Alaska 2008: Cruising into 50
Southeast Alaska and Cruising into 50
On Sunday, June 15th, we traveled up to Port Hardy to provision for the first part of our trip. As always, Craig thought I bought too much food, but (as always) we managed to have just about the right amount. Still, with all the non-perishables already tucked away on board, we could easily survive (and quite well fed at that) for about 3 additional weeks. After airing out the cabin, cleaning, and fueling up the boat, we set out at 4PM with beautiful weather and a perfect forecast for points north.
We sailed up the northwestern coast of Vancouver Island toward Cape Scott and then on past the few small islands at the tip. Actually, we mostly “motor-sailed”, since the winds were light and we have a limited amount of time. We arrived there at about 9PM as the sun was setting. This was one of the most spectacular sunsets I have seen.
We sailed through the night, taking shifts of about 2 ½ to 3 hours each. For someone like me, who needs 8 hours of sleep per night, this seemed like an ultimate challenge. Add to that the fear of being on deck alone in the dark, being cold (and at times very wet) and making sure we stay on course, the sails stay full, and that we don’t hit anything… well, I wasn’t sure how well I’d fare. We’ve been lucky so far in that the weather has been calm, but it actually wasn’t as hard as it seemed. Your body adjusts (and automatically wakes up) to the sleeping pattern. And, it isn’t ever quite as dark as you imagine it might be. On the second night of our passage, on my shift, I was rewarded with a beautiful full moon for a short while in between clouds and some rain.
After about 20 hours of sailing, mostly across the Queen Charlotte Sound, we reached the southern tip of the Queen Charlotte Islands. We originally intended to head up the west coast, but decided to head up the east coast instead. We thought we’d anchor out in one of the coves or head up to Queen Charlotte City to re-fuel and see the sights. In the end, with limited time, it was “Ketchikan or bust” and we straight-lined it across Hecate Strait and didn’t stop at all until we reached Alaska. Along the way, we saw whales, though none were very close to the boat. We didn’t take any pictures, because as our previous experiences revealed, no matter how cool you think the photos will come out, they all just contain a small black unidentifiable spot on a great expanse of water’s surface. As I finished my shift at 3AM, the wind picked up and Craig said we hit speeds of 11 knots (this is quite impressive for a sailboat!) We crossed the line from Canada into the US at about 1PM the following day, June 18th, and I celebrated being in Alaska for the very first time. The weather turned beautiful, after rain during the night and early morning, and we approached the first islands of “Southeast”, which is how this south-eastern area of Alaska is referred to by locals. The sun was shining and we peeled off our layers of rain gear and fleece. We decided to spend our first night in Alaska on anchor at Dall bay, rather than immediately dealing with customs, harbormasters and other forms of civilization.
On Wednesday June 19th we cruised into Ketchikan with unusually beautiful weather. We entered the main waterfront area of this very small city (actually more of a small town) to see not one, but 5 huge cruise ships tied up! Ketchikan itself consists of only about 1300 residents, and the monster ships add about three or four thousand people (including crew) each! They say that in the summer there are at least three ships each day and more often five or six.
After fueling up, we docked at the Bar Harbor Marina, just north of town. We immediately made the acquaintance of Wendy and Raymond, a lovely couple on their fishing boat across from our slip. Ray spent time with Craig telling him the ins and outs of local fishing and wound up giving us all sorts of lures, as well as a rod and reel to go along with the advice. We went downtown to check out the marine supply store and then had a crab lunch before re-provisioning and returning to the boat. The sunset was amazing that evening.
Ketchikan was a pretty busy place for a town of about 1300. In addition to the gaggle of cruise ships, there were float planes constantly taking off and landing, ferry boat crossings, and the surprisingly busy airport on the far shore. We enjoyed stopping here, but were ready to move on pretty quickly. Speaking about moving on… I’ve included two maps here to give the curious reader an visual orientation and overview of our travels once in Alaska. The portion of the trip getting to that point (from Winter Harbour) took about 2 days of round-the-clock sailing. Travel was from bottom of the image northwards (read: upwards). The first map shows up to Ford’s Terror and the second map continues from there on to Hoonah.
