On to Juneau

Douglas Harbor and Hoonah Sound proved to be another mixed bag. The prawn pots produced at a steady, but not extravagant pace, while the crab pots were total busts. Over our two visits to the anchorage we did 8 crab pot drops in widely varying locations and depths and not one crab showed up, legal or not.

Fortunately, as we were heading up Hoonah Sound, we had a radio conversation with someone leaving who suggested Cosmos Bay, a few miles south of Kelp Bay on Baranof Island. The anchorage in Cosmos is a little funky in that, if you use the inner site, you cross a shallow bar find the "deep" 4-fathom hole and drop the hook. Everywhere around you it is 2 fathoms or less. While it the inlet is only open to the ESE, we had a persistent 15-20 knot WNW wind from the head of the inlet the entire time we were there. The crabbing was good and we pulled our limit of 6 crabs the next morning (6/12) though.

We decided it was time to head towards Juneau and do our major provisioning before our guests would arrive for our Glacier Bay visit. From Cosmos we headed first to Pavlof Harbor on Chichagof then to Swanson Harbor where we did some more crabbing. While in Swanson we discovered the vessel "Peachy Keen" (a classic wood Ocean Alexander Mk I) owned by Billie & Mike Henry whom we know from Puget Sound. They were with a buddy boat, "Outbound". We joined them for dinner one night onboard their boat and scored a nice hunk of halibut from the 57 pounder they had landed.

After a couple of days there and a few more crabs in our freezer, we headed towards Juneau on Sunday, June 15. Normally, we have to look hard to find dock space in Juneau (transient space is unassigned in Auke Bay and it is first-come, first-serve) but when we arrived, it was as vacant as we had ever seen it and had no problem finding a spot. A busy few days are in store while here.