July 19, Santa
Anna Inlet
The alarm went off at 5:00
this morning, and we lifted the anchor at 5:30.
First stop was to check the 3 shrimp traps which we set in a relatively
shallow 260 to 295 feet. Surprisingly,
the most and biggest were caught at only 260 feet. The total catch was about 6 gallons of really
big prawns which, after removing the heads, reduced down to about 6 quarts of
tails.
After picking up the prawns
we had a 10 mile journey to the USDA’s bear observatory at Anan Creek. After anchoring Hobbit and taking the dinghy
to shore, we were briefed by a ranger on how to safely conduct ourselves during
the half mile walk to the observatory.
Basically, you make a lot of noise and, if you see a bear, don’t run or
make eye contact.
We only went about hundred
feet before we encountered two 2 - 3 year old grizzly bears. The ranger later told us they were brothers. The bears crossed Anan lagoon in front of us,
climbed up to the trail, and one of them paused to look at us. They then started walking along the trail in
the direction of the observatory. From
time-to-time they turned to monitor us.
We were careful to give them plenty of room.
At the observatory the bears
run free and the people are in an enclosure “safely” protected by a wooden
fence not much over waist high.
Sometimes the bears get so close that you could reach through the fence
and touch them. Some female bears leave
their cubs by the observatory while they go fishing. Other bears bring their catch up to the
observatory to eat. Some bears,
particularly the older ones, walk to the stream and pick up a fish in
seconds. Younger bears tend to take
longer to catch a fish. It is surprising
how many of the bears only eat the skin and bellies then leave the rest of the
fish for the crows and eagles. We
watched one old male catch fish over and over again just minutes apart and only
take a few bites of each. Less
experienced bears aren’t quite so picky about what they eat, but none of the
bears seemed to eat the whole fish. Anan
is an awesome place!!
We’re keeping an eye on you
Anan bear observatory. Note the bear in the rapids.
Linda and Cash watching bears
Salmon for the taking
Success
Delicious
July 20-22, Ketchikan
The trip to Ketchikan started
out fairly nicely; we even had a pod of Dahl’s porpoise pay us a visit. By the time we reached Clarence Strait,
however, the wind had picked up to 10-15 knots quartering on our bow. I considered stopping at Meyer’s Chuck but,
after checking the weather forecast, concluded tomorrow would be at least as
bad and possibly worse. We plugged on
and managed to get a fair amount of salt spray over the bow. On the way Cash made arrangements to obtain a
replacement for his cracked insulin pen with a pick-up at the pharmacy the next
afternoon.
We had planned on spending
two nights in Ketchikan. Unfortunately,
Cash’s pen didn’t arrive as scheduled plus the weather forecast was for
moderate wind and lots of rain. When the
pen didn’t arrive on the second day, the pharmacy gave Cash enough disposable
syringes free of charge to see him through the rest of our trip. The up side of this is that Cash had an extra
day to shop.
July 23, Foggy Bay
A calm, beautiful day greeted
us as we pulled out of the marina in Ketchikan.
First stop was fuel where we took on 350 gallons of diesel which was our
usage for the 200 engine hours and 1,061 miles since we left Ketchikan on June
7. As we traveled towards Foggy Bay,
Cash kept trying to talk me into fishing as he wanted to catch one more fish in
Alaska. I told him that I had no idea
where to fish but promised him that, if we came across a group of boats that
were fishing, we would stop. As luck
would have it, we came across such a group at Mary Island which is not far from
Foggy Bay and Dixon entrance.
We began trolling and almost
immediately Cash caught a small (3 pound) Chinook. After taking care of that fish we put the
lures back in the water and promptly caught two nice Coho salmon in the 6 – 7
pound range. At this point I had to
inject that it was my turn to catch a salmon.
This time life was a little fairer than it was when I called the next
halibut - I caught a really feisty Sockeye about 8 pounds. Cash really wanted to catch his limit of 6 Coho
so, over Linda’s objections given the state of the freezers, we proceeded to
catch 4 more Coho in the 6 – 8 pound range.
1 Chinook, 1 Sockeye, and 6 Coho
July 24, Prince Rupert
Talk about zero dark thirty:
the alarm went off at 3:30 in the morning and the anchor started up at 4:00
which was about the earliest we could comfortably detect debris in the
water. Sunrise wasn’t until 4:39. We couldn’t have asked for a better day to
cross Dixon entrance; the ocean was almost glassy with swells of only 1 – 2
feet and wind was just 1 – 2 knots. The
50 miles to Prince Rupert was long but uneventful. We cleared Canadian customs, tied up at the
Prince Rupert Rowing and Yacht Club, went grocery shopping then came back to vacuum
pack yesterday’s salmon. By moving some
food to the refrigerator freezer we managed to get all 6 Coho and the large
Chinook in the freezer.
July 25, Kumealon Cove
After yesterday we needed some
rest and slept in all the way to 7:00.
It was another really nice day heading south out of Prince Rupert but
the wind started picking up to 10 kts or so when we entered Grenville Channel. Rather than take the 2 mile trip into
Kumealon Inlet we decided to take our chance in the much smaller Kumealon Cove
just north of Kumealon Island. Sometime
during the day we passed the 2,000 nautical mile mark since leaving Everett.
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