June 19th, 2024
We left Swanson Harbor this morning at 6:00 am. Calm, smooth seas were in our view.
We had a 4.5 hour cruise to Tenakee Springs, located near the entrance to Tenakee Inlet off Chatham Strait on Chichagof Island. This is a village of roughly 100 people. It is an island on the Alexander Archipelago of the Alaska Panhandle. At 75 miles long and 50 miles wide it is the fifth largest island in the United States and the 109th largest island in the world.
Marlene and I walked the roughly 1 mile distance of the road that leads to the grocery store, museum (we will explore this tomorrow), post office, and ferry landing. It’s a quaint village with locals walking the road, saying hi, and meeting up with fellow islanders. All good.
This is the fire department, all volunteer, and as Marlene likes to say about us on Guemes Island, “No country for old men.” They do have a helipad in the village (we didn’t see it but believe it’s there), that will take you to either Juneau or Sitka. Truth be told: you be dead.
Tomorrow we will explore the island. We are here for two nights, maybe four depending on the weather. We are heading south and there appears to be a significant storm coming in, first looked like Thursday (tomorrow), then Friday, now maybe Saturday. The seas based on our apps look to be laying down Saturday night. If this is the case we will get as far south as we can on Sunday. Time will tell.
Now here is a true story of “living on the sea.” While I was down for a nap Marlene chatted with the sailboat next door to us on the dock. Here is Mom with an 8 month baby on her back jumping on the sailboat to join her 4 year old brother and Dad. Mom says the kids were basically born on the boat.
A final “boat project” story. Roughly 4 days ago I begin to have issues with my VHF in the pilot house. The radio started alarming “low voltage” to the point i had to turn off the unit. OK. I had the flybridge and a portable but, still, why was this happening? As I was coming out of Glacier Bay I started thinking about my “life lines” and Rico came out mind. Rico and Wanda are a couple in a 47 foot TollyCraft we met several years ago in Pender Harbor. Long story short, Rico is a boat “guru.” He can figure out anything. So I decided to pose my dilemma to him. (BTW, he and Wanda are also here in NorthEast Alaska but we are on different paths). When I explained my issue Rico, in true Rico style he said, “Send me pictures of the issue.” And I did. Long story short it “appears” to be a voltage issue, which is what the VHF Radio was chirping about. Rico had me put a multi-meter on my plug to the VHF (BTW, if you don’t have a multimeter, run to the nearest marine store and buy one) and check the voltage.
Lo and behold it was. 9.6, way too low to power the VHF, let alone the the GPS and AIS.
We discovered that the voltage coming from this panel was too low. (Why, well that I need to discover for a different day).
The voltage on this panel was fine so I moved the two wires to the upper electrical panel and, “voila” problem solved for now.. I now have functioning VHF and Display again but I need to be watchful of everything on the other panel. Boat issues. Solved. Sorta. A big shout out to Rico.
For the rest of the evening we are simply enjoying the beautiful inlet, weather, and being safely tucked in from whatever may come our way.
