SATURDAY, JUNE 24, 2006 – Petersburg
Dave was supposed to leave Petersburg at 0930, but as we were putting him in a cab bound for the airport, the taxi driver told us the plane was waiting for some parts in Ketchikan and would be delayed. He and John went on to the airport, and they instructed everyone to be back at 1230. David had had a long layover in Juneau, so that actually worked out ok and he got to stay with us another half a day. It was still raining (of course) but we decided to walk around Petersburg and visit the shops.
Petersburg is a cute little town with a large Norwegian influence and the people are very friendly. We enjoyed visiting the shops and found a couple of things to purchase. We had lunch with Dave at the restaurant near the harbor before we sent him on his way. We will miss him so much – it was really great having him with us.
After lunch, we went by the grocery store to pick up a few fresh items and wandered around a bit more. John prawned the easy way and had his best catch yet – 5 pounds from a prawner at the dock selling shrimp J. We decided we’d eat dinner at Northern Lights again (it was really the only restaurant in town that was open) since we’d be cooking the next couple of weeks. The special was king crab and it was delicious. We had a rather raucous evening with the waiter and staff, and decided that we liked Petersburg a great deal.
SUNDAY, JUNE 25, 2006 – Petersburg to Thomas Bay (Ruth Island)
We left the dock at 0830 in mist and fog. It was impossible to see any of the scenery. The mist and rain would stay with us all day. We were lucky enough to spot a humpback whale, which came fairly close to the boat. It was a good tail and fluke show with long lazy dives, but he was alone and did no breaching. Darrell and Sandy were very excited – it was their first whale!
We entered Thomas Bay and followed it down to Baird Glacier. We haven’t seen a glacier like this before and it was really quite interesting – much larger than I anticipated. We motored on toward the glacier and you could see on the depth sounder image how quickly the silt piled up on the bottom. It literally looked like we coming up on a cliff. The bottom went from about 60 feet to 2 feet in about 10 seconds and just as I was saying “um, honey….” we kissed the mud with the bottom of the bow. John quickly backed off while we all held our breath, and once again we were in deep water.
We went towards the other side of the bay and entered Scenery Cove. Wow!! Its name doesn’t do it justice. The cliffs are steep granite with vivid greenery growing in little nooks and crannies of the rocks. One peak reminded me of Half Dome in Yosemite because its dome was broken just like that. Seals were swimming in the water, along with numerous types of ducks. Birds were everywhere and we spotted Arctic Terns flying by. The only noise was the idling engine and it was so calm that we turned it off and just drifted, listing to the wild sounds and waterfalls cascading down the cliffs. It was so beautiful, we debated whether or not we could safely anchor in there, but hadn’t heard the latest weather forecast and both Douglass and Charlie’s Charts recommended against it (without stating a reason, tho) so decided to err on the side of prudence and go back up to Ruth Island Cove.
Ruth Island Cove already had 6 boats anchored by the time we arrived, but we found a spot on the outside. It took us two tries, as the first time we drifted too close to another boat by the time the anchor set, but we pulled it up and tried again and got it right, anchoring in 75’ of water with plenty of swing room.
The guys lowered the dinghy and went out to set the traps while Sandy and I stayed aboard planning dinner. Soon they radioed us that there was a waterfall with a hiking trail and did we want to hike. Well, it was pouring rain (still), but what the hay, we got on our rain gear and the guys came back and took us ashore.
The hike was awesome – with all this rain, the waterfall was really cookin’. And, it felt good to get a little exercise ashore. At dinner (fresh shrimp-yum!) we again debated whether or not we should have anchored in Scenery Cove, and decided that, given another opportunity, we would go for it (who the hell is Prudence, anyway?!) But, then again, we wouldn’t have seen the waterfall if we hadn’t come here. It was a draw. This had been a near perfect day, marred only by the fact that we discovered the master head wasn’t flushing. A good argument for having two heads aboard, I guess. (Or, two heads are better than one????)
