The log of S/V Lacuna, spring and summer 2005

Chapter 7

June 13-25, 2005. Juneau to Eugene via Glacier Bay and Hoonah.

6/13/05. I got up at 5:30, took a shower at our motel room in Juneau, and rousted everyone else up. After breakfast, I called a cab. Yesterday, I schlepped a couple of boxes of wine to Lacuna then laundry and laptop back to the motel, and it was such a strain that I wasn’t about to try to carry our luggage, beer, and $160 in groceries by hand. It was $10 well spent to be carried the few blocks to Harris Harbor. Miles and Dmitri stayed behind to catch their plane back to San Diego.

At the harbor, I filled the water tank and jugs, motored to the fuel dock and filled gas the tank, and by 10:00 Jill and I set off down Gastineau Channel to do a nearly complete circumnavigation of Douglas Island. It’s funny that it took us six hours of motoring to get to Auke Bay, which is just a few miles from Harris Harbor, a passage that could have been done in an hour had the tide been high enough. Unfortunately, we are at the neap and the highest tides weren't high enough to float Lacuna across the Mendenhall Bar, so we had to take the long way around. At the moment the plane carrying Miles and Dmitri was scheduled to take off, 3:24 PM, we were just a mile or two from the Juneau airport. It had probably taken 15 minutes for the motel van to take them there.

Gastineau Channel (click here for larger image)

When we left Juneau, there were no cruise ships at the docks, but one was headed in and seemed close by. I cut figure eights in a wide area of the channel, waiting for it to clear a choke point and show its intentions. It moved very slowly and cautiously; apparently it had thrusters because it seemed to be moving sideways more than forward as it got close to the dock. While we were motoring south in the channel, three other cruise ships headed toward Juneau. It’ll be busy downtown.

Fishing vessels in Harris Harbor, Juneau (click here for a larger image)

As we motored west in Stephens Passage, we had to pound into a headwind and chop. It was a bit uncomfortable but died down after a couple of hours. The view on the approach to Auke Bay was fantastic—Mendenhall Glacier and its mountains lie behind the bay. The marina was full. It’s first-come-first-served here, supposedly limited to transient moorage, but I see a lot of Juneau and Auke Bay home ports on sterns. It was too crowded to get to a space where we could hook up to electricity, so we tied up inside the breakwater, the last boat from the end. It’s nice and private out here in the hinterlands.

6/14/05. I changed the oil in OB before we set off this morning. I had some misgivings about heading out—a gusty wind had set the halyards slapping and the standing rigging humming last night, and a desultory rain rattled on the deck while Jill and I were snuggled in our sleeping bags. But our Glacier Bay permit begins tomorrow, and I knew we had to make mileage. One forecast (on public FM radio) predicted dying winds in the afternoon. The VHF WX station didn’t imply any decrease in the breeze. I read up on a few anchorages, set my sights on Hoonah, and hoped for the best.

We left the dock at 10:24 and immediately had to deal with chop and lots of wakes. Auke Bay is lively with tour boats from 30 to 100 feet long. Several 100-foot catamarans sped by in both directions after we left the marina. Smaller boats, holding a dozen passengers or so, zoomed along, raising big wakes. The west wind raised chop that added to the wakes. After we turned north into Saginaw Channel, the wind was from astern so I raised the jib and motorsailed with a current boost for a couple of hours. As soon as we rounded Point Retreat and headed south in Lynn Canal, the speed over ground dropped from 7 knots to 4.1 knots, and the wind became a chop-raising headwind.

Point Retreat lighthouse

Rain-filled squalls passed on both sides of us as we bucked, yawed, hobbyhorsed, and rolled through the waves, sometimes pounding down into a trough and shooting spray over the bow. It was the worst seas I’ve been in during this voyage. The chop was coming from at least two different directions, and every so often a wave set would roll through that was steep, deep, and breaking, probably four feet or more from crest to trough. I had to steer Lacuna up to the crest then turn 20 or 30 degrees off so she’d surf diagonally down the back of the wave and not bury her bow in the trough. It was like skiing a mogul-filled bump run except that the bumps kept moving, disappearing, and re-forming.

I had hoped to be able to make it to Hoonah, but when we reached the end of Lynn Canal, where it joins Icy Strait, the wind and waves were bigger than ever, very uncomfortable, and would only get worse after we turned 90 degrees to pass through Icy Strait, when they would be on the beam. The thought of rolling 30 degrees to port and 30 to starboard with every wave wasn’t very appealing, so I turned into the passage leading to Couverdin Island cove. It’s a snug harbor with lots of swinging room and a level floor about 5 fathoms deep. The anchor set well and the breeze kept the bugs away.

