Well I'm back on land.... In Seattle, while the Arctic Loon carries on for round 3 of its journey! My mom and I ended the trip in Juneau where we spent a couple days being extreme tourists (take a look at the Red Dog Saloon, and you'll see the kind of stuff we partook in... all in good fun) before I flew home. I still feel the boat rocking beneath my feet and I don't really know why, but I miss having tiny everything on the boat. Tiny kitchen... tiny bed, tiny cabinets, and even tiny toilets. I think maybe it's because it makes life seem a lot simpler - especially when you pair the living experience with a lack of connection to the outside world.
For some reason the videos don't seem to be playing. You can watch it on YouTube here.
Speaking of internet access, I promise I actually haven't been slacking on the blogging (although given where we were, you shouldn't have been all that surprised if that was the case). We truly have not had wifi in 3 weeks! Pause for a minute and think about how beautiful that is. I did a lot of reading (including a book about Timothy Treadwell... more on that later) and often only indulged in the outside world by listening to pre-downloaded podcasts before bed.
It's been an incredible 3 weeks full of nature I only thought existed in Planet Earth videos, good food, great people, and lots of adventure. We lost our dear friend Paula back in Ketchikan (no, she didn't fall off the boat... We just failed in convincing her to continue on further than she originally planned), and of course we missed her after that, partly for her crucial help in docking the boat, a lot for her constant need to wash our dishes, but mostly for her witty humor, positive attitude and kindness. Thanks for being a fantastic crew member Paula!
There is no way I could possibly give you a day by day recap of the last three weeks (or even a week by week - it's all such a blur) but I'll attempt to list all of the important highlights. Or maybe "highlights" isn't the best word... "memorable moments" might be better. I'm sure you'll see why.
Rough weather:
My memories of Alaska are not characterized by rain, but maybe they should be. You'll see mostly photos of beautiful sunshine in this post, but please know that this is not a result of us trying to trick you. "Look how lucky we are! Everyone should go in the off season! Everything's perfect and sunny!" No. We hit a lot of rough weather almost instantly after arriving in Alaska, almost as if those who drew the borders knew that's where the rain begins. The camera merely would have gotten too wet to use if we tried to take photos. Don't get me wrong, we had an incredible time for the two weeks that we rarely saw the sun. The scenery was still beautiful in its own way and we still saw lots of wildlife. I found the two times we found ourselves stuck in over-the-top winds (30-40 mph) to be an adventure. Waves were crashing over the bow and you could hear the wind whistling through the dodger. Thankfully captain Diana knows how to ride giant waves well so the 2 hours or so total of bouncing up and down could have been much worse. Still... we wore life jackets just to be extra safe.
Double rainbow: On one of those days we tucked into a little cove (Mole Harbor I believe?) much earlier than anticipated to wait out the storm. It was nice and calm in there and shockingly, the sun peaked through at sunset creating a stunning full rainbow directly over our boat. We watched the rainbow, the sunset, the glacier covered mountains and the array of singing birds for a while before noticing that the rainbow had turned double. I had to explain to my mom about the famous double rainbow YouTube video. We laughed about it, but in truth, our reaction to ours wasn't all that different.
Bears:
I mentioned earlier that I was reading "The Grizzly Maze" about Timothy Treadwell who was killed by a grizzly in 2003. As informative the book was about how little danger bears actually pose to humans, reading a book in which the main character is eaten maybe wasn't the best choice while bear watching? It made me a little paranoid... Like in the picture below for example. We were watching black bears on the beach at terror ford and I decided to hop in the kayak for a closer look. The book told us to not get too close (for the bear's sake, not ours) so I stayed a decent distance away. Well apparently it wasn't far enough because he smelled me and stared me down. The picture may as well be a video - he stayed in that position (the defensive position according to the book) for what must have been a minute before running back into the forest. I was probably just as scared as the bear. I just started back paddling, too nervous to move anything but my arms. My mom laughed at me a little because not only are black bears (or Grizzlies for that matter) extremely unlikely to attack humans but it is virtually unheard of for them to follow a human into the water. Yes, they can swim, but not very well.
That was our first experience seeing bears up close. A couple nights later we saw a pair of mating Grizzlies at Taku. We were told later by some other boaters that they had actually come onto the dock when they were there.
Humpbacks:
We found it funny that before about a week before I left, we hadn't gotten a real photo of a humpback. They were just everywhere. The first time we saw them in big numbers, they were putting on a beautiful show. There were at least 30 we guessed, all spouting, showing off their tails and playing. We were so in awe then that we didn't bother to get the camera. After that, every time we saw one, we wouldn't jump up and down and shout WHALE at the top of our lungs (as was certainly common before). Rather, it would've been like seeing a harbor seal - cool and fun to watch yes, but we see 10 every day, so we'll go back to reading our book in a minute.
