Remember last post when I told you the sunset was really pretty? Well, I finally got a view over the top of the breakwater so you can see for yourself.
Saturday morning we woke up to a red light on the holding tank that necessitated that we pump out (oh what fun!). We’ve known it needed to be done for a while and had been putting it off so it’s a relief to have it done. We shouldn’t have to worry about it again until after we’re home. We had to go to a different harbor to get to the pump out station and when we were finished there we stopped downtown once more so that I could take this picture. I think this sign is really clever.
It was a really low tide when we left so before I went down the very steep ramp back to the boat I took this picture from above. Just a little different perspective of the boat.
I made the mistake when going down the ramp to look up and saw a bunch of spiders that have made the ramp their home – yuck.
We reluctantly left Wrangell a little after 10am. We really enjoyed our time here and will definitely come back soon.
We didn’t have long to be sad about leaving because our next adventure was about to begin. The Wrangell Narrows is a 21 mile stretch of water that is fairly shallow (we averaged about 36 feet) and there are over 50 buoys to follow in order to make a safe passage. Here is a map of the first half with the buoys marked by color.
Wouldn’t you know that once we got started in our first really narrow, windy spot what do we see but a tug and barge coming the other way right at us! We have to stay to the LEFT of the red buoy that we are on the right of in the picture. We slowed way down and pulled over as far as we could to let him pass.
Once he got by, we got back on track and had an exciting but uneventful passage through the rest of the narrows. It was really fun to bob and weave around all of the markers!
At the end of the narrows we were in Petersburg. About the time we pulled in to our slip the sun came out for a beautiful few hours.
After tying up and getting everything under control we walked up to town. They call Petersburg ‘Little Norway’ because the guy who started the cannery where the city is now was Norwegian and many more Norwegian’s followed him to the area.
We went to the visitor’s center and the library which was a really nice, new building. While at the library it started to rain so we stayed a little longer than originally planned. On our way back to the boat we stopped at a pizza place and had dinner. I think we’re going to stay here for another day. It’s stopped raining and hopefully we’ll get a nice day tomorrow so that we can take a proper look around. This picture was taken from the back of our boat in the harbor. Something to ponder…
Tug Madeline 
enjoying your post and pictures of all the towns really interesting places and nice towns you have been in.Them Barges are huge that would have made me nervous with that coming at me.
The up above picture of the Madeline is a real beauty
enjoying your posts
Isn’t it so nice that you don’t have to keep a schedule. If you want to stay an extra day (or two) you don’t have to worry about work. What are you going to do when you get back to Juneau?
I have no idea what we’re going to do when we get home! There are a million things we need to do so I guess the first thing will be to make a list and then spend at least a couple hours a day doing chores unless something more exciting comes up. At this point we’re just taking it one day at a time and figuring it out as we go. If we get bored we’ll go on vacation!