Courverdin Island (click here for larger image)

6/15/05. Last night while at anchor, I plotted a course from Couverden Island cove to Bartlett Cove. There are two entrances to the Couverden Island cove, both narrow and challenging. We took the easier of the two, the NE entry, yesterday when entering the cove. Last night, I considered exiting through the more difficult passage, over No Use Ledge. According to the guidebook, the channel is marked by pilings and is possible to transit in fair weather, at high tide, with a shoal-draft vessel. But it looked a little scary to me, so I planned to exit via the same route I entered, even though it would add a few miles to the passage compared to the No Use Ledge shortcut.

This morning, I argued with myself as I weighed anchor and set out on the plotted course. I told myself to trust my judgment last night. But another part of me said that I was too cautious last night after the pounding we'd taken in Lynn Canal. The first voice said that although the tide is high, it's four feet lower than the tide when the route was described. The second voice replied that it should still leave at least four feet below Lacuna’s keel. The first voice muttered “Here we go again…” The second voice won, and we threaded our way slowly through the high-water route, never less than six feet showing at any time on the depth sounder. The second voice said (sotto voce) “Told ya so, told ya so. I just saved a couple of miles of traveling.”

Icy Strait was cold and cloudy but calm and not too rainy. Occasionally I saw spouts or porpoise splashes, but there were few views and little traffic. We crossed the invisible boundary of the park, radioed park headquarters that we would dock within an hour, arrived at park headquarters at 3:30, and got the orientation. Immediately afterward, I called Paul Dybdahl, the Hoonah harbormaster, who said he could find a place for Lacuna to moor for three weeks. He said the ferry leaves at 4:00 Friday mornings, so we’ll moor Lacuna by Thursday next week. I called the Driftwood Inn, reserved a room, let them know we’d be arriving by ferry and requested that they send the inn van to pick us up, and all seemed well with the world. I’d been anxious about what to do with Lacuna while I’m at Oregon Country Fair. There wasn’t likely to be moorage available in Juneau, given how they’re remodeling the docks. But Hoonah could be good—it’s the closest port to Glacier Bay so when Ed and I return in July we’ll be able to get to the park ASAP.

Between Point Gustavus and Barnett Cove, I saw several whales feeding as we entered the bay. There are restrictions on where boats can go in this passage; all boats must stay mid-channel and keep the speed under 10 knots. The humpbacks feed in the shallows.

Humpback spouting in Icy Strait.

Once we arrived at Bartlett Cove, Glacier Bay National Park, a dream was realized, a goal met: I got to Glacier Bay by the solstice, having done the entire Inside Passage from its southernmost point. I am grateful to my sweetheart Jill for her unflinching support, pleased with Lacuna for her seaworthiness, and proud of my accomplishment. To celebrate, Jill and I took advantage of the three hours we were allowed to tie up to the dock--we took showers and dined on Caesar salad with grilled salmon in Glacier Bay Lodge.

I’m used to park lodges being grand edifices constructed by the CCC 70 years ago. This lodge was built in 1966 and just doesn’t have the character or charm that the Glacier Park and Yellowstone Park lodges have. But the food was good (albeit expensive) and the fresh young faces on the wait staff were new in their jobs and a little giddy with the novelty of the experience.

Bartlett Cove (click here for larger image)

6/16/05. I got up at 5:00 and set off before 6:00. I wanted to take advantage of the rising tide to make some distance up the east arm, Muir Inlet. I hurried to get the anchor aboard because there was a cloud of no-see-ums and mosquitoes buzzing around me. It was very humid, and even more so inside the boat. Every surface was wet with condensation and there was a stuffy, clammy feel to the air. Instead of using the bug screen over the companionway last night, we used the rain curtain, which doesn’t allow much air circulation.

Low clouds obscured all but the low-lying shore around the park headquarters and the nearby shore. It was cold enough that I put rain gear on over my layers of fleece and put on knit gloves for the first time this voyage. As we left Bartlett Cove, a humpback porpoised a couple of times less than a hundred yards away. I saw the spouts of others feeding near the bay entrance. Two big cruise ships headed up the west arm, but there was no other boat traffic.

Given the fact that the number of private yachts that can enter the park per day is limited, I was surprised last night by how many boats were anchored or moored in Bartlett Cove, but after some inspection it looked as if many of them belonged to residents. There were a couple of commercial fishing boats and half a dozen yachts at anchor. A pamphlet given to us during orientation said that 350,000 people visited the park last year. Most of them must have been on cruise ships, because there isn’t much other traffic. If each cruise ship holds 3,000 people, and two a day are allowed entry, that’s 42,000 people in a week. It wouldn’t take long for that to add up.