MONDAY, JUNE 26, 2006 – Ruth Island Cove to Cannery Cove
We left Ruth Island at 0745, as we wanted to make Cannery Cove and still have some time to play there. It was dead calm and just barely misting – almost foglike. John and I both felt this was stuff that would burn off with sun. At 0930, we spotted a whale fluke so we stopped the boat and waited 15 minutes, but he never showed back up. By 1020, we could see some blue sky and I was almost done cooking crab (got 10 keepers overnight – need bigger crab pot!!). We spotted a huge sea otter by the boat, but he was camera shy and none of us could get a picture.
At 1125, while still in Frederick Sound, the sun had burnt off the haze and we were able to see numerous whale blow in the distance. We turned toward it and found ourselves in whale central!! I have never seen anything like it. Humpback whales were everywhere!! You could see the many schools of herring in the water – they were like little propellers roiling up the surface. And, you could see the whales dive and encircle them and then come up together with their huge mouths open, gulping all these fish. Absolutely beautiful and amazing! It’s a phenomena called “bubble-netting”, and I had read about it but never dreamed we’d get to witness it first hand. Darrell got a really great pic of this, and I’ll put it up on the site.
The whales were also lunge-feeding where they open their mouths and just lunge through the school of herring. What was amazing to me was how many whales there were all around us. They were literally in every direction. It was impossible to know where to point the camera. The other thing was hearing them breathe. It sent chills up my spine every time one of the huge creatures would surface near the boat and blow. They seemed to know we were there (we were idling), but just ignored us and better yet, avoided hitting us.
Just when we thought they were gone, another group would surface in another direction. Finally, it got quiet around our boat (although we could still see blow in the distance) and then the water was broken by a pod of dophins feeding on the herring. They blew by, and then we were startled by a huge sea lion leaping out of the water next to the boat, doing his fishing thing. By that time it all seemed too surreal and we all just started laughing. The sea lions would come and go, popping up near the boat, leaping into the air, doing acrobatic flips and dips in the water. The dolphins made another couple of passes, and there were a few more whale come through.
At this point we had been watching this show for over an hour and a half, and knew we had to get moving again in order to make our anchorage. We reluctantly tore ourselves away, in spite of the continuing blows, and turned up Stephens Passage toward Cannery Cove.
En route to the cove, we saw several more humpbacks, but didn’t have the drama we had with the feeding whales. By 1530, we had anchored in Cannery Cove.
Cannery Cove is, well, absolutely stunning. I just can’t come up with any more superlatives here! The anchorage faces a steep granite cliff that has a small glacier in the trough. There’s a muddy beach and foliage ashore – oh heck. I will just have to get the pictures up! The guys were lowering the dinghy while I scanned the beach with the binocs. “Um guys…you’re not going to believe this, but there’s a grizzly on shore.”
And sure enough, there was a young grizzly, his ears just peaking over the tall grass, standing on shore, looking at us. We all loaded in the dinghy, but by the time we were near shore, he had disappeared back up into the forest. The guys dropped us back off at the boat and took the crab traps out, since we knew we wouldn’t be able to crab for the next several days. While they were setting the traps, I spotted a large grizzly right on the beach in front of them. I tried to get their attention, but they didn’t understand my jumping up and down and pointing, and only succeeded in scaring the bear back up into the woods.
We decided we’d all get in the dinghy and just cruise along the shoreline in search of critters, since this seemed to be our day for wildlife. We never did see more bears, but did see many eagles and a large juvenile eagle perched in the trees, a very beautiful bird.
We finally returned to Mystic Moon and were deciding what to do about dinner when the power went out in the salon and we smelled a burning electrical smell. John shut everything down and looked in the commissary to see if it was our inverters. Sure enough, one of them was very hot and smoking and popping. Earlier in the trip, this same inverter had blown a fuse, so John & Darrell held hope that it was another burnt fuse, so set about replacing it. Of course, nothing being easy, the brass bolt on the fuse holder had stripped out, so it took about an hour to just get the silly thing off.
