On Monday May 20, we departed Petersburg around 9 a.m. No drama due to currents even though we weren’t at slack water. Once out and nearing the confluence of Fredrick Sound and Stephens Passage, we began to experience first, 3 foot choppy seas, then 3-4 foot chop as the wind picked up. The forecast was for even higher winds and stiffer seas, so we looked for a bail out from our original plans and went to Read Island, in Farragut Bay, a new anchorage for us. Not as nice as our original destination, Pybus Bay on Admiralty Island, but that would have taken 6 or 7 more hours of unpleasant and worsening conditions. Read was nice enough, and we set two prawn traps. But nothing in either, except one small shrimp.
On Tuesday, we did a weather day in Read, waiting for things to calm down and on Wednesday headed out, in much improved conditions from when we left Fredrick Sound. Even then it was a bit lumpy. Our next stop was Goose Cove on Kuiu Island, another new anchorage where we hoped to do some crabbing. We noted sea otters as we headed south in Keku Straight towards our anchorage but stopped seeing sea otters quite a ways before Goose. We also got cell phone service in Keku Straight, and seeing message, I called our friends on m/v Passages. We had just missed them in Petersburg (by an hour!) had a nice chat and expect we will see them in Sitka. At Goose Cove, there was a big float house at the head of the cove, still plenty of room for us. No-one around though. We set some crab pots found 1 small crab in one the next morning, not a keeper. Thursday, and reset a total of 3. Lots of eagles in the anchorage and a carcass on the shore for them…. probably a large deer. The weather was nice blue skies in the evening.
The next morning, Friday, we pulled pots and drew all blanks. Pulled dinghy in and then left and went to the Tlinket village of Kake to the brand new dock a fellow cruiser had said they had used the year before. No other boats on it, and we docked and started walking looking for someone to ask about it. Well, the person in charge found us, he drove up and asked if it was our boat and what our intentions were. As it turns out, we weren’t supposed to be there, it wasn’t open yet; We apologized and were told we could not spend the night, but a couple of hours was OK. We indicated perhaps we would seek out the totem pole (tallest in the world) and were provided directions to get there. So we did ~ 3 mile round trip walk to the totem pole then returned to the boat and left. We thought we would go to an anchorage we used in 2011, Honey Dew Cove a couple of hours from Kake. Well, when we approached we saw there were two boats rafted and anchored in this very small place. No room for us. Sooooo, we looked for another anchorage nearby, and tried Lord’s Pocket, which has rock strewn entrances, and once anchored we decided it was just too small for us. A 40 foot boat might do OK here, but we were just too big, and didn’t like the depth under our stern. Soooo, we left and headed to “Honey Dew” backup. We were slightly on edge. We found it to be a very nice anchorage, that wouldn’t do in a big storm, but our weather and winds were fine, and it was lovely. The forecast indicated we could get to Bay of Pillars on west coast of Kuiu Island but would face 3 ft chop in S. Chatham.
On Saturday morning, we left bright and early at 5 and the conditions were quite good, and if the chop developed it was after we left Chatham and turned into Bay of Pillars. There were a few fish boats anchored in coves near the entrance to this large bay, but we motored past and found a lovely spot completely secluded with very fine vistas. We had lunch, dropped the dinghy and near high water slack set off to explore.
There is an inner basin that is accessed by a narrow channel with rocks and fast current and swirlies that would require transiting this area at slack water with a careful lookout and proceeding slowly in a big boat, but in the dinghy we entered the basin. The current was still flooding and we would not have wanted to be there in Alpenglow. The inner basin is huge, the reason why the current through the narrow channel. We decided it was not lovely enough to risk the entrance, and when we got in there we found it to be more windy than where we were anchored! We saw a black bear grazing on the beach grasses in the evening back on Alpenglow.
We had a leisurely start Sunday morning, waiting for favorable flood current for Chatham. The conditions are calm, a good day to get out of Southern Chatham Straight. On the way out of the Bay, we saw a Selene (a brand of yacht) anchored in another cove and headed north to Ell Cove, a very well protected and lovely anchorage. Second time we have been there and it is a favorite.
No comments:
Post a Comment