Glacier Bay (click here for larger image)

Within an hour of leaving the cove, I added a first to my vita: my first sighting of a sea otter in the wild. Despite all the time I’ve been in sea otter waters, I’d seen them only in captivity. As we motored along at 4 knots, I saw him lounging on the surface off our starboard bow. He saw us coming and swam toward us, coming within 50 feet, then swam parallel to us for a bit. He rolled over on his back, put his flippers in the air, and groomed himself. He’d swim for a bit, then groom or lounge or do some rolls. It didn’t take him long to lose interest in us and we pulled away from him.

By 8:00, the sky overhead was clearing but low clouds obscured the horizon in all directions. To the NE, I saw a black, angular shape emerge from the clouds a startling 8 or 9 degrees above the horizon (the width of a closed fist held at arm's length). It looked like the profile of a B-2 bomber. I trained the binoculars on it—it was the peak of a mountain, clouds below, above, and behind. Maybe there IS some scenery here, I thought.

An hour later, we came across a sea lion haul-out on rocks around South Marble Island, a protected seabird rookery. The regulations say that boats can approach no closer than 50 yards from the southern shore of the island, but even doubling that distance we had some great views of these noisy and gregarious animals. As usual, the biggest bulls were hauled out on one rock and the females and juveniles on the others. As we watched, one big male bullied his way through a crowd of females and young, who scattered before him. The roars, grunts, bellows, and groans could easily be heard over the sound of OB. As we passed downwind, it smelled like a combination of fish market and stockyard.

Sea lions hauled out on a rock near Marble Islands.

A female or adolescent male entertained me for five minutes or more, zooming under the boat, surfacing next to Bratwurst trailing on its 20-foot line, rolling and playing around the stern, even leaping clear of the surface at speed. They’re so fast and graceful in the water!

Before 10:00 AM, I had scored another first sighting: marbled murrelets in the wild. There were a dozen or more puffins swimming off our beam. I didn’t want to approach too closely, so I don’t know whether they were tufted or horned puffins (later I identified tufted puffins), but their bright beaks were unmistakable. After studying both bird books on board, I recognized the little diving birds all around us as marbled murrelets.

North of Marble Islands, we saw three humpbacks feeding. One surfaced within a hundred yards; the others were a quarter mile away.

Mt. Wright, Glacier Bay National Park (click here for a larger image)

Around noon, we came across Mt. Wright, its 5139’ peak above the rocky beach wreathed in clouds. Unlike the hard rock of Roscoe Inlet, Mt. Wright is made of fragile stuff. It’s been heavily eroded by water and has lost the glacial polish that characterizes Roscoe Inlet. Deeply carved gullies carry waterfalls that disappear into the talus slopes above the sea. An hour later, we rounded Muir Point. I gave silent thanks for the great explorer, writer, and naturalist; I paid homage to his fortitude and compared my relatively luxurious transportation to the Indian canoes that he used in his explorations of then ice-choked Glacier Bay.

The day grew so warm that we shed our shirts, socks, and shoes. I opened the fore hatch to ventilate the cabin and put the sleeping bags on the deck to dry. At 2:00, Casement Glacier appeared to starboard. Jill aptly described it as looking like a highway; parallel, sinuous lines of rubble and rock mark the lanes.

Casement Glacier (click here to see a larger image)

When we passed Sealers Island, we started seeing bergy bits in the water. We soon saw where they were coming from: McBride Glacier calves into a shoal lagoon crowded with trapped bergs. Its face was steep and blue. We motored to the boundary of the wilderness area in Muir Inlet for a good look at Riggs Glacier, an enormous river of ice that towers thousands of feet over a 20-degree face dropping almost to the water.

We anchored in Hunter Cove, Muir Inlet. Our anchorage was off a low gravelly shore covered with poplar trees. They put out so many downy, wind-borne seeds that the water surface was white with windrows of fluff. It brought a certain symmetry to the day, a celebration of the fecundity of nature. This morning, instead of poplar cotton, it was no-see-ums that were so numerous. When I glanced down at the still water before I weighed anchor, I could see tiny ripples. I looked closer—the ripples were coming from no-see-ums trapped in the water surface, beating their wings in futile effort to get away. There were hundreds per square meter. On Lacuna’s gunwales, their bodies looked like coarse-ground pepper scattered across the plastic, dead where they lay trapped in the dew.

Tonight our anchorage has mosquitoes. I’m not happy about it and have been slapping the ones that have found their way into the cabin. There’s not much worse while you’re trying to sleep than the sound of a mosquito trying to find exposed flesh.

6/17/05. After a very restful night (except for the lone mosquito buzzing in the cabin), we weighed anchor just after 9:00. I woke at 4:00, saw that the top halves of the mountains to the west were already in sunlight. Beautiful, I thought, great photo opportunity, but the bugs would eat me alive, clad as I am only in my undies. I climbed back into my sleeping bag and slept another four hours. It felt like noon when I got up at 8:00. It’s so light in the middle of the night that it would be easy to sail 24 hours a day, but it wasn’t hard for me to sleep—I got up at 5:00 yesterday and stayed up until 11:30 last night.

