We left Khutze Inlet this morning just before 6am for our 55nm cruise to Lowe Inlet. Conditions were pretty much like this the whole day…a little wind, occasional chop, some current with us and some current against us.
It’s funny how the perspective changes after a couple weeks on the water as we make miles north. We left this morning before 6am, and when I noticed it was nearing 9am, I thought “We’ve already been underway for three hours???” On a relatively calm day with nice weather and beautiful scenery, there’s so much you can do underway as the time passes so gently.
Several boats saw a single humpback meandering south down Fraser Reach, another saw some harbour porpoises (harbour with the u because we’re in Canada).
And now we’re all tucked in at Lowe Inlet! Kevin and I took our dinghy up to play in the waterfall:
Then Dave and DeAnne (and Bodhi) came in to join us:
DeAnne took these photos of the pilings from the old cannery that used to be here:
Just before we were all scheduled to meet on Airship to talk about the plan and have some snacks, two more boats arrived here in Lowe Inlet. These same two boats were in Khutze Inlet with us last night, and one of the them made it very clear that they were not thrilled that one of our boats called to let them know how much chain they had out (since the arriving boat was about to drop their anchor right on top of it). We heard the two arriving boats talking to each other on VHF 68 complaining about “getting yelled at” — a gross over exaggeration about a polite request for safe anchoring. But whatever. Thin skin. Okay.
So now this evening, those same two boats came into Lowe Inlet and the first one dropped their anchor about 75ft next to one of our boats (who had 200ft of chain out). This is a deepish anchorage, where most of us dropped in 70-90 feet and backed toward the shoal. So this boat of ours called them to let them know they were uncomfortable with the too close proximity, but this new boat said directly that they refused to move. The second vessel of these two traveling together (maybe a 70ft pleasure boat) came barreling in right between two of our boats and looked as if they were about to drop their anchor as well. I stood at the open door of the pilot house, trying to indicate that it was not okay to drop 50 feet from us. Pretty soon, we heard them talking to each other saying they were going to move around the corner, and that they’d just come back in the middle of the night and cut all our anchor chains. Unfortunately for them, they broadcast this on VHF 16.
I called the non-emergency Coast Guard line and filed a report…this is unacceptable, dangerous behavior, and threatening other boats who are merely asking for a safe anchorage is ridiculously aggressive for no reason I can fathom, and in all the years of boating to and from Alaska, we never experienced this level of direct rudeness. Thankfully, they left the anchorage and carried on north. But as SE Alaska is basically a small town spread out over many nautical miles, I fear we will see them again and I don’t look forward to that at all.
Luckily, as we were all gathered and commiserating about the frustrating drama, two orcas showed up in the inlet!
Orca distraction!
While we were watching the orcas from the bow of Airship, we noticed Bodhi over on Turnagain looking very left out. Awwwww, Bodhi.
Dave and DeAnne just need to bring him over next time!! (DeAnne said his feet were wet and stinky today, but maybe tomorrow.)
The orcas came in all the way to the waterfall and then made their way back out slowly, and I managed to get a few photos while they were close by. So cool!
Sound Waves with orcas:
We had a fun happy hour with the orcas (and each other), and we’ll head out tomorrow late morning for a short trip up to Baker Inlet.
Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention about yesterday — while we were heading up the south estuary, two big RIBs full of people (likely from a charter boat) were headed in, and stopped one of our dinghies, telling them to inform the rest of our group that only two boats were allowed in the estuary at the same time (we had 5 small dinghies, 10 people total). I’m not sure why they were trying to police us (other than they wanted in and we were there). We visit Khutze Inlet several times every year and have for the past 10 years, and we’ve contacted and been told directly by the caretakers themselves that 16 people are allowed in at a time, and they never gave us any limit on our dinghies/kayaks. However, we immediately worried the rules may have changed, so as soon as we were back on Airship we checked, but the posted rules were just as we thought. Not sure why and how so much wrong information continues to propagate about this place, but if you’re in doubt, check this site or give the council office a call.
Update: Later this evening after I wrote the above, I did finally find, eventually, buried in a link to a PDF on the site, a place where they recommend that if actively watching a bear no less than 100ft from said bear, that no more than two vessels at a time are recommended to be viewing. By default we already do this, because it allows people to get closer in shifts without annoying the bear. So even after finding this language, we’re still within the guidelines, and I think if we’re so far away the bear doesn’t even smell or see or notice us, we’re still within the spirit of the rules.
Leading flotillas is hard sometimes!! 🙂