Total Distance Traveled: 2,800 nautical miles
This is not the actual distance that we traveled through the water, but rather the shortest distance required to get from point A to point B, according to Navionics web-based auto routing tool (which we found really helpful for route planning before the trip by the way). Our actual distance was actually much longer due to tacking and jibing, but I didn't have an accurate way to record that. For example, the blue line in the image below shows what Navionics determined is the shortest route to get from Port Hardy to Allison Harbour, and that route is 21.6 nautical miles. Our actual route was more like the longer black line, in order to sail given the wind conditions. We have an odometer on board that tracks distance using a little paddlewheel in the water, but I've found it's not accurate. Anyway, if you add up all these shortest possible point-to-point routes throughout our entire trip, the total comes to 2,800 nautical miles.
Total Days Underway: 77
Our trip was 110 days long (nearly 16 weeks / 3.5 months) and we spent 77 of those days traveling to a new destination. That works out to 7 days underway for every 3 days not underway. We knew from our pre-trip route planning that we had lots of distance to cover, so we needed to either make progress on any given day or have a good reason to not make forward progress on a given day. Most of the 30% of days not underway was in a town buying groceries, doing laundry, doing chores/projects, hiking, or packing as much tourism into one day that we could. In hindsight, it made the trip feel rushed. I know 3.5 months sounds like a long time, but we wish we had more. Seattle to Alaska is a lot of distance to cover in a boat that travels at a jogger's pace. Our typical velocity-made-good was around 4-4.5 knots, or 12:00 minutes per mile. Our hull speed is 7.25 knots, or 7:12 minutes per mile. If we were to do it again (which we hope we do), ideally we'd find a way to get 6 months (April - September) to do this trip.
Average Miles Traveled per Day Underway: 36.36 / Median Miles per Day: 31
Simply taking the 2800 miles covered divided by the 77 days underway results in an average day of 36.36 miles. The median day was 31 miles. For reference, going from Shilshole to Port Townsend's Boat Haven Marina is 32 miles, Shilshole to Tacoma's Foss Waterway is 29 miles, and Shilshole to Blake Island is only 10 miles. So basically, our typical day all summer was the equivalent of going from Shilshole to Port Townsend. Some much shorter, but also some much longer.
Top Ten Longest Days:
We had to leave Culpepper Lagoon at the high-tide slack current (or else the entrance would have been too shallow). This happened to occur at 8:47 am on the day we wanted to leave, so we had to get our butts up and underway much earlier than we typically did. This meant we were on well on our way by 9 am, compared to our usual day when we'd still be sitting around enjoying coffee at that point. We figured we might as well keep going until the evening and cover lots of distance this day. We thought this would have been one of our longest days of the trip, but it turned out this was just barely long enough to make it in the top ten.
This was near the end of our trip when we needed to get home and just rushed past the West Coast of Vancouver Island trying to cover as much distance as possible. We left Bunsby Islands (just east of Brooks Peninsula) and found good winds coming from our back so we put out the sails and decided to see just how far we could make it that day. Our goal that morning was to make it to Port Landford, near the entrance to Esperanza Inlet, which would have been a solid 32-mile day. However, we found ourselves sailing by the entrance to Esperanza Inlet early in the afternoon and decided we had enough daylight to keep going. We ended up tucking into Friendly Cove, at the entrance to Nootka Sound, just before the sunset.
8) Tracy Arm Out & Back: Day 56 - June 22nd, 60 miles
8) Tracy Arm Out & Back: Day 56 - June 22nd, 60 miles
One feature of Tracy Arm is that the only place nearby to anchor is right at the entrance in a little nook known as Tracy Cove. So, if you want to see the glaciers at the head of Tracy Arm, you need to go out and back on the same day. This is no big deal for motor boats that can easily travel 10+ knots; but for us sailboats that cruise at 4-7 knots, with a preference to sail quietly which tends to be at the slower end of that range, 60 miles is a long, intense day. Add the fact that this day was entirely in a narrow passage with little wind and more and more (and bigger and bigger) chunks of floating ice as you go deeper in, this was a pretty stressful day of mostly motoring. We did our best to sail as much as possible that day, but it ended up being around 1/3 of the time underway. The closer we got to the glaciers, the harder it was to sail and the more stressful it was to avoid chunks of ice. This stress combined with a tight schedule meant we basically got close enough to the glacier to get a picture then immediately turned around to get back to Tracy Cove at full speed. Our glacier experience anchoring in Thomas Bay and kayaking up to Baird Glacier was much more pleasant.
Like #9, this was during the "get home asap" phase at the end of the trip. We decided that Port San Juan was just barely close enough to Port Angeles that we could do it in one day (rather than stopping at Sooke along the way). So, we left early in the morning and went in a straight line to Port Angeles in order to ensure we got there in time to check in with US Customs before they closed at 8pm. We were lucky to see some orcas from the J-pod of southern resident orcas swim near us along the way. We realized it was them when we saw the plane that took this photo circle overhead.
