Another town and another whirlwind! We arrived around 5pm and headed for pizza, afterwards Fynn and Opa reeled in some herring.

The first day was devoured by the forestay replacement. Dad was a huge help in the morning, working right up till he left to catch their flight. Then came Tor and Jess and soon  enough the whole job was done- amazing! Jess and I went crazy inside all day with the four kids.  The  weather was  dreary and we felt stuck, waiting to be called ‘on deck’ to lend a  hand. It was draining. Of course the men were tired too, with the physical labour and such, but they at least have a huge accomplishment to show for it. Us mom have little more then mess and dishes and kids wanting more from us. The kid were literally bouncing off the walls in the boat so we planned a swim day for tomorrow. The highlight was the pizza dinner. Called the Kitchen sink, it came with about 2 inches of toppings and a plastic kitchen sink on top. The kids loved that.

“Do you ever feel like you cram too much into one day?” Jess asks me as she finds me at the laundry mat.  I am wrestling with the clothes in the dryer, always tricky with a baby on the front. Jess immediately lends a hand and pulls out my clothes. Grateful,  I step back and bounce Bowen, cranky from hanging sideways before Jess came to  my aid. “Yes, yes I do.” It was 11am and already I done 6 loads of laundry, walked to town to find more laundry quarters, gone shopping, and Kolby had cleaned up from the forestay job and washed the boat. “Meet you in  20 minutes to go to the pool?” “Yep” We were at the pool for just over an hour, then it was time to go. We had to fuel up and hit Wrangall Narrows at slack water by 2 pm. Going through the narrows the beauty was lost on us. We were all exhausted. Fynn fell asleep in Kolby’s lap  and we were snarling at each other. By the time we rafted with Yare we had settled and took in a lovely evening, with only one mishap. Just as we had set the outside table, Fynn leaned her weight on the folding leaf and it collapsed, sending plates and child smashing to the cockpit floor. Although bleeding from several small cuts, it didn’t take much to clean her up and we enjoyed our Baha style fish tacos on the more secure indoor table after that.

Interesting name right? Apparently it was named after a guy entered at slack water then was stuck in the inlet until next slack water, which I guess he found pretty terrifying. Not sure what is so scary here though. Rather it is exceptionally beautiful – as Jess said it is like driving your boat into Yosemite. The entrance is very narrow and can only be navigated at slack water or it becomes a torrent of whorls and overfalls.

The inlet is all sheer granite cliffs and tumbling waterfalls. We remarked how there is no mark of mankind here. No garbage, no old settlements, no history of logging. The only thing to mark the passage of time here would be the retreat of the glaciers, scouring the cliffs as they left. The remoteness felt endless. Despite the constricted entrance the inlet had a plethora of sea life, we saw seals and porpoise in the water, herons and eagles ashore and evidence of bear, but no furry friend sightings here.  The water was a interesting shade of emerald. We tried to go for a walk but only made it half a mile before the slippery rocks and bugs pushed us back to the dinghy.

The bugs swarmed up by the hundred in the cockpit, so we mostly had to stay tucked inside. I don’t think they were biting, but they were extremely annoying, flying in my face and mouth and eyes. We left at slack water at 1 pm today and ran a good 50 miles to our next anchorage. We have been doing a crazy amount of motoring in SE Alaska. I remember back when a 20 mile day seemed far. Now that is ‘only 20 miles’!! We have done almost 1000 nm so far in SE Alaska. That is the distance from Ketchikan to Vancouver!

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.

Boat love

Dance Party

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.

Odin watches as we approach

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.

We weren’t sure if we would make it to Elfin Cove, a little bay on the outside of Chichagof Island but the weather was so miserable that we figured we might as well motor over as there was little else to do. I am glad that we did, although the highlight was motoring through a narrow pass with the current running and twenty plus sea lions feeding all over.

We rafted three deep on the dock which was full of fishing boats who were resting as the fishing had been so excellent a break was well deserved.  The tiny town of 40 survives on running the various fishing lodges that operate 4 months of the year. It was a cute town and we appreciated stocking up on goodies at the local store. As we headed back towards Gustavas we were treated to a humpback breaching over and over, and only a few hundred yards from Asunto. The moment was only slightly diminished by the downpour.

