Winter Sailing in Alaska

[Taylorriddle]

Hello everyone,

I'm new to this fourm so I apologize if this is the wrong fourm to post this in.

My question is we recently bought a 54' monohul sailboat (Will add a picture)
She's done two circumnavigations and was built for racing, although we don't go fast on her.
We've done lots of day trips and longer trips on other boats but mostly in summer.

I want to take some time off work but sadly my work is easier to take off from in Winter. I want to sail from Juneau to Ketchikan and then back up again. But I want to do it in Novemeber/December.

I know it will be cold, I'm from north of Anchorage. I can handle the cold and what it does to my body. My question is how does the cold effect the sails and sailing in general? The winds pick up but I think my 54' should still be okay.

In general what challenges does winter add for sailing that I should try to prepare for?

[fxykty]

Lovely boat ❤️ . Welcome to CF! And you’re in a great area for winter cruising with lots of protected havens.

You’ve got at least two sources of off-grid heating? Is the boat insulated? Do you have good protection for part or all of your cockpit so that it can be heated? A water maker is handy as most docks will have no running water.

Cold air is denser, so you will need to be reefing early.

The generic winter advice for Alaska is to be very aware of the weather and the constant storms moving in from the North Pacific. If the Gulf of Alaska is reporting storms, you’re getting it next. So you may be doing lots of motoring to take advantage of the calmer days between storms. And always have a safe haven in range. Talk to commercial fishermen.

There are a couple of YT channels based in or visiting Alaska (Alluring Arctic is cruising north through Alaska starting last Fall) and on CF wrwakefield (I think he owns Denali Rose https://svdenalirosenc43.blogspot.com/).

[skipperpete]

Hi Taylorriddle and welcome to the forum.
I’m not a high latitude sailor so I have no practical suggestions or answers to your questions but I’m sure there are some on the forum who can. Thats a really beautiful yacht, what’s her name?

[Taylorriddle]

Thanks for the quick response.

Sorry for the confusion we used to live in Anchorage. We're living in Juneau now.

We don't have a watermaker, and the only sorce of heat is the diesel heater.

[Taylorriddle]

Her name is Leda. We've got a whole website about her history if you're interested Sailing Vessel Leda – Dedicated to the New Zealand built sailing yacht Leda

She's a 1940s wooden boat built by two brothers.

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by Taylorriddle

Thanks for the quick response.

Sorry for the confusion we used to live in Anchorage. We're living in Juneau now.

We don't have a watermaker, and the only sorce of heat is the diesel heater.

I updated my post when I saw your other post.

Number one advice is to keep everyone warm!

We’ll be coming that way in about 5 years and plan to winter over in SW Alaska.

[Renegde_Sailor]

Howdy and welcome to CF.

Let me tackle this one.

I am in Juneau right now, just sailed up here and had an amazing trip.

You will not catch me trying to sail up here past the end of September and here is the why.

It has nothing to do with the cold. It doesn't get that cold here.

It has everything to do with the wind, when the Pacific high turns this fall and starts spinning backwards bringing the hardcore southerlies with it, that means all through SE Alaska there are going to be at times 80-100 mph winds.

All of this country is deep, there are few shallow anchorages, well protected anchorages are also hard to find.

On the way up here we saw a whole lot of boats on the beach that were battered pretty badly, we saw the remains of others that had wound up on the rocks and were presumable pounded apart because all that remained were pieces because they drug or broke loose of their anchors and quickly ran aground.

There are commercial fish boats in this country that are built out of aluminum or steel that go out in that season and never come back, and they are built much stouter than your boat which is built to race, not to take a pounding.

Looking at her she seems to be a fine ocean boat with fine lines that probably loves to charge across the open ocean.

On this trip, you are going to be a motor boat, I got the sails up twice in between Bremerton and Juneau.

As far as the temperature, keep in mind saying this I am an oil field hand that worked for years in the Dakotas, Wyoming, Colorado and Montana, I know what it is like being out working in -30F with 60 mph winds.

It's cold, but it is a dry cold.

You find yourself heading north in a southerly and you will find that dodger on your boat does nothing but collect the spray coming from behind you, and you are going to get soaked to the bone and find a new definition for what it means to be cold.

Even wearing layers and having on fowlies being out in conditions like that will suck the heat right out of you because the water is so conductive to the heat.

To me doing the trip north may be doable, but it is going to be an extra level of misery, and the other thing is that everything is going to be closed, including some of the fuel stations which may greatly complicate things for you as even though you are driving a blow boat, good portions of the trip are 70+ miles in a ditch that is 1500 feet wide, 1500 feet deep, with 1500 feet of mountains on either side.

There isn't enough sea room to maneuver well, and as you are trying to do so you are going to be facing down tug and barge traffic.

The wind up here is no joke, as far south as Washington near the strait you can see hurricane force winds.

In Alaska and northern BC, 100mph winds are common in the late fall and winter.

Being someone accustomed to the cold, who has lived aboard and sailed through several PNW winters aboard a boat that was built specifically for this country with a hard dodger, windshield wipers, a bulkhead on the dodger and so on, I would not want to make the trip you are considering.

