Alaska 1 - We’re Off the Dock!

Departure Time: 12:48
Departed From: Squalicum Harbor, Bellingham
Anchored: Echo Bay, Suscia Island
Arrival Time: 18:30ish
Coordinates: 48º45.40N 122º54.24W

We’re off. What a whirlwind last 18 days since we splashed the boat. Aside from a 2-day shakedown, we’ve been working on finishing boat projects, purging, and moving from 7am-10pm every night. But we did it!

Laura has been amazing and making things disappear as we bring food, tools, supplies, etc. onto the boat. She found storage cubbies that I didn’t know existed on Ardent or any other boat for that matter.

We took off from Squalicum Harbor today and once the fenders and lines were off the sails were up. The forecast said the wind was supposed to pick up so we took our time going around the south end of Lummi to Suscia Island. Once in Rosario strait we had consistent 20-25kt winds with one 44kt gust. Took the sails down between Suscia and Matia.

Make it stand out

Great rainbow shots once anchored in Suscia looking east.

Double Rainbow!

A couple minor issues to adjust and we have way to much stuff on the boat. Over time we’ll purge some more. But everything from here on out can be incremental.

One new thing we got to use was the Furuno Radar which we can view from our iPhones and iPads via a wifi signal it puts out. See the pics below.

This is the big picture coming into the south finger of Echo Bay on Suscia Island. The red is the radar overlayed onto the chart. We still need to hook up the NMEA network to WIFI but it is old and we need an adapter.

This is the zoomed in version.

This the radar only version without the chart.