Wrangell Narrows

Leslie Thursday, June 12, 2008

There was some additional excitement aboard the ferry yesterday from Wrangell that I couldn’t include in yesterday’s posting.

Shortly after we boarded there was an announcement that the crew would be holding two weekly safety drills. Usually aboard the ferries the safety information for passengers is merely an announcement that if an alarm sounds for 10 consecutive seconds, passengers should proceed to muster areas dressed as warmly as possible. The weekly drills are different. First the crew did an "abandon ship" drill. All crew members, including the cook and bartender, donned orange life jackets and gathered at abandon ship muster places. They lowered the life boats to the rail level. (One person I was speaking with said that he didn't plan to wait for the cook to tell him how to escape.)

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The lifeboats are supposed to hold 63 people. Looks as if would be a bit crowded to me. I wouldn’t want to have to abandon ship for many reasons – but on this ship — the crew didn’t seem to know what they were doing. It appeared that they were all asking each other what to do! One method of escape is down a chute similar to the escape chutes on airplanes. One chute was completely vertical (not on an incline). The instructions said that the construction of the chute would slow the rate of descent. (Yes?) This is the escape chute.

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Here’s a passing ferry.

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And logs being floated down Frederick Sound.

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About an hour and a half out of Wrangel we went through the Wrangell Narrows. The ferry can sail through the Wrangell Narrows only at high tide. They say it is like threading a needle. Notice the red and green buoys. To stay in the navigation channel the ferry must keep the red bouys to the left and the green buoys to the right. The narrows are 23 miles long.

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