Tracy Arm

The main todo with Gloria and Micheal was Tracy Arm, and it didn’t disappoint. We anchored at Tracy Arm Cove and rafted up with Yare. After cruising together in Mexico and Hawaii it was great to have our first raft up. The kids were so happy to see it other it was a dance party late into the night. The bay was so peaceful that we never once heard the boats bump in the night.

The next morning it was hard to separate the kids so we took Lars and Odin aboard Asunto. It was a full and noisy ride! Tracy Arm splits to North and South Sawyer Glacier. We had heard a report from an aluminum charter cat that the South Sawyer Glacier access was a full of ice. He had pushed through the ice for 25 minutes to see it. It was also calving huge icebergs. We saw a few that were easily 200 feet long and 100 feet wide- on the surface.  They must have been beasts underwater. Kolby was pretty busy at the helm playing huge the icebergs, and Yare marked a few as their own, leaving bottom paint behind.

 Much like the vista at John Hopkins Glacier, Tracy Arm is sweeping granite cliffs, scalloped by the receding glaciers, waterfalls tumbling 1000s of feet and icy blue water. We found one iceberg that had rolled revealing it’s glassy undersides. We crept right up to it until the anchor nudged the ice, awed by it’s beauty. It is hard to find the words to describe the undersides of icebergs. They are endlessly complex and impossible to turn away from. The smoothness, like glass, the perfect hue of blue, the resounding hardness of the surface. Just amazing.  Further down the arm we found a waterfall tumbling into the sea and nudge the bow in, giving Asunto her Alaskan christening.

We dropped Otto at the glacier and zoomed around, visiting more icebergs, and scooping up ice from the sea to make ice cream (that idea didn’t work!).  A huge hunk of ice fell while we were there, it landed on the face of the glacier, shattered into a million pieces and fell into the sea with a noise that echoed like thunder. A full up of glaciers we started the 25 nm back to our cove where Asunto and Yare rafted again and shared a crab feast followed by pho lasagna. That was a day well lived.