Planning our route to Kodiak took a few considerations to time our arrival before sunset at 7:21 pm. The overall voyage from Missak Bay, Alaska Peninsula to St. Paul Marina, Kodiak Island is approximately 73 nautical miles. If you wanted to guess our arrival time off the average speed of 6 knots then one could estimate the whole trip will take a little over 12 hours. Backing up the time you could expect to set a wake up alarm for 7:30 am. We did set our alarm for 7:30 am, but only if it was that easy. We had to consider currents in this order Shelikof Straight, Kupreanof Straight, Whale Passage, Ouzinkie Narrows, and Kodiak Harbor Narrows.
The strongest current between our passage between Kodiak and the Alaska Peninsula is Whale passage. Max current today is 4 knots (sometimes this can be 8 knots). We do not want to arrive at max current against us, so after reviewing the currents we determined we needed to catch the ebb from 10:37 am to 4:57 pm. Sounds easy enough.
But wait, the Kupreanof Straight ebb doesn’t start until 11:52 am, so that means even if we tried to get to Whale Passage early we would be fighting a 1.87 knot current. And most currents we can feel at a distance before entering the straights that create the current. Therefore entering Kupreanof Straight a bit after 11:52 would be to our advantage.
Crossing the Shelikof Straight. The Shelikof Straight separates western shores of Kodiak Island from mainland Alaska. Just as an observation we found that if the Cape Douglas currents are flooding then generally we have a knot with when traveling south to north. As luck would have it today the stars aligned and we had the Shelikof current with us this morning. Our anchorage did williwaw from the south and southwest to the upper 30’s through the night, so it was a little spooky pulling up anchor between gusts of 38 knots this morning. After leaving the Missak Bay the wind didn’t get past 26 knots. The mainsail was reefed a foot from the top of the mast and we had 7-8ths of the Genoa out, but we were flying across the Shelikof at between 8.5 to 10 knots.
Once we arrived in the Kupreanof Straight we could feel the effects of current against the boat. We had full sail up and the engine on and only managed 7 knots. Until the wind switched out of the east (on our noses) and we pulled in the sails to continue motoring ahead at 6 to 6.5 knots.
At 3 pm we arrived at Whale Passage and the current with us are for a transit speed of around 9.5 knots. By 3:45 pm we were well out of the reach of the current.
Both the Ouzinkie and Kodiak Harbor Narrows will have a knot or less against us as we pass through, but those are much shorter distances and a knot isn’t so bad because we’re making such great time!
At 6:20 pm we rounded buoy four the last buoy to enter Kodiak Harbor Narrows.
6:43 pm our friends saw us sail past their house and we got our first text welcoming us home.
7:05 pm we passed under the bridge.
7:17 pm we were tied up to the dock and greeted by our neighbor.
It is lovely to be around the trees again.
Cheers,
Sara and Wade
