Post # 5 Posted at Juneau, AK, July 18, 2011

JACA Blog entry # 5    Petersburg to Juneau.

This entry begins at Petersburg, where we arrived on Saturday July 9.  After a day of chores, in gorgeous weather, we went out to dinner at the Beach Comber Inn, a few miles done the road, driven by a courtesy van.  There we had one of the fish dinners we’ve ever had anywhere:  I had a “White King Salmon”, which is a king salmon whose flesh is white, and Pam had a smoked black cod.  We don’t have fish like this on the East coast, so it was a special treat.

The next day was also beautiful, with the great snow-capped range looming across Frederick Sound, which borders Petersburg, shining brightly.  We took a long hike around the town and its outskirts, and concluded that this is a very different place than the others we have visited so far in Alaska.  Perhaps it is because the population is 70% of Norwegian descent and 20% of Swedish descent.  In any event, it is clean, friendly and while there isn’t much tourism amidst all the fishing, it has the air of a place accustomed to living unpretentiously well and enjoying life in a beautiful setting.  There is no question, however, that this place is dedicated to fishing: the fish boats come and go at all hours of the day and night, and the crews are the most common passers-by on the streets.  In the marina, whole families come and go to work in the fleet, and little children run up and down the docks to visit fathers and mothers coming and going on the boats.  There are bunkhouses provided for the workers in the canneries and processing plants – they come from all over the world, it appears, and stay for one fishing season or the other.  The processing plants run 24/7. 

When we arrived, we tied up beside a traditional Alaska fishing boat, whose owner showed up just at that moment.  He was a man who looked to be about 70, and moved about his boat with great deliberation, packing away some food and getting things ready.  He had the air and speech of a retired English professor.  We asked him if he was headed out, and he said yes.  Did he have a crew?  No, he fished alone-even though he was pretty old he still loved to be out there fishing.  How long would he be out?  Until mid-September.  Where did he fish?  Off the Dixon entrance, near the Canadian Border, in a notoriously rough part of the world.  He turned on his motor and backed out of his slip and was gone.  We asked the harbormaster about him, and were told he was a wealthy man who never needed to catch another fish.  We wished we’d had more time to talk to him!

Early in the evening we welcomed Jess, Frank and Zia arriving on the ferry from Bellingham.  After dinner, however, Jess got violently ill and had an awful night.  In the morning Frank decided that she should go to the local hospital because she was so dehydrated.  I called a cab and told him that we’d need first to go the hospital and collect a wheel chair for her, since the boat was a long ways out in the marina, and then we’d come back to the dock and get Jess and take her to the hospital.  He said fine, but took a little while to show up.  When he did, he’d already gone to the hospital on his own and collected a wheel chair.  When we got Jess to the hospital, he wouldn’t take any fare, saying it was the least he could do to help out a sick lady.  Once in the ER, Jess was beautifully treated, checked over, rehydrated, and ready to head off with us within a few hours.

Which is what we did.  Late in the afternoon we headed across Frederick Sound to Thomas Bay, home of the Baird Glacier and a host of other glacial streams coming down from the mountains.  As we got into the bay, the water temperature dropped from about 50 degrees to about 38 degrees in a matter of minutes, and the color of the water turned to glacial green.  We anchored in the usual deep water and went ashore to find the ranger cabin and trail head to the waterfall and lake above.  On the stony beach, a couple of guys were cleaning a huge halibut they had just caught.  They were renting the ranger cabin for the week, and were spending their days fishing from a small outboard.  We admired the halibut, and were promptly presented with enough fresh fish to last a week!

Our glorious weather continued unabated for four days before reverting somewhat to the norm, and then it got better again.  Summer has come to Southeast Alaska, if only briefly.  I’ve been swimming – first in 48 degrees, and then in a balmy 54.  It doesn’t last long, but we’ve got the pictures to prove it.  No company in that activity yet, but the sunscreen has been in use for the first time here.  We all did a long, arduous hike up the Cascade Creek trail in Thomas Bay.  By any rating this was a “most difficult”, and 5-year old Zia clambered along with the rest of us, most of the time refusing any help at all.  It was about the muddiest, slipperiest steep hike we’ve done in a long time.  But the roaring cascade near us was awesome.  That hike necessitated the first swim.  The second was a balmy afternoon at anchor in Cannery Cove (Pybus Bay), looking over a serene estuary, drinking a beer and waiting for some bears to show up.  The mountains are definitely getting bigger, and shimmer white all day and into the night in the sun.

It’s been a joy watching Zia adapt to life on a boat.  She’s game for anything, even participating in the daily crankcase oil check.  She now has her own daily job, sweeping out the cockpit.  We’ve rigged a trapeze on the foredeck to let her work off some of her enormous energy.

A major highlight of an otherwise long windless day under power was sitting still in a pod of feeding humpbacks in the middle of Frederick Sound.  We came upon them, and shut the motor down.  Some came within 50 feet or so of the boat, seemingly unconcerned with us.  They blew and snorted, lifted their tails repeatedly, and sometimes even showed us their long snouts and gnarly faces.  These largest beings on earth are endlessly fascinating.

