Sitka to Petersburg

Mt. Edgecumbe in the rain

We spent two weeks in Sitka from Thursday, June 7, to Thursday, June 21.  After Dorothy and Donald departed, we were focused on getting Jerry’s laptop repaired.  Working with the Dell service department was quite an experience, and we learned that those folks really have no concept of geography, particularly in regard to Alaska.  I’m not even sure they know Alaska is in the USA!  If we had been in the “lower 48”, a technician would have come to us to service the computer.  Because the closest service technician was in Juneau, we had to put the computer and the motherboard Dell had sent us on an Alaska Airline flight to Juneau.  The technician was very uncommunicative and every time we talked to Dell to find out about the status of the laptop, we got a new service representative.  So, Jerry would have to go through the whole litany of problems and attempted solutions, as well as the whole confusion about Alaska…beyond frustrating!  

We finally received the laptop on Tuesday, June 19.  It seemed to be working ok, at least sitting in the marina, so we departed on June 21.   Just beyond the breakwater we were bid adieu by a whale, doing his departing dive.  It seemed like a great way to begin the next part of the journey.

Sunset in Eliason Harbor

I shouldn’t make our stay in Sitka sound so depressing.  Actually, we had a great time.  We were in the marina with boaters we’d seen along the way as we had travelled this far…Miriam and Patrick on Spirit, Barb and Rick on Galatea, Eric and Sherry on Dolphin, and Dianne and Art on Kirkwall.  We were reminded once again what a small world it is.  We had known Eric in Visalia 20 years ago.  He owned the airplanes in the flying club to which we belonged!  Miriam and Patrick keep their boat in Anacortes marina and Dianne and Art live in the same area of Anacortes as Jim and Chris.  I’m sure we’ll see them all again once we’re back in Washington.  Rick and Barb are friends of our slip mates, Knute and Gerry, in La Conner.  

We further explored Sitka and came to enjoy this interesting community.  We found their equivalent of Starbuck's, the local computer store and the computer savant who could help us, and even found this starfish on the piling next to our boat.

Our eventual destination was Petersburg for July 4^th, but we had lots of days to get there, and it wasn’t that far, so we decided to explore the coves and bays on the east side of Baranof Island.  We’d seen some of this country with Beth last year, but there’s always more to see!

We made our way east through Peril Strait and just as we came out of the last narrow section we were greeted with great promise of sunshine and blue skies.  Yippee!!! 

Anchorage our first night out was a new one for us, a place called Appleton Cove.  Even though it was full of crab pots, it was beautiful and one of those secluded, tucked in coves we love to find.  We anchored in about 30’ of water (too shallow to fish) and sat on the back deck and enjoyed the sunshine and the beautiful views.  As you can see, the water was calm and the mountains around us still have a lot of snow.  We could hear the water running down the hillsides.

 The long hours of sunlight became really obvious in here.  Smokey is in the habit of getting me up between 3 and 4 AM to make sure she has enough to eat.  (Donald can vouch for this.  He slept on the settee in the saloon and heard us every morning!).  I was up with her about 0315 and was amazed how light it was.  Check out the photo!

Our cruise east down Peril Strait on June 22 was beautiful.  Our first day of warm sunshine, and beautiful views!  The peaks along the strait are still covered with snow, although melting quickly.  We heard the water running everywhere.  We had decided to head north up Chatham Strait to Tenakee Springs, a place we had visited last year. 

Tenakee Springs has a small marina and a little town built along a four-wheeler path.  I would guess there are about 40 full-time residents and a few more in the summer.  According to our cruising guide, folks from Juneau have summer cottages here.  Many of the coves in Tenakee Inlet are full of prawns and crabs, so lots of pots are in the water.  We don’t put pots out since Jerry is allergic to shellfish…a blessing and a shame!  Not putting pots out saves a lot of hassle and mess, but I love crab and would enjoy some fresh crab occasionally!

We walked down the path through Tenakee Springs, but chose not to partake of the hot springs.  According to our cruising guide, men and women bathe separately, but no swimming suits are allowed.  Just doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.

We debated about staying longer since the last weather we heard indicated severe winds on Sunday.  Did we want to sit in the marina or anchor somewhere by ourselves?  Saturday, June 23, was to be sunny and in the 70’s…so we went exploring once again.  Our boating friends from Anacortes (Dale and Anita) had recommended Saltery Cove as a fine place to check out, so that’s where we headed.  It was a brief 7 miles across the inlet and we found this sweet little uninhabited cove.  These are the places we love!  Once we were back in the cove, we were sitting in a little bowl with snowy peaks all around us.  Yep, great place to spend a rare sunny day!  Doesn't the boat look happy?

The fish finder said we should have lots of fish beneath us, and we could see a seal fishing along the shore, so we thought we could surely catch something for dinner.  No luck, though.  We had a few “hits” but nothing to bring aboard.  We got the dinghy down (only the second time this year!) and went exploring up and down the inlet.  We saw seals and eagles, but no whales in sight.  It’s quite amazing to be zipping down the water at 20 knots rather than the sedate 8 that Cosmo Place plods long at!

