Early this morning we sailed through Sumner strait and by the time that we had navigated through Snow Passage the wind started to blow. Not just a little bit but a lot. By 08.30 there was nearly 50 knots of wind velocity. The Ketchikan agent had advised us that is was supposed to be a windy and rainy day in Ketchikan but not a stormy day. Looking at the wind and the waves I was getting worried about sailing into Ketchikan. While approaching the port through Tongass Narrows from the North West you have to pass , with slow speed to avoid a wake, the Ketchikan Drydock company. If there is too much wind on the beam of the ship; it pushes you either into the drydock or on the rocks along the airport. Neither an option you want to exercise. Docking with too much wind in the port does not work either as the wind will push you too fast to the dock and at the same time you can get caught by reflecting winds coming off the mountains which will push you the other way again.

So I called the agent who advised that it was real “snotty” weather, which I suppose is a local expression for very bad weather. The local tugboat reported 40 knots along the dock and the airport tower (opposite the Ketchikan dry dock company) reported 25 to 35 knots of wind from the SSE. Too much to even contemplate entering the port. At 09.30 I decided to cancel the call and advised the guests accordingly. The weather forecasts from across the Canadian border were getting worse and worse by the hour and thus we were in for some “good times”.

With having cancelled the call at Ketchikan we only had to maintain a slow speed now. This was a blessing in disguise. While the winds were howling up to 60 knots (the highest read-out we had was 68 knots around noon time) and the seas starting to build, it meant that the ship was going to pitch. The slower you then sail, the better the ship moves through the waves, as it is not pounding into it and the better the ride for the guests. In the end the ship only gently moved, while around us a heavy storm blew and raged, causing spray and foam to be whipped up from the waves.

As it is compulsory to have pilots on board to sail in the Inside Passage, I could not just deviate to between the islands somewhere. Apart from the fact that the pilots were not available at short notice they would never have been able to come out in the pilot boat, as it was bad. Really bad. The ships speed set on the engines was 16 knots but we made barely 12, so much we were slowed down by the wind, which was full on the bow. As the ship was not moving that much, there were hardly any guests sea sick and quite a few were sitting in the crows nest enjoying a very upset Mother Nature in full rage around the ship.

The wind is supposed to abate by early tomorrow morning and by the time we re enter the Inside Passage as per schedule, it should be nice again. The irritating part is that in Vancouver it has been wind still and sunny since a few days; while we just at the other side of Vancouver Island were having the worst of it. The mind boggling thing is, is that this weather is not supposed to be here in May. On average May has calm and cold weather. What we had today was a real Alaska autumn storm. Hopefully this was an end of the season hick-up and now we will get back to a regular weather pattern.