Tuesday, August 20, 2013

On Towards Petersburg/Sanborn Canal and Portage Bay

Ginny and I have been happily married for 50 years , have 2 sons and 6 grandchildren. We have been avid boaters since the mid 1970's. We have sailed in various parts of the world making 'bareboat' charter trips in the Washington and Canadian San Juans and Gulf Islands, Maine,the British Virgins, South Pacific's Moorea and Tuamoto's and New Zealand. We owned and raced a J-24, Laser, and cruised a Newport 30 before buying a long range trawler in 2003 and cruising the waters of the Pacific Northwest and the 'Inside Passage' of British Columbia to SE Alaska for the last 10 years. After first owning a 2000 Selene 47, and 2002 Selene 50 (both named 'Ina Marie', we now, in the 'bell lap' of our boating days, own, operate and thoroughly enjoy 'Ginny C' , our 2007 Selene 42.



Saturday, July 17,2013; Sanborn Cove


To see our locations click on this text

We left  our Holkam Bay anchorage at the head of Tracy Arm at 7:45am for our 41 mile run to Sanborn Cove, a beautiful cove in Port Houghton Bay, infrequently visited by cruising boats because it is a bit out of the way in the general routes between Juneau and Petersburg and is not well charted.  It is overcast and rain is now expected for the next several days.  However, this AM the ceiling is high and broken as we depart revealing the majesty of SE Alaska’s rugged mountains and glaciers.  As we depart we hear and see two cruise ships [Carnival and Seven Seas] entering and leaving Tracy Arm Bar.  How lucky could we be to have had only two small excursion charter boats with us on our day here. We cross the bar, head south and drop the anchor and a crab trap in Sanborn by 1:25 pm after having slowed a bit off Hobart Bay to watch two whales for a bit. 

It is raining but this cove needs to be explored.  So, after enjoying a bowl of hot soup, it is on with the rain gear and off in the Kayaks for the next two and 1/2 hours paddling up and back down the riverbed through the vast marshes at the head of the cove hoping to see wildlife.  Eagles are everywhere but we are too early for the bears or moose to be out feeding in spite of the literally thousands of salmon schooled in the shallow pools as we kayak up over two miles of the river until we start to ground our Kayaks as the water continues to shallow out with the end of an outgoing tide.  The water literally churns all around us as the large groups of salmon scatter by reason of our presence moving through.

Back to the boat to dry out, warm up with hot showers, and an early dinner and off to bed tired ‘the right way’ from our kayak adventure.

Sunday, July 18, 2013 Portage Bay, Kupreanof Island.



The rains have finally arrived and the temperatures are cooling but the seas are not stormy. The highlight of the day as we cruised our 33.4nm run out Stephens Passage, around Cape Fanshaw and into south/east down Frederick Sound was spotting 14 different humpback whales.  They seemed to be everywhere we looked for about 1.5 hours of our 4.5 hour trip.  The ceilings are high between the rain squalls closing in to reduce visibility to less than a mile for short periods of time.  When it rains here it rains steady and hard but them breaks to more gray, black and white, but still wondrous views.  It is like we are cruising in a world without color, but a world that Ansel Adams would lust for!!!!

Portage Bay is huge shallow and safe offering good shallow anchorage.  We arrive about 1:30. drop a crab trap and set, or think we set well, in about 30 feet.  It is a day to cozy up with a good book. Stiff muscles from our long Kayaking from yesterday and the passing rain squalls tell us it is booking time and relaxation for our type ‘A’ nature.  

Ginny prepares the perfect comfort food dinner for the day, a yummy meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and roasted peppers,onions, and mushrooms complimented with some good red wine.  I also enjoyed my third 15/15,000 scotch.  Yes, we still have, 3 days later, some more ice berg chunks from Tracy Arm not yet melted away.

After dinner I glance at my anchor mark/waypoint I set when we dropped the hook and was amazed to see that we were dragging our anchor with each squall that came through.  And, our crab trap seemed to have disappeared.  After considering it gone I finally spot it with the binoculars, far from where we set it.  It is staring to get dark. So it is up with the anchor, covered in kelp, and off to pull the trap, now in some strong incoming tidal current.  When I finally hook the floats with the boat hook it is so heavy I can hardly pull in up even tho it it is only 45 feet down. No crabs in it but 5 humongous star fish encase it as I struggle to pull it onto the swim step. 




Back to our anchorage area, it takes us two trys to get a good set dragging the anchor acrros kelp beds until it finally finds the mud underneath.

It is now 8:50 and time to get back to our books before dozing off to a good nights sleep, confident that we will drag no more as the squalls pass thru.






























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