May 16,2024
We had a comfortable, albeit short sleepover in Port McNeil, which is a great city in which to provision, wash clothes if need be (there is a good laundromat a short distance from the marina), and a good IGA supermarket with fresh produce, cash machines, and even a pharmacy. We arrived in Port McNeil yesterday around 2:30. We docked at North Island Marina which is our favorite. Great docks, helpful, friendly staff, fuel and marine products should you need them. As predicted the rain started at about 5:00 pm and was constant through the night. We tucked in and finished off the new series “Man in Full” on Netflix. Jeff Daniels is fantastic as the lead protagonist. Diane Lane plays the scorned ex-wife with gusto. Aml Ameen is British actor we were not familiar with but are thrilled about. He plays Croker’s (Jeff Daniels) lead attorney and “dare I say” fixer. I think we will see a lot more of this actor in years to come. And Jon Michael Hill plays a deeply moving character who is trying to live his life in a racist town. (The adaptions of Tom Wolfe’s book, “Man in Full” is set in Atlanta in 1998). We highly recommend this limited series. It’s a good adaption of Wolfe’s book.
But back to docked in the rain.
Our new fellow boater friends from Blind Channel accompanied us to Port McNeil. Kinship, M/V Florian and Samson. This will be their first time to Alaska for all three boats. Saturday morning looks to be the best day for rounding Cap Caution but there appeared to be a weather window this morning, Thursday, to cruise to Allison Harbor, acting as a staging site for Cape Caution and taking off 4 hours of that long journey around the bend. It also allows us closer access to Cape Caution so we can take advantage of the BEST sea conditions on Saturday. After consulting with Chris Parker, and studying our two major apps, Predict Wind and BuoyWeather we decided to make the journey across to Allison Harbor. We left at first light (5:30). Two and a half hours into our four hour cruise we are experiencing relatively calm seas with 8 knots of wind, 12 of gust, and about 1.5 foot waves with 8 second intervals. The last hour coming into the harbor was pretty rough. We encountered 4 foot swells that we had to take on the beam for about 20 minutes coming in to Allison. All’s well that ends well. We will stay in this harbor tonight and tomorrow and wait out the big blow that is coming through this evening and will stir up the seas for the next 24 hours.