Alaska 2021 - June 6 - 8

 

Alaska 2021 – June 6-June 8

No rain today when we woke up! We decided to start off the day with beachcombing and then fishing. There is a lot of stuff on the beaches here – we found some useful stuff including buckets, cutting boards, totes, floats and other treasurers! Beachcombing is one of our favorite activities!

This is the reason we have not been successful crabbing - Sea Otters! We will start trying to crab at 250 feet since that is about as low as a sea otter can go - so we have been told!

We caught Ling Cod and had dinner on the Nelsea.

 

Alaska 2021 - June 4 - June 6

 

Alaska 2021 – June 4 - 6

 

We woke up to another very wet overcast day.  We headed over to Soda Bay and this is the scenery on the way over – beautiful even when its damp and cold. Everything is so immense here compared to the waters we normally cruise closer to home. Steve likes to call it Desolation or the Salish Sea on steroids – it is really hard to describe and we love each trip when we are able to experience more areas in Alaska even if the weather is ugly!

We woke up to more rain but it looks like we might get a break to go ashore and try to find what the book describes as “site of numerous carbonated water springs (Hence the name Soda Bay?) – they describe it as “pleasant taste” and range in temperature from 48 degrees to 70 degrees. We found several areas of bubbling water springs but we did not find them to be “pleasant taste” – they were full of Iron in most spots and we never did find anything close to 70 degrees but it was a fun morning on land exploring.

The Skunk Cabbage was huge all thru this area and you can see from the pictures how much Iron is in the area. The picture below shows one of the many small springs bubbling up in the ground. They make mounds of mineral deposits as the gas infused water bubbles to the surface.

Those of you that know Liz and Glen will understand why Liz is dressed for rainy cold weather yet Glen is dressed for Summer.  The rest of us dressed like Liz but Glen was determined that it was not going to rain and it did not! At least he was wearing his rain hat just in case!

  

Alaska 2021 -June 1 - June 4

 

June 1 – June 4

 

We woke to cold and overcast on June 1 but it is not raining right now which is a nice break although it is expected to rain for most of this week. When the weather allows, we always try to head ashore to take a walk and look around and we often go touring all the bays around in Glen’s Jetboat or our Grady. That is what we did today – we headed to CoCo Harbor.  The tugboat left sometime last night but we decided to stay anchored in Windy Bay as it was quite a comfortable anchorage.

At the end of CoCo Harbor was the site of a major logging operation so we took the opportunity to walk along the old logging roads (roads is a generous word as they are being reclaimed by the forest).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The picture of the boats is from our Anchorage in Windy Bay. The Shrimp were caught in CoCo Harbor – all three of us had out Shrimp pots and we all caught about the same amount of Shrimp – not as many as in the past trips but enough for a group dinner!

 

 

We woke up to more rain on June 2 and headed to Fishhook Bay by Hydaburg. There is internet available for Glen and Liz (they bought an AT & T phone in Ketchikan and their T Mobile work here also) but the rest of us have Verizon which does not work at all out here so we all took the opportunity to get caught up with home and email using Glen and Liz’s service. We called the town and found out that they are closed to outsiders so all we could do is drive by for a look since we could not go ashore.

 

 

This boat was on Sukkwan Island across from Hydaburg – it has seen better days!

We stayed an extra day to catch up on internet and phone calls since it was raining and we spent time talking about our schedule.  We were planning on going to Skagway this trip but due to Covid many areas are very limited so our Train trip on the White Pass and Yukon Railroad that we had scheduled was cancelled.  We made the decision to not go to Skagway this trip which we were all looking forward to seeing. Just means we will have to come to Alaska again!

This was our anchorage off of Fishhook Island.  Tomorrow we head to Soda Bay which is only about a 10 mile cruise from Fishhook. We are slowly heading towards Craig where we will be around June 15^th.

