Heading For Far Away Places Aboard MV 'Ginny C' June to October, 2013: Tracy Arm, a Spiritual Experience Navigating thru Ice Bergs

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.

Friday, August 16, 2013-- a ‘spiritual experience’ is the only way to describe it!!!!!-- the Sawyer Glaciers in Tracy Arm.

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I awake at 5:30 in great concern for fog and having to cancel or postpone our day at the glaciers. Instead i just see high overcast clouds but mostly a clear ceiling of the shear 5-6000 ft sheer rock cliffs going straight up, almost vertically out of water over 1,000 feet deep along its edges as we pull anchor and head up this absolutely awesome,magnificent fjord. Each bend brings more and larger ice bergs plus first tens, then hundreds, then 1000,s of small ones all large enough to spoil your day.

As we get closer these dangerous ones are interspersed with 10‘s of thousands’s small ‘bergies’ which we will have to plow thru very slowly as even these can do damage if hit with any inertia. But the wind is calm so they are not bunched up and blocking us from our goal of getting to the face of the glaciers. Some bergs are snow white and blue and thus easy to spot. Others are chunks as clear as glass and thus very difficult to spot.

Fortunately, we meet up with a small charter yacht ‘Catalyst’ out of Friday Harbor, in the Washington San Juans, with its 12 guests picked up in Juneau. She ran at our speed and as we headed into North Glacier Arm and as the bergs got thicker we could pretty much follow her. The last 1/2 mile in North Arm and 1.5 miles in South Arm was pretty much negotiated at dead slow speed then and now contacting only the smallest bergies no more than 12 to 15 inch chunks of glass clear ice.

Words cannot adequately describe the beauty of this place or the experience of being able to get within 1/2 mile from the face of North Glacier and about 1/4 mile from the face of South. It would have been totally unsafe to make any attempt to get closer. Both were calving quite actively, Chunks larger than our boat would break and fall, sometimes 100‘s of feet into the water. We cut the motor and drifted, listened and watched, for about 45 minutes at each head. The sound that followed the crash was as loud as any thunder I have ever heard. We watched one whole chunk of the blue ice wall fall at North probably larger than a 5 story office building. It broke loose several hundred feet up and its splash literally looked like an explosion. It set off a series of huge five foot waves which reached us a 1/2 mile away, about what seemed about 4 minutes later, bobbing the boat like it was a piece of cork.

Because of the receding over the years, our navigation chart showed us high and dry on land as we sat and watched in over 4 hundred feet of water. The immensity of the cliffs and sheer mountain walls rising straight up 1,000’s of feet and the immensity of the wall of ice on the faces of each glacier, over came us emotionally as we sat and contemplated in terms of scope and time, how this has been going on for 10’s of thousands of years compared to our physical size and time we will be be part of this planet. Yes a ‘spiritual’ or near ‘religious experience ‘ is the only way we can describe it.

Our only disappointment was that, among those of you have cruised with us as ‘crew’ and gained some degree of appreciation and understanding for why we have loved doing this so much, neither you nor family were here to share this never to be forgotten day with us.

Enough said, enough trying to describe the scenery and tge experience of cruising the ice fields--- ENJOY the pictures.!!!!! We navigated it safely, gathered some of the ancient ice and it is now time to celebrate!! I am off to pour and enjoy my 15/15 cocktail --- 15 year old scotch poured over a chunk of 15,000 year old ice!!! [Ginny will most likely do likewise, altho it most likely will not be enjoyed with scotch]. To end a perfect day we were greeted with a squall and incredible rainbow framing these majestic glaciated mountains surrounding our anchorage. We sat, sipped, and meditated, for almost two hours completely mesmerized reflecting back on this incredible day and the majesty of all of it!!!

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