June 2, 2022 Day 6: North Kelp Passage to Ketchikan, Alaska. 122 miles. 832 total miles.
We pulled anchor around 7:00 AM and off we went to Prince Rupert for fuel. We were still a little nervous about the gas situation, but we were all feeling better than we were the night before.
We pulled into the fuel dock and I don’t think we’ve been happier to get to a place. The chart plotter said we had 4.5 gallons to empty, but we aren’t too sure how accurate it is, plus we had our extra five gallon reserve. We’ve been getting closer to 3 miles per gallon so on our tanks we had about 13.5 miles we could go, and another 15 miles if we used our reserve. A little too close for comfort.
We got to Prince Rupert at low tide as well so we had to climb a really steep ramp to use the bathroom. Lillian climbed this ramp since she needed to go potty, and it definitely made her nervous. It makes it very clear how big the tidal exchanges are.
After leaving Prince Rupter it was time to cross Dixon Entrance. We really did have ideal weather and for a chunk of it it was really calm and pretty ideal. A bit later it got pretty rough and it rolled us around pretty good, but we kept making good progress. When it started getting a bit rough Ellen fell asleep on me. She’s been taking 2 naps on the trip, a morning one and an afternoon one, each about an hour. She already had her morning nap before we got gas, but she thought it was time for another nap. This time she slept 3 hours. She has been getting about half the sleep she does at home, so it was much needed for her. She woke up right before we were coming into Ketchikan, and woke up in time for lunch.
To get back into the United States we needed to clear customs again. We used the CBPRoam app to upload all our information. This time I know it made things quicker. We did make a few mistakes when coming into Ketchikan that slowed us down several hours, that we will be sure to avoid that next time, and it would make coming back into the states super quick and easy. First we waited until Ketchikan to announce our arrival on the app. This wouldn’t have been a big deal since they processed it pretty quickly. They called us after about 5 minutes. Chris’ phone dropped the call again. So they called me right away and I put Chris on with them. They asked us if we had a decal, which we didn’t. They denied our entrance into the US until we got a decal. They told us how to order one and told us to email it them and then they would approve us. So we went online set up an account and ordered our decal. It will be mailed to us and I’m assuming we put it on our boat window and it will make crossing the boarders quick and easy. We emailed them our decal receipt and waited, then decided we would resubmit on our CBPRoam app since our previous one was rejected. We resubmitted and waited a little longer than the last time, but then we got approved just like that and we didn’t have to do anything else.
In the future we would announce our arrival as soon as we crossed into US waters. We would order our decal before our trip and have it on our boat and ready to go. (The decals lasts a year.) If we had done those things it would have taken less than a half our. Since we didn’t do those things it did take us longer, but still very easy.
While we were waiting to get approved we booked a hotel in Ketchikan. Luckily Ketchikan is a pretty small town and is very walkable. The areas of town that aren’t so walkable have public transportation. There are two places to moor the boat and we opted for Thomas Basin area, right when you come into town. It’s near where all the cruise ships dock, and near the heart of the town. We liked the hotel over here better than the hotel near the other marina, that’s why we opted here. The pros are walking distance to the hotel of our choice, and more restaurant choices. Cons are that the laundromat and grocery store is across town near the other boat moorage place. We may boat over there to take our laundry and do a little shopping, etc.
You may be wondering how five people in a 22 foot boat shower. The answer is they don’t. We did buy these awesome bath wipes for the trip and they have been wonderful, but they aren’t the same as a real shower. Marinas have showers to use, but we were looking forward to showering in our own space. The hotel was wonderful for that. It was also nice to have more sleeping space as well. We brought Ellen’s little boat porta crib in the hotel with us, and her slumber pod, which is basically a black out tent that goes over the porta crib. We were really nervous how she would do, not being held to sleep. We put her in her bed and zipped up her slumperpod, she screamed when i first put her in, cried for about 2 minutes and then asleep. It was nice to get her to sleep before 8:00 PM!
Before we even showered we went to get some food. (This shows how hungry we were!) We opted for a pizza place that also has Filipino food. Everyone was excited. We got salad, wings, pizza, and lumpia. We ended up getting milkshakes there as well. We devoured our food. Pizza Mill was a great restaurant and the staff was wonderful!
We came back to the hotel, everyone showered, we used the wifi for a bit, and went to bed.
It took us 6 days to get to Ketchikan, Alaska from Edmonds, Washington.
Ryan’s Thoughts: Nothing happened except we made it to Alaska!!!!
Lillian’s Thoughts: Today is amazing! I woke up really early but i had an amazing breakfast and guess what! We made it to Alaska! But our trip is far from done! And for the first time in five days we don not know what that means! It’s amazing! Well that’s it bye!
