Heading home

We are leaving Prince Rupert, B.C. today and heading down Grenville Channel. If the rain lets up, that long slog will be relieved by lots of great scenery. We ultimately stayed in Wrangell for four days (due to--guess what--more weather delays). We enjoyed being temporary Wrangellites: taking a walk to a park with a trail through the muskeg, swimming at the community pool, a very good pizza from the bar near the marina and a movie at the community center. We had a good transit through Wrangell narrows to Meyers Chuck and the next morning we left at 4:30 for Ketchikan. We stayed one night there and then set out to cross Dixon Entrance at 3:45 a.m. We enjoyed calm weather for the first three hours or so, with the biggest challenge coming from dodging cruise ships. They are actually very courteous and a chat on the VHS lets us know what do to avoid being crushed! Unfortunately, the wind and seas built and we had to reroute to Foggy Bay. We were greeted there by a small humpback in the NARROWEST part of a rather tricky entrance; he or she must have dived under the boat to get out of our way. Taking a deep breath, we traveled on a few hundred yards where I spyed some other obstruction not on our chart--it turned out to be three deer, swimming across the channel! The trip from Foggy Bay to Prince Rupert the following day was fine. We successfully dodged all of the gilnetters and much more confidently negotiated Venn passage, the rather labyrinthine back door to Prince R, since it was our second time. Hope you are all well and getting some summer weather--we did go without long johns on our walk yesterday evening!

Wrangell redux

Here I am back at the laundry in Wrangell... After leaving Petersburg we sailed to Chapin Cove, then crossed Chatham Strait to stay in Red Bluff and Warm Springs on the east side of Baronof Island. We had planned to go on to Sitka and possibly take a ferry to Juneau, but the continuation of unseasonably bad weather (with accompanying strong winds)decided us on turning south. Also, our boating companions, who had discussed staying up here much later or even leaving their boats for the winter, unexpectedly got the "go south" bug -- and we want to continue to travel with the group as we cross the big bodies of water on the way home. Another consideration is Millie's welfare--we need to varnish and we've been unable to air out and fully dry our interior cushions. No mildew yet, but not a happy thought! We are mildly disappointed not to have gone further north, but looking forward to revisiting our favorite anchorages and exploring others we missed on the way up. While on Baranof we FINALLY saw brown bears. Our first, a skinny two or three year old, was just 100 yards away on the beach as we entered Chapin. Red Bluff had stunning alpine scenery and a bear meadow a quarter to a half mile from the anchorage area. We stayed several days, spending hours watching about six individual brownies as they went about their business. With their large humps and grazing behavior, they reminded us of buffalo. We were fascinated by the interactions between the juveniles and the older (huge)dominant bears. Several chase scenes convinced us that running from a grizzly would be futile; they are incredibly fast. Another treat was coming across sea otters, comfortably floating on their backs as we crossed Frederick and Chatham. We spent three days in Warm Springs where we were able to take a mile long walk to a lake and, of course, soak in the springs. My friend Jan and I did our soaking in the "natural" pools, literally on the edge of a waterfall. The men folk used the cedar tubs in a bathhouse set up near the dock. Jan and I, having left any semblance of personal vanity/modesty behind on this trip, wore only our bathing suits, sailing boots and jackets on our trips back and forth--a group of kayakers, in their fancy rain gear, pronounced us "tough ladies." Speaking of personal vanity, I'm having my hair cut at the Millie Salon--an overturned orange bucket on the back deck, a garbage bag cape and Mr. Kurt wielding the scissors. He does a pretty good job and in any case, I'm usually in a hat, hood, or head scarf. When we returned to Petersburg, we treated ourselves to a half day trip on a fast boat to the Le Conte glacier. As we traveled toward the glacier the bergy bits--from small to building-sized--were fantastical. Some square, others round--balancing on flat slabs of ice--and most carved into irregular shapes like modern art sculpture. Captain Ron took us as close to the glacier as he safely could. The floating ice there served as a harbor seal nursery, with several hundred moms and pups pulled out on the floes. As a bonus, we now have some bergy ice in our iceboxes! After chores today we plan to visit the museum we missed last time, and hike again up Mt. Dewey (a great viewpoint here in town).

Petersburg (Little Norway)

We are about to leave Petersburg and head toward Sitka today. This trip could be as short as four or five days or as long as two weeks, depending on weather and how long we care to linger in places like Baranof Warm Springs. Yesterday the cloud layer lifted enough for us to see some incredible mountain vistas on our way from Wrangell to Petersburg. That transit includes the 21 mile Wrangell Narrows with over 60 aids to navigation (lights, buoys, day marks) along the way; they call it Christmas Tree lane! We took a Petersburg walk in the afternoon downpour and got thoroughly drenched, but we were able to look out on Frederick Sound (where we are headed today) where we saw our first "bergy bits"--smallish chunks of iceberg that have calved off the Le Conte glacier nearby. From shore, they were glowing blue jewels floating in a sea of gray. Today we will admire, but also, dodge them. Petersburg has a large, active, fishing fleet, so we have been able to admire large quantities of working boats in the marinas. Downtown is decorated with tole painting galore and the shops feature Norwegian items. I'm off to dig eggplant and zucchini out of the bilge for a veggie lasagna tonight (I prefer Italian over Norwegian cuisine). It SOUNDS like the weather is settled enough for some cooking underway. We ate the last of our crab last night and will be keeping our eyes and ears open for new spots to crab and prawn on the way to Sitka. We have heard that the resurgence of the sea otter population (yay!) has decimated the crab population out near Sitka (too bad, but maybe things will settle out in the future). Hope you are all well and having less rain than we have.