In the meantime, Sandy and I couldn’t use the galley so we continued spotting grizzlies on the beach. Finally, the fuse was removed, and it was not blown, so we knew we had a major issue with the inverter. We spent the next few hours testing circuits, looking for a short or something that would have caused the thing to fry, all to no avail. About that time, I was standing in the galley and saw two huge orca dorsal fins pass a foot away from the swim transom.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
TUESDAY, JUNE 27, 2006 – Cannery Cove to Tracy Arm Cove
Before we lost the inverter last night, we had tentatively decided that we would stay another day in Cannery Cove. With the inverter issue, though, we thought we better rethink our plan.
We have two inverters, stacked, which carry separate loads. The “slave” was the one which had blown, and its load is the icemaker, the watermaker, the trash compactor, and various electrical outlets in the salon and staterooms. John had tested all of the circuits and really didn’t believe we had any shorts, especially since we had everything operational while using the generator. The good news here was that we could make water while running the generator. The other items were not important, but they too worked while the generator was working. This confirmed John’s suspicion that we didn’t have any shorts anywhere.
However, the inverter would need to be replaced. We finally came to the conclusion that we could carry on for a couple of days, conserving water, and then making water while we run the generator. All of us really wanted to see Tracy Arm, so that was our new plan, to head to Tracy Arm today, see the glacier tomorrow, and go into Jueau the following day. John contacted Outback and they agreed to rush a new inverter to Juneau for us, under warranty.
At 1200 we pulled the anchor. We had a heck of a time getting the anchor up – it was really stuck in there, and as the chain was coming up, you could see why – it was covered in the stickiest, stinkiest black mud I’ve ever encountered. I switched the anchor washdown to the saltwater faucet because it was taking mega water to get the gunk off the chain.
We finally were on our way, seeing whales as we went and were anchored in Tracy Arm Cove at 1645. The sun was shining and it was actually warm. The guys lowered the dinghy and took it over to one of the numerous icebergs in the water and chopped off a large chunk to make glacier martinis with.
The bergs were really, really blue, just like the pictures you see. I read that the reason for this is that the ice is very dense and absorbs all of the light rays of the spectrum except blue, so that is what is reflected back.
Anyway, it made wonderful martinis (really!) and we sat in the cockpit sipping our glacier martinis and enjoying the scenery, hoping to spot bears on the beach, but all was quiet. Oh! Except for the fact that a huge cruise ship came in after us. We had heard that the cruise ships were coming in Tracy Arm now, but it was still surprising to see this behemoth glide by.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 28, 2006 – Tracy Arm, Sawyer Glaciers (& Disaster)
The rain was coming down in buckets when we upped anchor at 0815. We are used to the rain now, but it sure was nice seeing the sun yesterday. Also, the low clouds obscured the mountain tops somewhat, but oh well. The rain did cause the steep granite walls of Tracy Arm to be covered in thousands of ribbon-like waterfalls.
There were several scattered icebergs about as we set out, but we didn’t have too much ice in our path. John cranked up the generator and started the watermaker, but it wouldn’t make water. It didn’t seem to be holding the pressure, which is odd because we had made water successfully the night before. We hoped that it could be because the water temperature was too cold, but really didn’t know. We’d just have to wait until we were back in the cove to try it again.
The fjord really is gorgeous – even in the rain. It reminded me of Princess Louisa, with the steep walls and waterfalls rushing down. We were about 5 miles from the glacier when we really started encountering lots of ice – bergs and little bergie bits. We slowed way down and cautiously continued on. As we rounded Sawyer Island, a mammoth cruise ship was coming out and was directly in our path. We let him have the right of way J and tried to make our way to his path and benefit from his wake pushing the bergs out of the way. (By the way, I wonder what those huge wakes do to the sides of the canyon. I should think it would cause some serious erosion of the walls.)
At any rate, I don’t think it helped too much as Darrell and I took turns on the bow trying to push some of the small bergs out of our path. At this point, we could see into North Sawyer Glacier. It was quite impressive! But our goal was South Sawyer, so we plugged on. John did a superb job of piloting, using the thrusters to help us navigate the seemingly impossible path. We managed to get within a couple of miles of the glacier, and it was awesome. The thing is so large – way, way bigger than Baird. And it is stunning, with the tourquoise blue ice shimmering, in spite of the overcast.
