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While we may blame Drake for our spending more time tied to the docks in towns, truth be told, we enjoy the time as well. We spend a lot of time during the day walking as we leisurely work through the few tasks that make it on to our project list.

After six nights in town, on Friday June 7, we headed north out of town along Olga and Neva Passages, retracing our earlier path into to Sitka. Our plan was to apply for a short notice (72 hour) permit for entry into Glacier Bay National Park then head into Juneau afterwards. For our first night, we headed into Appleton Cove on the north shore of Baranof Island. If the wind is blowing along Peril Strait, you don’t get much protection from it at anchor. It was blowing and we didn’t, but winds lessened as the sun dropped lower on the horizon. We did see two brown bears (widely separated) feeding on the ample sedge grass along the shore.

The next day, June 8, we exited Peril Strait and headed north along Chatham Strait. We had applied for our Glacier Bay permit for entry on June 11 earlier in the morning and received notice later that morning that it was successful (it is “first-come, first served”). So, we now had more structure to our plan. For that night we went into Cedar Cove in Freshwater Bay. This was a “new to us” anchorage and we used data provided by Lynn & Neal Parker on the Krogen 48, Navigator to enter this poorly charted area.

The next morning, we made an additional successful application to the National Park Service for entry into Glacier Bay for that day for the purpose of anchoring in Bartlett Cove and attending the mandatory annual boater orientation program. While an entry permit is needed to get to Bartlett Cove, you don’t need a permit to remain in Bartlett Cove. Pets are allowed on shore in certain areas, and we’ve found a suitable area for Drake to play while on a long lead leash.

While Bartlett Cove can be pleasant to spend some time, if the wind has a strong westerly component, it can come pretty much straight in, especially at higher tides, and be bouncy. With a weather forecast for west wind, on June 10, we made one more permit application to the NPS and received a one-day permit for entry into the park that day. That permit, combined with our original permit, allowed us to begin our trip to the upper bay a day earlier. We headed to North Sandy Cove, one of our favorite Glacier Bay anchorages.

The next day, we headed up the west arm and anchored in Reid Inlet. This is a dramatic anchorage with a glacial snout over hanging the beach at the inlet’s head. It feels like you are anchored in a high mountain lake. Unfortunately, the anchorage can be very cold and windy from the winds racing down Reid Glacier. We plunked our anchor down and quickly were blown back on to it, setting it firmly.

An early start the next morning got us to the head of Tarr Inlet and the face of the Margerie Glacier before the first cruise ship of the day. We ended the day anchored on the east shore of Russell Island, another stunning anchorage and without the brisk winds of the previous day. On paddle to a nearby island, I was “encouraged” to leave by a local oyster catcher who apparently had a nest nearby and didn’t want my size10 XtraTuff boots anywhere near it.

After Russell Island, based on the recommendations from another vessel (the small cruise boat Sea Wolf), we anchored in Sebree Cove. It is a fair-weather anchorage looking south across a vast expanse of Glacier Bay. The weather was perfectly acceptable but we didn’t see the extensive wildlife that Sea Wolf had the night before.

After one last night in Glacier Bay at Shag Cove, we made our way to Funter Bay on Admiralty Island. A very early start had us at the busy Statter Harbor Marina (Auke Bay) northwest of downtown Juneau shortly after 8 am, Sunday, June 16.

While we may blame Drake for our spending more time tied to the docks in towns, truth be told, we enjoy the time as well. We spend a lot of time during the day walking as we leisurely work through the few tasks that make it on to our project list.

After six nights in town, on Friday June 7, we headed north out of town along Olga and Neva Passages, retracing our earlier path into to Sitka. Our plan was to apply for a short notice (72 hour) permit for entry into Glacier Bay National Park then head into Juneau afterwards. For our first night, we headed into Appleton Cove on the north shore of Baranof Island. If the wind is blowing along Peril Strait, you don’t get much protection from it at anchor. It was blowing and we didn’t, but winds lessened as the sun dropped lower on the horizon. We did see two brown bears (widely separated) feeding on the ample sedge grass along the shore.

