July 3 - July 29th
We sent the kids off on July 2 and headed for Swanson Bay where we had a Taco Tuesday on Nelsea with everyone! The first time in awhile for everyone between visits, hospitalizations and some not going to Skagway. From Swanson Harbor we headed for Neka Bay past Hoonah with Magic Moment and North Star. The others went into Hoonah at the dock for a night and we anchored out. We started having a problem with our NEW inverter so we had to start running our generator all the time. We will have to troubleshoot when it is not July 4th as everything is closed!
We went to Hoonah in Nellie for the 4th of July parade and also a trip to the Cannery for shopping. It was nice to get on land for awhile! The others had to join us in our anchorage since they could not stay in Hoonah for the 4th. We left Neka for Flynn Cove on July 5th where we have caught halibut in the past and it was great again - we are full on halibut as we caught our limits and Steve caught a large one!
We spent a lot of time trying to troubleshoot out inverter issue but it is not something we will be able to fix on the boat so Steve and I are breaking off of the group and heading back to Juneau. It needs a software update for a known problem that they just issued a fix for on June 24th! Unfortunately it won't run long enough to install the update, so the dealer told us the only way to fix it is to send it in which does not work for us since we are in Alaska. We will be missing Glacier Bay this trip and also our friends Carl and Cheryl were supposed to join us for a week but with the issue we can't continue. We went to Juneau on the 7th and I flew home on the 8th -10th. Alliant Marine ordered us a new inverter, configured it in Seattle and I flew back to Alaska with it on the 10th. Steve and I spent the day installing the new one and it is working great (lets hope for longer than the last one ran). We will deal with the broken one at the end of the summer when we get back to Seattle. A very disappointing week since the new one was installed in Port McNeil the last week of May so it was just over one month old! The good news about flying home was I got to see our four granddaughters (and their parents!) and it was the fastest way for us to get the new one back to Alaska.
We left Juneau for Flynn Cove again and more halibut was caught! Steve's brother Michael flew into Hoonah and we left to meet up with everyone again in Cedar Island on the 15th (we had a quite 40th Anniversary on the 14th with just the 3 of us).
From Cedar Island we travelled to Freshwater Bay, Favorite Bay, Angoon, Appletgon Cove and thru Peril Straits to Kalinin Bay where we fished for Salmon and were again rewarded with Fish! We caught 3 Kings and 10 Silvers over 2 days which was great!!!! From Kalinen we headed south past Sitka to Redoubt Bay and more fishing for Silvers and ended up in Sitka on July 23 for a couple days to reprovision and shop. We ate out a couple of good restaurants and said goodbye to Michael as he flew out of Sitka for home on July 24. Our final night in Sitka we had a great dinner with the group at Ludwigs Bistro which was fantastic! We also got to catch up with Steve and Kim Oberto who now live in Sitka.
Once we left Sitka we headed to Piper Island, Ushka Bay then Hidden Falls where we went to the Fish Hatchery and got to see many resident Grizzlies that live by the hatchery to catch an unlimited supply of fish! After Hidden falls we spent 1 night at Baranoff and went to the Hot Springs and Baranoff lake above the Hot springs. After our hot springs adventure it was off to Red Bluff where we spent two nights and waited for Linda and Mike on Kotare to join us again. They had grandkids fly into the Sitka area so they did not leave Sitka when we did and they joined us in Red Bluff. The weather has been very strange this year - mostly cloudy and rainy with occasional periods of sunshine and also wind and fog and most days are long pants, long sleeved shirts and fleece!
