I launched early and considered circumnavigating the Sukoi Islands. I have been joking about getting an old paddle blade and mounting it on my wall. I will put a notch in the edge for every island I have circumnavigated, and write their names on it. Big notches and big letters for islands like Isla Angel de la Guarda and little notches for little islands like the Sukoi. However everyone else got ready to go faster than I expected and I did not have time. I compromised by paddling around the small Middle Sukoi Island which is not much more than a large rock covered with trees.
Between the rain and a fog the visibility was poor and we planned on making the quickest crossing across the shipping channel between us and Kupreanof Island. We collected at the south end of West Sukoi Island and dashed across. Then we hugged the shore and headed south. The town of Petersburg is on Mitkof Island so we still had to cross the busy Wrangell Narrows to get there. Just as we arrived at the mouth of this channel two ferries went by. We crossed behind the south traveling one and I for one cut it close and tried to catch a ride on the wake. Surprisingly the large ferry had a very flat boring useless wake. Many of the small fishing boats going by had larger ones. This channel is so narrow that this crossing only took a minute. We had been told that the safest time to arrive would be at 1:00 PM as the flood tide was about to start. We saw no evidence of any movement of the water so we must have hit the slack right on time.
At the dock where we landed we did see evidence of the huge tides. There were three large wooden fishing boats tied up to a special dock that had a shelf below it. Fishermen tie up their boats here and let them set down on the iron-beam-reinforced shelf at low tide. This leaves the boats high and dry like a drydock. Before the next tide comes in they just have time to dry off the hull with blowtorches and re-paint them!
That afternoon I was organizing the gear in my kayak behind the B&B we were staying in. A man arrived with several small salmon and started chopping them into steaks. Then he tossed the pieces over the railing onto the mud flats! Eagles arrived and scooped the steaks up as they skimmed low. I called it the "Eagle Show". Jesse Meyer could not get over the waste of perfectly good Salmon. He went inside to tell Lisa Rohe about it, and was so incensed about the waste that he forgot to tell her about the eagles! So she did not come out and missed the show! I leaned on the railing to watch and one eagle swooped so low over my head that it almost took my hat off!
Very early the next morning we caught the Alaska Ferry to start our trip home. Typically when I go on a kayak expedition I drive like a maniac (or fly) to get someplace, then hurry back afterwards. The trip on the ferry was a chance to decompress after the camping trip. We had two days relaxing on the ferry before two days of driving to get home. We had time to hang out our tents and other damp gear to dry so there was less work to do when we finally did get home.