SV Panta Rhei Retirement Trip

We were visiting the Anan Bear Observatory south of Wrangell. It is one of the best places to visit in all of SE Alaska BECAUSE it has bears. But (as we learned) there is a dark side to this bear concentration. And of course, there is a story to tell.

Anchoring in front of Anan is problematic. The depth drops off steeply from a sand bar at the river entrance forcing an anchored boat to anchor in sand on the edge. If the wind or tide turns while you are bear viewing, the boat can peel off the edge of the slope and the boat drifts away. Boats still anchor there, some with a stern anchor to maintain orientation and some just depend on a prevailing wind onshore. That is called the "crossed finger" approach. We anchored in "fools inlet", about 5 nm away from Anan and took our high speed dinghy to Anan. We pulled our dinghy up on the beach (using the wheels) while we hiked to the bear observatory. There are indeed bears everywhere and the river is chock-a-block full of spawning salmon.

The ranger found us at the observatory. Your dinghy is being destroyed by a Grizzly, he said. Turns out they know the "name" of this Grizzly. She likes the way dinghies bounce when she jumps on them. He would advise when she is done playing and we can go get our dinghy.

There was a commercial outfitter there with a jet boat and she offered to give us a ride to our sailboat and that we could use her canoe to rescue our dinghy. That was really helpful. The photo shows that we brought Panta Rhei to the float and then took her canoe ashore. Two of the flotation chambers still held air, so the dinghy floats enough to tow it to our boat. The front chamber has 5 rips in it. We are hopeful we can patch them, though it is not accomplished yet.

We are in Ketchikan now where it is raining. No surprise there. We have internet and power and coffee so we are quite happy. The rain has to stop before we can patch our dinghy and that is not likely in Ketchikan. But someday ... Until then we have our story to tell