7/17/2023
We leave Ketchikan heading north to Meyers Chuck - about a 30 nm push - leaving at about 7a and expecting to arrive at just after noon. The highlight (or lowlight) of the morning was listening to the coast guard talk to a resort ferry called the “Miss Sadie” from the Calder Mountain Lodge who first fowled their prop on a bow anchor line that came loose and then their engine started smoking. They had another resort vessel that came out to unload the 17 resort passengers and 2 crew and a second vessel that came out to tow them in. The Coast Guard was mostly a observer in this, but they got all the gory details from the boats involved - which was like listening to th play by play of a car accident over the radio. Everyone was ok thankfully - all very cringe-worthy…
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We made it to Meyers Chuck at around 1p and were fortunate to find a place on the float to accommodate our boat. The town has one big trail that goes through it - but no roads or other modes of transport. There is the dock and a float plane service, but for the most part it sounds like people either use their own boats or other ppl in town with boats help them out. There are 3 permenant residents in the winter and about 20 during the summer. You must be pretty self reliant to live here.
We got a trail “map” - which was more of an artistic watercolor representation of the town than a map per se. It was fun though and added to the town’s charm.
We hiked out in one direction and ran into one of the summer residents. She had been coming here since she was 7 yo (she was probably in her 60s now). She pointed us to where the beach was and helped us put in our order for Cinnamon Rolls. There is a lady that bakes Cinnamon rolls and you can text her your order the night before and she brings them right out to your boat in the morning! We hadn’t had service since we arrived, but for some reason this lady did so we got our order in. Hurrah!
The trail also included some trail art along the way and an art gallery - that was currently empty/locked, but likely used to be full of interesting things. There was several art items of particular interst to Sara - a slide and a large spider web.
At the end of our hike (which was only about a half mile) there was a staircase up onto a small island and a house on it. I expect a high tide would probably make the staircase (and the house) inaccessible by anything other than boat.
On the first part of our hike, we ran into 2 kids - both a bit older than Sara - with their dog. The girl followed us out to the beach (probably eager to play with the new kid) and Sara introduced herself and they hit it off. She taught Sara how to throw sticks for their dog to fetch and helped her identify various items that she found on the beach. Afterwards, they headed back to the dock to fish - fairly unproductively, but highly engaging/exciting for the them. Eventually they realized that you could get the fish to follow the shiny lure to the surface (even if they weren’t biting it) and then grab them with a net. They got 2-3 this way and kept them in a bucket for a couple of hours before sending them back.
We found lots of huckleberries and blueberries on our hike. The huckleberries were somewhat new - we have seen them before on this trip, but not in any significant quantities. There are a lot here - enough for us to make huckleberry/blueberry pancakes for dinner. Sara also found some green pea bushes and picked us our veges for the night!
Angela is not usually a pancake person, but she was tonight - I had to make 3 batches vs my usual 1 batch with just Sara and I. I also made some eggs to make it a well rounded breakfast for dinner.
After putting a significant dent in our pancake reserves, we decided to watch a movie instead of our usual board games - The Grand Budapest Hotel, one of Angela’s favorites. We’ve discovered on this trip that Sara loves Wes Anderson movies, too. We had such a great time, we decided to stay an extra day here - I expect there will be lots more berries and hiking in our future.
7/18/2023
The following morning, we were greeted by cinnamon rolls delivered by boat from across the bay (we didn’t realize the baker lived on a different island!). They were amazing, but I forgot to get a picture so I guess we will need to get some more tomorrow. :)
It rained today - from about 10a onward. This was not the light Seattle rain that we have experienced so far on this trip - this was real rain all through the day. Fortunately, Meyers Chuck is still charming in the rain and we still did quite a bit of exploring.
Before exploring however, Tom had some work to do. The black water tank full light was misbehaving (lighting up when the tank wasn’t full), the sink was clogged again, and there are several chips in the gelcoat (present when we got the boat) that I have been meaning to fix. All this took something like 2-3 hours to fix and Angela/Sara were off exploring while I worked. When they got back to the boat, a small package had arrived for Sara from the two little kids that she met yesterday. :)
After they got back, we had a light lunch and tried to wait out the rain - to no avail. When the two kids came down to the dock in shorts, we decided it was time to stop being lazy and embrace the rain. We took a dinghy ride around the bay and into the back bay (called the “Back Chuck”) to take a look at some of the historic houses and some of the new ones under construction. There were quite a few homes being built and we saw some of it in action. There is a small saw mill in town and ppl would cut down timber, drag it over to the saw mill by boat, process it into lumber, and bring it back to the dock where the house was being built. Hyper-local construction. We also saw the post office - closed now, but it looked to be still in operation - and more uniquely constructed buildings on these tiny islands. This one also looked like it was inaccessable at high tide.
After the dinghy ride, we headed back to the dock to hike the other way down the trail (to the left). The trail took you off the beach and over a small ridge over to the Back Chuck. You can go all the way along the Back Chuck at low tide, but it was high tide and we were stopped at the small pass that accessed the back chuck.
On the hike, we saw lots of new berries from this trip. Angela says they are called Thimble berries and they are quite good, but they have to be very red when you pick them. I had seen these berries before on past hikes, but I’ve never seen them fully red/ripe. Sara and I picked a bunch of them - both to eat and to make into some kind of topping for a goodie back at the boat.
When we got back to the boat, we racked our brains for a bit and decided that a steak sauce would be the best use for the berries. They were pretty sweet by themselves, but I added a bit of sugar and mushed them up into a jelly. It was amazing on the steaks - Sara put some on her potatoes and brocolli as well, but I wasn’t that brave.
