Category Archives: misc

Flowers and Ice

Posted on by under misc

A couple weeks of wandering around waterways and sites between Glacier Bay and Tracy Arm… In between we saw Swanson Harbor, the southern Lynn Canal, Auke Bay, Juneau, Stephens Passage, Taku Harbor, plus some more of Admiralty Island. The theme of the last month has been flowers, glaciers, icebergs, whales, and abandoned canneries. Oh, and then there are all the great Alaskans–mostly fishing families–we’ve been meeting at the various state floats out in the middle of nowhere.

Here are some pics of a few places we’ve been in the last few weeks and some of the flowers and ice along the way.

The Reid Glacier in Glacier Bay National Park

We anchored in the Reid Glacier inlet where we could see the glacier to the south and the mountains across the Glacier Bay to the north

Beautiful growth on the shore nearest the Reid Glacier

When a whale visited us in the Reid Glacier inlet, the auto-focus on the camera kept focusing on the boat–not the whale!

But then the whale dove and the camera focused properly sans-whale

Lucky us, our friendly whale popped back up quickly

And again…

Yes, that’s the whale’s snout coming up outta the water

And the birdie just kept chasing this whale

Looking up the Tarr Inlet at the Grand Pacific Glacier

The forecast for 15 kts of tailwinds and nice stormy looking clouds skidding along enticed us to put up some sail

Setting sails almost assures that the winds will die away quickly

Brenda checks out a pretty sight of sea life along the Swanson Harbor public float

And here’s what she’s seeing

The southern Lynn Canal

Mendenhall Glacier near Juneau

Stephens Passage with a fishing boat in foreground, a whale plume behind it in the background.

Auke Bay

Blue Lupine

A freeloading Bald Eagle supervising our sailing along Stephens Passage

The artful ruins of a cannery at Taku Harbor

A bee enjoying the blue wildflowers of a kind I’ve never seen before

Pink Lupine

Chocolate Lily

Buttercups

Motoring along the Stephens Passage during the 4:00 am sunrise

Mahdee-sized iceberg in the early morning sun

Another Alaska sunrise

Blue icebergs are amazingly beautiful

A pair of show-off humpback whales swimming nearby Mahdee

The whales are everywhere but easier to see when it is very calm

The whales pop up near the boat

We see tails everywhere on the Stephens Passage

A slow day at anchor, David catches up on his reading

And Beryl catches up on her beauty rest

Many bergs in Tracy Arm were Mahdee-sized and glowed deep blue

This one looked like it was lit up from the inside

This boat-sized berg was clear ice–and happened to be right in the narrow marked entrance of the Tracy Arm

Where to Anchor?

Posted on by under anchoring, misc

Scouting out an inlet to anchor in is sometimes cold and wet work.

Sometimes the anchor spot is spectacular–like here next to Reid Glacier.

Sometimes Beryl tries to “help” us with finding a good spot.

Photos

Posted on by under anchoring, misc, News, photos, sailing, Weather

I managed to upload some photos here in Petersburg but somehow I’m just not getting my blog post together. Since we are leaving tomorrow for Admiralty Island and points further north up the Chatham Strait, I thought I’d just post the photos and leave the blog post for “later.” So, here we go:

A Sunflower Seastar always seems to show up in our crab pot. No crab though.

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The cover I made for our 600′ spool of 3/4″ polytron floaty line is now in place on the monkey rail.

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We were next to a very pretty tugboat in Ketchikan.

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Across the dock in Ketchikan we had this lovely motor yacht built in 1931–the same year as Mahdee was launched.

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Sunshine and clouds along Clarence Strait.

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Mahdee on the public float at Meyers Chuck. Yes, it was free to stay there. Just us and one other boat were there.

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The “streets” of Meyers Chuck are paths through the woods. Seriously.

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That speck below the sun is not a bird. It is an airplane. Click Here for a bigger image of it.

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As we exited Meyers Chuck, we went up Earnest Sound and into Seward Passage anchoring in Santa Anna Inlet before continuing up Seward to Zimovia Strait and anchoring in Anita Bay. It was a rainy couple of days but striking and beautiful.

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There were numerous fishing boat setting nets in Anita Bay so it was a mine-field to get to the quiet anchorage at the end of the bay. Well worth the side excursion since it was so lovely.

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Our sealevel rain was snow at higher elevations nearby Anita Bay.

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Anita Bay was the first anchorage we’d shared with another cruising boat since leaving the San Francisco Bay in late March. We’d shared anchorages or floats only 3 times before but always with fishing boats. This little boat was headed from Juneau, Alaska to Portland, Oregon.

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The clouds cleared and we had a wonderful day motor-sailing from Anita Bay to the Wrangle Narrows passage to Petersburg. It was calm early in the day but we had good winds crossing Stikine and Sumner Straits.

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We fished along the way but had no catches other than kelp.

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The historic gold-rush town of Wrangle sits at the mouth of the Stikine River.

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A navigation aid sits on the little island called “Two Tree” and one of those trees looks a little sickly. We wonder what they’ll call it if/when one of the trees dies?

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As we got closer to Petersburg Alaska on the Wrangle Narrows we saw some pretty and old buildings on the waterway.

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That’s it for now, folks. More details on this passage and photos of Petersburg and northwards in my next blog post.

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