BBQ'd Salmon-it was fabulous!
Fresh salmon!
Cleaning the salmon
Chuck and John with Chuck's King Salmon
Chuck and John's catch in the cooler.
Margaret with a "local" displaying his King Salmon catch
Aug 2, 2010
We returned to Juneau and our boat after a very nice visit at home. We were glad we went home. We arrived to cold and rain in Juneau after nice warm weather in San Diego. It was a bit of a shock to be back in the cooler weather, but was actually not too bad. We departed to Juneau heading south for about a 7 hour time on the water. After about two hours our auto pilot failed, with multiple error messages on the LCD screen. We had to hand steer for about two hours. Now I know that doesn't sound difficult, but if you ask a boater what pieces of equipment are the most critical, what you would hear is that the engines/transmissions/propellers are number 1 and the auto pilot is #2. When you are on the water, you steer a specific compass course or courses to arrive at your destination. The auto pilot keeps you on this line, even if you have wind or current pushing you off to one side or the other. So, trying to hand steer a boat on a compass course is difficult and requires constant attention. Doing this for any length of time can become very tiring quickly. Fortunately after a couple hours I turned the auto pilot back on and it worked fine. Go figure. That evening at a very remote dock, (we were the only boat there) I tried to make it fail and figure out why it had failed. Nothing seemed to make it stop working again. When we reached cell phone service I called the manufacturer and they felt convinced the circuit board in the computer was bad. Well, to make a long story come to an end, we traveled for three more days without a failure. I did order in a new circuit board (expensive) for when or if it fails again.
As we moved south we encountered grey whales again. What a thrill to observe them. The closest we get is about 100 yards. HOWEVER, we had one HUGE whale pop out of the water about 50 feet from the side of our boat. It wasn't scary as they move very gracefully and we were just awe struck. It was spectacular. The wildlife in Alaska is why we like it here so much and we saw lots of it this year.
We arrived in Ketchikan on July 19th where we stayed for 12 days. If you recall this was our first city after we crossed into Alaska from Canada. We have joined the Ketchikan Yacht Club. We really like it here. The population is about 12,000 plus the 6,000-12,000 daily cruise ship passengers who arrive and depart daily. I have a very good friend, John Noble who lives in Ketchikan and besides being a very nice guy, he is also the consumate fisherman. John takes me fishing, and is patient with me as he tries to teach me the nuances of how to catch fish. I am learning fast. One day with him I caught my first King Salmon. What a thrill. It was about 12-14 pounds and fought a lot. As far as this kind of salmon this is on the smaller side. A more common size is in the 20 pound range and they can get all the way up into the 50 lb. range. But to me, my first salmon, this was huge. That night John BBQ'd the salmon and brought it over to our boat where we enjoyed eating fresh fish together. It was fabulous. We did the usual tourist stuff in Ketchikan, enjoyed walking around, eating meals out sometimes, and just having fun. We hated to leave there on the 31st heading south back into Canada. We arrived in British Columbia at the city of Prince Rupert on August 1st. Prince Rupert is a city on very hard times, lots of boarded up buildings, very depressing actually to see this. The bad economy has hit extra hard here. We feel sorry for the people. I'll post pictures next so you can enjoy some of the sites we have seen. We will have no cell phone or internet access for the next two weeks, so won't update until then.
Chuck and Margaret
As we moved south we encountered grey whales again. What a thrill to observe them. The closest we get is about 100 yards. HOWEVER, we had one HUGE whale pop out of the water about 50 feet from the side of our boat. It wasn't scary as they move very gracefully and we were just awe struck. It was spectacular. The wildlife in Alaska is why we like it here so much and we saw lots of it this year.