The next day, June 8, we exited Peril Strait and headed north along Chatham Strait. We had applied for our Glacier Bay permit for entry on June 11 earlier in the morning and received notice later that morning that it was successful (it is “first-come, first served”). So, we now had more structure to our plan. For that night we went into Cedar Cove in Freshwater Bay. This was a “new to us” anchorage and we used data provided by Lynn & Neal Parker on the Krogen 48, Navigator to enter this poorly charted area.

The next morning, we made an additional successful application to the National Park Service for entry into Glacier Bay for that day for the purpose of anchoring in Bartlett Cove and attending the mandatory annual boater orientation program. While an entry permit is needed to get to Bartlett Cove, you don’t need a permit to remain in Bartlett Cove. Pets are allowed on shore in certain areas, and we’ve found a suitable area for Drake to play while on a long lead leash.

While Bartlett Cove can be pleasant to spend some time, if the wind has a strong westerly component, it can come pretty much straight in, especially at higher tides, and be bouncy. With a weather forecast for west wind, on June 10, we made one more permit application to the NPS and received a one-day permit for entry into the park that day. That permit, combined with our original permit, allowed us to begin our trip to the upper bay a day earlier. We headed to North Sandy Cove, one of our favorite Glacier Bay anchorages.

The next day, we headed up the west arm and anchored in Reid Inlet. This is a dramatic anchorage with a glacial snout over hanging the beach at the inlet’s head. It feels like you are anchored in a high mountain lake. Unfortunately, the anchorage can be very cold and windy from the winds racing down Reid Glacier. We plunked our anchor down and quickly were blown back on to it, setting it firmly.

An early start the next morning got us to the head of Tarr Inlet and the face of the Margerie Glacier before the first cruise ship of the day. We ended the day anchored on the east shore of Russell Island, another stunning anchorage and without the brisk winds of the previous day. On paddle to a nearby island, I was “encouraged” to leave by a local oyster catcher who apparently had a nest nearby and didn’t want my size10 XtraTuff boots anywhere near it.

After Russell Island, based on the recommendations from another vessel (the small cruise boat Sea Wolf), we anchored in Sebree Cove. It is a fair-weather anchorage looking south across a vast expanse of Glacier Bay. The weather was perfectly acceptable but we didn’t see the extensive wildlife that Sea Wolf had the night before.

After one last night in Glacier Bay at Shag Cove, we made our way to Funter Bay on Admiralty Island. A very early start had us at the busy Statter Harbor Marina (Auke Bay) northwest of downtown Juneau shortly after 8 am, Sunday, June 16.

Following our ten-day stay in Petersburg, on Memorial Day, May 27, we headed south with John & Kathleen on Laysan to anchor in Ideal Cove, about 15 miles south of Petersburg.

About ½ mile north of Ideal Cove is beach access to a trail that passes some lakes and eventually reaches one of the roads on Mitkof Island. Laysan launched their dinghy and graciously took Marcia, Drake and I over to the trailhead. By this time is was the afternoon and we only walked about a mile along the trail before turning around and returning to the anchorage.

The next day we parted ways with the Douglas’s who were still in shakedown mode and were planning to stay a few more days before moving on. We headed up to Pybus Bay where we dropped three prawn pots in our usual spot. Starting last year, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game had moved the commercial prawning season from October to May. While the commercial prawning season in the district encompassing Pybus Bay had closed we weren’t sure whether our pots would be able to harvest any prawns leftover from the commercial prawners. We anchored for the night in one of our favorite spots west of the West Brother Island.

The next morning, the weather had deteriorated a bit, and the anchorage was a little bouncy. We headed over to Pybus Bay to retrieve our pots. The wind and sea conditions made it a little challenging and while we did a respectable haul of prawns, we elected to not reset the pots but instead headed further west in Fredrick Sound to the Honey Dew anchorage. This is another favorite anchorage of ours as it has a lovely beach to which we paddle kayaks to shore and play ball with Drake.

