Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Ketchikan, AK
I cannot believe that we have been on the water for over 7 weeks!  A new adventure every day and this year, in spite of the weather, the boat has not seemed to shrink at all!!! 
After leaving Craig we continued down the south west side of POW....it is a very large island..the largest of the hundreds, if not a thousand or so, of islands in SE Alaska.  We spent a couple of fairly uneventful days which is not a bad thing..........until we had to ride out a storm.  We had heard weather reports of an upcoming event and found a lovely anchorage called Mabel Bay where we would be sheltered from the predicted SW winds....and we were.  It rained horizontally and blew pretty hard in our little cove but we got mainly gusts that blew over the tree tops.  We did hear that night about 8PM that is was blowing at Cape Decision...20 miles to the west...at 71 MPH.  Now that is a heavy blow and to think that we got maybe 40MPH gusts out of it.  Gary makes very good anchorage choices....I opt for scenic....he opts for safety!!!  We did not however score on the crabs there.  Gary says many of these bays have been "otter-sized".  The lovely little furry creatures are decimating the abalone, clam and crab populations.  We are sure they will slowly move south towards Puget Sound and then we will be out of crab as well.  But then, they are protected creatures.  Wish the bears were.
The next day all was calm and we continued on POW to a lovely place called Keete Inlet.  We were once again graced with the presence of bears.  A couple of them just grazing along the grassy waterfronts.  But then a third came along.  I was overjoyed until I saw that he was lame....actually badly maimed.  Missing his L front paw and the back L was barely keeping him upright.  No doubt he had been caught in a trap.  He probably won't live long and it made my stomach just flip for him.
This has been the first trip we have ever taken where we have had such bad bear sightings.  First was 5/15 with the hunters shooting the bear, then later on at Murder Cove where Gary found the bear carcass on the beach intact except for the missing HEAD and front paws and now this third badly crippled guy.   We have had Bad Bear Bay, Butchered Bear Bay and now Maimed Bear Bay.
Enough already!!
But the whale sightings have been quite good this year.   And with my new camera we are actually getting some fairly (OK not by professional standards, Chris) good shots of tails which is an improvement over the frustration of missing ALL the good shots in the past.  Whales in your water always makes for a good day.  Am anxious to get home to MY computer and my Picasa and get some REAL photos online!!! 
On south to Hunter Bay where we expected a good beach bear showing but got nada.  Instead we were treated to a breeding pair of Sandhill Cranes with babe in tow.  I guess they are quite rare in this part of the world.  I am not Audubon-ite but it was pretty exciting.  There are also several old dock "ruins" in this bay which was the site of a large cannery and a copper mine years ago.  It is amazing how heavy weather will quickly turn perfectly good buildings and docks into nothingness in a fairly short period of time.
Next stop, after an absolutely flat rounding of Cape Chacon on the Dixon Entrance, we spent the night in Hidden Bay on the EAST side of POW...finally made it around the south end.  Saw another couple of bear, a couple of dear and a beaver swimming in the water.  Hidden Bay is indeed hidden.  It is entered via a winding channel of rocks and drying reefs that make it a landlocked bay protected from all wind and things that go bump in the night.  Very pretty place.
OK, have made it to Ketchikan and will begin our slow journey south toward home tomorrow.
Have many more stops to make and a lot of salmon fishing to do in BC waters.  The Kings have already been through and the Silvers are not here yet!  For the first time ever, Gary has not caught a salmon in Alaska!!  On to BC where the salmon are easy.................
Now to try and load some photos!

I called him Two Dot

Beautiful Baronof Island

Cozy little stateroom

A whale of a day!

Perfectly calm Dixon Entrance!!

June 12, 2012
Craig AK
My apologies!!!  Mea culpa!!  Sometimes internet connections are just impossible to come by.
We used to be able to just grab onto a "large" yachts' wifi but those days are over.   Even in downtown Juneau there was no internet at the docks.  But we have had a lovely two weeks since last I jotted down a few thought.  I'll try to bring you up to date on our travels and adventures.