However, there were a couple exceptions. The first was on one of those rough stormy days I mentioned earlier. We were about an hour from the harbor and my Captain Diana had all of her focus on steering the boat through the rolling waves. I was just holding on staring out at the horizon hoping not to get sea sick. I looked down for a second, and when I looked up, there was a vertical humpback, maybe 200 feet from us. Yes I said vertical. It had breached like a rocket ship going directly into space and let its entire body out of the water. But I didn't see that part. I only saw it in the last instant before it started its plummeting belly flop back into the water. Imagine looking up and where you saw just gray clouds and waves before you see a whale that looks like it's flying (that's what we ended up calling it - the flying humpback). I was so shocked I started laughing hysterically and my poor mother didn't know to be worried or excited. It breached over and over again like that until it was out of view.
The second time we got that excited about a humpback is displayed nicely in the video below. Be prepared to hear me freaking out a bit in the background.
The music you hear is what we call the "whale music" it's supposed to "call the whales." We were a little convinced after this experience, so if you're joining the Arctic Loon in the future, be prepared to listen to a lot of it. The whale even breached for us on his way out of the harbor.
Orcas:
Another majestic creature we didn't see as much of are the orca whales. We only saw them twice - once way back in Burke channel, and again after leaving Thorne Bay around week 4. It had been a grayish day, but the sun was just starting to peak through at sunset. We saw them off in the distance, and it couldn't have been a more perfect end to our cruise that day. I had been practicing the guitar, so I started playing wagon wheel (one of the very few songs I can play while simultaneously looking at something else), and it sort of felt like it all wasn't real - like the camera was slowly panning out on the final scene of a rom com, and we'd hear the director yell "break" any second now.
Sea otters:
Look at the pictures. They speak for themselves. These fury little creatures are just adorable - they always looked directly at us for a second, like they were curious, before getting scared and diving below. We loved watching them float on their backs with their feet in the air.
Sea Lions:
Very different from sea otters, these are quite the beasts. We often saw a few in the water, but the best place to see them was on a small island in Glacier Bay. There were easily thousands hanging out on the rock, and you could really smell it At first I thought I was smelling pigs.
Puffins:
Here's a photo I got. Aren't they the coolest looking birds ever?
Mountain Goats:
This is one animal my mom didn't see on her last trip. I didn't understand all of the excitement until I saw one complete with its horns and big bushy white coat. I had been expecting the type of rams I used to see in Colorado. I have to admit these were much cooler! We did have to get really close to one of the rocks to get a good view. They're often so high up they're really tough to spot!
Dolphins:
I talked about the porpoises earlier in this blog. They were even easier to spot as the trip went on. In Glacier Bay, I would go so far as to say that we saw one every fifteen minutes. I went kayaking one day and they came right up next to me. They're friendly little creatures. I even got an incredible video of a group of them "bow riding" with us - swimming along side the front of the boat, but later accidentally deleted it. That broke my heart. I mourned it's loss all day. You may not be able to see just how sharp and fast these dolphins moved on this blog, but perhaps it's better some of the magic of Alaska be kept for you to see for yourself..... or you know, you could always watch this YouTube video that is virtually the same.
Terror Ford:
This is one of those places I'll never forget the name of - partly because it is named so well for what it is, and partly because it was just so majestic. Hardly anyone tucks into this beautiful little inlet due to the small but narrow channel you have to go through to get in and out. You have to wait for perfect slack tides which only happen once every day during daylight or else the currents would be too strong. We could see why when we arrived 2 hours early. It looked like a great spot for some white water rafting. Even at slack the currents still looked rough and it was very ominous not being able to see around the corner. We came so close to turning around but we didn't, and we were rewarded with calm bright green water, towering granite, snow covered mountains, and lots of waterfalls. Oh and of course the bear I mentioned earlier that stared me down. It was absolutely worth the terror of going through the narrows.
Bergie Bits:
Both at Tracy Arm and Glacier Bay we ran into fields of ice bergs where bits had broken off of the glaciers. It might be the most beautiful thing I saw in Alaska, but they were also troublesome. In Tracy Arm especially we had to crawl through them at a snail's pace, often putting the engine into neutral so the little ones wouldn't ruin the propeller. Just before we were about to leave Tracy Arm, we decided we absolutely needed one of the baby icebergs (Bergie bits we called them) to break up and use as cocktail ice. It's extremely long lasting... Plus there's the novelty of drinking 2000 year old glacial ice. Without a net, it was quite a pain to catch. We tried three times before we finally got one on board - with me sitting on the back under the dingy trying out different sitting positions that might let me hold on the slippery thing while also not falling into the (literally) ice cold water.
