At 4am this morning, while at anchor in Pond Bay, we were startled awake by what sounded like a loud and distressed “Hey!! HEY!!!” or “Hey! HELP!!!” A male voice. Kevin bolted up from the pillow and said “Did you hear that???” I had, but thought it was in my dream until that point. We threw on clothes lightning fast and ran up to the pilothouse, opened the doors, and scanned. We didn’t see anything obviously out of the ordinary, so I got the binocs and scanned all the boats (our group’s boats and the other several in the anchorage)…all dinghies and kayaks were accounted for and visible. We scanned the shore looking for kayaks or dinghies or people or bears…nothing. And not a ripple on the water. No other sounds but the birds, nothing on the radio (which had been off because I forgot to turn it back on after happy hour and before we went to bed). We waited and watched for a half an hour or more. Nothing. It was very odd, and disconcerting, of course. So that’s how our day started. I wish we had an answer, but we don’t.
I eventually snapped a few shots of the sunrise before we went back down to try to get a bit more sleep.
We pulled our anchor just before 7am and headed for Ketchikan. Conditions were great this morning on our way in, but the wind was scheduled to pick up a bit in the afternoon (and for sure tomorrow and Tuesday). Here’s the forecast for Clarence Strait this week.
Best we got a move on this morning!
On the way to the fuel dock a U.S. Coast Guard tender pulled alongside and boarded us for a routine safety check. They were very friendly and nice and we passed again with no issues. After our stop at the fuel dock to refill our diesel and top off the dinghy gas jugs, we continued north in Tongass Narrows and on to Bar Harbor.
We all got slips in Bar Harbor (4 of us in south, 1 in north). After Airship was in, I made crab salad open faced sandwiches for lunch with some of our crab bounty. Seems like we’ve caught more crab already this year than the whole summer last year! That’s probably not quite accurate, but it feels that way!
The Accuweather weather forecast for Ketchikan today said “Dull and dreary” but most of the day the sun was partially out and it was quite nice! (A little overly dramatic, Accuweather?) However by the time we were scheduled to walk up to Oceanview Restaurant for dinner with the group, it started raining and the sky was completely gray. So okay, dull and dreary it is.
Had a great dinner at Oceanview with lots of fun and animated conversation. We’ll be here for three nights, and people got a great start on sightseeing today already. We’ll be doing boat chores, picking up packages of stuff we ordered over the past couple weeks, shopping, and generally playing tourist. Will meet again on Tuesday night for another group dinner before we head out.