Arrived in Meyer’s Chuck: Mother Nature’s Surprise

Monday June 23rd, 2025

We had a wonderful night in Wrangell watching the fishing boats come in to the processing plant delivering their crab and fish. It was a sunny evening and many of the boats that came in were family boats, literally, Mom, Dad, and the baby in diapers. Needless to say all these fishing families are fit, toned, and should be a mini series. Marlene and I discussed this. Taylor Sheridan of Yellowstone fame should create a miniseries simply called, “Alaska.” Anyway, back to reality. We went to bed and set our alarm for 4:15 am for the six hour cruise to Meyer’s Chuck. The forecast was for calm seas, light waves, you get the drill.

Well, Mother Nature had a different plan. (This picture is from a local carver in Petersburg that has his carvings in the Three Trees Store in Petersburg). The majority of the cruise was as forcasted, 3 to 6 knot winds, minimal gusts. A long, albeit boring cruise. Boring is good. And then as we were approaching Clarence Strait I grabbed my binoculars and saw something up ahead. “Marlene, I see white caps. I don’t think that was predicted.”

”Greg, I just checked this area on Predict Wind 20 minutes ago in case Meyer’s Chuck was full up and we needed to proceed on to Ketchikan. This was definitely NOT predicted.” And then we approached it, no hit it and encountered 5 to 7 foot waves, 35 knot winds and the worst part—no periods. In other words we had to take on each wave in quick succession as one after another hit the boat. The good news, if there is such a thing in these circumstances, is that the waves were coming at us on our bow. So we were hitting them straight on, watching the water crest over our boat as we went up, and down, through the waves. But wait. It gets better. In order to get into Meyer’s Chuck we had to turn into the waves to enter the cove. “Brace yourself Marlene, we are going to take these waves on the beam and it’s going to be ugly.” And ugly it was. Now the good news—here we go again—is that the terror lasted for less than 15 minutes. When you are turning into high waves with strong gusts your concern is that the waves don’t take hold of your boat and pull you down (nice way of saying over). We turned, it was ugly; we tacked, it was ugly, and then we officially got “pitched” into Meyer’s Chuck. Fortunately there was a space on the dock. If there wasn’t we would have dropped a hook. There was no way we were going out into that again or even consider cruising on to Ketchikan. Fortunately there was a person on the dock to help with our bow line. As you know, we are suffering from a limpy bow thruster so my ability to handle the bow was limited. It all worked out. We tied up the boat, took a deep breath and then took a nap. It was too early to start drinking.

Tomorrow? That’s the big question. Do we stay here for two nights or brave the seas tomorrow and proceed to Ketchikan? The weather forecast for the next two days in about the same. Readers, what’s your opinion?