There are many alcids here: guillemots, murrelets, murres, puffins. Marbled murrelets have become my favorites. Their preferred mode of evasion is diving. As Lacuna approaches, they duck their heads, spread their wings, and disappear with a little splash. They’re funny, plump little birds that dive for fish, the northern equivalent of penguins except that they can fly. In evolutionary terms, they must compromise between flying in water and flying in air. To hunt successfully, they must be able to dive deep, so they cannot be very buoyant. For maximum efficiency when swimming, their wings must be short and narrow (high aspect). The combination of high density and small wing area means that flying is laborious; their wings beat so fast that they are a blur. It’s difficult for them to take off. They paddle furiously with their little feet, running along the surface to add speed and lift. They often belly-flop and bounce off the water to gain elevation during takeoff. If they don’t want to go far, they might skip along the water like a stone before splashing down. They fly just above the surface, wingtips almost touching the water, getting lift from the ground effect. It’s hard to imagine that they can fly 100 km inland to nest in old-growth conifers. In Oregon, their nesting habits led to protection of coastal old-growth forests.

In mid-afternoon, we passed east of Composite Island in Queen Sound. I noticed that the rock is harder here than most of the other places we’ve visited in Glacier Bay. The east shore of the bay north of Tidal Inlet is smooth and polished. Most of the surrounding slopes are deeply gullied like Mt. Wright. I wish I knew more about minerals. Some of the mountains are of orange-red rock, heavily incised. Here, the rock is gray (white where it’s newly exposed) and hardly shows any water erosion. It looks more like Roscoe Inlet than it does its neighbors.

East shore, Glacier Bay (click here for a larger image)

Queen Sound has cirques on every side. Most of the view of Carroll Glacier is blocked by the high terminal moraine. The head of the inlet is broad, flat, and gravelly. The mineralogy of the mountains next to the inlet is complex, with many inclusions, veins, streaks, and intrusions of other material.

Off the mouth of Rendu Inlet, the day was so warm that we took sponge baths, washing our hair with the cold-water shower. What luxury to have pressure water! We know we’re going to have to refill the water tank soon, but there’s plenty of water falling from the slopes around us.

We motored to Blue Mouse Cove where we set anchor off the north shore. We had to look for a while to find a good place to anchor. Most of the cove was too deep for the rode I have set up: 30 feet of chain and 250 feet of rope, giving me an effective maximum anchoring depth of 55 feet (5:1 scope). I could have dug out the spare 150-foot rode and tied it on, but instead I found a place shallow enough, with enough swinging room (barely) off the shore. The air was calm all night, so it was restful. This time we got smart and put up the bug net before slowing down to anchor, and it paid off with a fairly bug-free night in the cabin.

We ran out of water as we were finishing the dishes. I paddled Bratwurst around the cove but found only one marginal little trickle of a stream. We still had a gallon jug full of drinking water, so I put off getting more.

Blue Mouse Cove (click here for larger image)

6/18/05. I arose at 6:00 and got underway a bit after 7:00 while Jill slept. It's another gorgeous, calm day, but yesterday afternoon, a haze developed, and now it’s getting thicker, making conditions less attractive for landscape photography.

Within an hour, we passed the first ice. I did a double-take when I first saw it. The sight sent me to the chart immediately because it looked like a mid-channel rock, complete with seagulls. There was no rock on the chart. The seagulls were real, but the “rock” was a low berg covered with gravel and rock dust.

Two big cruise ships passed us, their wakes steep and short. Behind them, a layer of diesel smoke hung in the air at the height of their stacks. The air was so stratified and still that the smoke layer remained distinct for hours. After several hours of sunlight, the smoke turned brown—a little LA smog right here in remote Alaska.

I cruised close to the shore, scouting for places to get water. A few streams didn’t pass inspection. Many were absorbed by the talus quite a ways from the beach. Others were on shore so steep that there was no way to anchor Lacuna. Finally one showed up with the right set of attributes: adequate flow over a beach open enough that bears couldn’t hide (Jill is very concerned about the bears), shoal enough for anchoring. I dropped the anchor just off the beach in 15 feet of water, using a 2:1 rode, paddled Bratwurst in, and filled the five-gallon jug and bucket. Getting over the cobbles and back to the kayak was a bit of a struggle, especially because I was being hounded by deerflies and had no extra hands with which to swat them. After the second trip to the stream, I had enough water to fill the reservoir and filter a couple of gallons of drinking water. We got underway ASAP to escape from the deerflies, which we cannot outrun but can outlast.