We finished up the evening with a game of Scrabble Slam - a new game that Angela picked up several weeks ago and we have been working on convincing Sara to play with us. She finally agreed and it was pretty fun - and Sara even won a game, with a heavy handycap and lots of help. It was a great game for helping her learn how to spell words - learning AND having fun!
7/19/2023
We bide a fond farewell to Meyers Chuck and continued our way up Clarence Straight. But first, cinnamon rolls!
We didn’t have super long to go today - about 10 nm across the straight and then north a bit to Coffman Cove. We got a little sailing in - probably 2 hours or so - and then we were blessed with glassy seas all the way in. Sara decided that she wanted to break the ice with driving the big boat - so we turned off the autopilot and gave her a chance to keep the boat going in a generally straight line. She did a bit better with this one than the dinghy - I think the wheel is a bit more intuitive and easier for her to make minor corrections as opposed to the dinghy.
She steered for probably an hour - it really took it out of her…
We got into Coffman Cove around 1p - we were one of the first boats in (outside of the fishing boats).
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The town was cute - but nothing compared to Meyers Chuck. We stopped by the Riggin Shack for some chicken wings and fries… and a root beer float. We walked around a bit and checked out the library - which had some fun stories from the town newsletter from back in the day. After we had our fill, we dropped the dinghy and went to explore up the inlet a bit. We found a large estuary that we were able to explore at some length at high tide - we even made it back over a tidal barrier to Sweetwater lake. We didn’t see any wildlife, but we saw lots of tracks and spots where animals had laid down in the tall grass.
We finished up the evening by heading back to the Riggin Shack for a take-n-bake pizza. A 12-in pizza needed to be cut into thirds to fit into our oven - but we made it work! Then to bed early for an early start for wildlife watching (and to catch the favorable tide out of the strait).
7/20/2023
We had a 4a start today - It was a beautiful morning, calm and clear. Angela and I spent the first couple of hours together looking for wildlife and then I took the first shift while Angela went down to warm up. About 8a, a small animal poked her head up out of the cabin - wanting to steer again!
Angela took over around 9a while Sara and I did some math worksheets. At 11a, the call came from the cockpit - Whales! We were coming around Point Colpoys and a group of 3-4 humpbacks were feeding on the fish which must have been caught in the swirling eddies off of the point. They were a little ways out and they dissapated before we got all the way there. We saw numerous blows and a few fluke up dives - we slowed way down (following the rules around whales - and also hoping they would come back) but they weren’t coming back.
We continued on our way out of Sumner Strait - our guidebooks suggested that we would see more wildlife as we continued our way out towards Point Baker. Apparently fresh water coming into the strait from the Stikine River combines with strong currents to create eddies that trap fish and the predatory mammals (whales, otters, sea lions, etc) have a perfect place to grab some lunch. We saw several islands full of sea lions on our way up the straight and right as we approached Point Baker, whales popped up right in front of our boat, then behind it. We stopped the boat and watched them for a while - I got some great surfacing pictures and fluke up dives.
Right when we were thinking they were gone, one popped up about 5 feet off our bow - so close you could see into the blow holes and see the spots on his/her skin. It was so close that we could feel the wake in our boat!
We were at max ebb when we arrived and the ocean was doing it’s usual boiling/swirling when two tidal streams met. This area was particularly pronouced - which is likely why the whales like this place. Just to give you an idea of what this looks like…
In addition to the whales, we saw hundreds of Pigeon Guillamote - a small diving bird that looks a bit like puffin. They were diving away, likely feeding on the same fish.
Sea Otters also joined in. They didn’t seem to mind the boat (as they did in BC) - probably because of the fishing boats in the area - and you could see the fish they were eating as they floated by. My favorite part of watching otter is the little jump they do when they are ready to dive again - they are so bouyant (and athletic) as they pop out of the water and dive back in to head back down to eat.
Finally, some bald eagles were hovering around picking off fish that got too close to the surface. We have seen lot of bald eagles on this trip - enough that we don’t really call them out when we see them anymore - but we seeing them dive and pick a fish out of the water is still pretty novel.
We finally decided to pull into the Poinst Baker Cove and tie up to the floats. We found “Alaska’s last floating salon” closed - so alas there are no more floating bars/restaurants in Alaska. There was not much to the floats and the area upland from the floats is all private. We walked up there to explore and the lack of signs made us think it was a public walkway - until a local informed us that we had missed all the signs but that they “must have all blown away during the winter”- so not sure how we were informed. We also found the public restroom - which was just a hole over the ocean at the end of the public dock. Wow. Anyway, they didn’t have diesel and we needed some so we were on our way…
We had to head another 3 nm down the coast to Port Protection where we were informed that they would roll a hose down the dock to fill up your boat. Unfortunately, when we rounded the point, we caught the opposite ebb stream coming into Point Baker and we had almost a 3knt current against us for the first part of the journey - slowing us to just over 2 knts of ground speed.
Fortunately, we only did this for a mile or so before we pulled into Wooden Wheel Cove and Port Protection. We filled up with fuel on a real fuel dock (guidebooks were out of date) and wondered aroud a bit. At first, it looked like there might be a boardwalk trail through town, but it ended in private property signs. Someone on the dock informed us that we can just go past them to continue on the trail - but now I don’t know what to believe!
We ended up giving up on these two ports and headed out to anchor for the night - which we enjoy more than ports anyway. Merrifield Bay was only one nm away and we made it there pretty quickly. Not a particularly sheltered anchorage, but cozy and quiet. We don’t anticipate any storms coming in so hopefully this is a relaxing night for us!
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Tomorrow we leave Clarence/Sumner Straight and make for Rocky Pass and our two day journey to our next major port of Kake! Less than two weeks until Glacier Bay!