July 17-18 – A Weekend in Naha Bay

To give Dave Nagle’s brother and sister-in-law a brief taste of Alaska cruising, we did a short 20 mile trip from Ketchikan to Naha Bay. There is a public dock there and trails that go to some upland lakes.

The dock is a bit small so Dave went in first and I rafted to him on the outside. Unfortunately, while waiting for Dave to dock and my focus on him the wind pushed us a bit to close to the shoal outside a stream emptying into the bay. Faster than I can say “oh #@!&” our stern drifted into the soft bottom and we got stuck.  Our bow float proudly the entire time.

Fortunately, we were only an hour before low tide and we easily floated off about two hours later.  Dave and crew gave us a hand by taking our anchor in their dinghy and dropping it 100 feet away in the deep water so tantalizingly close as seen in the image taken of our forward looking sonar screen (as an aside, the FLS is at the lower helm and I was at the upper helm because that is where I dock from). As we floated clear, we took in anchor chain to help pull us away from the shallow. Dave in his dinghy simultaneously pushed us along at our stern.

The rest of the weekend was extremely pleasant as the weather improved. Marcia prepared a wonderful halibut cioppino for everyone using fish that was given to her by Justin from the fishing boat Little Lady.  Marcia has discovered that chocolate chip cookies are an effective bait for “catching” fish.

On Sunday, before departing back to Ketchikan, Marcia and Dave dove our boat using Dave’s hookah gear (an air compressor operating on deck and supplying air via hoses). It was the first time Marcia (photo right in case you don’t recognize her) has dived on compressed air since college. Fortunately, our brief grounding caused no harm and it gave Marcia a good excuse to dive under the tutelage of Dave, a certified dive instructor.

We returned to Ketchikan at about 5:30 PM in the warm sun and enjoyed our post docking beer, chips and salsa on our fly bridge.

Roundtrip mileage – 41.9

Cumulative mileage – 1231.2