6) Octopus Islands to Matilpi: Day 9 - May 6th, 63 miles
6) Octopus Islands to Matilpi: Day 9 - May 6th, 63 miles
This was a long day that we actually planned to be this long. During our pre-trip route planning, I realized that if we timed our exit of Octopus Islands to hit the 9:23 am slack through Okisollo Channel, then we could ride the favorable ebb current all the way through Johnstone Strait. This allowed us to cover lots of distance this day while also having time to attempt to sail in the light winds we had that day. One fun memory I have is drifting sideways through Current Passage in light winds and flat seas, getting pushed 3 knots by the current. We had to be sideways in order to keep the sails full, which gave us just enough speed in the right direction to keep us in the middle of the channel. There were a handful of motorboats going by that probably thought we were crazy. Thankfully I live in the modern age with good GPS telling me my actual course and speed over the ground in real-time. I don't think I'd have had the confidence to do stunts like that before GPS.
This was the shortest route we could find to get to Haida Gwaii without doing an overnight passage across Hecate Strait. We spent the previous day leaving Prince Rupert and staging ourselves at Larsen Harbour. We left early in the morning and got across the strait just in time to see the sunset from Queen Charlotte City. Good sailing too.
During this phase of the trip (after Sitka), we found ourselves behind our planned schedule so we were focused on catching back up so we'd have plenty of time to enjoy Haida Gwaii. This day was right after we did our first overnight (#2 below). Rather than doing two overnights in a row, we decided to pull into Bob's Bay and get a solid night of sleep. The next morning we went around the north end of Dall Island and had a lovely day of sailing southeast from Telvak Strait. We decided mid-day that we could make it all the way to Nichols Bay, which was a good staging point for getting to Prince Rupert. We barely made it, pulling into Nichols Bay after dark. It was one of only two times on the trip we found ourselves dropping anchor in the dark.
This was the next day underway after #4 above. We decided it wasn't worth spending an extra day heading further east along the Alaskan border to make the passage to Prince Rupert shorter, so we just went in a straight line from Nichols Bay (at the southern tip of Prince of Wales Island) to Russell Arm (a small anchorage just across the bay from Prince Rupert). We spent the entire day motoring because we couldn't afford to waste any time going slow sailing. This was the second of only two times when we anchored in the dark. We pulled into Price Rupert's customs dock at 11pm and woke up the Customs officer on the other end of the phone. He asked the least amount of questions we've ever experienced when checking in. I'm pretty sure he just wanted to go back to bed. Once done with Customs we went across the bay to Russell Arm to avoid paying for a marina that night.
We were already behind schedule when we were ready to leave Sitka, then some nasty weather forced us to stay an additional day. So, we decided to spend that bad weather day prepping easy meals so that we could do overnight shifts and make up some ground. We left Sitka with winds coming from the northwest so we headed due south. The image below is a good visualization of our route. The blue line represents the 146 miles it would have been if we motored directly there. We choose to sail downwind around 100 miles to the purple pin, at which point we found ourselves pretty far offshore and decided it'd be a good time to jibe back towards land. 70 miles of eastward sailing latter we found ourselves heading right towards Bob's Bay. It took us around 36 hours to cover this 146 miles due to our desire to go directly downwind, the slowest direction to sail (but much more pleasant than sailing upwind).
Combining #2-4, we covered 306 miles in 4 days, bringing us back from being behind schedule to one-day ahead of schedule.
The longest day of them all was one we were anticipating the entire trip: heading south from Haida Gwaii to the West Coast of Vancouver Island. We knew from the beginning of our route planning that there'd be no way to avoid doing an overnight passage here. Really our overnight passage from Sitka was just a practice run for this journey. We thought maybe this would require two nights since it took 36 hours to cover 146 miles south of Sitka. With that in mind, we decided to leave mid-day so that we'd arrive mid-day two days later. It also gave us lots of buffer time. If we were faster than expected, then we'd arrive in the morning. If we were slower than expected, then we'd arrive in the evening. So, we left our anchorage at Etches Point, spent the morning getting a tour of Sgaang Gwaay, and headed out around 2pm. Luckily, we had some good wind coming from just the right direction that afternoon and evening and realized if we kept up this pace we'd make it in one day. That was enough motivation for us to keep the pace up all night (which required motoring overnight). We arrived at North Harbour (an anchorage just outside of the small town of Winter Harbour) by the next evening and breathed a big sigh of relief that this tough passage was behind us.
Overall, we found that 50 miles per day was our comfort limit. Anything beyond that left us very drained at the end of the day and/or required us to motor a lot to keep the pace up. Ideally, we'd do 20-40 mile days, but there's no way we would have made it to the places we went in the 16 weeks we had.
Overall, we found that 50 miles per day was our comfort limit. Anything beyond that left us very drained at the end of the day and/or required us to motor a lot to keep the pace up. Ideally, we'd do 20-40 mile days, but there's no way we would have made it to the places we went in the 16 weeks we had.
I love stats posts! You did 50% more distance than us in just over half the time (2800 nm in 3.5 months vs ~1800 nm in 6 months). But we were intentionally going slow and the last 2 months were rest months. Would be great to see a route map (I think most of your extra distance was north of Haida Gwaii, where we turned around, and going up the inlets).
ReplyDeleteYeah our trip definitely felt rushed. We'd like to go a slower pace next time around. I think somewhere around 100 miles per week would be ideal (i.e. five 20-mile days per week or three 33-mile days per week). Now if only we could arrange our adult responsibilities to work on that schedule too...
ReplyDelete"Would be great to see a route map..."
I agree. I've been wanting to create one ever since we got back. You're comment inspired me to actually sit down and do it. I'll be posting it as a new post shortly.