August 8, 2022 Monday Day 73: Tracy Arm Cove to Berg Bay (not the one in the Glacier Bay) 183 miles- 3223 total miles
Today we pulled the anchor early for us, around 6:30 AM. Luckily the kids were able to sleep even with the loud noise of the windlass pulling up the anchor. Once everyone was up we had breakfast on the go. We saw a lot of whales, probably 20+, some were close and some were far away. It still hasn’t gotten old seeing them.
We stopped at Kake for gas. This was by far the most expensive gas of the trip. This time we paid $8.49. Most places were less than $6.00 a gallon so this was really really expensive. What can you do? While Chris was getting gas the kids and I walked up to the gas station store to look for a few provisions we needed (ketchup and lunchmeat). That store didn’t have what we needed, but we did get to use the bathroom. Chris ran (literally) to a more well stocked store while I took the kids back to the boat. Chris found what we needed and then were off.
On the way home we wanted to go a slightly different route, bypassing Petersburg. (I really enjoyed Petersburg when we were there before and I was sad to skip it, but a new route really was more appealing. We decided to go through Rocky Passage. Rocky Passage is a narrow passage that is marked well so we knew where it was safe to go, but its name Rocky Passage is a good name. Chris did a great job navigating and we stayed well away from the rocks. There was a lot of kelp here, and once it got caught in our outboard. The kelp will block off part of the engine causing it to overheat. Luckily there is an alarm that sounds so we know to stop and fix the problem. When the kelp causes the engine to overheat it is a quick fix, most of the time just moving the engine up will knock it off, sometimes we have to manually remove the kelp. We were off and running quickly after.
Just outside of Rocky Passage there was a whale feeding. We were able to get fairly close to watch it. (While still giving it plenty of space.) This whale was putting on a show and was lunge feeding! It was fun to watch it for a while.
We stopped in Wrangell for dinner and Chris changed the prop yet again, back to our stainless steel one. We have two different props that perform differently, but neither are ideal. Chris went back and forth between these two props testing the boat at different weights and in different seas. I think we have finally settled on the prop that will get us home.
We have permits for Anan Wildlife Observatory tomorrow and we want to get there earlish so we can hopefully have room on the public float so we don’t have to anchor. We decided to drop anchor a little closer to Anan instead of staying at Wrangell so we wouldn’t be so rushed in the morning. We did push getting to our anchorage a little too close to dark and when we anchored there wasn’t much light left at all. We dropped the anchor around 9:30 PM.
Ryan’s Thoughts: We are on our journey home.
Lillian’s Thoughts: Today was fine. We saw a whale lunge feeding!