After leaving Hoonah  we traveled east on Icy Strait where we spent a night at Couverden Cove (Swanson Harbor) where the city of Haines has erected two "refuge" floats for fishermen (mainly) to get away from weather and be safe at a dock.  Most anyone uses the floats...we were one of many pleasure craft tied there.  The bad news was that there were no crab in our pots!  We moved on to Admiralty Cove  on the north end of Admiralty Island for just a temporary anchorage while we awaited the tide to flood so we could access another anchorage for the night.  About 4 in the afternoon we left anchorage #1 and moved on to Oliver Inlet.  What a perfectly lovely and beatuiful place!!  Two photos above.  We were surrounded by beautiful mountains and by 5 bears!!  All big Grizz.  Just spectacular.  The only catch was getting through the narrows.  We should have had about 4 feet under the boat (by tide reports) when in actuality we had only 1.7 feet!!!!  We were holding our feet up with concern!.   And many parts of Alaska are so poorly charted, I guess because there are that many people here.....that the charts details only go down to 3 miles.  That is not helpful when trying to get into a tight space.  But we made it safely in without having a rock named for us and safely out on a much higher tide the next day.

We cruised on to Taku Harbor for a day.  Taku is the site of an abandoned cannery now in ruins.  You feel like you are in no man's land when suddenly a large ship passes by your little cove.

On 5/31 we moved on to Juneau where we met up with a couple of Skagit boating friends.  We rented a car, made the obligatory Costco run, Fred Meyers (they were both very happy to see us) and them moved on to Mendenhall Glacier, the Alaska State Museum and the Mt Roberts Tram.
I had posted on FB (while at the library waiting for the laundry to finish) that we had made it Juneau and received a message from Carl Heine ( a former ER doc at Skagit, now in Juneau) that he and his wife were in town and to call them.  Much to our surprise they invited Gary and me and our two boating friends to dinner!  We had a wonderful dinner of grilled salmon with to die for Brownies (made by Carl's visiting from NH mom) in a lovely home with a killer view of the Juneau downtown from high above the water.  They told us that they had bought their home from an artist who has an current exhibit at the Ak State History Museum (Photo of exhibit above)  I was much surprised to see the exhibit!!  Very large encompassing two rooms of the museum.  I felt almost special.....like I had dinner at "his" house last night!!

The next day we moved on to Windfall Harbor in Seymour Canal on Admiralty Island.  This may be one of the most visually productive anchorages of all of our trips combined.  We had bears on the beach, loons on the water, eagles in the sky and kayakers with tents on the beach.  The next morning we pulled big prawns from our pots and had whales in our water.  We had humpbacks and orcas as well as pacific white sided dolphins and sea lions and otters.  AND, the sun was out.  It was a sun in your face, wind in your hair, prawns in your pot and whales in your water kind of day!!  Perfection!!

Moving on past Admiralty and on to Kupreanof Island and again through Rocky Pass!! 
When we got back to Prince of Wales (POW) Island we stopped at Port Protection to see if I could find another former colleague.  To my almost immediate surprise I found Jubal ( the medic) at the grocery store.  I looks happy and healthy and told me to tell everyone that his is now a long haired hippy!!
Down the west side of POW and onto to a few more anchorages before making it into Craig yesterday.  Made it to the grocery this morning so we are once again provisioned.  Our current plan is to continue south around POW and then back up to Ketchikan for final provisions before beginning our southward journey towards home.  We have been out on the water 6 weeks!!  Seems like yesterday that we left home but it is time to think about heading south.  Gary would like to spend awhile fishing Squally Channel in BC....the fishing here has been non existent.  The kings are not in yet and the silvers are still out too.  Read this morning that Copper River kings are way behind this year too....they are usually at Haggen's by mid May!!  And since the otters are protected they are wiping out the clams and crabs in most of the little coves......we may starve....or be forced to eat chicken!
It may be a bit before I am able to post another update but I will as soon as possible. 
Thanks for reading this and traveling along with us on our little boat.  I appreciate all the comments.
Happy travels.