All of a sudden, we saw a small boat just busting through the bergs at high speed. It had to have been a tour boat from Juneau with a reinforced hull. He took the thing right up to the face of the glacier at ramming speed, leaving us with a nasty roll in his wake – worse than the cruise ship. Thanks a lot, um…dude. It also caused the bergs and bits to shift around us, so we fended off several big ones before the wake passed.
We turned the engine off and sat and just looked at the glacier in awe for almost an hour. There were several harbor seals on the ice, some with pups. Finally, we decided to go over toward the North glacier and realized that lots of bergs had closed in on us while we sat. It took us quite a while and it was very slow going, but we made it to within a mile of North Sawyer before it was just too thick to continue. We stopped and ate lunch (and gave John a rest – it was exhausting driving through all that stuff) and were once again waked by the jerks driving the tour boats (there were 2 of them now).
After lunch, we slowly made our way back to clear water, having to use the boat hooks to fend off more ice. We did run over one small chunk, but it came out from under the boat without doing any damage. Again, John did an amazing job (won’t even get into the KSP factor – you can imagine!) and we came into clear water and enjoyed the fabulous scenery back to Tracy Arm Cove.
We anchored tucked up into cove in front of 5 other boats at 1630. Sandy and I made glacier martinis from the ice we had gotten yesterday, while the guys went to retrieve the crab pot we had left out from this morning. It was (still) raining cats and dogs when they returned, and they set about getting the dinghy up because we wanted an early start to get into Juneau to pick up our inverter. We were in the galley when we heard a large pop and went out to investigate. All seemed well, and we thought perhaps we had had an underwrap in the line raising the dinghy. We went back inside and they continued on, and the next thing we knew, there was a huge popping noise and crash, and Mystic Moon rolled and shuddered. I cannot begin to tell you what a sickening noise that was.
Sandy and I raced outside and could see the dinghy hanging by the boom’s lifting line off the port side of the boat. The mast had crashed down and was now resting on the bimini. The starboard aft stay had broken? Come out of its fitting? And it had allowed the mast to crash with the weight of the dinghy on it. We were all in shock, but realized we had to act quickly as the full weight of the dinghy and the weight of the mast with all the heavy electronics was being supported by the frame of the bimini. To make matters worse, we could see the mast was bent from the pressure and actually had a crack in it. We had to get it back up.
Fortunately, the winch drum was free and turned without impedance, so the first thing we did was lower the dinghy back down into the water to take that weight off the mess. We got the dinghy down and tied her off to the boat, then tried to formulate a plan to pull the mast back upright.
I’m very grateful that Darrell and Sandy were here. It was great to have four brains to work out a plan, and all of us contributed to the final solution.
We took the boom (which surprisingly was not damaged) and ran the boom line from the winch down to the padeye which held the original stay. We tightened that down and then used the mast line and winch to pull the mast up off the bimini. It seemed to hold, but of course none of the other stays could put opposing pressure because the whole thing was so out of whack, and it concerned us that it might fail underway tomorrow. So we took one of our thick lock lines, tossed it up above the satellite bracket and ran the line back through the eye splice in the line, effectively lassoing the top portion of the mast. We then ran that line directly astern to the aft starboard padeye that held the dinghy in its cradle, tied a knot in the line, then ran it through the ratchet attached to the portside tie down, and used the ratchet to tighten up the line. I know it sounds confusing, but it worked and mast seemed to be very secure, albeit very crooked and bent. We were running on adrenaline alone.
As soon as we felt comfortable that we had done what we could, we went inside, dried off, and John called Brad on the sat phone to confirm that the padeyes for the dinghy were through bolted. God love Brad, here it was at least 9 PM his time and he still answered his phone. We went through the whole thing with him and he couldn’t believe what had happened, nor could we.
THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 20006 – Tracy Arm Cove to Juneau
John and I hardly slept at all, and were up and raising the anchor at 0620. The winds were calm and we knew we would be fighting the current on part of our way up to Juneau, so we wanted to get as far as possible before the winds kicked up. Our concerns were that with any roll at all, the mast would be stressed and possibly come down. We’d never get it back up in a seaway. As we were leaving the cove, two Orca dorsel fins surfaced off our starboard side. I only hoped that could be good luck, for a change.
Finally, someone cut us some slack and the weather held and the seas were relatively calm, even giving us an unexpected push up to Juneau. We counted a total of 12 humpback whale blows that we saw en route. We called the harbormaster on the phone, explained our situation, and he was great, working very hard to find us moorage for what we knew would probably be an extended time.
By 1200, we were docked, but only had 30 amp power. The harbormaster moved us to another slip in Harris Harbor that had 50 amp power, but shortly thereafter, the owner called and said he’d be coming back in and needed it tomorrow. Finally, the harbormaster returned, having moved 3 or 4 boats on the transient dock and told us we could move over there, using 2 30 amp outlets for power, and allowing us to stay for 14 days. I can’t say enough about how hard he worked to get us situated. Kudos to Juneau harbormaster and staff.
Anyway, we landed at the T dock in Harris Harbor, away from downtown, but near a boatyard and supplies. The docks are brand new and very nice. And full power is gratefully appreciated.
We had called the Kleins on Kasekuchen earlier and told them of our mishaps because we knew they were in the area somewhere. Sure enough, they were going to be in Juneau the following day.
We spent this day trying to regroup and figure out what we could do to salvage our cruise. Brad had already called this morning and had been hard at work for us looking for a new mast as replacement. He had found one at Forespar, where they are custom built for Selene, waiting for a boat that was still in China. Forespar agreed to let us buy it and would build a new one in time for the boat coming from China.
The inverter was on its way and would be here Monday, and Outback had a dealer here who could install it. John talked to Horizon, because of course the watermaker still wouldn’t make water, and Mary at Horizon was to ship out the parts to arrive by Monday or Wednesday of next week (we are fighting the 4th of July holiday, too, just to add to the fun). And we still had one functioning head.
FRIDAY, JUNE 30, 2006 – Juneau
Friday was spent trying to figure out a way to ship the mast up here to Juneau. The shipping guy at Forespar was worthless in helping us with arrangements. Kate at Sterling, on the other hand was just a jewel. She worked her butt off (and overtime on a Friday night, to boot) to help us. The long and the short of it is that we could get the mast to Seattle by truck, but couldn’t get it here to Juneau except by boat, which would take another week or two. Finally, I went up to the boatyard here and talked to the owner and asked him how he shipped his stuff from the lower 48. He recommended Alaska Air Freight, so I contacted them and they said they could do it (the Juneau office). Kate called to make the arrangements with the Seattle office and they said they couldn’t do it. Dina at Alaska Air here in Juneau told me to call the Seattle freight office at SeaTac and talk directly to them, which I did. John, the manager there, has been so very helpful. He thought the mast would fit on the air freighter, but couldn’t commit until he saw it. He said if we could have it there by Monday morning, he could get it on the plane, he thought. Kate called Forespar and they agreed to ship the mast via Yellow Freight to arrive in Seattle by Monday morning.
Darrell and Sandy hung out at the boat and we all were in shell-shock, I guess, not to mention exhausted. Sandy putzed in the galley making seafood chowder we planned on having for dinner with the Kleins when they came in, while John and I made phone calls and generally ran around trying to get information. John worked on the head and did get that fixed. Seems several small pieces of toilet paper had gotten stuck in what we think is the tube that primes the macerator to run. Very odd and not supposed to happen on these Tecma toilets. Whatever…..at least we now can use our own head. Of course the caulking surrounding the toilet (which I’m guessing is really 5200) is a mess and I have no idea how to remove it and clean it up.
Darrell helped John and made arrangements for us to go to Pack Creek tomorrow to see bears.
Bob and Cheryl arrived on Kasekuchen and were able to tie up on the transient dock. It was so great to see them come in. They were really tired, too, having spent two marathon days coming from Sitka. They came over for dinner and we shared joys and tears.