Dear Chubby Fans,

After writing the last report on the restaurant owner's laptop, I retired to my basement room among the cartons of paper towels and cans of tomato paste. The evening was devoted to watching Jaws 2 on cable television, I guess to put myself in the proper frame of mind for heading out to sea. I was hoping to go directly south out of Kake through the notorious Rocky Pass which would save us a 30 mile detour north and east into Frederick Sound.

I awoke Saturday morning and walked out the door to assess the weather. Didn't look too bad but a storm was due in on Sunday so I decided to make a break for it. A logger, Jim Murphy, at the restaurant offered to give me a ride down to the dock after breakfast which I was happy to accept. Turns out this fellow's sister has a restaurant at 1910 Ukiah St. in Mendocino. Her name is Shannon. Rhoda, do you know her? Jim's wife is postmaster at Manchester where Jim spends his winters.

Back at the dock I hastily made ready to shove off which we did at 9:30 am to start the carefully choreographed dance with the tides and currents in Rocky Pass. The Pass is one of those classic narrow Alaskan passages where the flood tide flows into the passage from both the north and south and meets in the middle. This necessitates traversing the north half of the pass, a distance of about 25 miles starting at low tide and riding the flood to the middle. If one's timing is good, the tidal null point is reached exactly at high tide slack. Then one rides the ebb southward out the other side. To add to the challenge of timing, there is the winding, shallow, rock studded, kelp choked path to follow, where the slightest miscue will put you up on the rocks. So off we went, slowly accelerating into the pass as the flood built its momentum. By the time we got to the first of the two most difficult channels, The Summit, we were riding a current of about 4 knots. The kelp grew right across the channel in places so it became a game of nerves and quick reflexes as we streamed through the thicket, picking the line of least resistance while all the time staying within the confines of the 50' wide channel. With one eye on the kelp and the other on the GPS screen, we connected the 50 or so dots that I had laboriously programmed two days before. We met the opposing flood just on time at the half-way point and pushed into it for not more than 15 minutes before high tide was reached and the flow reversed, sucking us southward toward the open waters of Sumner Strait.

The weather was pretty miserable for most of the way, cold, rainy and with an annoying south wind, consistently opposing our progress and throwing up a chop that kept us bathed in spray. As we moved into Sumner Strait our current riding scheme broke down and we picked up a very foul 2-1/2 knot current around Mariposa Reef as we turned eastward towards our hoped for stopping place for the night, Pt. Baker. We were motoring at full throttle but barely making 2.5 knots as we struggled to clear the standing waves of the overfall at Mariposa. After perhaps two hours we finally emerged from the grip of the current and ran into Pt. Baker just as darkness settled. A Minke whale surfaced and blew right at the entrance a couple of hundred yards ahead of us and I wondered if there was enough room for both Chubby and the whale in the narrow entrance. This is the place where Al Stein, Rhoda's neighbor, and a veteran fisherman from Pt. Baker, told me emphatically, under no circumstances, try to enter Pt. Baker at night. His words echoed in my head as I maneuvered through the 100' foot wide passage of the rock-studded entrance in the darkness at low tide, the seaweed draped rocks hanging over the passage ominously on both sides. As I glided through the passage at half throttle, awaiting the grinding shudder of fiberglass against rock, the miniature panorama of the community of Pt. Baker unfolded to view. The narrow inlet, perhaps 200 yards wide and 1/2 mile long is surrounded by a scattering of houses and docks with the usual scattering of fishing boats tied here and there. I pulled up to the public dock which had a space waiting for me and tied up. A community center on a float at the end of the dock had a public phone. I called Naomi and then, feeling the nervous exhaustion of a rather tense day, went right to bed.

In the morning I chatted a bit with the owner of the lodge and restaurant, bought some gas and motored around the point to a second community, a bit larger, called Port Protection. This community lies in a beautiful, sheltered little cove with a great gray limestone peak towering with foreboding cliffs above the bay. Met three fellows on the dock and had a nice conversation about the area, the fishing, and a bit of gossip relating to life in a small, isolated village. I went up to the store and restaurant at noon when it opens but the owner said that the cook drinks a bit and wasn't coming in so she couldn't serve any hot food. I had some time to kill before the tide turned at 4 pm so I could extricate myself from these narrow confines so I returned to the dock and continued the conversation with Bill, owner of a steel sloop which he was in the process of rebuilding. His previous boat had exploded due to a propane leak last year. He touched off the leaked propane when he lit his stove to cook breakfast. He was in a coma for several weeks and burned over 67% of his body. I immediately thought about cruising aboard Chubby for the last month and a half with 21 gallons of gas aboard, a veritable napalm bomb waiting for a place to go off. I guess I'll be a little more careful when cooking.

Folks, there's a little more to tell about the williwas at Warren Island and the lovely town of Craig but there's a line forming for the only internet terminal in town, so I'm going to give others their turn and I'll try to get on later this afternoon.

Love...Bill