If we pass within a half mile of the shore, deerflies are waiting for us. We’ll pick up dozens in fifteen minutes. More than half a mile offshore, they gradually diminish in number as the flies that have taken up residence on the boat leave one by one. They bite, and what they lack in speed they make up for in toughness. Many times I’ve hit one with enough force to stun or kill a lesser fly. They fly away as if they had just been brushed off. Sometimes they’ll fall on the deck from a hard blow, wiggle their feet in the air for a few seconds, then flip over and fly away. I’ve learned to stomp on them and squash them—mere slaps are not enough. Jill’s right foot and ankle are swollen from bug bites—she’s been applying Benadryl cream and taking Allegra antihistamine, but the itch is still enough to wake her up from a sound sleep.

As we neared Lamplugh Glacier, not far from the west shore, a giant cruise ship rounded the point to the north of us. I headed more toward shore; she turned until it looked as if we were on a collision course. Wanting to stay well out of her way, I called on the VHF and asked for a recommendation. The skipper said to hold course, so I cut the throttle back and let them cross ahead of me. Other traffic showed up over the course of the next hour or two—two smaller cruise ships, the sightseeing catamaran based at Bartlett Cove, the second giant ship that had entered in the morning, and a couple of airplanes. As Ed would say if this were a ski run, “It’s getting crowded!”

Margerie Glacier (click here for a larger image)

At the head of Tarr Inlet, the face of the Margerie Glacier is some 250 feet high. The middle third of the face is white and transparent blue. The outer thirds are dark with rock covering the surface and veined in the ice. Fantastic pointed spires mark the tops of seracs cleaved from each other by fissures and crevasses. Some look as if they are ready to topple over into the water. The glacier is advancing 6 to 8 feet a day and calving actively. We shut off the motor and floated among the growlers and bergy bits, listening as rocks and ice chunks fall off the face, splashing loudly into the water. Unseen but heard as sharp reports echoing off the mountains are the falls that happen in the crevasses behind the face. Every so often a big chunk falls into the water with a resounding splash sustained by the ice and rock knocked loose by the falling material and the sound of the newly calved iceberg rising to the surface.

Jill and Margerie Glacier

Jill wrote in the logbook, “Sometimes the sound is like a muffled cannon, other times like rapid gunfire. Any number of sound (or unsound) analogies come to mind. Just now a sustained roar as a huge chunk breaks off Margerie’s face and falls into the water. It resurfaces quickly. We’re surrounded by high mountains, mostly capped with snow…We are in the midst of sizes and powers that few of us are privileged to see. Mirabile contemplatu: wondrous to contemplate.”

Icebergs near Margerie Glacier (click here for larger image)

Margerie Glacier (click here for a larger image)

To the north, Grand Pacific Glacier, the main stem and biggest of all, looks like a big terminal moraine, but on closer examination one can see ice under the rock. It no longer calves into tidewater but little more than 200 years ago stretched 65 more miles out into Icy Strait. Its rapid retreat provided the site for landmark studies in ecological succession. Huna Indian legends tell of a time when they were chased from their home in Glacier Bay by the advancing ice. After dispersing, their descendants founded what is now the town of Hoonah.

Grand Pacific Glacier (click here for a larger image)

We motored north until the bergy bits in the shoals at the foot of Grand Pacific got a little too dense for comfort. Although there’s not as much floating ice as there was in Tracy Arm, there was enough to turn us back south at 59 ° 03.207’, the most northerly point of the voyage. I congratulated Lacuna for getting here, almost 15 ° north of home.

Grand Pacific Glacier (click here for larger image)

Gulls on a dirty iceberg.

We motored into Russell Island Passage, where we set anchor in a little cove about midway down the east shore. Great views, and the sound of waterfalls down thousands of feet of slope fills the air.

6/19/05. When I weighed anchor and began motoring south, the day was cold with just enough breeze to ripple the surface and a continuous cloud cover at about 1000 feet. Within an hour, we reached Reid Glacier, where the sun was shining on the glacier and to the south. It looked as if Glacier Bay was cursed with heavy overcast while just over the ridge the sun was shining. I shut off the motor and we listened to the sounds of nature: waterfalls and whale breaths. A humpback was feeding in the shallows at the sill of the fjord when we entered. As we idled down the center of the channel, he continued to work the shoals on the west shore of the inlet. On every side, long, thin waterfalls cascaded down thousands of feet. Unlike Margerie Glacier, Reid Glacier is quiet. We heard no sounds of falling rock or ice.

Reid Glacier (click here for a larger image)

Just before noon, we reached Lamplugh Glacier, where I again shut off OB. As we drifted close to the face of the glacier (it’s mostly grounded and not calving much, so I felt safe approaching closely), I could hear the roar of water. As I inspected the face of the glacier with binoculars, I saw a torrent of dirty water rushing out from underneath the glacier; it was the meltwater river emerging in a rapids under the ice and over the shoal. The face of the glacier is remarkably blue, lined with many layers of rock dust.