 

Alaska 2021 - May 31

 

Happy Birthday Amanda!!!!!  We left Ham bay and headed to CoCo Harbor -a large Tugboat and Barge were anchored where we wanted to go so we went into Windy Cove which is on the west side heading into  CoCo Harbor.  It is pouring with rain and only 55 degrees so we all hunkered down in our boats today.

May 29 - May 30

 

Alaska 2021- May 29 – May 30

 

We left Kassa Inlet this morning and changed our destination to Ham Bay since it is blowing pretty strong today and it was more of a straight shot across past Long Island to Dall Island.  A lumpy windy ride but the anchorage is great.  We had gusts to 40 on the crossing so glad we are tucked into a bay that provides the correct anchorage for a predicted Southeast Wind 35-40 thru tomorrow night. Dave and Jane were bouncing around in front of us on the trip over.

We woke up to rainy windy weather on the 30^th but decided to bundle up in rain gear and go over to Howkan on Long Island which was once one of the largest Haida Villages. What we think we found was more evidence of missionaries who lived in the area based on the names on the many gravestones we found in the woods. There were also many metal parts to things like stoves and tools.

We looked for remnants of an old totem pole but it must have been reclaimed by the woods.

As we were leaving Long Island we saw many otters – No crabbing for us! According to some caretakers who were just North of Mission Bay the sea otters moved in about 5 -6 years ago which is why there are no crab here.  We found hundreds of them in the kelp beds.

We went back to our boats and played another round of couple’s cribbage before having spaghetti dinner made by Dave and Jane on the Nelsea. We followed up by our normal movie night on Glen and Liz’s boat. Another wonderful day exploring parts of Alaska.

Alaska 2021 - May 27 - 28

 

April 2021 - May 27 - May 28

We left Tah Island and headed for Kassa Inlet. The ride over was nice and we ended up with enough sun in the afternoon to wear shorts instead of fleece pants.  Liz even managed to get a sunburn on one side of her face.

Not the same weather when we woke up to the next day – cold, cloudy and another fleece day! The guys had put out crab pots and shrimp pots but only left the shrimp pots out since we kept seeing sea otters.  We ended up getting some Shrimp in the pots.  Good thing we had the correct licenses because we had a visit from the State of Alaska Troopers boat. They were very nice and helpful – out of Ketchikan and they saw our Shrimp pots so they knew we were there. In Alaska you have to purchase your fishing license which includes crab but there is a separate Shrimp license that is free and available online. Luckily Glen was reading the fishing guide and realized we needed an additional shrimp license so we all had them which was great! 

We went for a tour of Kassa Inlet in the Grady after lunch and spotted Bear again.  This one let us get really close before he scampered into the woods.

Beautiful Scenery around Kassa Bay even on a cloudy cold day.  There are lots of rocks to watch out for on the tour.

Alaska 2021 - May 25 - 26

 

Alaska 2021 – May 25 – May 26, 2021

We left Nichols Bay this morning expecting to go to Dall Island and Pond Bay but the weather had other plans for us.  When we got out of Nichols Bay there was a lot more wind and wave action than we thought there would be based on the weather forecast that we listened to before we left.  It was going to be a very lumpy ride so the decision was made to go to thru the Barrier Island to tuck out of the waves and we stopped at Tah Island for the night.  We woke up to very cold, wet weather so we decided to stay put and spend the day catching up on boat tasks.  Steve and Glen took Nellie out to see if there were any areas for crabbing but unfortunately as cute as they are we are sharing the bay with many Sea Otters so no crab for us!

     We had Taco Tuesday on the Nelsea and played Phase Ten on the Flybridge of Nelsea since it stays nice and toasty there.

   On the ride over from Nichols Bay we saw Seals, Eagles and some beautiful scenery again.

The pictures never show how crappy the water is but I had to go down to the front v berth during the ride and the port windows looked like watching a Wash Machine with water swirling around them.  Next time I will get a picture of them.

Wednesday was a very cold wet day so we waited until the afternoon then took a cruise up in Glen’s jet boat to several inlets including Hunter Bay. We had several Bears to photograph on the trip.