Thursday, June 20th, at about 2PM, we sailed out of Ketchikan and headed for Myer’s Chuck. Along the way, we started putting Ray’s advice to work and tied and prepared fishing lines for the much-anticipated king salmon (aka birthday dinner fish.) Myer’s Chuck is an anchorage about 30 miles WNW of Ketchikan and was supposed to be a beautiful spot. When we arrived, we were not at all impressed. It was not the beautiful wild natural scene we had anticipated. There were several other boats and some dilapidated cabins… we pressed on. About an hour later we arrived at Vixen Inlet. It was 9PM and though tired and wet, we put down shrimp and crab traps… at $250 for a fishing license we needed to make the most of it! We then anchored and enjoyed a late dinner and “movie time”. Although Craig loves going out to see movies on the “big screen”, I find that movies on the boat, using the large display Craig built in, are the ultimate in theatre entertainment pleasure.
It is amazingly quiet and lovely here and we climb into our comfy “nest” and fell asleep with visions of prawns and crabs dancing in our heads.
Friday morning, June 21st… happy summer! Craig puts on his wet suit and does some maintenance and cleaning under the boat. He then… great warrior hunter that he is… takes his spear gun and prowls the perimeter of our small anchorage on the lookout for unsuspecting halibut. They must have all been deep in hiding, since he came back empty-handed. Not being a halibut fancier, I wasn’t the least bit disappointed. Along the way, however, Craig saw a small salmon which got our hopes up for trolling. In some commercial crab pots located near ours, he saw a reasonably full lot of crabs. I was still anticipating with great delight, the crab and prawns we would hopefully pull up in our traps. Hah! We pulled up the crab pot first… it had one sole occupant, but sadly not a crab. It was a star fish (lucky stars for him as no one eats star fish, do they?) Oh well, there would be no crab omelets for breakfast, but we still held out hope for a brunch of prawns on the BBQ.
We headed out to retrieve our prawn traps and continue our voyage. At the end of 300 feet of line, pulled up hand-over-hand (pant – pant – wheeze – wheeze) were our two shrimp pots. And (drum roll, please) there was one measly small shrimp in each trap. So, as we dropped our “catch” onto the grill, we calculated that with fishing license, traps and lines (didn’t even think about adding fuel and such) the cost of each delectable shrimp came to approximately $276. They were splendid tasting, but even so, we must figure out a better way.
We anchored out later that day in Bergs Inlet, off Blake Channel. The location and scenery were spectacular. If one could only stand to be outside and take advantage of it. This was the first afternoon without a good solid breeze and the bugs were thick as thieves. Luckily, Craig had bought some natural bug spray and it seemed to help. Maybe it was just that WE couldn’t breathe (it smelled so horrible) and so it took our minds off the bugs!
Sunday, June 22nd. We left Bergs Inlet with a bit of rain and an undaunted population of insects. As we headed through the narrows of Blake Channel and got into more open waters, the breeze picked up enough, so that the bugs disappeared. We had mostly nice weather and no luck what-so-ever in trying to catch salmon. Oh, did I mention that we were trolling with three lines off the back of the boat during the entire trip? No matter… no fish. When the sun was out, we were stripping off layers of wet-weather gear, fleece and gloves, and then within minutes the sun disappeared again behind the clouds and we reversed the process. This went on many times each day. I am not complaining though, it was beautiful for more time than we should have expected, according to the locals, and we enjoyed every minute. Yes, we were pretty diligent about our sunscreen. That, layered on top of multiple applications of bug spray made a nice shield against UV rays.
As we cruised on, we were rewarded with a beautiful rainbow.
We wound our way through the Wrangell Narrows, 21 miles of beautiful narrow channel, and arrived at Petersburg. This is one of the towns where cruise ships do not stop. The narrows and the harbor aren’t deep enough and the locals don’t want the ships here anyway. Petersburg is a real working harbor for fishermen. I absolutely love this little place. It has a great feel to it and everyone is friendly, warm, and welcoming. Since we arrived on Sunday evening, nothing much was open, so we’ll have to explore the rest of town starting tomorrow morning.