We arrived in Ketchikan on July 19th where we stayed for 12 days. If you recall this was our first city after we crossed into Alaska from Canada. We have joined the Ketchikan Yacht Club. We really like it here. The population is about 12,000 plus the 6,000-12,000 daily cruise ship passengers who arrive and depart daily. I have a very good friend, John Noble who lives in Ketchikan and besides being a very nice guy, he is also the consumate fisherman. John takes me fishing, and is patient with me as he tries to teach me the nuances of how to catch fish. I am learning fast. One day with him I caught my first King Salmon. What a thrill. It was about 12-14 pounds and fought a lot. As far as this kind of salmon this is on the smaller side. A more common size is in the 20 pound range and they can get all the way up into the 50 lb. range. But to me, my first salmon, this was huge. That night John BBQ'd the salmon and brought it over to our boat where we enjoyed eating fresh fish together. It was fabulous. We did the usual tourist stuff in Ketchikan, enjoyed walking around, eating meals out sometimes, and just having fun. We hated to leave there on the 31st heading south back into Canada. We arrived in British Columbia at the city of Prince Rupert on August 1st. Prince Rupert is a city on very hard times, lots of boarded up buildings, very depressing actually to see this. The bad economy has hit extra hard here. We feel sorry for the people. I'll post pictures next so you can enjoy some of the sites we have seen. We will have no cell phone or internet access for the next two weeks, so won't update until then.
Chuck and Margaret
Jul 13, 2010
Juneau
This is the entire city of Juneau, as you can see just builtalong the water
Chuck and Annette
Chicken dinner on the boat. We bought this at the grocery precooked into charcoal! :)
Myers Chuck and Petersburg
Surrounded by fishing boats in Petersburg
Petersburg memorial to Scandanavians
Private "dock" by someone's house
Yes Bay Fishing Lodge
View from Yes Bay Lodge, just beautiful!
Dinner at Yes Bay Lodge
Yes Bay Lodge Entrance. This is a neat placeKetchikan and Misty Fiords
To the right, you would rarely see us dressed in Alaska this way!!!!!!!!
Dolphins on our bow wave!
Misty Fiords Scene
Margaret arriving at Ketchikan Airport and to left Ketchikan Yacht club that we joined, our FIRST yacht club! :)
It has been too long since I posted here. After my nephew Todd departed from Prince Rupert in British Columbia, Lee and I then moved to Ketchikan, Ak. This was a two day trip and involved crossing an open ocean passage called Dixon entrance. The waves were moderate but off our beam, so we activated our stabilizers to help take most of the roll out of the boat. Stabilizers are a wonderful contraption, they are actually fins that stick about 4 feet into the water and are about 3 feet wide. They are thin and face fore and aft. Driven by hydraulics which comes from a pump mounted on the engine, there is a gyro that senses the roll of the boat. The computer sends a command and the fins rotate appropriately to apply pressure against the sea as it passes by them. This in turn causes the boat to "lift" in the appropriate direction. They make for a safer and more comfortable journey.
After three days cleaning the boat my sister Annette and Margaret arrived by plane and we commenced our journey of two weeks with them to Juneau. Juneau is north of Ketchikan, but first we went south and into a long (100 mile+) body of water, shaped like a U that then exited to the north of Ketchikan. This area is properly called the "Behm Canal" or more commanly known as Misty Fiords National Monumnet. Misty of course because the area is a rain forest and there is perputual mist. There is NO civilization other than one fishing lodge in this entire trip. We usually wish for sunny weather, but expect Alaska to almost always be grey and overcast and rainy. This time we wished for bad weather and got sunny weather. When it is raining in this area there are literally hundreds of waterfalls, many of them falling thousands of feet. Instead we saw just a few waterfalls. The fishing lodge we visited, Yes Bay Lodge, did not have any guests yet, so we went there and had a wonderful dinner in this quite old but elegant place. The appetizer was 1/2 of a large crab for each of us (enough there for a whole meal), then we were treated to a wonderful fresh halibut, cooked just right. They don't have room at their dock for a boat our size, so we anchored near by and took our inflatable to dinner. We had a wonderful time. Upon leaving Misty Fiords we then went to a very small community called Myers Chuck. In the winter the population here is about 10 people and during the summer swells to about 50! There are absolutely no services here, but it is an interesting place to walk around. Can you believe though there is a U.S. Post office here! No wonder they lose money! But, the postmisstress sells "sticky buns". These are homemade cinammon rolls, yummy, but obviously not on the diet.