If you want to sail this winter, I would see about getting her down to Washington by the end of September, if you made it early enough you could visit the wooden boat show in Port Townsend, which owning a wooden boat is a place you will probably want to familiarize yourself with anyways.

[skipperpete]

I just opened the link to the history of Leda and I’m very impressed, she not only looks good, she’s also beautifully constructed from the keel to the masthead. Congratulations on being the owner of this remarkable sailing vessel.
It seems that she was originally without an auxiliary engine, did she have one fitted later in her life?

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by Renegde_Sailor

Howdy and welcome to CF.

Let me tackle this one.

I am in Juneau right now, just sailed up here and had an amazing trip.

You will not catch me trying to sail up here past the end of September and here is the why.

It has nothing to do with the cold. It doesn't get that cold here.

It has everything to do with the wind, when the Pacific high turns this fall and starts spinning backwards bringing the hardcore southerlies with it, that means all through SE Alaska there are going to be at times 80-100 mph winds.

All of this country is deep, there are few shallow anchorages, well protected anchorages are also hard to find.

On the way up here we saw a whole lot of boats on the beach that were battered pretty badly, we saw the remains of others that had wound up on the rocks and were presumable pounded apart because all that remained were pieces because they drug or broke loose of their anchors and quickly ran aground.
.........

Yikes!!!!
I think I'll stick to the winter wonderland that is Chilean Patagonia.

[Taylorriddle]

I appreciate the honest and detailed answer.

In your opinion would it still be okay to go out for short trips out of Juneau like just for a week or less if the weather looks good? Or would you recommend just keep her in the slip till Spring if I'm not able to go down to Washington?

[Taylorriddle]

Originally Posted by skipperpete

I just opened the link to the history of Leda and I’m very impressed, she not only looks good, she’s also beautifully constructed from the keel to the masthead. Congratulations on being the owner of this remarkable sailing vessel.
It seems that she was originally without an auxiliary engine, did she have one fitted later in her life?

She had a 4 cylinder perkins added in the 90s!

I just bought her this month so I have a lot to learn about her still.

[desodave]

Originally Posted by Taylorriddle

I appreciate the honest and detailed answer.

In your opinion would it still be okay to go out for short trips out of Juneau like just for a week or less if the weather looks good? Or would you recommend just keep her in the slip till Spring if I'm not able to go down to Washington?

The issue here is what you have to do to protect your boat's systems from Alaska's winter weather, and whether you can easily/quickly reverse them for that week of sailing. I run an electric heater in the boat but concern myself about a prolonged loss of power in a winter storm that dumps a foot of wet snow. For example, I drain my water system every winter out of an abundance of caution and our temp doesn't go below -15 C, seawater usually around 7 deg C. I've never had more than a surface skim of ice in our marina just N of the 50th Parallel. I remove my jib because of the regular gale/storm force winds that hit all winter but, with a furling main (and moored facing the wind), leave the main in place. You probably need to remove both sails. I have replaced the coolant in my heat exchanger with anti-freeze, imo a bit overboard in my climate, maybe not in yours.
You've got a beautiful boat and I can understand your desire to get out in it when you've got the time.

[Renegde_Sailor]

Originally Posted by Taylorriddle

I appreciate the honest and detailed answer.

In your opinion would it still be okay to go out for short trips out of Juneau like just for a week or less if the weather looks good? Or would you recommend just keep her in the slip till Spring if I'm not able to go down to Washington?

There are going to be a few nice weeks in the winter sure, the problem there in is that the weather can change on a whim up here, and what starts as a beautiful morning can turn into a nasty afternoon and you can get caught out in it.



There are a few issues I would have there, which are 1. familiarity with your boat, she is new to you which means you do not yet know what to expect from her.



2. You yourself don't have the winter sailing experience.



3. The boat is not a north pacific basher built from steel and aluminum with windows bolted in, she is a wooden boat, and she is an old wooden boat at that.



The issue with sailing for short periods out of Juneau, is Juneau is up at the end of a ditch, so you are looking at an hour of motoring to get out into the main channel, there are quite a few directions to head, but protected anchorages are few and far between.

Taku where I am headed today is absolutely beautiful and well protected, but outside of that most places to anchor here are a 3 sided bay with an exposure, and many of them are exposed to the south, which is why they were never developed, as in the winter months with the storms they are completely inhospitable!



So yes, I think your best bet would be either to take the boat to Washington in the spring, or just enjoy it during the spring/summer in Alaska.

There are so many beautiful places up here to explore.

[Kelkara]

I'm surprised to hear how bleak Renegade's experiences with SE Alaska winters are ... I've only been there in summer, so out of curiosity I googled some wind data just to see what the reality is.

I picked the weather station at Five Fingers Lighthouse, which is about 60 miles south of Juneau (Windspeeds are in m/s so multiply by 2 to get knots, samples every 10 minutes) for January 2023.

Plotted are windspeed-direction and gustspeed-direction. Then I wondered if the winds died down at night so plotted only for 10am-4pm. Then I plotted windspeed by day, to see how variable days are, and finally picked a couple of days that looked like they might make the best sailing to see how it varied over the day.

No comments, I've not been there at that time of year, just graphs.

[psk125]

My brother lives in Juneau. He hauls his J/30 out of the water for the winter, and tells us about the winds that come down the mountainside and blow over the telephone poles.