frederick sound

july 7th - thomas bay

After consecutive visits to Wrangell and Petersburg, we were ready to get out of towns for awhile and sit at anchor. Our first destination was just north of Petersburg. Thomas Bay is an inlet carved from two separate glaciers - Patterson glacier and Baird glacier. Neither is a tidewater glacier (Patterson Glacier has receded far enough that we never saw it) so no bergy bits or growlers in the water.

The only good anchorage in Thomas Bay is at the south end of Ruth Island. Most of the bay is deep enough that we could drop our anchor and all the chain we own and the anchor would never touch bottom. When we pulled into the anchorage, we discovered a commercial boat had carpet bombed the anchorage with crab pots. Cussing the Mad Crabber, we wound through the pots and found a enough room to get our anchor down and enough chain to hold us in place.


Hello World anchored amongst the Mad Crabber's thousands of crab pots littered around the southern end of Ruth Island.


Hiking the Cascade Creek trail.


Checking out our first glacier - Baird Glacier at the north end of Thomas Bay.


The big news as we exited Thomas Bay was an encounter with our first bergy bit. This one had floated north from the LaConte glacier farther south.

july 9th - portage bay

Portage Bay was our next destination. The primary feature of Portage Bay is that it is almost entirely landlocked and has acres and acres of water that's 30 feet deep with a nice mud buttom. After months of trying to find a spot to anchor in 90 feet of water, this place was awesome. We can't remember the last time we only put 150' of chain out. Nothing much else to report, though. We laid over a day and mostly sat around the boat reading books.


Anchored in Portage Bay.


There were no commercial crab pots in Portage Bay. My best guess is that they aren't interested in hermit crabs which is all Christy to managed to catch in our crab pot.


Laundry that we never got around to doing in Petersburg.

july 11th - cannery cove

We'd heard some good things about Cannery Cove so we left Portage Bay on a beautiful day and headed across Frederick Sound. We'd also heard that you have a good chance at seeing humpback whales. What they didn't tell us is you have a good chance of running into one. They're everywhere in Frederick Sound. We never got close enough to get a decent picture though so you'll just have to take our word for it.

We pulled into Cannery Cove and realized the "good things" we heard perhaps understated it a bit. While anchoring we saw six brown bears on shore so as soon as we were done, we lowered the dinghy and headed to the shore to check them out.


The mama bear didn't like how close we were. The cubs knew something was going down but their directional awareness still needs some work.


A place as cool as this must be investigated by paddle board.


Now that we have a waterproof camera, we can take some photos from the paddle boards.


This is the view we woke up to. Makes for a nice start to the day.

57° 18.382'N 134° 09.167'W