From misty early to a glorious sunny day we passed a few trawlers in Chatham strait, then Mt Calder and soon turned off into El Capitan Passage. It is a very narrow passage through a maze of islands and islets, some of it dredged. It was incredibly tense navigating through but all went well as we kept a good eye on all the navigation aids and sometimes on the GPS.

It only got a bit nerve racking later down the way in Dry Passage, even narrower and dicer, when the GPS started showing us on land. As soon as we realized that the GPS was off and made do without it, all went well again. The markers are well placed and kept us in line as we  went along. We are so focused on picking our way that  sometimes we  kind of forgot to look at the landscape and it is good to have the pictures now to reminisce on the day.

After that we poked into Devilfish bay, supposedly a cursed bay, and it was. First we had trouble going through the narrow into the head of the bay as the chart-plotter was acting up again and nearly got us aground, second the winds were so strong funneling in there that we could not find a sheltered place to drop the hook. 

Upwind to Sarkar Cove

Off we went  8 miles down the passage to beautiful  Sarkar Cove, under sail the whole way giving our crew a nice thrill with the boat heeling high in the gusts of wind.

Pic by P.Vigneux

Sarkar is a fabulous place with a top-notch fishing lodge. The owner comes to get you in his float-plane from Ketchikan and all their fishing boats are equipped with radar, also  the cabins look grand. But most importantly, just like everywhere we have been in the last few days the fish is jumping out of the water incessantly.