Lamplugh Glacier (click here for a larger image)

Blue ice at Lamplugh Glacier (click here for a larger image)

Lamplugh Glacier crevasses and seracs (click here for a larger image)

Lamplugh Glacier is near the mouth of Johns Hopkins Inlet, an area closed to protect the seal nursery at its head. We idled through the bergy bits and brash ice just outside the exclusion zone, marveling at the size and fecundity of Johns Hopkins Glacier. This glacier moves 10 to 12 feet per day and is one of the few that is advancing and thickening. Even though it’s almost the first day of summer, we’re wearing warm hats and layers of fleece.

After we left the glaciers and headed back SE again, the cloud cover got thicker and lower, the breeze colder, and the water bumpier. We set anchor again in Blue Mouse Cove, this time in the lee of the south shore, and had a night without bugs—the rain, cold, and wind kept them in the forest. I tied a triangular tarp at the bow to keep rain off the forward hatch, which I like to keep partly open to let a breeze flow through the boat, but on a windy, rainy night quite a bit of water can come in unless it’s covered. The wind wasn’t going to let me get off easy. Several times gusts would start the tarp flapping to the point that the metal grommets beat loudly on the deck over my head as I tried to sleep in the vee-berth. Three times I crawled out of my sleeping bag and went out in the driving wind and rain in my undies to re-tie it. The fourth time I took it down and dogged the hatch shut.

6/20/05. The cold wind and low clouds continued. Fortunately, Jill was able to stay asleep in the vee-berth as I set out heading into the chop from the SE wind. I turned toward the east shore to minimize the fetch, but it was still rough even close to the shore. Crossing Muir Inlet was an exercise in rough-water helming as I steered Lacuna through the crests and troughs, trying to minimize the amount the bow plunged between waves. The wind was too much on the nose for me to take off the sail covers and set sail.

Once we got to the east side of the channel, the chop wasn’t bad and I could do some sightseeing. Just west of Flapjack Island, I watched a whale spouting half a mile away, puzzled because there seemed to be a smaller splash off the whale’s head as it porpoised, almost as if it were exhaling a second after the spout. I watched for a while with the binoculars before I saw the little flukes; a calf was swimming just ahead of its mother and diving when she did.

In mid-afternoon, as we passed east of Strawberry Island, we ran out of gas. Although I didn't know just when it was going to happen, I had been planning on it. I wanted to know what the maximum working capacity of the new gas tank is. The tank holds 26 gallons, but I knew that the pickup tube wouldn’t reach the last sip of gas in the bottom. I had a one-gallon gas can in reserve (designated for use in the generator) so I poured that into the tank and pumped up the fuel line. It was satisfying to start the engine and have it purr as if there were no problems. I ran it only long enough to raise the sails.

We had some terrific sailing, with 15- to 20-knot winds from the south. I set the first reef and we reeled off the miles. I had forgotten how much fun sailing in a real wind can be. Most of the winds that I’ve experienced in this voyage have been less than 10 knots, rarely enough to make it worthwhile to take the sail covers off, usually just enough to set up an unpleasant chop. But here was wind that made Lacuna dance as she beat her way upwind and then sailed a beam reach into Bartlett Cove. I sailed almost to the fuel dock then started the motor only long enough to drop the sails and get to the dock. We took on 23.6 gallons of gas, having made 306 nautical miles since the last fill, an average of 0.35 gallons per hour at sightseeing speeds (avg. 4.3 kt). When making distance, OB consumes 0.45 gph while pushing Lacuna at 5.5 kt.

Beardslee Islands (click here for larger image)

We tied up to the dock in front of the park headquarters and went to the lodge for supper. While we were waiting for dinner, I found out that rooms were available, and even though it was expensive ($200/night), I decided to splurge as a treat for Jill, who had been such a good sport for the whole voyage. After we took our bags to the cabin, I took Lacuna out into the cove, set the anchor, bade her good night, and paddled Bratwurst back to the dock.

Before leaving Lacuna, I listened to the weather forecast on the VHF. Our permit was up; we had to leave the park the next day. Twenty-knot winds were predicted in Icy Strait for the following afternoon. The tides would be best for an exit from Glacier Bay before 8:00 or after 2:00 P.M.. Jill and I decided to make an early exit rather than risk more nasty conditions, so I set my alarm for 5:30.

Behind Glacier Bay Lodge, Dennis finds that bears can reach higher than he can.

