Category Archives: 2020

Sunshine?

Posted on by
Reply

Will it ever stop raining this summer?? The good news is that our mountain lakes are overflowing and that means hydro power for our town will be in good shape for a while, after a couple of years of drought. Yes, we live in a rainforest, but if it doesn’t get the usual over-100″ of rain every year, it’s still called a drought.

We stopped back in town for a few days to re-provision then headed back out to the beautiful wild places. Portage Bay on Kupreanof Island is a good place to anchor for the night when heading out of Petersburg, and we ended up spending two nights there because of a nasty weather front passing through. Before the front arrived, conditions were perfect to put the drone in the air to shoot video of the bay and a few photos of two DeFever 49s – ours and another one owned by friends.

The dock is adjacent to an abandoned log dump, from a time when Portage Bay was an active logging site. Now it’s home to a handful of old beater cars and trucks, brought over by landing craft and left there so their owners can use the old logging roads to explore or to hunt.

We saw 41 knots peak wind as the storm came through, as well as some very rare thunder and lightning! We were used to seeing lightning on the east coast (and always hoped that something taller would anchor nearby), but lightning… here? Really??

The storm front didn’t clear the weather as we had hoped; instead the skies resumed their gray overcast, and rain and mist were our companions again. Regardless, the mist rising from the forested mountains can be beautiful, and it didn’t stop us from enjoying quiet places…

…and looking for bears. Found a brown one! The bear was around for a while scavenging in the tide line, but the real entertainment came from a mink. We spotted it from the boat, and he only paused his hunting for a moment when I came to visit in the kayak.

The early morning mist reflected in the calm water was so beautiful… It’s good that we can appreciate the many moods the weather and the landscape combine to show us. Brooding and misty (and rainy) is the norm this summer.

On our way to the next anchorage we spotted some humpbacks feeding closer to shore. We turned towards them and stopped the boat a conservative distance away. Drifting with the engines out of gear, we stood on the bow and watched a large group diving in all directions…

Whales to the left of us… whales to the right of us… a mother and calf diving in unison…

Mother and calf

…and the whales kept moving closer to us, some swimming towards the boat…

…until we were surrounded! It was amazing – we didn’t know where to point the cameras.

It began to rain quite hard, and we waited until the whales passed by us before we put the engines back in gear and continued on our way, exhilarated.

We headed back to a favorite spot – Takatz Bay on the east side of Baranof Island, where we waited for some more weather to pass. We enjoyed the waterfalls…

…picking ripe salmonberries and blueberries…

…and of course, looking for bears.

This bear was unusual because it was a black bear, and they are not at all common on Baranof Island. I’ve never seen one here before – only brown bears. This one was making snorting noises at us, so we kept our distance and let it eat in peace. We may be having a cold, wet summer, but we’re still seeing a lot of wildlife and sublime landscapes.

Kuiu – Tebenkof Bay

Posted on by
2

Tebenkof Bay is a big place with a number of smaller bays, creeks and anchorages to explore. We checked out a few spots at the end of last summer, and added a few more to our list this time… but we left plenty of spots to investigate some other time. There’s just never enough days and weeks to explore all that we’d like.

Fortunately, the trend of seeing lots of bears continued.

The first morning in a new anchorage was a three-bear bonanza. I watched two of them while drinking my coffee, then I decided to jump in the kayak and get a closer look.

This bear (above) was more skittish than the others, and as I drifted in the kayak he suddenly decided that he didn’t like having me around.

In the meantime, the first bear (the one reflected in the water in the first photo) meandered back into the forest, but I spotted a third bear turning over rocks a little farther away. This one looked like an old bear – its face was gray and it was a little skinny compared to others I’ve seen.

Sitka blacktailed deer were plentiful too – bedding down in the grass or walking around and watching me paddle.

We’ve had so much rain all summer and it has been very overcast much of the time, but on this day the wind was feather light and the sky was gorgeous. We savor every day we can spend out here in nature, but we really appreciate the pretty days.

A friend was in the area, and he needed to check on a cabin that his friend was building on a small island nearby, so we jumped into his skiff and had a fun ride zipping among the little islets. The cabin is new, but the site had some older buildings from a past owner that were neat to see, as well as a skull from a medium sized marine mammal of some sort.

It was a perfectly protected spot from the weather in any direction, with lovely views out the channels.

Our friend left us back at our boat, and by then it was time to start heading back towards town so we could re-provision for the next jaunt. Once again, a pod of Dall’s porpoise graced us with their acrobatics and amazing speed. You don’t see them as much as you see their rooster-tail splashes!