Saturday, May 26 2012
Hoonah AK
Since we left Sitka life has been calmer and thoroughly informative!

But first, our trip through Peril Strait...more specifically through Sergius Narrows was very good  but the current was running at a few knots.  It can run quite fast through there and one must take care.  As our engines were cranking at 2000 rpms we were cruising along at a whopping 2.8 knots!!!  I thought we were going to start moving backwards.  But we made it through nicely.  The channel marker is what fast current looks like as it tries to pull on the buoy.

Mt Edgecomb

Sitka AK

Sitka is quite the wonderful place with a HUGE Russian history.  Stumbled across the grave of some Saint Yacobi...one of the first Russian priests to serve there.  On my circuitous bus ride about town I saw a National Cemetery ( who knew?), Univ of SE AK, USCG station, Mount Edgecomb and the whole of downtown.
I also found out that in Sitka the ER is really the Emergency ROOM!!  One room, two beds.  One ER doc, the rest of the providers are FP with offices who come to the ER when needed....like the VERY OLD DAYS.  Even in my early days we had ER docs.  Granted they were residents in other specialities but they were there in the ER!.  I did get offered a job for next summer.  Problem is that the ER nurses have to take patients on the floor and then swing to the ED (room) when a patient rings the buzzer.   Don't think I want to move backwards in time at this point in my career.

Sitka Harbor

On to Elfin Cove!  What a wonderful little place. It is located on the north coast of Chichagof Island.  There are 12 year round residents and about 100 in the summer with the fishing lodges and summer rentals.  Directly across Icy Strait from Glacier Bay, tucked way back off the strait in a tiny little cove.  Began by a Swede in 1930's.  Grew into a little community which used to have a school.  I met several interesting folks there.  Mary Jo who has lived there 40 years but who began her teaching career in Berkley.  She now has started an Elfin Cove museum which is quite good.  Then there was the 33ft new boat being taken home to Seward from Lopez Island and the guy from Juneau on the beach combing boat who used to live in LaConner.  As I was walking the dog a lady spoke to me and I recognized her as a woman who photo I had taken about 6 years ago while she was rowing to the sea plane to pick up her groceries.  After all this time she has a name....it is Susan.  Elfin Cove is quite the busy place as there were three seaplanes that landed during our afternoon stay. 

 Elfin Cove is a boardwalk town...NO road.  And since the boardwalk is literally their means of transportation it falls under the AK Dept. of Highways and is funded.

Elfin Cove Air terminal and seaplane dock with Glacier Bay across the Strait.
I had heard that there are no black bear on Chichagof...only Griz.  Susan told me that is because the Griz ate the black bears!!  She also told me that she and her hubby have lived at Elfin Cove since '93 but before that they lived in the San Juans for 15 years.  We do indeed live in a small world!
Icy Strait was a little choppy but not too bad coming into Hoonah.  We saw a few whales but nothing like in times past.  We may be a bit early for the humpbacks this year.  Hope our sighting increase in the coming weeks.
We are also so very grateful that we have seen this part of the country under better weather circumstances in the past.  It is so beautiful but this past week has been rainy and dreary with low clouds hiding the magnificent peaks.