6/21/05. When my alarm went off, it was raining. I hadn’t slept well, and my motivation was low, so I re-set the alarm for 6:30. When the alarm sounded again, it was still raining. I had forgotten to bring my rain clothes ashore when I paddled Bratwurst to the dock last night, and I didn’t want to get soaking wet the first thing, so I suggested that we have breakfast at the lodge. Jill was happy to agree. As we finished breakfast, the rain abated and I paddled out to Lacuna then drove her to the dock. We loaded our luggage aboard and set off, a couple of hours later than we had planned.

Our late departure meant that we faced an adverse current from the rising tide flowing into the bay. Sure enough, as we left Bartlett Cove our speed dropped bit by bit. I cranked the throttle up all the way, dodged a cruise ship, and powered slowly out of the bay. As we labored through the narrowest part of the entry to Glacier Bay, I was watching a navigation buoy off Point Gustavus, my course marker for the turn east in Icy Strait toward Hoonah, for reassurance that we were actually making progress against the current. I went below to study the chart and when I came back up on deck I couldn’t see the buoy. I thought I was going nuts or blind. I got the binoculars out and scanned 360 degrees twice. No buoy. Too weird!

I turned on the chartplotter. It showed the buoy a quarter mile off my port beam. I read the bearing and trained the binoculars in that direction (the binocs have a built-in bearing compass). No buoy. I knew that I had been looking at it not ten minutes before, but it was nowhere to be seen. I focused the binocs on a standing wave and watched it for a few seconds, thinking it might be a sea lion hunting in the tide rips. Suddenly the buoy popped up out of the wave and was immediately submerged again. Some current! As OB strained to push Lacuna against the flow, I saw porpoises, a sea lion, and a few whales feeding in the fast, turbulent currents just outside the bay.

In another half an hour, we had emerged from the adverse current and were making good headway toward Port Frederick, where Hoonah is located. Near Point Adolphus, I spotted several whale spouts in the shoals, contrasting sharply with the dark forest behind. Soon the show began in earnest, with whales surfacing 50 meters from the boat, several whales on all sides of us, and a group of at least five animals sticking close together, spouting almost simultaneously. We kept our course, staying well offshore to avoid disturbing them, and throttled down to idle. Three small boats were in the path of the whales, but they were evidently aware of their impact on the animals and seemed to be drifting.

A pod of whales spouting off Point Adolphus

Hoonah (click here for larger image)

As we passed Cannery Point and entered Port Frederick, we motored past an anchored cruise ship with excursion boats shuttling to and from the dock at the cannery. Hoonah, the largest Tlingit village in SE Alaska, has run through logging and fishing as economic mainstays. Now they are catering to tourists. The cannery hasn’t fallen into ruins, unlike most old canneries in the Pacific Northwest, and has become a tourist attraction.

Hoonah cannery

Hoonah hasn’t prostituted itself as much as Ketchikan or Juneau (perhaps because tourism is so new to the town), but it’s evident that the trade will have an impact. Charter buses ferry cruise ship passengers from Cannery Point to the town center and back again. So far, there are no jewelry or fur stores in evidence (we heard later that they are at the cannery), but the shopkeepers and tavern operators seem eager to accommodate more business. The owner of a deli told us, with some bitterness in her voice, that the Hoonah Indian corporation that owns and operates the cannery is being led around by the nose by the cruise ship operators, who don't allow anybody but cruise ship passengers to tour the cannery and who discourage passengers from visiting the town. She thought that the cruise ship lines were setting the operation up to fail so they could acquire the corporation's assets for a song.

Hoonah waterfront (click here for a larger image)

When we got to the boat basin, harbormaster Paul Dybdahl met us and directed us to temporary moorage. I deflated Bratwurst to avoid extra charges then Paul showed me the slip where Lacuna will rest for the next few weeks. Apologetically explaining that long-term slipholders pay by the calendar month, he charged me for two full months, June and July. I was happy to pay the $63, which seems like a bargain compared to the daily rate that many marinas charge.

Hoonah harbor (click here for a larger image)

The sailboat next to us, a bubble-top Columbia 26, appears to have been used as a live-aboard. There’s a big aluminum fuel tank tied on top of the cabin, a hose and shutoff valve leading into the cabin, and what looks like the stovepipe from an oil stove poking up through the deck. On the other side of us is an old 22-foot Glassply sedan cruiser that hasn’t moved in a very long time. The hull is covered by a forest of algae. The outdrive is rusted and scabrous with corrosion. It’s not totally abandoned—the blue tarp that covers some of the cockpit looks to be less than a year old. Some of the fishing vessels are ancient double-ended trollers. Others look as if they belong to weekend commercial fishermen—the boats are too small to catch enough fish for a decent living, but they give the skipper an excuse to spend time on the water.

Lacuna’s cabin is a mess. I started rearranging gear, moving some stuff out of the hold and other stuff in, organizing the goods I want to mail back to Eugene (extra life jackets, towels, books, shoes), extricating all my food from under the vee-berth and putting it into dry bags for storage aft, then filling the locker with Ed’s food that had been in dry bags aft (he sleeps in the vee-berth and uses that area for personal goods; I sleep on the starboard settee and use the starboard hold for my storage).

