We take do our Juneau fishing charter and depart Juneau - a bittersweet departure, but it was time - and make our way to Gustavos - to pickup Dawn and head into Glacier Bay National Park.
8/5/2023
Our day involved a later start than usual with a 10a fishing charter, departing from the marina next door (15 min walk). We met up with captain Levi and his deckhand and one other client - which we later found out also worked for the fishing charter as a mechanic, but was just on this trip for fun. We headed out to the far side of Pt Retreat near Funter Bay - a journey that took about 45 min in this boat but took us the better part of a day in our boat.
Fishing was an experience. Neither Angela or I realized how busy/active the whole process is. You put out the downriggers and clip the lines to it as it goes out and that takes a couple of minutes - after that I thought we would be waiting a while, but we immediately started to see some of the rods pop up (which means there may be a fish on) and we started relling them in. Most of the time it was nothing, so we would start the whole process over again. It was exhausting for the crew and us. But it was worth it - 3 huge Cohos. We kept the smallest one and shipped the other two back home. Even the smallest one is a lot of fish - we have enough Salmon for at least 3 days. Sara got some 1:1 time with the captain on the way back and asked every question she had about fishing. When they cleaned the fish on the way back, we got a chance to taste the salmon roe - which is delightful on sushi and only ok when eaten fresh/plain.
8/6/2023
The following day we did some last minute grocery shopping/laundry before dropping Oakely off at the dog boarding place in Juneau. Turns out the boarding place was right next to Alaskan Brewing company - so we headed over a little early for a late lunch/beer before dropping Oakely off at 3:30p. Then off to Avis to return the car and cab back to the boat. We got underway and filled up on gas before finally departing the marina at around 6p. We were origionally planning to do 20 nm today and stay at Coverden island but, given the late start, we ended up staying in a closer harbor at Barlow Cove - about 10 nm out of Auke Bay. We were chased by a whale the whole way and at one point it came up no more than 20 feet from our boat before passing us and leaving us behind.
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We got in late and after getting our anchor set, doing some last minute putting away/fixing up, and Sara/Angela doing a short shore excursion - it was 10p. That’s pretty late for us generally, but it’s very late when we had to get underway at 4:30a the next morning to catch the outgoing tide. Jsut as everything started to quite down for the evening, we started to hear whale blows all around us - some as close as 1/4 mile. This basically lasted all night, our first whale watching from an anchor - it was very peacefull and amazing.
8/6/2023
We already miss Oakley, but life without having to go to the shore in the morning is exponentially easier. We woke up at 4:45a and were underway by 4:50a. We pulled into Lynn Channel and immediately had a 3 knot current at our back which stuck with us all the way to icy passage. By the time we were out in the pass, we were thinking we could make it all the way to Bartlett Cove today - until we read the guidebook closer and realized we couldn’t pull into the cove until our permit opened up tomorrow…
The entire way to Gustavus, were hearing warnings about severe flooding in the Mendenhall valley. There is an ice dam that forms every year in the Mendenhall glacier and it ends up breaking in Jun/July. It held on really late this year so there was a lot of water backed up. Auke Bay was reporting floating oil tanks, sheet metal, and lumber from houses that were swept away. Good thing we got out when we did!
We pulled out the sail for the first time since it was damaged in Chatham strait. We ended up not being able to replace the sail in Juneau - Catalina Direct did not have any sails in stock and there is an 8 week lead time to make one. Thankfully, the sail was not in as bad of shape as I had origionally thought and it will be usable for our trip back to Seattle.
We got into Gustavus at around 1p and tied up to the floats. The floats have a 2 hour limit for your stay and we thought we would be able to walk into town and back in that amount of time. We didn’t and we didn’t get back to the boat until 5 hours later. The town is about a mile and a half from the floats and the popular trail in the area (Nagoonberry trail) was a further mile before doing the 2 mile loop. In all, we hiked around 7 miles in those 5 hours and stopped for ice cream and dinner - so it was a very active excursion!
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On the way into town, we stopped at a small artisan shop, a community garden, and an ice cream shop called the Sunshine Grill. The beach near the dock was very white and it was so sunny/warm that you could almost believe you were in Hawaii if you didn’t know any better. The community garden was very cute and each row had an artisan sign telling you who’s it was. The Sunshine grill (the only resteraunt in town that isn’t associated with a lodge) has 3 meals a day - with one item on the menu. You get what you get! They also had a small garden shop in the resteraunt complete with a guide for how to grow stuff in the sub-artic - helpful!
The Nagoonberry trail was pretty fun - it went through an old growth forest before passing through a somewhat arid open plain before hitting the beach. The wind started blowing as we approached the beach, but it quickly died back down again. We figured our boat was secure to the doc behind a large breakwater, so it would be fine. Foreshadowning, but it was not.
We stopped off for dinner in town since our hike took so long. It was a single meal that you could order - menu changed daily. It was almost like stopping off at someones house for dinner - you get what you get and don’t pitch a fit.
Got back to floats and our boat was bucking like a bronco. We read that the floats get the brunt of icy strait chop, but everything looked calm while we were in town so we thought we were ok. We raced to exit (although any damage that could have been done would have been done over the last 4 hours) and untied the lines in the wrong order. The spring line was still attached and our stern swung out until it was perpendicular to the dock putting all it’s weight on the spring line - to the point where Angela couldn’t untie it (bow was pinched into the dock). After about a min of trying to fix it, we cut the line and let our stern swing all the way around - pulling out easily away from the docks and into the pass. Very stressful cast-off, but the lost dock line was the only casualty. Boat and crew were all ok.
Pulled around to Pleasant island cove - which was actually pleasant. Easy to get hook set in clay and slept soundly with two other boats. We knew we had another early morning and with the lack of sleep the night before - we were in bed by 8p.
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8/7/2023
The following morning we were on our way by 4:45a again. We had about 15 nm to go to get to Bartlett cove and we were hoping to get in before the 9a boater briefing (although we were going to hang out in the cove all day, so we could have easily grabbed the next). As we pulled out, we passed the sleeping sea otters - big groups of 20-30 of them holding hands so they didn’t float away. We were up before the otters!
Right as we crossed into Glacier bay NP, a thick fog set in and vis was around 1/4 mile. Fitting! I grabbed a screenshot on our chartplotter, we made it!
We pulled into at Bartlett cove dock at 8a, so plenty of time. We pulled easily into one of the slips and headed ashore. There is a 3 hour limit on the docks, so you have to go anchor out - which we will be doing this evening. For now though, we have almost a whole day to kill before Dawn arrives - so lots of hiking, blogging, and exploring is in our future.
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Here’s a teaser of what’s to come in Bartlett cove!
We spotted them on AIS, but the Nat Geo Venture was at the dock when we arrived - the same one we saw in Juneau several days ago! We got our pictures at the dock and headed in for the briefing. There were several fun artifacts - a toten pole, some tree art, a traditional canoe, a whale skeleton, and the Glacier Bay lodge - which looked like one of the nice ones. The lodge also had wifi - so though it would be a good time to post this. Next post will cover all of Glacier bay - the big one!
