Day 61-Pybus Bay

Looks like Peter and mom arrived just in time for some terrible weather.  I woke up early in the morning to wind whistling through the straps holding the dinghy on top of the boat and rain pelting the windows.

I listened to the weather and it didn’t sound good.  25-35 knot winds, heavy rain.  Even in our protected anchorage, we sailed around wildly.

When it’s both rainy and windy, all the windows on the boat must be closed to prevent rain from streaming in.  With three people inside a space that’s probably the same size as a Suburban, this can be problematic.  Condensation is a constant problem.  Add in the moisture released from cooking, and it might as well be raining inside.

Even with the Wallas heater running full tilt (any lower a setting and the wind would extinguish the flame), the inside of the boat was wet.  I just couldn’t get enough airflow.

With the terrible weather and poor visibility, none of us felt like doing anything outside.  Around lunchtime a charter boat came into the anchorage we were in and dropped their hook.  We finished lunch and headed out to see the head of Pybus Bay and find another spot to anchor.

We didn’t do a whole lot of seeing.  Even the radar couldn’t penetrate the downpour.  We did, however, find a nice anchorage without any other boats (Peter’s desire…he seems to want to avoid all contact with the outside world unless it’s through his iPhone) that was well protected from the waves.

In the evening the wind subsided, as predicted, but the rain kept on pouring.  We had hoped to see some bears in here, but no luck.  Perhaps we couldn’t see them through the fogged up windows, or the shoreline-obscuring rain, or we just weren’t paying enough attention.

The weather forecast looked like it might cooperate for a trip across Chatham Strait to Red Bluff Bay.  I’d seen a ton of bears there a few weeks ago, and it’s a beautiful spot.  I’ll listen to the morning forecast and see.  If not we’ll head for Rocky Pass and try to get a permit for Anan Creek to see bears there.

5 nm today and 2,206.6 total

Day 60-Petersburg to Pybus Bay

Today’s plan is to head to Pybus Bay on Admiraly Island.  I spent a night there last week and found it beautiful, and Admiralty Island has a high concentration of brown bears, which would be fun to show to mom and Peter.

The trip out is a bit more than 50 nautical miles, and since we’d run at planning speed it wouldn’t take too long.  We got a late start, after picking up some more food, filling the water tanks, and cooking breakfast.

The first half of the trip through Frederick Sound was uneventful.  The seas were mostly calm, and we spotted quite a few humpbacks along the way.  Some even got pretty close!

After rounding Cape Strait, the wind increased and the seas built.  Rain pelted down.  Pretty soon, we were surfing down four footers.  I had to remain on top of the throttle to keep the bow from burying into waves as we caught up with them, but the ride wasn’t too uncomfortable and the autopilot had no trouble keeping up.

Then the electronics died.  Autopilot, chartplotter, and radar all down.  Nav lights, wipers, cabin lights, 12v outlets, and VHF down too.  They flickered back on a few times, for a few minutes, but dropped out as quickly as they came back to life.

Notably some stuff was still getting power.  The engine gauges functioned perfectly, the compass and depth sounder (wired into the ignition) operated normally, the windless and Wallas performed flawlessly.  The iPad, with its’ own battery backup, continued to work uninterrupted, providing chartplotting even when the rest of the marinized (read: expensive) electronics stopped working.

Based on the symptoms I figured it wasn’t a fuse or breaker that was the problem.  It was likely a loose connection somewhere in the system, a simple thing to fix, if I could find it.  I checked behind the helm panel and all connections seemed tight.  Nothing out of the ordinary.  With fairly rough seas and only eight nautical miles to go, I figured our best bet was to get to Pybus Bay and troubleshoot there.

I’ll take a break from the story here to tell an important lesson: always have an independently powered backup system ready to go.  Minimize points of failure.  Even a backup MFD/chartplotter likely would have been taken offline by this problem.  In this case I had my iPad already running and I quickly switched on a portable VHF.  I had another portable VHF, as well as my laptop and iPhone with charts, GPS chips, and many hours of battery life.  Had the electrical system not been fixable, I could have easily made it back to Petersburg.

Anyway, once we got into the calm of Pybus Bay I started troubleshooting while Peter steered the boat.  I quickly found the problem.  A breaker in the aft lazarette had a loose wire.  A few turns of a socket wrench and the problem was fixed.  It’s amazing how a tiny problem can have big consequences.

Seals welcomed us to Pybus Bay

With the electrical problem solved, we headed for Sheldon Cove.  Unfortunately the clouds had closed in and hardly any scenery was visible.  On the plus side, we did get to watch a humpback for 45 minutes meander through Pybus Bay.

After anchoring Peter took the kayak for a spin.  Sheldon Cove does offer excellent kayaking, much better than Cannery Cove, it seems.  Lots of salmon were jumping throughout the bay, but unfortunately no bears.

A wet kayak ride

~52 nm today and 2,201.6 total

Day 59-LeConte Glacier

After a relaxed morning hanging out on the boat Peter (my twin brother) and mom arrived around 11 AM.  The morning started off with heavy rain, which eased to showers and then clouds and sunbreaks later on.

As soon as Peter and mom arrived we left Petersburg, bound for LeConte Glacier.  I had been in a week before and cruised effortlessly almost to the face of the glacier.  Unfortunately, today wasn’t quite so easy.

A few clearings offered views of the mountains

To start with, the entrance bar (really a terminal moraine) had a ton of ice on it.  Way more than last week.  I got through easily enough, but there was a lot of ice in the water.  Mostly the big stuff, easy to avoid, but devastating if you hit it.

As we rounded the first bend I had to slow down to displacement speed while constantly steering around ice.  The ice let up a bit, but soon thickened.  Anyone who’s driven a small fiberglass boat through an ice floe knows that the sounds are awful…grinding, crunching, clunking.  And the whole boat shudders.  Just a few miles into LeConte Bay, still five miles from the face of the glacier, that’s what we were experiencing.

Reluctantly I turned around.  We moved the boat into a clearer patch of water and Peter and mom took turns paddling around in the kayak for a few hours.  We grabbed some ice for the cooler as well, and watched as some giant bergs floated by.  By giant I mean the size of a moderately sized house!

Peter kayaking

Mom kayaking

A bit of scale

After the kayaking we headed back towards Petersburg.  The trip back was easy and I avoided running into any floating ice. 

The World, a 600+ foot condominium cruise ship was still anchored just outside of Wrangell Narrows when we returned.  Interestingly, I had seen this ship in Sydney Harbour (Australia) several years ago during New Years, and again in Friday Harbor (San Juan Islands) sometime in the past few years.  It sure gets around!

The World

In Petersburg we filled up with gas, bought lots of groceries, and generally got the boat ready for the next five days out.

38.2 nm today and 2,149.6 total