Week 14 - Salmon!

On Monday July 15 we departed Sarkar Cove and stopped at a potential halibut spot and I tried jigging. Current and wind kept moving the boat too much so I pulled in gear and we headed off to Bay of Esquibel where I switched to mooching gear for salmon and we tried a spot along the east coasts of the Maurelle Islands. I definitely got some nibbles and then ... another rockfish, which I threw back. So we headed to a delightful anchorage, Nagasay Cove, with a scary narrow, shallow, kelp-obscured entrance. The location experiences afternoon sea breezes but these calmed down in the evening. We were rewarded to a lovely sunset (partly thanks to fires in the Yukon sending sun-reddening smoke into the upper atmosphere).

On Tuesday, July 15, 2013 it was beautiful morning and we launched the dinghy and geared up for trolling with the downrigger and went off to try again. Initially we put the gear down to 50 feet. After some time, I said—let's go to 70 feet. And 10 minutes later the rod tipped in a very telling way. I said, yes we do have a fish. And I hoped it wasn't a rockfish mimicking a salmon. Kurt pulled the downrigger in while I fought and reeled in the fish. At last, after 3 cruises to Alaska I caught my own salmon, a silver (Coho). I confess I was very excited. We secured it to the boat and cut the gills to bleed it and I got the gear in the water again and we continued to fish. But the wind was coming up and really I just wanted to go back to the boat and tend to the fish. Once back I measured, photographed and then successfully gutted the fish. (I think my laboratory years payed off) Put blue ice blocks on it and brought it in and filleted it. A total of 3.4 lb plus I saved and froze the trimmings for prawn bait.

On Wednesday we timed our scary exit from Nagasay Cove to be at high slack. It was fine, and the key is distance from two islands in the middle of the entrance channel. You need to be 30 yards from the two islands, and 55 yards from the south shore, and this worked well for us. We crossed the sound and went into Craig. Initially we were told to find a place in the north harbor, but there was no space there so the harbormaster said go to the south harbor, and he moved a boat to accommodate us. Very kind. We like Craig. The only problem is there is no internet wifi at the south cove so we went to the library to access internet. We spent two nights in Craig and did laundry, reprovisioned, internet and had dinner at a fishing lodge that specializes in gourmet food. The seafood was fresh, Alaskan and really well prepared. Yum.

On Friday we left at low tide early (4:15 a.m.) because we were timing slack at Tlevak Narrows a few hours later. We transited the Narrows at exactly the time we wanted to, we had modulated our speed to be there at the high slack. We then did a lovely run down Cordova Bay, planning to spend the night along the way. But based on the forecast, Kurt proposed pushing in our good conditions to a further anchorage, Nichols Bay, immediately west of Cape Chacon. It was a grind to get there, as we had not put the stabilizers in the water but we got there OK. We then proceeded to have the worst experience anchoring that we have ever had. The first location we didn't like the way it suddenly shallowed up (shoaling up). There was someone already in "the spot" in the second location in Nichols Bay. We tried nearby in a deeper location but the anchor was dragging and we had a lot of chain out and were too close to that other boat. So we pulled and went to the head of the bay, which had two rocks we needed to steer clear of. The wind was blowing us around. Well we dropped the anchor and got a really good hook but we were being blown back while dropping and I went and checked the depths at the stern with the handheld depthsounder and was alarmed to see shells and the bottom and 12 feet. Too shallow when the tide went out, soooo….we pulled and tried another spot that was quite deep, would be windy, but we got a good stick and so we called it an anchorage. It was fine, though we would not want to have to wait out bad weather in this spot. So all in all, Nichols Bay did not endear itself to us.

On Saturday morning we pulled anchor at 5:00 a.m. put the stabilizer fish in and headed out of Nichols Bay. Our timing was aimed at rounding Cape Chacon at low slack, which we more or less did and then cross Clarence Straight and flood through Sealed Passage/Felice Strait between Annette and Duke Islands. All went really well and it was very calm and pleasant conditions. We crossed Revillagegido Channel and entered Behm Canal and Misty Fiords National Monument and made our way to Shoalwater Passage to anchor. A section of Shoalwater Passage is charted at 1 ½ fathoms (=9 feet), and with a 4 foot tide we thought we would be in 13 foot depths and have 6-7 feet under our keel. Well, transiting this shallow spot, which is quite long actually, we noticed a least depth of 9 feet, and lots of this section were less than 11 feet. Fortunately we did not ground, made it to deeper waters and in 12 kt of wind, dropped anchor, it was a nice stick but this was not an anchorage protected from the prevailing SW winds.

On Sunday we had a leisurely morning and reflected on having put 25 hours of engine run in the previous two days. We were also waiting for the tide level to reach 6 foot and so we pulled anchor and left around 9:30. It was still windy, and we headed east in Behm Canal. We passed by Punchbowl Cove which can be spectacular, but because it was low clouds and we realized we would see nothing. So we continued on to Fitzgibbon Cove. The satellite weather report suggested: "Areas of drizzle and fog with showers". Just as the Eskimos may have 27 words for snow, so too the NOAA weather forecasters in Alaska have developed a variety of terms to describe rain. Here might be a typical long range forecast: "Monday, rain. Tuesday, rain. Wednesday, rain—heavy at times. Thursday, rain. Friday, rain likely. Making up for the grey skies were a pod of a half-dozen orca heading down Behm Canal.  We put the boat in neutral and watched them go past.

We arrived at Fitzgibbon Cove around 2 p.m.; there were two other vessels, a sailboat and Ranger Tug (really cute trailerable cruising boats) and later a larger vessel came in too. We still have a good bit of wind (10-18 kts) in our anchorage; this was not the 10 kt that was forecast!  We put our crab pots out in the hopes of repeating our 2011 Crabapolosa remarkable harvest.