We left here and headed to our next destination, the city of Wrangell, population 1400. This is a pretty good sized community for this area. We walked around and saw the whole place in about 10 minutes! There is one family run little restaurant where we had dinner. Then on to Petersburg, population 1800. A Scandanavian town with the history of the first settlers from where else, but Scandanavia. It is a cute place, two restaurants, two grocery stores and two ace hardware stores. We spent a few days here because a storm system came through and did it ever rain, day after day, non stop! We were a bit sick of the rain. Nest we moved to Juneau over the course of two days and on June 20th Annette and Lee flew back home to Raleigh N.C.
On June 23rd my brother Grant arrived from his home in Minneapolis. We was with us a week and we took the opportunity to travel to Glacier Bay National Park. This is the park where there are multiple calving style glaciers dumping into the sea. It is a huge place only accessable by boat. The park is very tightly regulated so you must have a reservation to take your boat into it and you can only stay a limited time, no more than one week. It is almost impossible to cover all of it at 8 knots, so we took a 10 hour tour on a jet powered catamaran boat which was quite fun. We saw glaciers up close and personal. However the other attraction is the wildlife. Before we entered the park we were in an open ocean area called Icy Strait. Sounds cold, right? And here we were treated to a spectacular show put on by HUGE grey whales. This is a feeding ground for them and they were flying out of the water with these huge bodies. One whale we watch for at least 15 minutes, just stayed in one place with his tail sticking up out of the water and slapping the water over and over and over. It was spectacular.
My brother left on June 30th and we flew home to San Diego on July 1 for a 10 days visit with all our family. We had a lot of fun and have no returned to the boat, just Margaret and I, to continue our journey. We will keep you posted.
After three days cleaning the boat my sister Annette and Margaret arrived by plane and we commenced our journey of two weeks with them to Juneau. Juneau is north of Ketchikan, but first we went south and into a long (100 mile+) body of water, shaped like a U that then exited to the north of Ketchikan. This area is properly called the "Behm Canal" or more commanly known as Misty Fiords National Monumnet. Misty of course because the area is a rain forest and there is perputual mist. There is NO civilization other than one fishing lodge in this entire trip. We usually wish for sunny weather, but expect Alaska to almost always be grey and overcast and rainy. This time we wished for bad weather and got sunny weather. When it is raining in this area there are literally hundreds of waterfalls, many of them falling thousands of feet. Instead we saw just a few waterfalls. The fishing lodge we visited, Yes Bay Lodge, did not have any guests yet, so we went there and had a wonderful dinner in this quite old but elegant place. The appetizer was 1/2 of a large crab for each of us (enough there for a whole meal), then we were treated to a wonderful fresh halibut, cooked just right. They don't have room at their dock for a boat our size, so we anchored near by and took our inflatable to dinner. We had a wonderful time. Upon leaving Misty Fiords we then went to a very small community called Myers Chuck. In the winter the population here is about 10 people and during the summer swells to about 50! There are absolutely no services here, but it is an interesting place to walk around. Can you believe though there is a U.S. Post office here! No wonder they lose money! But, the postmisstress sells "sticky buns". These are homemade cinammon rolls, yummy, but obviously not on the diet.
We left here and headed to our next destination, the city of Wrangell, population 1400. This is a pretty good sized community for this area. We walked around and saw the whole place in about 10 minutes! There is one family run little restaurant where we had dinner. Then on to Petersburg, population 1800. A Scandanavian town with the history of the first settlers from where else, but Scandanavia. It is a cute place, two restaurants, two grocery stores and two ace hardware stores. We spent a few days here because a storm system came through and did it ever rain, day after day, non stop! We were a bit sick of the rain. Nest we moved to Juneau over the course of two days and on June 20th Annette and Lee flew back home to Raleigh N.C.
On June 23rd my brother Grant arrived from his home in Minneapolis. We was with us a week and we took the opportunity to travel to Glacier Bay National Park. This is the park where there are multiple calving style glaciers dumping into the sea. It is a huge place only accessable by boat. The park is very tightly regulated so you must have a reservation to take your boat into it and you can only stay a limited time, no more than one week. It is almost impossible to cover all of it at 8 knots, so we took a 10 hour tour on a jet powered catamaran boat which was quite fun. We saw glaciers up close and personal. However the other attraction is the wildlife. Before we entered the park we were in an open ocean area called Icy Strait. Sounds cold, right? And here we were treated to a spectacular show put on by HUGE grey whales. This is a feeding ground for them and they were flying out of the water with these huge bodies. One whale we watch for at least 15 minutes, just stayed in one place with his tail sticking up out of the water and slapping the water over and over and over. It was spectacular.