The anchor:
On our last night in Glacier Bay, we went to bed early anticipating a long day ahead to avoid an incoming storm. We set a solid anchor in a little bay that was described in our book as "bomb proof from any weather." But around 11pm we both found ourselves up on deck in pitch black (of course the one night in Glacier Bay when clouds were covering the moon) monitoring the anchor. Captain Diana had been checking our GPS location since the winds started up, and we seemed to have dragged more than 200 feet from our usual swing (which we had monitored all afternoon). The Arctic Loon's trusty anchor had never dragged before, and we knew we'd been solidly set, so we were both perplexed. The good news was we weren't drifting anymore. The last thing we wanted to do was re-anchor in the middle of the night. But my poor mom could not rest without being sure we wouldn't drift. I slept for an hour on deck so as to be ready at a moment's notice to help pull up if we needed to. After that she sent me back to bed and stayed up watching until the sun came up. It took a lot of time analyzing our path on Navionics before she figured out what had happened. The anchor, in fact hadn't drifted at all - we'd been perfectly safe. The boat had just strangely been hanging out on one far end of the circle where the anchor allows us to drift, before quickly darting off to the other side. We think the currents changed, and perhaps our chain was caught on a rock or something, holding us back from following them at first. It was nice to know that the anchor could be trusted after all.
Glacier Bay:
I've mentioned Glacier Bay National Park many times already in this post, but I think it's just worth mentioning how lucky we were by a) being able to go there, and b) actually having good weather. We made it to Alaska early enough that I we were able to mess around a little and go to places we hadn't planned. We weren't sure which route we would take until we saw the glorious weather report for Glacier Bay. Perfect sunshine and heat for the four days we would be there. Temperatures were above July and August averages. It was a dreamy way to end the six weeks, stopping at glacier after glacier, watching sunsets, and kayaking in turquoise water every day, all while surrounded by pure white mountains.
It couldn't have been better. If there was any downside to those four days though, it was learning how quickly all of this beautiful glaciers are melting. Most of them melt by at least a couple feet per day. You can hear the global warming statistics until you can recite them in your sleep, but there's something about seeing right in front of you the nature that we're destroying that will trigger the environmental activist in anyone. It will be an absolute tragedy when these glaciers have disappeared completely.
Docking:
I don't really have any stories to tell about docking, but I thought the topic deserved a tip of the hat on this blog because it was easily the most stressful thing we ever did. In calm waters on windless days, docking was a breeze (pun intended), but when currents were strong - especially when currents were pushing the boat away from the dock) I'd have to take a few deep breaths before jumping off and tying up. It was a lot easier with Paula on board, having two people to tie the lines. Without her, I'd have to jump off first with the center line and get it as close and tight as I could, as quickly as I could, and then jump on board to grab the stern line, tie that up in the same way, and then do the same for the bow. A few times, I couldn't get the center line close enough, so the boat drifted too far from the dock for me to get back on, leaving my mom to have to run out and throw it to me. Boating is not for the weak-hearted.
Women boaters:
One thing that surprised me throughout this whole trip was how abnormal it was for us to be sailing a yacht with a crew of only women. When the three of us were aboard we'd often get comments like "All women! Wow! Good for you!" or "huh, I've never seen that before." When it was down to just two women, the reactions came more often and usually included a little bit of a stare and an exclamation of disbelief. One harbor master asked my mom "So what's the deal? Are you ex coast guard or something?" None of this was ever judgmental at all - usually quite the opposite - nor did we get the sense that any of these people didn't think we were capable of managing the boat, they'd just never seen it before. It only bothered me that every time something went wrong (like difficult docking - which is bound to happen with even the most experienced sailors), I would have in the back of my mind that we didn't want to make fools of ourselves because we were women. I wanted to live up to all of the praise we were getting and not reinforce a potential stereotype that all boats should have a man aboard. This got me thinking a lot about feminism - I don't think anybody we came across ever thought we were incapable, but I think it's a shame that I felt that need to prove that women could do this - even if it was just to myself.
This about wraps it up! What an incredible trip. So much adventure, wildlife and beautiful scenery that can never be captured in the pictures on this blog. I'm so grateful to have had such a rare opportunity, and I couldn't recommend sailing, or Alaska more to anyone who is thinking about it. I'm sold on the boating world.
I've taken my laptop, so unfortunately I don't think anyone will be keeping up the blog for the current leg at least. Perhaps they'll post some photos in a few weeks! Thanks for reading!
