Auke Bay to Sitka with Alex

Leaving Auke Bay

8/24/11

I am just in the process of getting out of my bunk on another rainy day in Sitka Harbor when I hear a combination of scraping, clattering of hardware, and yelling, with BB being mildly jostled, followed shortly by a frustrated “fuck! fuck! fuck!” Staggering to the cockpit, I see a dark blue-hulled Valient 42 sailboat wedged stern first between BB and a large steel trawler yacht called “Teddi Bear”.  At first I thought that he is trying to dock between us, but the guy at the helm, middle aged, dark haired, explains, with abject humility, that he couldn’t get the boat out of reverse and was forced to turn the engine off.  Unable to stop, the boat therefore wedged between two boats, mine being one of them.  It turns out that his shift cable picked that moment to break.

ah - another rainy day

I ended up with a deep gouge in my paddleboard plus some paint scratches and shallow grooves on my starboard side, to share with some other scratches and fender rubbing on that side, since I normally tie up on my starboard side and gets brutalized more than the other side; I was tied up on my port side this time. 

Well, I need to get my boat repainted when I get the boat back to Seattle anyway, since it’s definitely getting wear and tear on this trip to Alaska, along with my many mistakes that I’ve done in learning how to dock this thing (it's taken me awhile to get used to how wide this boat is).  It rains too much to have any work done here in Alaska.  I’ll touch it up so it doesn’t look so bad. 

Elfin Cove-outer harbor

One of the problems with a blue hull is that it shows scratches a lot more than a white hull.  Maybe I should strip the blue off and paint the boat white. It would also serve me better in more tropical climes as it wouldn’t be so hot below. But, then, it wouldn’t match her name of Blue Bossa.  And it wouldn’t look as good. Hmmm, decisions, decisions.

And, in the future, I’ll put fenders on the opposite side of where I’m tied up so that things like that won’t be as bad.

Anyway, I’m ready to move on.  Sitka is not going to be a place where I want to leave my boat. The harbormaster here won’t commit any space for the winter, and the place is too exposed to swells and surging and wearing out dock lines is a real issue. Plus it’s really expensive (more so than other ports in Alaska). I haven’t gotten any answer from Hoonah, because nobody is ever there. 

I think I’m going to head back to Wrangell and haul the boat out and dry-store it over the winter.  I won’t have to worry about docklines wearing out from aggressive swells made by winter swells, electrolysis, expense of high dock fees and the expense for a boat watcher.  I’ll just need to winterize the fresh water pipes, and put on a full boat cover (which I have) over the deck. It would only cost $172/month to store and there’s lot of room there too.

Fish'n with a downrigger

Now most people living in one of the lower 48 states would expect Alaska to be at least pleasant during August – I mean, isn’t August the warmest time of year to most of  that area of the world?  And I know the rest of the US has been sweltering in the August heat.  Well I’m here to tell you that this does not at all apply here in Alaska.  And, as far as I know, there’s no such thing as “Indian Summer”.  It rains the heaviest in September and October. So it shouldn’t be any surprise that Alex’s week with me was mostly raining, with occasional few hours at a time where you could actually see blue sky (note: I have found out since I wrote the above, talking to a couple of locals, that this was an unusually wet August - last year, the temperatures were an all time high with lots of sunny skys - so I think this wet summer may be El Nina relate).

Fish'n

Alex flew into the Juneau airport, near Auke Bay, on the 14^th of August.  Since I had already stocked up with food, fuel and water, we decided to head out immediately the same day to spend the night in Swanson Harbor, where I had stayed previously with Rick and Chris.  This was a good move because it was so noisy and active in Auke Bay, and I wanted to get a head start on this trip because there were a lot of new places to visit and little time.

My plan was to get to Sitka the long way around Chichagof Island, going through Icy Straits almost to the Pacific Ocean, but then dipping down to Elfin Cove, then going through Lisianski Inlet to Pelican, then Lisianski Strait to the Pacific Ocean, then heading south along the coast until we reach Salisbury Sound, which ultimately leads to Sitka.

A Mighty Catch

After a quiet night tied to the public dock at Swanson, we headed west 40 miles to Elfin Cove. Elfin Cove is a tiny and tidy little community with a public pier and dock (where we tied up) in the outer harbor, as well as another dock for float planes.  The inner harbor has a fair amount of slips for permanent boats (all small). Elfin Cove has little houses all tied together with boardwalks with no cars.  We spent an hour or so walking around dressed in our foul weather gear and boots (of course it was raining), checking out the houses and the inner harbor, where there were a lot of small charter fishing boats.