We stayed in Saltery Cove two nights and we were glad we did.  The second day (Sunday) Chatham Strait, the big water outside Tenakee Inlet, had winds up to 40 knots.  We heard on the VHF radio that several fishing boats had gotten beaten up in the weather and came in to the marina at Tenakee Springs to make repairs.  We saw gusts up to 35 miles an hour as we snugly rode on our anchor in Saltery Cove.  The captain of the other boat anchored in Saltery Cove was very chatty on the VHF radio so we invited him over for dinner.  He was quite an interesting guy and even brought some yummy crab dip to share (there’s more than one way to catch crab!).  He was cruising solo for awhile and loved to spot bears on the beaches.  He helped us spot 6 black bears on the beach at the head of the cove!  Yes, I should have a photo but they were just too far away.

The winds brought rainy, unsettled weather but no strong winds or big seas so we were off the next morning, June 26, to make our way to Cosmos Cove.  The little anchorage was about a 50-mile cruise down Chatham Strait.  We had not stopped here last year, but were curious to see this little cove, with a name so similar to Cosmo Place.  It turned out to be a small anchorage full of crab pots and “Wanderer”, a 48-foot Bayliner, already there. We watched them pull and attempt to reset their anchor several times, using techniques that we thought were rather marginal.  Although the winds had come up, we set the anchor on the first try and settled in for the night.  

We had one more boat come in and park behind us, making for a cozy anchorage!  When we left the next morning, we cruised by 5 fishing boats sitting in the outer cove, waiting for the season to open!

June 27, Wednesday, our destination was Red Bluff Bay.  We stayed here with Beth last year and had memories of a warm, sunny afternoon watching an eagle on a nest.  Well, of course this is 2012 and the whole weather pattern has gone to pot!  No warm 

sunny days!  No sitting outside and watching the eagles.  Even so, this was still a pretty place.  To reach the anchorage, we wound through a narrow channel for about half an hour…just what we love!  Red Bluff Bay has a very tall cascade of water down the hillside and is obviously on the small cruise ship tour.  We saw several of them come and go. 

Even though it was rainy, the wind died down and we spent a lovely quiet evening, watching the waterfall and, yes, the eagle on her nest.  Including us, there were three boats anchored near the head of the bay and plenty of room for us all.

We watched an older Grand Banks come in and anchor.  They cruised all around the basin looking for the perfect spot and finally parked between us and another Nordic Tug.  The folks on board were an older couple…yep, even older than us…and seemed to be very methodical in their approach to anchoring.  You could almost year a little bit of bickering going on!  The best part of this little scenario was the name of the boat, “Maxine”!  I’m not sure about the sail…definitely an “after market” addition!

Jerry’s navigation software told us that we didn’t need to leave until 0900 on Thursday, 6/28, for optimum transit time, to reach our next destination:  Kake, on the NW side of Kupreanov Island.  I thought that any town named “Kake”, spelled right or not, must be an interesting place.  This is another Indian town with a population of about 500.  At one point in time Kake was a thriving metropolis, by SE Alaska standards, but the cannery closed and deferred maintenance had become a way of life.  We had not been to Kake last year so we were ready to explore a new town, such as it was.  We knew things weren’t going well in Kake when we saw all these derelict boats on the shore of the marina basin.

The route to Kake involved crossing Chatham Strait.  You can see our route (the dotted line) on the chart below and from Red Bluff Bay to protected water, about 28 NM.  It took us about 4 hours since we had serious wind and current against us.

(Okay, so I have to tell you that in Sitka, while we were sorting out Jerry’s laptop problems, we bought navigation software for my Apple computer.  It’s not as “fancy” as Jerry’s and doesn’t have nearly the bells and whistles that his does, but I can plot a course and follow the boat using a little GPS puck.  This is a screen shot of the chart showing our route).

Last year when we crossed Chatham Strait with Beth, we really got beat up.  We had beam seas and winds and rocked and rolled all the way across.  Fortunately, it wasn’t nearly as rough this year. 

We made our way to the public marina, about 2 miles south of town.  Great docks and not many boats.  We tied up in another serious wind and rainstorm and decided it just wasn’t in us to walk or dinghy in the wind and rain to town!  So, we sat and read and watched the eagles cruise the marina in the rain.  This photo is of a juvenile (I’d guess four years old) sitting just above us, looking for dinner.

After we’d gotten cleaned up and were sitting in the pilothouse enjoying our cell phone coverage, “Wanderer” came in…the boat we’d watch struggle to anchor in Cosmos Cove.  As they entered the Kake marina, they ignored the fact that just off the jetty it’s only three feet deep!  Thankfully they came in on a rising tide!  Their first moorage attempt was to back into the slip next to us.  We find backing into a slip a little harder so a couple of tries seems reasonable, but they didn’t even have their fenders down.  Yikes!  Eventually they pulled bow-in to a slip (fenders down) but had a terrible time tying up.  The picture says it all.  All three folks in the dock had jumped off the side of the boat, but how will they get back?  The swim step isn’t even on the dock yet! Eventually they figured out that they had to loosen the lines, bring the boat forward, and could return to the boat at the stern.  I’m sounding really smug and such a know-it-all, I know.  I can certainly sympathize with them.  There are a million things to learn about operating a boat and, even though we may have conquered mooring and anchoring, we still learn something new and invaluable almost every day.