The highlight of the ride from Petersburg to Juneau has been a long day exploring Tracy Arm and it’s two major glaciers descending into the ocean.  We entered Tracy arm late in the afternoon, under power in thick fog and an adverse 4 knot current.  It is a narrow opening between two buoys, and JACA was making very slow going of it in the wild swirls and whirlpools of the rushing
 water.  We’d already seen a number of small icebergs in the area, and several appeared out of the fog.  We made our way slowly to Tracy Arm Cove, which is the only decent anchorage in the area, and a good jumping off point to explore the long deep arms of the fiord.  A huge white motor yacht appeared out of the fog behind us, and followed us in.  There were already about 6 boats anchored there, so it seemed very crowded!

In the morning the fog was still thick but we were hopeful.  We headed out into the horns of a couple of cruise ships that had already made a pass up the fiord (what on earth did those folks see?), but as we worked our way along, the fog lifted, the mist began to part, and the sun starting peeking through.  By the time we worked our way through the increasingly thick ice to the first glacier (it takes three hours to do that in JACA), it was a beautiful day, and we sat in front of the wall of the Sawyer glacier drinking in this massive river of ice slowly tumbling into the ocean.  Every now and then a piece would fall off, sounding like a cannon shot and creating a huge splash even though the piece itself seemed very small.  Just another iceberg to start down the fiord!

Then we headed over to the South Sawyer glacier, which if anything is more majestic and stupendous than the Sawyer itself.  We found a decent hole in the crush of small ice bergs about ½ mile from the face of the glacier, and left Pam and Zia making circles in JACA while the rest of us jumped in the dinghy to take pictures, and get a little closer.  We got back to Tracy Arm Cove late but exhilarated: it had been one of those days you never forget.  In the cove, a bunch of small icebergs about the size of cars were milling about.  So we icepicked some hunks of ice for the libations, and watched the little bergs meander around the harbor.  All of them ultimately wound up on the shore, stranded for the remainder of their melting lives.

Slowly working our way to Juneau, we put in at Taku Harbor, about 25 miles south of the town.  This is a nicely protected place, the site of an abandoned cannery and a few fishing cabins.  The harbor authority of Juneau also maintains a nice public dock, which on a Saturday night turned out to be very popular.  We tied up there, among a couple of small fishing boats and a couple of sailboats out for the day from Juneau.  As the evening wore on, the fleet grew bigger, so by the end we were all rafted several deep.  We’d made the acquaintance of an elderly couple (he’s 73) on their small old wooden gill netter, a typical Alaska fish boat.  Irene wanted to know what a sailboat looked like down below –she’d never been on a one.  So she got the tour, and shortly thereafter produced a big hunk of king salmon, saying that they’d been eating enough fish.  And we got a tour of the little boat – cozy, Spartan, and warm.  Larry has fished his whole life.  Now he and his wife leave home in Prince of Wales Island in May, fish all summer, and go back in October for the winter.  Every day the “supply boat” makes the rounds of the fleet in the area, bringing ice for their tanks, and buying their catch.  Larry showed me his “slips” for the last few days of fishing.  He had several days of 3800 pounds in the catch, for which he was paid an average of $1 per pound.  He and his wife do it all alone.

Meanwhile, more fish boats kept arriving, and it soon became apparent that fishing in the summer in this part of Alaska is a family affair.  Behind us was Dan, on his 45’ gill netter.  With him for the summer were his 40 year old daughter, and her 7 year old daughter, Kennedy.  Rafted along side him on a slightly smaller boat was his son-in-law (married to his daughter) and their other child, a five year old boy, plus another brother from New Hampshire.  The young family lives and works in Colorado in the winter.   She’s a special-ed teacher.  Then Dan’s son showed up on a third boat with his family aboard.  This is very different than fishing in Maine, and is a pleasure to see.  There were multiple tours of JACA and vice versa.  The kids work too: Kennedy catches the fish coming down the chute from the net as it reels in and stuffs them in the hold!  Amid great hilarity from the multitude on the dock, three of the youngsters, including the 7 and 5 year olds, were tossed into the 50 degree water and immediately fished out.  Noisy firecrackers followed.  They were all off the dock early in the a.m.

Zia and Jess had another wish fulfilled: in Taku we saw our first black bears, a mother and two cubs, foraging in the bushes near the shore while we sat quietly in the dinghy watching the show!

Yesterday morning, Sunday July 17, we headed out of Taku towards Juneau, in a sunny placid sea.  We discovered early on that the (only) head wasn’t working properly, in that it wouldn’t take in water for flushing.  Serious problem on a boat!  So I found the manual for the thing, and then began disassembling the intake side of the operation.  Sure enough, after a while, a piece of lettuce dropped out of the inner valve, and after reassembly we were good to go.  Alaska waters are full of all sorts of stuff, but what a relief!

Now we are moored in Auke Bay marina, about 11 miles north of Juneau, which is the only reasonable place for boats like us to go.  We’ve already rented a car and had a first quick trip to the Mendenhall Glacier, which dominates Juneau, and a great fish/crab dinner downtown.  At the outer edge of the marina are two huge fish boats, both from Seattle, named the Dominator and the Gladiator respectively.  Their noisy generators grumble throughout the whole marina.  Tomorrow it is going to rain all day, so the chores and shopping will begin.  JACA has been 1060 miles since Bella Bella, and we have reached the half way point, time wise.  We are above latitude 58 north, which is nearly 400 miles further north than our northernmost point in the Newfoundland trip.  I can only hope the next half will be as grand as the first!  The status of the facial hair is shown in the last picture.