Tues, May 22, 2012

SITKA!!!
What a beautiful place this is.  But first...to fill in the past 9-10 days. 
Saturday afternoon before we left Ketchikan we ran downtown and wanted to stop at Safeway for a few last minute things before we left the next AM.  If you've ever been to Ketchikan's Safeway you know that they used to let you push your cart to the dock and then down to your boat.  A nice feature if you have $200 worth of provisions to get down the dock.  But then 3 years ago they realized how many grocery carts are/were at the bottom of Kethcikan harbor....some less than conscientious folks didn't return them to the top of the dock (Safeway is at the top of the dock!!!).  So Safeway had an electric fence run under the pavement around the parking lot and put locking devices on the front wheels of their carts.  So there you are, mindlessly pushing your cart across the dock when WHAMMO the wheels lock and you have whiplash and a sternal bruise from ramming into the push bar on the cart.
WELL, this time when we made our last minute run to Safeway the power was out and guess what????
when the power is off so is the parking lot wire.  We thought we'd push to the edge and then carry but suddenly we were half way to the boat when we realized we were still rolling along. Life is good!
We took the cart back!
So Sunday AM we left and ran up to Vixon Harbor on the mainland.  Nice little place a bit tricky to enter as it shoals out to about 2 feet.  We slid in with me doing a bow watch.
The next day on to Anita Bay on the NW corner of Etolin Island.  Good anchorage but big and open...not to my liking.  However, we did get a very nice pull of prawns.  Not a lot but BIG!

Tuesday was my birthday and we were off to Prince of Wales (POW) Island and Red Bay on the NW side.  What a pretty little place.  Tucked in, peaceful, eagles on the beach.  Dropped the anchor and looked across to see a big grizzly bear chowing down on the grass.  Then here comes a skiff with two guys in camoflage (sp?) who ran their skiff up on the beach and got out with rifles!!!  They were down wind of the bear.   Then suddenly one of the guys raises his gun and the bastard shot the bear~!!!  Happy Birthday, Carol!!!  I was just sick!  A couple of days later we were anchored at Murder Cove on the south end of Admiralty Island.  Gary took Diesel ashore and found a bear carcass.  Intact but for the head and front paws...like it had been poached.  Pretty disgusting.
Then we ran into a Fish and Game guy at Warm Springs and he told us that taking the head and front paws is acceptable in Alaska hunting of bear.  Not liking this sport.

Bath house

Public Bathhouse

Baronof Warm Springs

Warm Springs did renew us though.  A nice hot soak in the public tubs was refreshing and soothing.  Gary tried to hike up to Baronof Lake above the hot springs but ran into 2 feet of snow on the boardwalk.  A man there told us the lake was still frozen over.
On of one of our favorite bear places....Appleton Cove on Baronof Island.  We saw 4 bear there and they were all alive with no sign of hunters!!  Then down to Hoonah Sound and our prawn fields.

A nice haul of prawns and a bear to boot!  Life is good again.

Mt Edgecomb @ Sitka

Through Sergius Narrows in Peril Strait today an into Sitka this afternoon.  Need to rest before we start the chores tomorrow.
I still have a wsy to go with this blogging attempt but each time is getting a bit better.  Bear with me!