My brother left on June 30th and we flew home to San Diego on July 1 for a 10 days visit with all our family. We had a lot of fun and have no returned to the boat, just Margaret and I, to continue our journey. We will keep you posted.
Jun 5, 2010
Lee and Todd on Fishing Boat
Salmon Fishing with downriggers
Shearwater Marina and fishing resortWe were joined by my nephew, Todd, in Shearwater. He flew in on a small plane to a landing strip. The terminal was basically non existant. Shearwater is known to be a great place to fish for salmon. So, since I'm not the best fisherman, we hired a professional guide to take us fishing for King Salmon for 6 hours. Well, the net affect of this, was ZERO fish!.. And was it ever COLD! I had on two pairs of very heavy socks and boots, and just froze! Not pleasant at all and made especially unpleasant since we had no food. Shearwater features a small restaurant, boat yard, and grocery store. The grocery store is resupplied by barge once every two weeks. So, knowing we'd need milk and other fresh produce we ordered this two weeks in advance of our arrival so they could store it in the refrigerator. Milk cost over $8 per gallon! But if you're out of milk, you don't mind, just happy to receive it. We left Shearwater the next day transiting the inside passage heading to Prince Rupert where Todd would fly home to his home in North Carolina a week later. We stopped at interesting anchorages as well as another abandoned cannery. We fished most every day as well as caught dungeness crabs. It was a lot of fun and again we were blessed with great weather. The next blog will have the pictures of this trip.
CHUCK AT OCEAN FALLS
LOCAL CHARACTER AND BROTHER IN LAW
OCEAN FALLS
FOG MOVING IN AT OCEAN FALLSOcean Falls is a community of 50 people, in the summer time! :) At one time there was a very large paper mill here that many years ago closed down. Now the city is actually a ghost town, with buildings that are falling apart and a few people wandering around. About a mile down the road from the dock is where the people live, mostly people trying to make this into a summer destination for vacation homes. This is also located at the deadend of a very long fiord. There is an electrical generation facility here which is enough to power a small town, but instead supplies power to 50 people and then there are transmission lines going about 15 miles to an indian community of a few hundred. The Ocean Falls Power Plant! The weather here was drizzly but not too cold. The winds were calm, and then our second night here (yes we stayed two nights)a fierce wind of over 40 knots came out of nowwhere rocking our boat and ripping our flag. Not predicted and not expected. I always tie the boat very well, and was I ever glad I did. One hour later it was calm again. Very strange.
May 31, 2010
GRUMAN GOOSE AT DAWSONS LANDING
NAMU CANNERY PIER IN RUINS
ABANDONED NAMU CANNERY
OLD SHIP DERELICT AT NAMU BRITISH COLUMBIA
ECHO BAY, BROUGHTON ISLANDS
KWATSI BAY BROUGHT ISLANDS
KWATSI BAY BROUGHTON ISLANDSOur trip through the Broughton Islands and around Cape Caution, our open ocean crossing, was blessed with wonderful weather. The winds were relatively calm as were the seas. Cape Caution can be a very rough place if the wind and currents oppose each other, but not this time. After rounding the cape we proceeded to a dock called Dawsons landing where a husband and wife and their children carve out a living in the wilderness. This is a second generation family. Really rough living. For example, besides people like us paying moorage, he collects loose logs from the waters, and then sells them to people who need logs for whatever purpose. It is agains the law to just go and cut down trees which are of course everywhere. Then we moved on to Namu, an abandone salmon cannery where hundreds of people worked and lived at one time. The canneries were prolific up and down the coast and then disappeared with the advent of refrigeration being added to fishing boats. With that technology, the fisherman were able to take the catch back to the cities to sell, vs. stopping at the closest cannery. The coastline is riddled with cannery debris, most of which have been absorbed back into the environment.
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