The weather continued to be unsettled so we decided to repeat the route from 2023 in which we headed to Warm Springs Bay. In the early season, the dock there isn’t as crowded and finding space is easier. There is a small community of vacation homes along boardwalks leading up from the dock and three tubs fed by a piping from the hot springs up the hill from the dock.

We got our soak in the tubs after we arrived, but soon heavy rainfall and its runoff overwhelmed the flow of from the hot springs and the tubs became tepid and discolored by the tannin from the ground water. After two nights, we decided to cut our losses and after two nights, we did an early start, rode favorable wind and current and made the 83-mile journey to Sitka, arriving the afternoon of June 1.

Following our ten-day stay in Petersburg, on Memorial Day, May 27, we headed south with John & Kathleen on Laysan to anchor in Ideal Cove, about 15 miles south of Petersburg.

About ½ mile north of Ideal Cove is beach access to a trail that passes some lakes and eventually reaches one of the roads on Mitkof Island. Laysan launched their dinghy and graciously took Marcia, Drake and I over to the trailhead. By this time is was the afternoon and we only walked about a mile along the trail before turning around and returning to the anchorage.

The next day we parted ways with the Douglas’s who were still in shakedown mode and were planning to stay a few more days before moving on. We headed up to Pybus Bay where we dropped three prawn pots in our usual spot. Starting last year, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game had moved the commercial prawning season from October to May. While the commercial prawning season in the district encompassing Pybus Bay had closed we weren’t sure whether our pots would be able to harvest any prawns leftover from the commercial prawners. We anchored for the night in one of our favorite spots west of the West Brother Island.

The next morning, the weather had deteriorated a bit, and the anchorage was a little bouncy. We headed over to Pybus Bay to retrieve our pots. The wind and sea conditions made it a little challenging and while we did a respectable haul of prawns, we elected to not reset the pots but instead headed further west in Fredrick Sound to the Honey Dew anchorage. This is another favorite anchorage of ours as it has a lovely beach to which we paddle kayaks to shore and play ball with Drake.

The weather continued to be unsettled so we decided to repeat the route from 2023 in which we headed to Warm Springs Bay. In the early season, the dock there isn’t as crowded and finding space is easier. There is a small community of vacation homes along boardwalks leading up from the dock and three tubs fed by a piping from the hot springs up the hill from the dock.

We got our soak in the tubs after we arrived, but soon heavy rainfall and its runoff overwhelmed the flow of from the hot springs and the tubs became tepid and discolored by the tannin from the ground water. After two nights, we decided to cut our losses and after two nights, we did an early start, rode favorable wind and current and made the 83-mile journey to Sitka, arriving the afternoon of June 1.

The annual Little Norway Festival in Petersburg honors the town’s and communities’ Norwegian heritage. It is Petersburg largest community event and held in the middle of May over a weekend close to the Norwegian Constitution Day, May 17.  Like many small town celebrations, there are parades, contests, demonstrations and many opportunities to eat and drink.

We arrived on Friday, May 17 which was the day of the parade followed by the very popular herring toss and street fair (crafts, food vendors and beer gardens).

I’ve red circled the herrings in flight in the photograph.

We made the extra effort to get to Petersburg in time for the festival in part to meet up with friends also attending. John & Kathleen arrived a two days ahead of us to start bringing their boat out of its winter hibernation. Not exactly intended, we ended up moored next to them on the dock.  Their boat was being built at the same time as ours at the Seahorse Marine boatyard.

Also arriving ahead of us were Natala and Don Goodman accompanied by Dave Adams. Dave owns two aircraft that he built but neither are on floats. Don, Dave and I were on the successful 1981 Denali South Buttress climb. They had flown up on Don & Natala’s Cessna 182 equipped with floats.  The US Forest Service has many cabins in SE Alaska only accessible by float planes or boat available to rent.  Don & Natala have done several previous trips visiting some cabins and where possible we’ve met up with them along the way.