Jill and I walked to the ferry terminal to check on the schedule. We saw that there was a ferry leaving at 8:45 PM, but after some deliberation realized that we couldn’t prep Lacuna for storage, sort out our stuff, make arrangements for lodging in Juneau, and take care of other details by that time. On the walk back to the harbor, we stopped at the bar. Jill wanted to get some local color, and despite my misgivings I agreed. It was the right choice. The room was packed with people, raucous with laughter, and full of good cheer. The bar had cooked a mess of crabs for the cruise ship trade, and they still had some left, so we each ordered a drink and a half crab. When Jill asked for a crab pick, the waitress showed us how to use a sharp claw tip to extract the last little bit of flesh from a joint. It was delicious, messy, and entirely local. I asked for the darkest beer they had—it turned out to be Alaska Amber. It’s one of my favorites, but as Jill wrote in the log book, it’s a lot like the Alaska night sky on the solstice—not very dark.

6/22/05. Having forgotten to dump the toilet holding tank overboard when we were out in open water, and having reached maximum capacity, we decided to take a little cruise out into Icy Strait. As I rigged to leave the dock, I plugged in the autopilot, which immediately began screeching, showed no display, and would not respond to commands. The display is full of condensation. It’s a sign of British quality, workmanship, and engineering when a boating product isn’t waterproof. I cursed, put the autopilot below, and motored out of the boat basin and into Port Frederick. A humpback surfaced between Lacuna and an anchored cruise ship, but otherwise we didn’t see any whales.

After clearing Cannery Point, and seeing that the tidal current was carrying water away from the mouth of the port, I pumped the toilet tank and flushed it with several buckets of sea water. The day was pleasant, although the overcast was continuous at about 1500 feet, so I kept Lacuna idling in big circles while I gave her decks a sponge bath. Before noon we had tied up at the dock again. I hooked up to shore power to charge the batteries and run the space heater.

At the deli, I had an excellent grilled halibut sandwich, but despite snacking on several samples of halibut pizza, Jill chose a piece of pepperoni pizza. We took showers and did laundry at the harbor office (best coin showers ever—copious hot water, and four quarters bought more time than I wanted). A heavy mist in the evening kept us aboard the boat, quite comfy except for the lack of headroom and the mess of luggage that we keep moving back and forth. I put the autopilot in front of the space heater to dry it out, and before I went to bed I tested it. It appeared to be working again.

6/23/05. The boat basin is surrounded by a stone breakwater. Eagles and ravens perch on top like sentinels, sometimes a dozen or more on a stretch of breakwater.


A juvenile eagle joins two adults on the Hoonah harbor breakwater.

The tidal range is considerable, with a 17.5 foot high early this morning, followed by a – 4.4 low at 8:51 AM. The ramp down to the float was steep at low tide! Ravens and eagles pick through the lower intertidal zone when the tide is at its lowest. There was a steady rain that discouraged touring, so I read a novel. During a break in the rain, I carried a couple of boxes to the post office, a mile away, to mail home. We cleaned the perishable food out of the lockers and boxes and took what was usable to the Hoonah Senior Center. After lunch, a nap, and making arrangements for a cab to pick us up at 2:00 AM, we went to sleep on Lacuna for the last time in a while.

6/24/05. The alarm went off at 1:15 AM. While Jill did her last-minute packing, I brewed coffee. Within half an hour, she was ready to go so I asked her to leave the boat while I moved stuff into the cabin. I had left Bratwurst packed in its bag in the cockpit, along with other equipment and supplies, until the last minute. I quickly transferred all of it into the cabin, took down the boom tent, put the cushions and other moveable gear below, and locked up. The taxi got us to the ferry terminal an hour before the ferry arrived. It wasn't until 4:00 AM that we were able to board. The dawn was gorgeous, with low cumulus clouds shining brightly in the sunlight, tall mountains to the north illuminated from peak to sea level, and blue sky overhead.

It was a little disorienting for me to be on the water without full navigation gear. I wanted a chart so badly as the ferry navigated though islands and channels. A few times I slipped my pocket compass out to see what the heading was, but until we got to Auke Bay, our landing north of Juneau, I was disoriented. We called the Driftwood Inn and asked them to send their van. Half an hour later we were having breakfast (a smoked salmon omelette for me) at the restaurant next to the motel and two hours later were sound asleep in our motel room.

6/25/05. Another early morning--we were in the motel van headed toward the airport by 4:10 AM, and by noon we were back in Eugene. In less than a month, after the Oregon Country Fair, I'll be back in Alaska for the trip south. Stay tuned.

--Dennis Todd

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