Monday, June 23rd – Thursday, June 26th…. We’re taking a “working” break. We’ve got cell phones and a wireless router connected to a Verizon broadband card and thus, we are “connected” and happily working snugly in the cabin (it has been raining pretty consistently). It seems that even if we’re working full days, doing it while gently rocking on board makes it so much more pleasant and not like work at all. We’ve been dining on king crab legs, local spot shrimp, and local fresh king salmon, all on the grill. This is about as good as it gets unless you can manage to catch it yourself! We even had some halibut fish tacos that were marvelous (though I’m not much for Mexican food, in general). Craig is a happy camper, since he found a local coffee roaster in Petersburg. He placed an order and they are roasting up a batch for him. Woohoo! Thursday afternoon we’ll be doing laundry and a final grocery shopping in order to be ready to take off for the last week of our adventures…. “cruising into 50”.
We left Petersburg on Friday afternoon in the rain, and after fueling up, we headed out to Thomas Bay, 12 miles north. That doesn’t sound too far, but if you’re usually cruising at 6-7 knots AND you’ve got current against you, it could take a bit of time. We pulled in and anchored in a small cove in Thomas Bay next to Ruth Island. We had hoped to go further into the inlet and see Baird Glacier at its head, but the visibility was low and we decided it wasn’t worth the extra cruising time to get there.
Saturday morning, the weather looked mixed, but with better visibility. We took off and headed out of Thomas Bay northbound in Frederick Sound. Upon entering the sound, we saw our very first mini iceberg. We were to see many and more impressive examples along the way this day. We also saw another great rainbow. We cruised up to Stephen’s Channel and headed up to Endicott Arm, which would lead us to Ford’s Terror. We heard about this lovely place from friends in Ucluelet, who spent many years cruising in Alaska. Had it not been for these friends, we may not have sailed to Alaska at all. The plan was to head south from Vancouver Island, but they insisted that we continue north… thanks Kent and Kerry! As we entered the inlet, we saw a beautiful glacier. Further in, we began seeing pieces of glacial iceberg, some blue and beautifully formed. We saw eagles (actually, eagles were plentiful throughout our entire trip!) and a humpback whale, which surfaced shockingly close to our boat near an islet in the inlet.
We rounded the bend into the entrance of Ford’s Terror and anchored out in a “waiting area”. This small anchorage is beautiful, with multiple waterfalls, high cliffs and floating mini icebergs moving by. You can only proceed beyond this point, and further into Ford’s Terror, on high-slack tide, and since we were there at low-slack at 4PM, we would need to wait until late that evening or the next morning. We decided to wait until the next morning. As we sat on anchor, we saw large chunks of ice (we’re talking from dinghy-sized up to tank-sized!) that floated by our boat. One large chunk brushed up alongside the boat… sort of scary and breathtaking at the same time.
The next morning, June 29th, I am 50 years old… and ready to celebrate to the max!
Craig and I wake up at 4AM (sunset is at 10:30PM and sunrise is at 3:30AM, so it is essentially light all the time) and since it is low tide, we decide to begin my birthday celebration with a dinghy ride into Fords Terror and see what we would expect later when we bring the mother ship in. The rapids at the entrance were crazy and moving fast. We barely made it in with the dinghy. Once through though, it was beautiful. The scenery was awesome… high cliffs and waterfalls, snow covered peaks and then grassy shores. We traveled up to the head of the inlet and saw several seal pups. Unfortunately, the head of the inlet was grassy and marshy and we were immediately eaten alive by mosquitoes. Based on this, we decided that we didn’t need to bring the boat up this far and we could enjoy scenery just as nice where we were currently anchored.
