A downright leisurely morning in Tracy Arm Cove — we didn’t leave until just before 9am. The plan for today is to head up Endicott Arm to see how close we can get to Dawes Glacier, before turning around and heading for the entrance to Ford’s Terror so we arrive around 3:30-4pm. High slack in Juneau is at 4pm, so we should be able to transit the entrance somewhere between 4:15 and 5pm.
There were some gorgeous icebergs and views along the way, but Endicott Arm was an easy very-little-ice cruise today.
The only time we needed to slow all day was passing seals and seal pups on icebergs. This one was so cute, with a pretty spotted coat!
Ooop! Look who popped up from behind her!
Look how little ice there is!
Boats took turns running between Airship and the glacier so we could take some photos.
We arrived early at the entrance to Ford’s Terror so we’d have time to launch a dinghy and take people through the entrance to give them a feel for what it will be like with the big boats, since it’s pretty tough to see anything meaningful from outside.
There were several small-to-medium sized icebergs floating around the waiting area with one occasionally riding the flood in through the entrance.
We entered about 35 minutes after Juneau high slack and had a knot or two of current still flooding, but by the time we were all through it had already started to ebb.
There was one other boat that came in with us, and when we arrived at the anchorage, another boat was already anchored, so a total of six boats for now. We anchored successfully at the head of the west arm, and all of us just took in the scenery with awe. Words never accurately describe the feeling of this place…the enormousness of everything surrounding you on all sides. Photos help, but often, looking through the camera lens is so pale in comparison to the 360 degree vistas, the smells, the sound of water cascading down cliffs coming from every direction. But we’ll try:
We put out some prawn traps after we anchored and made dinner with the best view ever.
The next morning we checked the prawn traps and had 25 (coonstripe) shrimp. That’ll do for a first check!
Everyone met in their dinghies at 10am for an excursion. Low slack in Juneau was right around 10am, so we thought we’d make our way to the exit/entrance to arrive around 10:30-10:45…if it was actually slack or close to it we could park the dinghies and take the drone up for some updated photos, which would be fun!
Another huge waterfall:
We got to the exit/entrance and it was nowhere near slack — still ebbing pretty hard with a visible overfalls — so we turned around and bagged it.
On the way back, we stopped to see what conditions were like at the entrance to the east arm…also ebbing hard. We likely could have made it in just fine, but didn’t think it was the smartest choice to lead the group in under those conditions without being certain about the location of the rocks beneath.
Kevin took the drone up for some aerial shots while the light was nice (Airship’s the one closest to the shoal, far right).
In the shot below, our anchorage is behind the drone, the east arm entrance is on the left, and the exit to Ford’s Terror is the path to the right.
Tonight we hosted a grill night on Airship. Friends and past flotilla-goers David and Julie on Dogstar arrived in Ford’s Terror tonight (along with two more boats, making it a total of 9 in here!). They came by at the end of our gathering and we all hopped in the dinghies and went up the east arm while we could get in. It was already ebbing, but we had enough time to go all the way back in to the cool rock amphitheater bird cave thing (cliff swallows flying all around us).
We’ll have all day here tomorrow — we won’t be leaving until the late afternoon/early evening high slack (5:15pm in Juneau, so probably exiting around 5:45pm). No complaints at all about anything. Zero.