North Star arrived yesterday in Ketchikan, Alaska! Roberta and I weren’t onboard, but I monitored the trip closely, and we’ll be flying up to join the boat five days from now.
I was worried about this leg of the trip because of all the work that was done to the boat over the past year, but everything went smoothly.
There was only one incident of note: at the worst possible moment, while in open ocean, the stabilizers failed.
For most of the trip to Alaska, the boat was on the Inside Passage, protected from the open ocean by islands. But for approximately six hours after venturing north of Vancouver Island, the boat is exposed to the open Pacific. The weather was decent, and the boat can easily handle the ocean, but this would be the first trip into the Pacific with our new stabilizers.
They have been solid thus far, but we haven’t really had a chance to put them to a real open-ocean test. A couple of hours into the run, they suddenly shut down, with the fins in a slanted position. In other words, the stabilizers, which are tasked with keeping the boat from rolling side to side with the ocean waves, were now causing the boat to lean in one direction nonstop.
After a brief bit of “What the heck is happening???” it was discovered that a button in the engine room had been accidentally brushed, shutting off the stabilizers. Oops!
Once the crew understood what had happened, the button was pressed again and the stabilizers immediately came back to life. The good news was that nothing traumatic happened. The boat leaned, but not badly, and handled the situation painlessly. It was a good, if inadvertent, test — and a valuable lesson learned!
The trip thus far
During the trip north the crew took LOTS of pictures and video. I’ll be on the boat starting next week and will do a video update for youTube, but for now, the crew has been posting updates on our new Instagram page.
North Star Instagram Page
Our new Instagram page – https://instagram.com/mv_northstar
My video and text blog entries will start soon from on the boat.
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Thank you!
Ken Williams (and, Roberta, plus our pups – Keeley and Pixie)