Later on Jerry talked to the guy in the orange jacket and got the scoop.  Orange jacket and his wife are from Maine and friends with the owners, who are from Massachusetts and in their 80’s.  Orange jacket said he and his wife didn’t know anything about operating the boat and I’d guess that the owner couple was in the same boat (pun intended!).  They are bound for Petersburg where the guests will fly home and the owner couple will take the boat to WA, where they keep the boat in Anacortes.  Amazing! 

Are you sick of bird photos?  Friday morning, 6/29, as we were having breakfast, we saw this blue heron on the float across from us, watching the channel for breakfast.  We left about 0800 to reach Portage Bay, on the north shore of Kupreanov Island.  This anchorage is only about 20 miles from Petersburg and was a new one to us, so we were ready to explore. 

We had intermittent sunshine and (you won’t believe it!) no rain.  We followed the Kupreanov shoreline fairly closely and saw lots and lots of whales, whales spouts, tails, flukes, etc.  I didn’t get a good whale photo, but did take this scenery view of Kupreanov Island.  The logging effects are quite evident, but it’s still a lovely sight.

We pulled in to Portage Bay, a fairly wide bay about 3 miles long and decided to anchor deep in the bay so we would have protection from predicted southwest winds.  This was one of those anchorages that should have been a piece of cake (yep, dangerous words).  Our cruising guide said “…anchor anywhere.  The bottom is covered with soft, sticky mud at a consistent depth of 30 feet”.  Music to our ears! 

We picked our spot, dropped the anchor, reversed to set the anchor on about 120 feet of chain, and could not get the anchor to bite into that soft mud.  We backed up and backed up but the anchor didn’t grab the bottom and we couldn’t figure out why we weren’t holding in this sticky mud.  Uh-Oh!  We finally decided to pull the anchor up and try again and when the anchor broke the water’s surface we saw that it had grabbed a 4-foot log off the bottom!  No wonder the anchor would not bite!  (Yes, I wish I had a photo of that, too, but Jerry dropped the anchor and log before I could grab the camera.)  Our second attempt was easy and we settled in to watch the birds and the rain.  Later in the evening, waaaayyy down at the entrance to the bay we saw three other boats had come in, one of which was “Wanderer”.  They were anchored closely together and well away from our spot so we had no neighbors to worry about.

Saturday, June 30, we were up early once again to arrive at Petersburg at slack.  As we approached the entrance to Portage Bay here’s what we saw

The boat out there by itself on the left is “Wanderer”.  When we saw them the night before, “Wanderer” was in between the two right hand boats.  Looks like they drug their anchor during the night, as the tide changed.  Perhaps they found a log to grab, too.  This bay is a collection site for logs, waiting to be loaded.  Wanderer is making its way to Petersburg, too.  Wonder if they’ll make it.  Wonder if we’ll see them again.

June 30, Saturday morning’s cruise to Petersburg brought us more whales and even some porpoises “dancing” in the bow wake.  At one point, Jerry had gone below to shave and I was looking at the charts while I piloted the boat.  Something caught my eye off the starboard side and there, not more than 50 feet off, was a whale, just swimming by.  I never have my camera handy when I need it!

It must be herring season in Petersburg.  It’s been a showery afternoon, but in between showers 4-6 little skiffs are out in the channel catching herring.  We’ll do that too when we get ready to leave.  The herring make great bait fish for salmon and halibut.  These herring fishermen are right in the opening to the north harbor marina where we are moored.  Realize that there are two canneries here as well, so the commercial fishing boats are going in and out, too.  Grand Central Station in Petersburg, Alaska!

Well, I spoke too soon about “Wanderer”.  They came crabbing into the North Harbor, through a fairly stiff current in the channel, and dodging all of those herring fishermen.  Jerry and I were both out there to catch their lines since it seemed the current and a heavy touch on the throttle was making their mooring difficult.  Now they are tied up right beside us!  I’m sure we’ll hear more stories from these two couples from New England.

Today is Sunday, July 1, so I’ll wrap this up and get it posted.  For those of you having really hot, miserable weather I’ll cool you off with our weather conditions update:  Temp. 48 with a wind-chill of 47, cloudy and rainy, wind 5 knots NE and the barometer is steady is 1014 mbar.  Another dreary day!  We went to church this morning at the lovely little Petersburg Lutheran Church and then stopped to get videos to watch later.  Yes, we have an account at the video store here! 

We’re looking forward to celebrating the Fourth of July here and to attending the parade, watching the fireworks, and maybe even participating in the herring toss.  Stay tuned….

As always, we wish you could be here with us!