Monday, July 8, we planned to spend the day at Shelter Cove and suddenly in the morning saw a bear on the beach! Actually a black bear mom and three tiny cubs! She really worked the beach during low tide. It was very nice to watch them. We also share the cove with several sea otters, who are in really shallow waters and seem not the least bit bothered by us. We put the dinghy in the water and went off fishing at the high slack, but didn't catch anything. But it was a good trip because we used the downrigger and successfully deployed it and I got some nibbles and we didn't lose gear or have to deal with any tangles etc. Good to get the practice. The conditions were not very pleasant, it was raining and the wind came up. Anticipating a genset run for the afternoon I had made bread dough, punched it down before we left for fishing and upon return we fired up the genset and I baked the bread in the toaster oven. Yum. I had thawed prawns and made garlic prawns with spaghetti for dinner.
Tuesday morning we pulled anchor and slowly motored to Petrof Cove, also in Tebenkof. The conditions for going around Cape Decision were not forecast to be acceptable to us until Friday to leave Tebenkof.
We are seeing lots of jellyfish in Tebenkof Bay anchorages, which makes fishing and dealing with the ensuing mess on the line unpleasant, plus jellies affect the fishing. No bear on the beach in Petrof, but 3 rafts of 30-50 otters in the cove Wednesday morning. Just curiously looking at us and seemingly unbothered. We headed for a cove in Explorer Basin, (close to Southern Chatham Straight) to spend two nights. We saw a black bear in the west part of the cove, who seemed to know we were there, and was somewhat shy.
There were lots of nice kayak areas and we explored first by dinghy across the basin, where we got out into Tebenkof Bay proper and were treated to great humpback whale activity. 
There were probably 6-10 whales that we could see in the Bay, working separately. One was doing lots of double-flipper slapping. The humpback has flippers that are 1/3 their length, so these are 15' flippers they are slapping around. I don't know why they do this but once they start they continue with the behavior for some time. We also saw several of them breaching. Our main concern was that we didn't want them anywhere near us in the dinghy. Later in the afternoon we brought in the dinghy and launched the kayaks, but by then the wind had come up so we stayed in protected waters. It was a fun area to paddle in, despite the wind.
Later, after putting the kayaks away, we lowered the poles for our stabilizers for travel the next day. The wind had shifted to SW and blew us to the end of our chain putting us quite close to the east shore. We were OK but it was a little nerve wracking. With a good anchor alarm and being well within our anchor circle we had set, we were able to sleep OK. We heard on the weather radio that Cape Decision was blowing 30 with gusts to 38, a little disconcerting as it wasn't forecast to be that high. Friday morning, we left at 5 a.m. so we could round Cape Decision at slack tide. This was before the updated weather would be available. We were in unpleasant head seas. Kurt got the weather via sat phone a little after 6. As it turns out the forecast had changed and our anticipated weather window was no longer forecast. The 3 foot seas were now forecast to be 4 foot seas, and there was special mention of Cape Decision in the forecast discussion. Conditions worse than we expected or wanted. So we decided to bail out in the cove on south east part of Port Malmesbury. But not before both cats suddenly threw up in a bout of "synchronous urping". Everybody on Alpenglow hates the crashing and hobby-horsing of head seas!
We saw a black bear while heading into the anchorage and by carefully looking Kurt was able to spot another black bear, or perhaps even the same one working the low tide beach in our anchorage. This bear was visible for some time as it worked the exposed buffet of clams, seaweed and other goodies.
On Saturday, July 13, we headed out and the conditions were worst at the entrance to Port Malmsbury because the current was ebbing strongly and this was against the west wind. Once out and into Chatham Straight proper, we turned beam to the chop it was more comfortable. The stabilizing "fish" really did their job. Cape Decision itself was quite pleasant, with swells but OK. All in all, we named this day "Whale Dodge" because on 4 different occasions whales surfaced in front of us and very close, or next to us and with an apparent path to collide with us. So we took evasive action, turning away from their path. They were all intent on feeding and I don't think paying attention to the vessel traffic. Of course we always give the right of way to whales, especially fishing whales! We passed into Sea Otter Sound of Prince of Wales Island and headed to anchor at Sarkar Cove in El Capitan Passage.
One of the reasons we chose Sarkar Cove was the fishing lodge there that is friendly to cruising boats. The next day we dinghied over to their docks and inquired if that had any guided fishing available (no, fully booked, no cancellations) or if we could procure dinner at the lodge (no, the entire lodge occupied by one large party, so it is theirs, and finally inquired if we could purchase 5 gallons of gas for our dinghies outboard. No problem for the gas. So at least we filled up which allowed more flexibility since we were getting low. We had a leisurely day and it was foggy in the morning but this burned off, and a beautiful day was at hand. I baked bread during genset run and plotted my next fishing attempts.
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