The next morning, we left early to head to Pelican Harbor, stopping in a few places on the way to try fishing.

I should mention that as soon as Alex came on board, the first thing he wanted to talk about is all of the fishing we were going to do (isn’t Alaska the fishing center of the US?), even spending $50 on a fish license (for a week!). I should mention that he is a very enthusiastic free-dive spear fisherman, having caught some major big fish in Mexico (of course, spearfishing is a much more proactive way of getting fish, versus using fishing poles and lures which is more passive).  I was embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t done any fishing yet, but was more than willing to give it a try, since I had some new fishing tackle and a downrigger, which I had never tried.  Three problems immediately came up:

1)    Where does one fish for salmon or halibut? –  Close to river entrances, mounds, close to rocks – all of these questions I found myself woefully ignorant.

2)    Type of fishing tackle – I found myself also woefully ignorant on the right tackle to have for the right fish, so, of course, we had mostly the wrong stuff to fish with.

3)    We agreed that we’re both too impatient for fishing.

What added insult to injury was that there were tons of salmon (pinks) jumping out of the water all week in every place we went to, teasing Alex to angry frustration. 

The result of our fishing to Pelican resulted in catching a somewhat small rock bass, which didn’t fight at all due to being pulled up so fast that it’s stomach came out of it’s mouth. Ha ha!

Pelican waterfront

Pagen statue

Endless boardwalk

Pagen sacrifices

The next morning looking out from Pelican

Pelican Harbor, tucked way up in Lisianski Inlet, is a very picturesque place, prompting lots of pictures.  Kudos to Alex, who brought with him a modest and worn out, but still good, small digital camera for taking some outstanding shots; also, when he started using my SLR with a 300mm lens, he was like an enthusiastic soldier with a bazooka.  The town of Pelican offered a myriad of rustic scenes (beautiful scenery intermingled with artistic junk littering various places). The pictures above will tell the rest.

Like Elfin Cove, it’s all connected with boardwalk, only on a much larger scale. There were schools, a public library with odd hours, a combination harbor master’s office and police station, with the one cop going up and down the boardwalk on an ATV (all terrain vehicle - again, there are no cars).  There was one general store that was closed, a breakfast and lunch cafe (which served delicious omelets), and a laundromat/showers.

Famous or Infamous?

We decided to have some dinner at the famous (or infamous) Rose’s Bar and Grill.  We walked into a dark cave with a ton of bar kind of things hanging on the wall, an old honky-tonk piano sitting in a corner, and about 10 locals drinking and chatting away.  They saw us walking in and immediately said hi, how are you, with one woman coming up (pretty drunk, I think), telling us her life history, both of us trying to look interested.  We ordered some food and a couple of beers.  One of the customers, a weathered and grizzled old bearded guy named Hans (I later found out that he was 57, Rick’s age), started enthusiastically chanting at the top of his lungs:

“Oh Pelican, Oh Pelican

Little city by the sea

Where a whiskey glass and woman’s ass

Made a horses ass out of me!”

After singing that a few times, he went up to where I was sitting, picked up a small one-handed sledge hammer that I noticed was sitting on the bar, and started to swing it back like he was going to hit me with it – I quickly got off the stool, but what he was really swinging at was a fixed, battered bronze bell, also sitting next to me, which I didn’t notice at first.  It made a very loud “bong!”

I had no idea why he did that, but not two minutes later, Alex and I each got another beer “on the house”.  Later he came up to swing at it again, and once again, Alex and I got another beer, which Rose (a nice old lady in her 70’s, who has been working that bar for the last 30 years) said came from Hans.  Well, it wasn’t too long when we were talking to Hans; he was a real colorful character who owned a very small house in Pelican (he was going to sell it for $70K), had a small commercial fishing boat in the harbor, wanted to hire Alex to crew for him (I could see that Alex was tempted), owned a place in Mexico, where he lives about 6 months of the year, and loved to drink (he was quite drunk).  I think I remember that he suggested that I bang the bell with the sledgehammer – which I did and was very much satisfied with hitting it hard and it ringing loudly. Hey! What do you know? - We got another two beers.

