast further deteriorated. And once we got into the inner channels, we’d be basically immune from wind for the rest of the trip into Craig.

So we continued on, to an expansive but undocumented anchorage between Divide Island and Hamilton Island, just at the entrance to El Capitan Passage. It turned out to be a lovely spot, filled with sea otters that had the good sense not to crawl on my boat and use it as a toilet.

 

Anchored for the evening.

This new schedule presented a bit of a problem. I’d made reservations with the USFS for a Saturday tour of El Capitan Caves. Now we’d be passing the caves on Friday. I called the Forest Service office on the sat phone and they happily rescheduled our tour.

57.89 nm today

1781.32 nm total