Wood Point to East Sukoi Island, June 27th 2005.


Our plan for leaving Wood Point was to paddle out into the middle of Fredric Sound and let the flood tide help pull us south. Don Fleming guaranteed that we would see whales in the middle of this body of water. Lisa Rohe has never seen a whale and has been joking that these mythical animals do not really exist. Perhaps because Lisa did not say "I BELEIVE", we didn't see any whales all day long! We did watch lots of boat traffic. We saw fishermen pulling in nets that didn't seem to have very many salmon in them. Has the Land of Plenty finally started to run low on abundance?

The day was uneventful and we arrived at the East Sukoi Island in plenty of time to find a campsite. The tide had finally relaxed enough for us to camp on the beach! We didn't have to crash through the brush and find flat spots in the Forest Primeval! There was a high tide at 6:30 in the evening and then the next high tide, which was a little lower, didn't arrive until the next morning. However, the experience of being flooded out of our tents at Bussy Creek was still heavy in everyone's minds. So everyone waited until we saw the 6:30 high tide come and go before they set up their tents.

Despite being very close to Petersburg and Civilization, the Sukoi Islands still felt very remote. We had a beautiful view north up Frederick sound as we set up camp, cooked and ate our dinner, and rested on our beach. Late in the evening a whale finally swam by. It was pretty far from shore, we could see it blowing but it took binoculars to see the black back humping up. Lisa is still skeptical but has to admit that there may be something to this whale myth.


All text and images Copyright © 2005 by Mike Higgins / contact