Alaskan Sea-Duction: July 2017

After extremely enjoying the 4^th in Wrangell it occurred to us that we have 3 weeks to kill before have to be back in Ketchikan to pick up family friends and my daughter Sam. So what are we to do?

Well there were places on Chatham Strait we wanted to spend some extra time and visit a few places we have not seen yet! Red Bluff Bay was one of these places. As mentioned before we were struck by the beauty of this place. We spent 4 days here, killing fish and shrimp. We saw lots of bears. We spent a lot of time exploring this jewel of a bay. One lesson we did learn was not to run your generator when the tides were going from high to low. All the weeds and moss from shore is in the water and will plug the water intake, thus over heating your generator.

The next stop was just a short run up Chatham Strait called Warm Springs. This place has a huge water fall at the head of the bay, with a great dock and a trail up to the big lake that is responsible for. Oh, and they also have sulfur hot springs and the few residents here have built a bath house. The dock is always crowded with cruisers like us, but the fishing fleet tends to dock here to from time to time. This does tend to upset the cruisers who are trying to get to the dock.

Once you have made it to the dock, there is fresh water to fill your tanks. This crystal clear, cold water is taken from the lake above. Best water anywhere! We stayed here for a few days exploring the trails, hot springs and bath house. In fact, someone somewhere has a video of me and the bath house. There are 3 baths in the bath house. You fill your huge tub and you can overlook the bay and waterfall as one side of the bath room is open to the view. Well………I am relaxing in the hot water butt naked. Didn’t seem to matter to me. The door was locked. When it was time to get out I stand up and start drying myself off. I heard some racket and looked up and there was this mini cruise ship right in front of my window and I was being videoed! What could I do? I smiled and waved back to the tourist.

If that wasn’t enough our friends aboard the Pairadice got a call from the U.S. Coast Guard. They had been trying to get a hold of him for hours, until someone on the dock told him about it. He called them back. It would seem that one of their friends had been following us on AIS. This is a device that can receive and transmits signals from other ships so you can see them and they can see you to avoid collisions. Well while in Red Bluff Bay, John turned his devise off. We were not moving for a few days so why run it. Well John and Tracey’s friend became concerned because she had not seen or heard from them in several days. Cell service is non-existent or very weak at best. John told the Coast Guard that he was just fine and asked if they could relay that back to their friend.

The next stop was the native village of Angoon. The main reason for going here is that they had Verizon cell service here. The anchoring area is called Favorite bay, but to get there you have time the tide because the current can reach 9 knots. We were over an hour early! So we circled in the strait until almost high tide and then made our way in. You really need to pay attention to your charts here for rocks just below the surface. The dock wasn’t big enough to accommodate us, so that is the reason we went into Favorite bay. We had OK cell service here. The bay is large and plenty of room to swing. We went into town which wasn’t much. The only store was closed for stocking and there are no places to get a bite to eat, so we didn’t stay long. The next day we all decided we had had enough of “no-fun” in Angoon and would start heading south to Ketchikan.