After the winds died down yesterday afternoon, we had a serene, completely calm overnight in Puffin Bay. We pulled the anchor this morning around 7am and headed for Cape Ommaney. We were hoping the fog would burn off by the time we got to the cape so we could at least see what it looked like. Pretty soon we were definitely feeling the drama of our 3+ knots of current … Read more
We left Scow Bay a little early this morning (7am) since we had a longer day than the past few (a whoppin’ 33nm to Redfish Bay). I wish we had just a bit more time to slow down and pop in and out of more anchorages, but I guess it leaves us more to see the next time we do this leg. It’s interesting…the west side of Baranof Island is … Read more
Finally, a good weather window lined up with our plans to get on the outside of Baranof Island for a few days! We got up at 5am in Baby Bear to transit Sergius Narrows near the 5:30am slack, which meant (a) we got into Sitka before 9am, and (b) we were tired, so immediately after getting settled in our slip, we took a nap. 🙂 We’d been in touch with … Read more
We spent a week or so in Juneau after the flotilla ended…visiting with friends and family (Laura’s brother Jason flew down from Anchorage with a friend for a visit), and made good use of the rental car we reserved (used the Turo app for the first time…will definitely do that again!) We took a couple trips to Western Auto & Marine, Jerry’s Meats & Seafood (smoked salmon, double smoked bacon, … Read more
Once again, everyone wants to know what time Airship is going to leave, so we say 6am, and when we get up at 5:30am, two of the other three boats are long gone and one is pulling its anchor. Fine then. 🙂 Conditions in Stephens Passage were calm and even glassy for our cruise north into Juneau. We watched a humpback breaching to the left of a cruise ship (hope … Read more
Every summer during the flotillas, almost every evening, there’s discussion about what time people want to leave in the morning. Sometimes we have a reason to need to leave early (weather, timing for current and tides, things like that), and when we don’t have a reason to leave early, we leave it up to the individual boats. We’ll put in the written plan, even “Leave whenever you want today!” Inevitably, … Read more
We never did see the sow and teeny tiny new cub that our friends saw at Pavlof, but before we left this morning, this one came out and was munching some sedge grass on shore. There definitely will be more bears here later when the salmon are running. See last year’s post from the end of July. Left to our own devices with a comparatively short day (30nm) and a “leave … Read more
We left Appleton Cove right around sunrise so we could scoot out and up Chatham Strait and into Pavlof Harbor before the weather came in. It’s really tough some days to get up and going so early, but then we’re often rewarded with incredible sunrises and scenery like this along the way: Out in Chatham just before turning into Freshwater Bay, we spotted three orcas, two adults and one little … Read more