Writing this while riding the Ferry up Neva Strait, after a stop in Sitka, on my way to Bellingham from Juneau. After some last minute preparations—including refinishing the bottom of my kayak with Epoxy impregnated with graphite in order to make it tougher—managed to test pack my kayak yesterday (everything fits, as long as I squint hard enough), mail some boxes of food and charts to Sidney, BC (hopefully they arrive!) and get on the ferry at about 1AM, with Emily's help. Laid out my sleeping bag in the solarium on the Malaspina and hit the hay.
Woke up to fog this AM in Salisbury Sound, shortly after the ferry passed through Kakul narrows. Made it to breakfast late, as the fog cleared, and watched Neva and Olga straits glide by as the ferry worked its way into Sitka Sound. Sitka is always beautiful, not least on a bluebird day like this!
Paddling here today would be a lot more pleasant than the last time I was here, with Jason Amundson, in a borrowed kayak, fighting a brutal headwind and pruning up in often-horizontal Sitka precipitation. That was in July (?) 2015. After that trip, confused by the nature of tidal currents in Sergius narrows, Jason carried out a web search for papers on currents between Baranof and Chichagoff islands. He never turned up what he was looking for, but he did find a military proposal from the 1950s to use nuclear weapons to clear Sergius and Whitestone Narrows for easier navigation. This would have been associated with "Project Ploughshare" and "Project Chariot," well-documented in the book The Firecracker Boys and movie of the same name.
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