What a day! Southeast Alaska is so amazing, particularly when you get off the beaten track. Today we did all sorts of magical things that just can’t be planned for. I hope you are ready for a long post.
This morning we finished up our transit of Rocky Pass. It did not feel as adventurous as perhaps it was: the Devil’s Elbow and the rest of Rocky Pass are shallow and have a very narrow dredged channel with tons of rocks marked on the chart; however, the dangerous rocks and shallows are generally not visible at high tide, so it looks to an observer like you’re just passing through a wide channel.
The forecast predicted settled weather for the next few days, so we decided to explore a little of the west coast of Prince of Wales Island before heading east again for some boat work on the grid in Wrangell and to use the permit we have for the Anan Wildlife Observatory next Monday. First we stopped off at Point Baker.
There wasn’t much to see, as the cafe and bar had both closed down (not that we needed a bar at 9 AM) and there was no fuel at the fuel dock. It was a pretty spot, but felt a little abandoned. We talked to a fisherman on the dock about (among other things) going through Dry Pass to El Capitan Passage, and he said it was a piece of cake, easier than Rocky Pass. That bolstered our plans to try this reportedly tricky pass later today.
On our way out of the bay we saw that a few people were fishing the point, and we thought, “why not?” We had some spare time since we couldn’t transit Dry Pass until near the 6:00 PM high tide, so we dropped a couple lines and trolled for salmon. We quickly realized people weren’t the only ones fishing—we saw whales and bald eagles fishing, too!
We fished with the locals (human and otherwise) for about an hour, until we caught a salmon for tonight’s dinner. It’s wonderful how casual all these exceptional experiences feel here.
After fishing, we checked out Port Protection (didn’t stop) and continued south. The day was cloudy, but the seas were delightfully calm on Sumner Strait. As we were pulling into Shakan Bay, we had our second jaw-dropping whale experience in as many days. Breeching whales!
Initially, we noticed some distant splashing that at first I thought was just surf breaking on a rock. Then we realized that there were whales and that one or two were jumping. We watched one whale in particular that was swimming near our boat. It started with some fin slapping.
After the fin slapping and a few deep breaths, the whale disappeared for a minute or two, then came LEAPING up out of the water with a huge splash. Each time it leaped 2-3 times in a row, which allowed me to get into the rhythm of the thing and take pictures of the astounding display.
I was beside myself. I still am! What an amazing thing, how could we get so lucky? And we were the only people around to witness it. This one whale was quite a jumper, and we watched him do his thing for at least half an hour as we (very) slowly made our way toward Dry Pass.
I’m sorry if I’ve exhausted your capacity to look at whale pictures, but I just can’t help myself! I’m not sure how else to even begin to convey how awesome it was to watch an animal larger than our boat throw itself out of the water over and over again in front of us.
Well, you can imagine that this overshadowed the adventure of transiting Dry Pass. For those interested, everything went smoothly. We entered on a 10 ft tide (rising) and never saw less than 20 ft of water under the boat. Current wasn’t much of a problem and we were going slowly the whole way. Also, no one else was using the pass during our transit, so we had the channels to ourselves. Actually, we haven’t seen anyone since Shaken Bay this afternoon - no one in Dry Pass, no one in El Capitan Passage, and no one where we’re anchored in Devilfish Bay. We plan to be here for a couple days.
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