Back at the boat by 7AM, we had a birthday breakfast of fresh local salmon/lox and cream cheese on bagel and rice cakes. It was so yummy. Then I opened my birthday cards and present from my loved ones. Thank you again to those “loved ones” reading this. I had tears in my eyes and joy in my heart… feeling ever so loved and cherished. Sparkle on, indeed!
The weather turned from consistently rainy into a bright blue sky and very warm for my birthday. We sat up in the cockpit and enjoyed the beauty around us. Craig put down some shrimp pots and a crab pot. The crab pot was full of sea urchins… amazing how much they can eat (and so fast), when those guys don’t even look like they move at all! We would pick up the shrimp traps on our way out of the inlet the next day.
Monday, June 30th, we headed out of our lovely anchorage in Ford’s Terror and went to retrieve our shrimp traps before heading back up Endicott Arm and northbound towards (but not into) Juneau. Surprise of surprises… our traps yielded a catch!… yippie!… 79 shrimp, to be exact. After only catching 2 the first time, we felt it essential to tally these up. We ate them on the grill and steamed… yes, all 79, though many were very “shrimpy” in size,lol! They were all fabulous and needed nothing… no butter, no seasoning.
We continued up Stephen’s Passage and then into North Stephen’s Passage, which would bypass Juneau. We decided we didn’t want to stop there amidst all the cruise ships and other traffic. Just prior to stopping for the evening, we had cell phone service (though weak) for the first time since leaving Petersburg. It lasted about 20 minutes and then disappeared again. We anchored out in Admiralty Cove and, first things first after anchoring, Craig dropped the crab pot.
We caught a baby halibut in the crab pot. That makes 2 starfish, countless sea-urchins, and one flat ugly fish of sorts… not a single crab. Still, ever the optimists, we keep trying. We lift anchor and troll for salmon for a while, since we see them jumping out of the water in the distance. No luck for us… lucky for the salmon though. We sailed up past Auke bay (near Juneau) and see another lovely glacier… they are so impressive. We round a point and enter Lynn Channel and are now sailing southbound.
We continue on to Icy Straits, trolling off and on along the way, and then head in to Port Frederick, the inlet where Hoonah Harbor is and where we’ll keep the boat the next two months. We decide that instead of proceeding into Hoonah this evening, we’ll continue further inside the inlet and anchor out for two days before heading to the dock. We anchor in the North Bight and it is spectacular. A small quiet place surrounded by snow covered mountains and a large waterfall. It is simply breathtaking. Crab pot down. Halibut line down. We do have a backup plan for dinner however, just in case. 😊
Wednesday July 2nd, we wake up to splendid sunshine. We see salmon jumping a short distance from the boat and an immediate frenzy ensues with Craig grabbing all his spear-fishing garb and gear and me making the dinghy ready for the trip out. We cruised the area… I was driving the dinghy while Craig, the great hunter/warrior, was on the lookout for salmon. We both enjoyed the excursion, though my view was better than Craig’s… visibility was poor in the water. Once again, the salmon were safe (must have been why they were “jumping for joy”). No matter… we had a wonderful and relaxing day, with temps in the 70’s and sunshine abounding. Tomorrow we’ll motor on to Hoonah to explore what seems like a great little town. On Thursday July 3rd, we make our way towards the town of Hoonah. We had never even heard of this place before, but cruising guides and people we met along the way said that it was a great place to keep the boat. The town is small and mostly native Indian. Although the cruise ships anchor in the bay, they tender people to a new “cultural center” located about a mile outside of town. The cultural center provides good employment for the locals, but most cruise-ship tourists (and that’s just about all the tourists there are here) do not venture beyond this, so the town has remained pretty much untouched. We participated in the July 4th rituals… viewing a quaint parade and then the gathering nearby. This place is just great, good energy!
July 5th. Time to return to (land-based) home after what has been a totally awesome trip. I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday celebration or vacation! Granted, it is July, but we simply love being in Alaska. Craig continues to wonder when we’ll make it down to warmer waters, or better yet, Tahiti. We’ll do those trips too, but this one for now was a treasure. The waters may not be warm, but the warmth is in our hearts here.