We had five nights in Glacier Bay and 4 of them were in perfect sunshine. Without the last day of low cloud and fog we may not have appreciated the sunshine for the glory that it was! We were welcomed into our first anchorage by a pod of humpbacks lunge feeding at the surface.  We sounded giddy as we pointed out the whales- about 10-15 of them, all around. Kolby put the boat in neutral then turned the engine off as the ways came closer. One surfaces right abeam of us, look one look at Asunto and dove down – too close for comfort for that big whale. We, of course, were ecstatic. He actually was so close Kolby and I look at each other and said ‘please don’t hit out boat’. The owners of our last boat, Georgia Dawn had a whale hit their rudder (somewhat intentionally as they too were engine off and drifting) and caused a lot off damage just south of here.  Humpback whales, up close, are just massive. They are so big it is hard in fact to grasp the scope of their size. A full grown adult humpback is 40-50 long and weighs over 35 tons. Basically they are the same size as Asunto. And we live in Asunto!

The next three days were glorious and sunny – tank top weather! We motored up and down the inlets, visiting the Glaciers. We explored the ice flow from the McBride Glacier, which is rapidly retracting, went ashore at the Riggs Glacier where Fynn and I played crack rock. Basically you through a small rock at a bigger rock and see if the small one shatters. Many do, already cracked from the weight of the glacier that has retreated. Most of the Glaciers are retreating or thinning, causing the ground beneath the to rebound and raise at a rate equal to the increase in water level. We loved the Marjorie Glacier which towers 250 feet above sea level and runs a mile wide. The top was covered in spires and towers that majestically reached for the sky. We motored back and forth, dodging ice and waiting for her to calve a big one. We loved the  Marjorie Glacier!

Each Glacier is very unique!

When we had our fill we headed for our anchorage at Reid Glacier, watching the ice float by and calling out shapes. “there’s a whale!” “That one’s a dog” “Anyone else see the kayak?”.

By the time we dropped anchor a high cloud cover had rolled in and there was a icy wind ripping down off the glacier. The next morning we had to bundle up as we headed for John Hopkins Glacier. The as we rounded the point the landscape because barren. Dark grey granite mountains raced towards the sea, icy blue glaciers nestled in their valley. The grey sky matched the sea, which was filling with bergy bits (floating ice) and growlers (little ice bergs). Kolby stood on the bow, directing the path through the ice, occasionally pushing a few away when there was no path to be found. As we approached the glacier the ice built into a solid flow on the starboard side, and became littered with seals and their pups. It felt as though we had been transported to the Arctic. The John Hopkin’s Glacier is the only glacier in the park that is advancing/thickening at a rapid rate of 15 feet per day. We watched two huge spires fall off and crash into the sea before we headed back out the inlet and said goodbye to the glaciers.

Approaching John Hopkins Glacier

The next few days the cloud was low and heavy in the sky. Kolby and his Dad caught more halibut and we went shore and found wild strawberries. We also found evidence of bears, but no luck in seeing them yet.

 Well we did see them the first anchorage in Glacier Bay but night was falling and it was difficult to make them out on the shore. Before we said goodbye to Glacier Bay National park we stopped by the Steller Sea Lion rookery and marvelled at the huge bulls atop the rocks, weighing in at 2 tons. Several of the mamas had their babies with them, no way we were considering swimming with these mammoths! We also stopped by the ranger station where Fynn received her third Junior Ranger Badge. She was a bit shy but was pretty happy about it!. Goodbye Glacier Bay, it has been amazing!

Hoonah is a little secluded town, with a large population of Tglint (say CLING-it) locals. The houses are mostly derelict, but enough are painted in bright cheerful colours that makes the town look happy on the surface. Not that we got too deep into the local vibe here. The natives are reserved, not necessarily unfriendly, but indifferent to us.  We met one family from Oregon that comes here for the summer to fish and we ended up having dinner in their cabin, salmon of course! The fishermen were hauling in all sorts of salmon, mostly pinks and silvers and heaps of halibut. We asked a bunch of questions to everyone who was filleting halibut until we felt like we had a pretty good idea of how to go about catching these monsters. Our helpful Oregon family gave us their salmon carcasses for bait. It ended up slicing off the meat left behind and using it to make salmon burgers. It felt weird but we hadn’t caught any salmon and were craving some fish so… The burgers were delicious. Most of our time in Hoonah was eaten up with groceries (we had to stock up for two weeks with Kolby’s parents), laundry, internet and securing our permit for Glacier Bay. This turned out to be a bit of a gong show and Kolby had to twice go up at midnight to the local bar to get on line and apply for the permit. Guess he got a bit of local flavour up there! Hoonah is basically a cruise ship town, where people either a) don’t work b) work only on days when the cruise ship is in town or c) work regular hours. I would say the majority fall into categories a and b. We were pretty knackered when we rolled off the dock and headed to Flynn cove, 10 nm away.

They are spectacular