Amazing Alaskan Sights!

Alaska Coast Range

We left Wrangell at our usual departure time (6 am) in a low cloud. Our challenge this morning was traversing the Wrangell Narrows, a very narrow passage that is marked with some 65 numbered navigational buoys. As long as we kept the red ones on our right and the green ones on our left, we were in deep enough water. A clerk in Wrangell, when she heard where we were going, warned us that it might get scary if the Alaska ferry (the one that comes into Bellingham) was coming south as we headed north. A small boat like ours just moves over and waits for the bigger boats to pass. Also, the towns at either end were having fishing derbies on this weekend, and there were going to be plenty of fishing boats zipping up and down the Narrows. Fortunately, we did not encounter any large boats, the water was calm, and the fishing boats had already gotten to where they were going. We arrived in Petersburg about lunchtime and the very nice harbormaster put our two boats in slips next to each other. Petersburg has a huge fish processing plant and life there centers around fishing. The town was founded by a Norwegian (from Tacoma!), and a Norwegian motif remains (kind of like Poulsbo, WA). None of the restaurants were open because of the holiday, but we had a great dinner of King Salmon on Xanadu, compliments of a local fisherman who, when asked by Roxie, gave her more than just a fish head (for bait). The salmon was wonderful!

Baird Glacier--Thomas Bay

The next day, we woke up to brilliant sunshine and predicted highs of the low 70s! It took us only about four hours to get to our overnight anchorage—Thomas Bay off of Frederick Sound. There we saw two Alaskan Amazing Sights. One was the Baird Glacier coming down to the water’s edge. Our cruising guide had not told us to expect this, so a wonderful surprise. The second Amazing Sight was a moose running on the beach. The moose is Alaska’s state land mammal, but not always seen by visitors. Our good luck held the rest of the day as both boats got their limits of crab. We had great Crab Louies the next evening.

While going into Stephens Passage the next day, we saw our third Alaskan Amazing Sight with some icing on the cake. Dall’s Porpoises chose our boat to play in the bow wave. I know some of you have seen this, but it was a first for us and very thrilling and beautiful to watch. This kind of porpoise looks like a small Orca whale, and can move very fast through the water. They also have a great sense of fun. The jackpot of this experience was seeing humpback whales blowing and diving around us at the same time as the porpoise show!

We spent the night at Port Houghton (Sanborn Canal) and the next night at Hobart Bay (Entrance Island) where we actually found a government float to tie up to—just room for our two boats. Katie loved getting off the boat for the rest of that day.

Still on our way to Juneau.

Signing off,

Susan, Rod, and Katie

Hint: I don't know what works on your computer, but on mine if I double-click on a picture in the blog, it enlarges it and makes for better viewing.