All I remember is that when I asked for the bill, it was well over $80. Alex and I figured out that when you ring the bell, you’re buying a round for all of the people in the bar.  Ha ha!  The joke was surely on me!  Luckily when I rung the bell, there weren’t near as many people in the bar than when we came in.

Bears in Lisianski Strait

The Pacific Ocean from Lisianski Strait

The next day opened up beautiful, with blue sky and lots of clouds.  Alex got up early to take some very scenic shots showing blue sky, patches of fog or mist hanging over the water, and the water being utterly still.  While most of the time is rainy, when Alaska clears up, there is no place that’s more breathtaking.  We took off to head to the Pacific Ocean.  On our way through Lisianski Strait, we saw a bear with two cubs playing around on Yakobi Island.  We hung around with Alex taking pictures before moving on to hit the open ocean and heading south 8 miles to Portlock Harbor, bouncing against a southeast wind and chop.  Up to now in the interior, there was not the amount of deadheads that I saw in Canada.  Out here in the choppy waters, there were deadheads everywhere, all hard to see.  Even though we were both looking for them, it didn’t take long to hit a small one anyway, causing a bump (but no damage).

Portlock Harbor, where the entrance is just south of Hill Island, is a series of islands that create on a minor scale an inland harbor filled with small coves.  We stayed at Didrikson Bay, a beautiful, somewhat landlocked bay.  We first tried to find where there would be a good place to anchor and ended up scaring another mother bear and her two cubs at a river entrance, they dashing madly to hide from our smelly boat and us.  Once we anchored, we launched the dinghy to revisit the bears, and then try to fish a little bit.  In both areas we failed.

Didrickson Bay

Bears in Didrickson

Bird watching in Didrickson

Armed and dangerous

We could have spent at least 3 or 4 more days visiting each of the coves of Portlock Harbor if the weather allowed, but I was hearing on the weather report an approaching low, promising do-able south-easterlies for the next day, and then 30-35 south-easterlies the day afterward.  Since we were on a strict time schedule because of Alex’s flight out, I decided we should leave the next day to go straight for Salisbury Sound, since I didn’t feel like pounding against gale force winds.

So we left early the next day, carefully finding our way through a maze of islands and narrow channels (Alex doing the rock-watch at the bow in a few places).  We checked out Kimshan Cove, noting a couple of old cabins nestled amongst some trees, looking abandoned.  We twisted along until we reached Smooth Channel, which evolved into Rough Channel, and by 

Alex - exercising the dinghy

then, we were in the open ocean.  At first it was rough, but it quieted down very soon afterwards and before we knew it, we were in Salisbury Sound, going into Kalinin Bay, which I had been to before.  Since it was warm (the quiet before the storm), we launched the kayak and paddleboard and explored the bay hoping to find bears.

Kalinin Bay - taken by Alex on kayak

That night, it started blowing and raining hard.  The next day it was still raining and blowing hard, a couple of more boats coming in from the storm to anchor with us.  Since we couldn’t really do anything outside, and since Alex didn’t have a book, we decided to pass the time by playing games – dominoes (atomics), which I won more often than I lost, and chess (via the computer), which Alex won all the time.  We were trying to play cards, but we both realized that we didn’t remember how to play any card games.  I remember hearts being my favorite card game, but I forgot how to play it!  Wow! Has it been that long?  It’s pretty obvious I need to get a book on card games.

What to do on a rainy day

The day after (Saturday), we left Kalinin to head to Sitka going through the familiar and crowded channels to Sitka, where we found a slip and tied up.  The Sitka harbor has a lot of night-lights on its docks, which I never notice as my forward cabin doesn’t let in a lot of light (claustrophobics need not apply).  But the main cabin, where Alex was sleeping, has big windows with no shades – so Alex got really creative in hanging towels and blankets in strategic places around the cabin to make it sleep-able.  I do need to get shades for the windows…I just got to know how and who to order them from.

Lisianski Strait - interesting rock formation

Alex left the next day, back to San Jose (90 degree weather and no rain) preparing for another full year’s schooling at SJSU.

Route from Auke Bay to Sitka

So here I am in Sitka.  I’ve finally got the long-awaited water heater, but I’m going to hold off installing it until next year, since I have to winterize the boat, and having a water heater would make it more complicated.  I’ll probably leave Sitka next week.  Which way I go, I’m not sure.  I have to deal with some more storms due in a couple of days, so we’ll see.