Frederick Sound – Riveted

Takatz Bay, Kake, Rocky Pass

Laura Domela — Tue, 16 Aug 2016 00:37:40 +0000

The weather was supposed to be not bad in Chatham, so we poked our head out and things looked pretty calm. Foggy, but calm.

The forecast was for 15 knot winds and 3 foot seas, but it wasn’t even that. Until we got about mid channel, and then the wind picked up considerably. I think we saw 24 knots. The waves were on our bow and about 3-4 feet but not too bad. As we neared Point Gardener at the bottom of Admiralty Island we opted to go for the rougher water and cross over there rather than stay out longer in Chatham, because sooner or later we’d need to turn east, and the later we did that, the more on our beam these 3-4 (5?) foot waves would be. Having abeam seas sucks quite a bit. The boat rolls side to side and stuff you forgot to put away falls on the floor. So instead, we had about 45 minutes (felt like WAY longer) of pretty steep 5ish foot waves on our bow. Crash, crash, blam, blam. Kevin took some video while I was working through the worst part of it (I know, nice bedhead, hush.)

Ahhhh, nice and calm here in Frederick Sound, finally:

We saw a few humpbacks in Keku Strait, on our way into Kake:

We got to Kake and headed for the harbor where we could get some water, some calm, and walk to the market to get more eggs and few other things. Some photos from our walk to the store:

And sunset from the back of Airship:

In the morning we got a little bit of fuel in Kake (just enough to make sure we had plenty to get to Wrangell, since it’s about a dollar more per gallon in Kake) and then headed for Rocky Pass. We haven’t done Rocky Pass before, and are looking forward to it! Most of it isn’t a big deal…we’re timing it to get to the “Summit” just before high slack tide. The shallowest, trickiest parts are The Summit and Devil’s Elbow (a super kelpy, narrow, shallow turn to port that also happens to be missing three of its navigational aids at the moment). We had some time to kill so we hung out and drifted with some halibut lines in the water out near Pup Island, but all we caught was this shark (a spiny dogfish). We put him back:

Here are a couple of photos from Rocky Pass (more like “Kelpy Pass”…so much kelp!!):

After we were through Rocky Pass but not quite yet into Sumner Strait, I noticed some splashing up ahead. Turned out to be a humpback doing a whole lot of tail slapping (and then some fin slapping). We detoured slightly to watch the fun:

Awwww, humpback floating on his back with fins up….so cute.

We saw several more humpbacks as we entered Sumner Strait, but this lively one was the only one we photographed.

Next stop: Totem Bay!

Hobart Bay to Petersburg

Laura Domela — Wed, 26 Aug 2015 12:15:00 +0000

Airship Goes to Alaska

Yesterday morning in Hobart Bay was calm and beautiful and we got up and got an early start on our way to Petersburg. Looking out of our little cove on Entrance Island:

Back toward the cove and the public dock:

Stephens Passage was calm…oh yeah, this reminds me…while we were in Snettisham (and also last night in Hobart Bay) we had no VHF weather channel reception. So…we have this cool inReach satellite device with unlimited text messages, so we texted our daughter in NY, sent her a link to the NOAA Alaska inside waters weather forecast, and asked if she would text us the updates in the morning for Stephens Passage so we knew what to look forward to (or what to avoid). It was fabulous and we owe her a big thank you for being the NY/AK inside waters weather exchange. (I've also used the inReach/DeLorme satellite device to ask her to look up recipes for me too…she's amazing. If you need this service, she might be for hire!)

Five Finger lighthouse:

A little bit of fog ahead:

It turned out to be another gorgeous day (even with an hour or so in fairly thick fog…whatever, we've got radar and AIS and we know how to use 'em):

Devil's Thumb in the distance:

Arriving in Petersburg:

We're in the North Harbor again (we were here mid-June on our way north). The first time we were in Petersburg though, it was a Sunday and it was fairly early in the season so most of the shops were closed and there was not much going on at all. But today the weather is spectacular and the town feels much more vibrant than it did on our previous visit.