On Saturday, the highlight of the day was the Kaffe Hus. This is a fund raiser for the Sons of Norway in which homemade traditional Norwegian treats are laid out buffet style and you can fill your plate to your heart’s content. Bringing a container or ziploc bag to bring something back to the boat is always a smart idea.

Later that day Marcia watched intently while a 90 pound halibut was swiftly carved up into four portions by a professional from the local processing plant.

Both Friday and Saturday evenings we gathered as a group on the boats to have beverages, snacks and conversation. Weather permitting it would be outside on the flybridge.

Don, Natala and Dave flew out on Sunday in a weather window ahead of an approaching weather front. Before leaving the area, Don flew east towards the coast range separating the SE Alaskan Panhandle from British Columbia.  They had beautiful weather for a flyby of Devils Thumb, a prominent peak visible from Petersburg.

The last Little Norway Festival event we attended was the Rotary Club Seafood Bake & Barbecue. The seafood served were ample portions of king salmon and black cod. The setting is at the Sandy Beach park which looks east out over Fredrick Sound.

We haven’t quite figured out when and where we’ll go from here.  Since we bypassed Ketchikan, we are “spending” those days we “saved” here in Petersburg.  There are places for Drake to play and for me to walk, so no hurry.

The annual Little Norway Festival in Petersburg honors the town’s and communities’ Norwegian heritage. It is Petersburg largest community event and held in the middle of May over a weekend close to the Norwegian Constitution Day, May 17.  Like many small town celebrations, there are parades, contests, demonstrations and many opportunities to eat and drink.

We arrived on Friday, May 17 which was the day of the parade followed by the very popular herring toss and street fair (crafts, food vendors and beer gardens).

I’ve red circled the herrings in flight in the photograph.

We made the extra effort to get to Petersburg in time for the festival in part to meet up with friends also attending. John & Kathleen arrived a two days ahead of us to start bringing their boat out of its winter hibernation. Not exactly intended, we ended up moored next to them on the dock.  Their boat was built at the same time as ours at the Seahorse Marine boatyard.

Also arriving ahead of us were Natala and Don Goodman accompanied by Dave Adams. Dave owns two aircraft that he built but neither are on floats. Don, Dave and I were on the successful 1981 Denali South Buttress climb. They had flown up on Don & Natala’s Cessna 182 equipped with floats.  The US Forest Service has many cabins in SE Alaska only accessible by float planes or boat available to rent.  Don & Natala have done several previous trips visiting some cabins and where possible we’ve met up with them along the way.

On Saturday, the highlight of the day was the Kaffe Hus. This is a fund raiser for the Sons of Norway in which homemade traditional Norwegian treats are laid out buffet style and you can fill your plate to your heart’s content. Bringing a container or ziploc bag to carry something back to the boat is always a smart idea.

Later that day Marcia watched intently while a 90 pound halibut was swiftly carved up into four portions by a professional from the local processing plant.

Both Friday and Saturday evenings we gathered as a group on the boats to have beverages, snacks and conversation. Weather permitting it was outside on the flybridge.

Don, Natala and Dave flew out on Sunday in a weather window ahead of an approaching weather front. Before leaving the area, Don flew east towards the coast range separating the SE Alaskan Panhandle from British Columbia.  They had beautiful weather for a flyby of Devils Thumb, a prominent peak visible from Petersburg.

The last Little Norway Festival event we attended was the Rotary Club Seafood Bake & Barbecue. The seafood served were ample portions of king salmon and black cod. The setting is at the Sandy Beach park which looks east out over Fredrick Sound.

We haven’t quite figured out when and where we’ll go from here.  Since we bypassed Ketchikan, we are “spending” those days we “saved” here in Petersburg.  There are places for Drake to play and for me to walk, so no hurry.