May 12, 2012
It has been a busy and hectic 2 weeks since we left Pruth Bay.  We took the outside route around Hunter Island and the Spice Island group to Bella Bella to get water.  A little Native community in Northern BC.  The bad news was that their water line broke during the winter and they haven't bothered to get it fixed yet!!  On to plan B.
While there we learned about Enridge Oil Co.  A large Canadian company who want to run a pipeline across Alberta and BC to Kitimat to ship crude to CHINA!!!  And the worst is that this company has a very bad eco history. 
From Bella Bella we cruised to Rescue Bay for a night's anchorage.  We were met by a wailing loon....no really....as we entered the bay.  We spent a restful night on the hook and the next morning took off to Klemtu for water and were met with success. From Klemtu we passed through Meyers PAassage and out to Laredo Sound and then north to Surf Inlet for the night.  We entered the inlet with a nice lingcod and and 12 pound salmon and a couple of small bottom fish for bait.
Next day took us north to Gil Island and Macdonald Bay where we got some nice crab!
By this time the weather was looking a bit iffy so we took the Inside Passage (Grenville Channel) north to Porcher Island. 
The wind was predicted to blow and we knew we could anchor in Hunt Inlet.  But to our surpise we found a nearly empty, NEW and sturdy, government dock!!!  Hunt Inlet is a small community of maybe 20 homes, mostly seasonal.  There are a couple year round residents.  There is a nice little walkway around the inlet so we had a place to get off the boat and walk The Diesel.  On our trek we came across a little building with a sign that read Studio.  A gal came out and invited us in.  She is Eunice Seilemann and she quilts!  Man does she quilt!  She has a real talent and makes some lovely pieces.  I bought a couple of little things and we chatted a while.  She seemed genuinely happy to have a woman to talk with for a bit.
Two days later the wind calmed and we headed for Dundas Island:  the last of the Canadian islands before Alaska.  We put the anchor out in Brundage Inlet with a great set so we knew we were secure if it blew and blow it did.  Gary tried to row Diesel ashore and just go blown around the bay.  He made a pass at coming to the back of the boat for me to grab the dinghy but got blown right past me.
The next morning we headed out across Dixon Entrance at 0 dark 30 only to be turned back by 7-8 foot seas and huge wind waves and icy hail covering the port side of the bridge enclosure.  We didn't even really get out into the big water before we went back to Goose Bay.  Our plan was to anchor but we found a little dock that appeared fairly sturdy.  Gary too one look and said....."This is our new home".  The dock was covered with icy sleet but did have some good, tready shingles nailed to the edges for a foothold.  We tied up rested a bit.  There was a little (12x18 ft) shack on the dock with a bit of a kitchen inside and a outhouse style toilet...not too rustic...it had a seat!  There was also a burn barrel. 
We are not known to be hesitant to take advantage of a good thing.  As we were running low on water and we had no idea how long we might be there, Gary took a bucket and set it under the roof of the shack and another near the boat run off.  In no time at all we had added 15 gallons of pure H20 to our supply....with a tad of Clorox thrown in for safety.  We spent a nice night tucked in and awakened to winds of 9 kts and seas with a 2 -3 foot chop.  Good water!!!  So away we went at 0540 to cross the dreaded Dixon Entrance.  It got a little rough a couple of times but it was very do-able and safely do-able.  We arrived Ketchikan at 1015! 
We learned that one boat came across the day before with 2 couples aboard.  One of the women got off and went straight to the airport!!  Should have waited a day.  Yesterday morning we met a couple at the Safeway coffee shop from California.  They came across about 5 hours behind us when the water had kicked up a bit, well, a lot.  They are in a 62 foot steel hulled vessel which took a 25 degree roll on their crossing.  That was before they lost their computer!!  And a lot of stuff in their galley.
Big seas out therel  We are still here because there are 10 ft seas just north of here where we want to go...but predicted to calm tomorrow.  Hopefully we'll be able to make our move!!!
Last night we had dinner with Lee and Diane aboard their 62 footer.  Boy did we feel like the poor step childre.  Their boat not only has a full size gas range and side by side SS refer in the galley but a nice leather sofa and love seat in the salon PLUS a fireplace and a PIANO!!!!!  Out of our league...but then we can go places they can't.  Na  Nana Nana!!  But I did learn from them that there are massage therapists in a couple of very remote locations so I am ready.  Now all I need is a pedi and I'll be in great shape.  Later.......................
OK, there you have the latest.  I'll try to post more in a few days. 

April 27, 2012

We ended up leaving LaConner on Monday, 4/23.  Our first day only took us to Prevost Harbor on Stuart Island but the tides were right and Gary picked up a couple of dozen oysters!  We had wonderful oysters two nights in a row.
Day 2 took us to Nanaimo to clear customs and then on to Schooner Cove.  We ended up staying there 2 days because of a 40 mph blow in the Strait of Georgia.  Crumby place.  Good docks, nice people but no power and NOTHING there.  No store, no restaurant.  We each read a book!!  It really galls me to have to spend moorage in a place where there is nothing to do.
Yesterday, Thursday, we proceeded on flat water under blue skies to Gowland Harbor across from Campbell River.  Dropped the hook behind an island....gotta have a dog walk place....and had a great night on the hook.  Will leave here in about an hour for Seymour Narrows....need the right currents to get through there.... and then on to Cameleon Bay.  Plan to put out the prawn pots and have prawns for dinner.  Life is good.