We wandered around town and down to the Sons of Norway Hall for some touristy photos (in Chamber of Commerce light, I might add):

Bojer Wikan Fisherman's Memorial Park:

I'm pretty sure this is Bojer Wikam (a local fisherman):

Hammer's Slough:

I really like this shot…little Viking ship adornment on top of a pole in the parking lot with Sons of Norway Hall and its viking ship in the background:

We walked around a bit and went in a few shops, then reprovisioned at the IGA before heading back to Airship to make dinner. Next, we'll head down Wrangell Narrows and over to Wrangell for a day or two.

Here's our track (about 48 nautical miles) from our cove on Entrance Island in Hobart Bay to Petersburg on Mitkof Island:

Pybus Bay to Taku Harbor

Laura Domela — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 23:27:00 +0000

Today was another 50+ mile day, so we left Pybus Bay at 6am (after pulling in one more Dungeness crab). Kevin pulling up crab traps at 5:30am:

I'm glad it was clear when we arrived, or we'd have missed those beautiful mountains back there, covered by the misty gray this morning.

One of the rocky islets in the entrance to Pybus Bay:

We cruised up Stephens Passage (forecast for seas 3 feet but this morning changed to less than 2 feet) and it looked like this pretty much the whole way:

We saw humpbacks ALL ALONG OUR CRUISE. All. Along. We probably saw 40 or 50 humpbacks. Here are a few (too many) photos:

Humpback at 2 o'clock!

Humpback in the foreground, with two more behind him:

I'll chill out on the humpback photos, but it was super cool.

Oh yeah, we also saw a seal tossing a salmon about before he ate ‘im. It was raining and pretty gray, but I managed to get a few long lens shots:

We were the third boat to show up at Taku Harbor (two other Nordic Tugs were already there, a 37 and an older 32) and we opted for the north dock rather than anchoring out near all the crab pots. The north dock has land access and some hiking trails that we wanted to take advantage of.

Facing into the harbor:

Facing back toward shore:

(There’s also a floating dock in the south of the harbor with no land access, but I think it’s got a courtesy dinghy on it if you wanted to go to shore and didn’t have your own. Either that, or someone left without their dinghy.)

By 6pm there were five more boats in here, but it still didn't feel crowded, and everyone is very friendly. Kevin went out and dropped our crab traps out in the sea of commercial crab traps with little expectation.

We went on a nice hike among the old cannery buildings and deserted cabins:

Totally good horror movie set:

There’s a forest service cabin and a nice waterfront fire pit if you head to the right after you get to shore, and a ways past that, the trail opens into a clearing in the woods with a giant rope swing. Fun!!

Picnic table and fire pit in front of the cabin:

Rope swing!

New trees growing on old trees:

Another fish boat in the harbor putting out a TON of traps. Now there’s really no hope for more crab for us. We went out on a dinghy excursion around the shore looking for bears (there are both brown bears and black bears here, but we haven’t seen any yet.)

We decided to check our traps before coming in from our dinghy ride because it’d been two hours already and why not? We had 6 large male Dungeness and one female (she went back in). Six large keepers! We left the traps down (since, if we’re cooking and freezing a bunch of crab, why not go big?)

Think there are enough crab pots out here?? (All of those on the back of that boat went down here after I took this photo.)

Our haul after 2 hours in Taku Harbor:

One of the boats put down a couple crab pots right by the dock in maybe 5 feet of water. After a short time, most of the boaters were gathered over there watching Dungeness after Dungeness make its way into the pot. Crazy! (And probably in a few weeks there will be no crab at all in this bay by the looks of how many crab pots there are here now at the very start of the commercial season.) We lucked out!

We were still really psyched about how good last nights crab enchiladas were, so I made them again! This time I added a little bit of light cream cheese along with some light sour cream and milk, and they were EVEN BETTER.

Today’s track (55.5 nautical miles, 7 hours 14 minutes):

Tomorrow: Juneau!