I was really excited about this part of the trip. My daughter Samantha was joining us for a
5-day excursion through Misty Fjords National Monument. Tracy also had a friend fling in so double the
fun! Tracey had done a very fine job of
mapping the trip to make sure we could see most of the park. One thing we didn’t count one was the
weather. Our scheduled departure was the
next day, but 35 knot winds were forecast for the crossing of Revillagigedo
Chanel to east Behm Canal. A command
decision was made to leave that evening while we still had daylight and the
seas were calm. Yep we started to notice
the loss of daylight.
Our fist anchorage was a little bay between the
mainland and a little island, called Shoalwater Passage. This gave us great protection from the wind
and wave blowing up from Dixon Entrance.
There was also a forest service cabin which a young family had rented
over the weekend. Typical Alaskan kids
running about, swimming, noisy and having the time of their lives. The next morning, I saw a black bear in their
camp going through all their stuff. A
reminder that Alaska is a wild place, but bear safety is part of the lessons
learned by Alaskan children.
The fun part for me was having my daughter Sam with
us. At first, she was scared as she had
no idea what our boat (yacht) was like.
She had only experiences smaller fishing boats and she almost went
overboard and she doesn’t know how to swim.
This was also a chance for her and I to get to know each other
again. She is 21 and looks at the world
through different lenses than I do and she got to understand how I looked at
things. Sometimes they meshed, sometimes
they didn’t. We got to explore those differences.
She took a liking to our dinghy. She wanted to go explore and look at the scenery. The first time we were in it I scared the
heck out of her, because the bow of the dink comes up as it gets on step. By the end of the trip, she was actually
driving the dink by herself and having a blast.
Our first tour took us up Smeaton Bay. This was a big letdown. There was nothing here, except tree covered
mountains which we have seen every else in Alaska. What was nice was the sunshine once we got out
of the wind. Sam adopted the bow of the
boat. She would take a chair and sit in
the sun while listening to her music.
There was this rock which had lots of seals on it also taking advantage
of the sun. Sam called the “sea puppies!”
We planned to use Shoalwater Passage as a home base
while exploring the southern east side of Misty Fjord. The next day it was foggy and raining. When we left the protection of the anchorage
we ran into wind waves and thick fog.
Sam was a little worried, so she got a lesson on navigating using
charts, AIS and radar. Eddystone Rock
looked mysterious in the fog. At low tide,
there is quit an area around the rock where you could dink over and explore on
foot.
Our destination today is the crown jewel of Misty
Fjords, Punch Bowl and Rudyerd Bay. When
we first entered you could barely see ½ mile ahead of you, then the fog started
to lift! Oh my! The wondrous view that
laid out before us. Granite walls that
shot up to 3000+ feet on both sides with hundreds and hundreds of waterfalls. We wondered back to back bay in the Rudyerd
Bay arm. At one point, there was a very
narrow passage between the outer bay and the inner bay which was just wide
enough for one boat to pass through.
This back bay was so quiet and smooth, no wind and the sound of water
falls everywhere. At the head of the bay
was a river and green grass fields. But
the water shallowed very quickly, so you had to pay attention. We made our way back to the outside bay. While transient the narrow part I saw huge
schools of salmon making their way to their home streams and rivers. Sam got really excited as she wanted to go
fishing. Unfortunately, salmon fishing
was closed in the area.
After getting out of the narrows, we made the turn
into Punch Bowl Cove! The clouds and fog
lifted to where this cove walls shot way high!
Pure granite walls reaching 4000feet into the sky! Normally this place is very busy with tour
boats and planes from the Ketchikan cruise ships! But when we were there you could almost hear
a pin drop! Just the waterfalls and an occasional
eagle is all you heard. This place left
an almost spiritual experience for me.
We made our way back to Shoalwater Passage for one more
night before heading into the northern end of the monument. We side tied to John and Tracey on the Pairadice
to have a party. Sam and I did some more
exploring on the dink. Tracey’s friend
Julie wanted to go ashore and look at the Forest Service cabin.
Just as we pulled up on shore a kayaker also landed. We were friendly and told the gentleman that
we would only be a minute as we wanted to look at the cabin. His attitude surprised us. He acted like we were trying to steal the
cabin. He did not have a friendly
attitude and later I found out why. He
hated power boats. As we were leaving he
asked if we were going to be running our generators. I asked why.
He stated the generators would ruin his wilderness experience. I stated “That’s funny, our generators are
running right now as we speak and I can’t hear them.” He then asked if we would shut them off. At this point I was pissed off. I stated NO! we would not be shutting them
down. He then demanded we shut them down
which pissed me off even more. So during
the night I turned my music on, at the appropriate sound level to piss him off
and I would sound my hand held air horn from time to time. The next morning, we left early with blue
skies and just to make sure our purist kayaker knew we were leaving, I swung
ASD by the cabin, laid on the boat horns and a couple of loud blasts from the
hand air horn! I just couldn’t help
myself……
Our next anchorage was Fitzgibbon Bay at the northern
end of the monument. First, we took a
tour of Walker Bay. This was beautiful,
but not like Punch Bowl. It was green
and majestic and a lot quieter than punch bowl as there were no boat tours or
float plane landing and taking off. We
side tied to John again and Sam and I took the dink to the next bay and put
down a shrimp trap. She did most of the
driving and we practiced taking off and getting on step. At the end, it didn’t scare her anymore. That night the stars came out and looked like
a carpet of light across the sky. If you
looked north east you could see the light blue sky from the sun traveling
across to rise again at 4 AM. The shrimp
pot had 5 shrimp!!! Dang.
The next stop was Spacious Bay on the West side of Misty
Fjords. On the way, this area empties
several glacial rivers from Canada. The
water turns a greenish, greyish tone.
After a few hours, this color disappears. When we got to Spacious Bay we decided that
it was too exposed to the NW winds. So,
we hopped over to a little bay called Klu Bay.
We dropped a shrimp trap outside the bay. This area has a huge lake up in the mountains
and this is home to Ketchikan hydro power.
There are two big water falls that empty into this bay.
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