We started our 2024 cruising season on Saturday, May 4, one day earlier than we originally targeted. The winds looked to be less fearsome on Saturday than Sunday so we speeded our preparations up a bit.  The first stop was Anacortes where we took on fuel and had some work done on the boat.

Because the work was done on Monday, we needed three nights in Anacortes and didn’t depart until Tuesday.  We cleared BC customs in Port Browning on North Pender Island in the Gulf Islands.  Our yacht club subsidizes our moorage at the marina there (it is considered an “outstation”), it has a nearby grocery store, a restaurant and a huge lawn for Drake to play on, all very attractive features.

After this leisurely start, our northward grind began.  Over the years, we’ve fallen into the practice of traveling “fast” on the northbound trip to SE Alaska and “slow” on the southbound journey. When in that “fast” mode we travel when conditions allow and take advantage of all of the daylight, routinely leaving at first light and stopping at the last good anchorage before last light.  This year was an example of that.  From Port Browning, over the next 10 days until our next port of call we covered 713 miles in about 112 engine hours until Petersburg.  As we traveled north, we realized that we could get to Petersburg in time to attend some of the best parts of the Little Norway Festival we enjoyed so much last year. The US Customs and Border Patrol’s mobile ROAM app allowed us to clear customs without going into port so we were able pass by Ketchikan without stopping.

The map below shows our route from Anacortes to Petersburg. 

While we didn’t do a lot of photography on the way north, we do have two photos of us (or at least our boat) as we headed north.  The first is a photo taken by fellow Queen City Yacht Club members, Lois and Geary Long, as they passed us in their Selene 62, Raven, north of Cape Caution approaching  Calvert Island.  The second is a photo by our friends, Kathleen and John Douglas, owners of our sistership Laysan.  The photo was taken from the Alaska Airlines flight they were on to return to their boat in Petersburg as the plane was making its scheduled stop in Ketchikan.  It was quite a coincidence that their plane made its landing approach as we were passing by in Tongass Narrows.

This blog operates using the Google Blogger (aka Blogspot) service.  Most of the images in the blog are stored using either Google Blogger storage or, more recently, the Google Drive cloud storage service (I do have links to my Microsoft Onedrive cloud storage, in some cases).

On January 10, 2024, Google implemented some sort of change to its Google Drive service that “broke” links to the image files being used as thumbnails in my (and many others) blog.  It seems to impact blog posts going back to Spring 2018 when image storage was shifted to Google Drive. 

The text in the posts render properly but the image placeholder is blank except for the image file name. Left clicking on the image placeholder will bring up the full size image.  Right clicking brings up a context menu with multiple choices including “Open Image in New Tab” (or something similar depending on your browser).  This choice will bring up the smaller thumbnail image.  I only mention this to say that problem is with how Google Drive handles the web page’s HTML code’s request for the thumbnail image as the source for the full size image hyperlink.

I am hoping that the issue will be resolved soon.  In the meantime, all the blog images are accessible but you just have to click on the image placeholder to see them.

This blog operates using the Google Blogger (aka Blogspot) service.  Most of the images in the blog are stored using either Google Blogger storage or, more recently, the Google Drive cloud storage service (I do have links to my Microsoft Onedrive cloud storage, in some cases).

On January 10, 2024, Google implemented some sort of change to its Google Drive service that “broke” links to the image files being used as thumbnails in my (and many others) blog.  It seems to impact blog posts going back to Spring 2018 when image storage was shifted to Google Drive. 

The text in the posts render properly but the image placeholder is blank except for the image file name. Left clicking on the image placeholder will bring up the full size image.  Right clicking brings up a context menu with multiple choices including “Open Image in New Tab” (or something similar depending on your browser).  This choice will bring up the smaller thumbnail image.  I only mention this to say that problem is with how Google Drive handles the web page’s HTML code’s request for the thumbnail image as the source for the full size image hyperlink.

I am hoping that the issue will be resolved soon.  In the meantime, all the blog images are accessible but you just have to click on the image placeholder to see them.