Last posting DavidEllis was departing no name cove, Tracy Arm, Holkham Bay, heading up Stephens Passage to Juneau, a six hour passage in pleasant, partly cloudy weather and a light breeze. We left behind Shearwater and Honu who would go up Tracy Arm to Sawyer Glacier and the next day head south and west towards Sitka.

In past summers we've preferred tying-up in Douglas harbor across the Gastineau Channel from Juneau proper. This gives us easy access to a great tidal beach where we can let the Rs loose to sniff, P&P, run and explore as we walk a mile or more down and back. Another choice is Auke Bay, well north of Juneau, and for a boat with our draft, requires going two hours or so north up the west side of Douglas Island (as the Gastineau Channel in the middle shrinks to a small passage thru marshes that shifts a bit year-to-year).

Auke Bay is a zoo with a labyrinth of unassigned dockage like a giant game of musical chairs. In past years our strategy was to drop Dorothy off on the outer float with a handheld radio and she would run and scout out a likely spot, radio us, then fight off the competition until DE could get there. Besides that insanity, Auke is also well away from everything else about Juneau, so when we arrived to find no room at Douglas, we opted to stay in town at one of the other anchorages.

Each time I've gone by Harris harbor, I've thought "that looks tight", meaning not a lot of room to maneuver. And it was, but I did not anticipate the strength of the tidal current running in / out, perpendicular to the slips. Wow, that was fun! Not as much 'fun' as Brown's Bay (08/30/2009), but I was glad the folks from the Krogen sharing our assigned slip were not there to see how close we came to taking off their nice teak rail. Witnessing the near miss to their boat would likely have inflicted severe emotional trauma.

Next day was July 4th and I stand in admiration of Juneau folks celebrating USA's birthday in pouring rain. Ms Dorothy, the Rs and I celebrated with a long, wet walk / run on the aforementioned beach at Douglas.

The following day Tjasa and Aiden arrived from Massachusetts and Hong Kong respectively and the party got started. We first met T&A at the Seahorse boatyard during the summer 06, when DavidEllis was not quite completed. They live aboard a Seahorse 52 (fiberglass) Rhianna at Hebbe Haven Yacht Club, up towards Sai Kung, Hong Kong. You'll find references to T&A all through the blog e.g. 8/31/2008 Malaysia and along with others in Hong Kong, have been very good and kind friends to us.

Tjasa, my favorite rocket scientist, was finishing up a fellowship in underwater robotics-related graduate work at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, while Aiden arrived from HK having sent their 3 1/2 year old Nela off to Slovenia with Grandma -- to quote one of my childhood crushes "My! People come and go so quickly here!"

No sooner did T&A arrive by plane, then Jake arrived in his SV In Your Dreams. Jake is an Alaska guy who we met at HHYC in HKG, introduced to us by T&A, last spring as he was also preparing to cross the Pacific east-bound, single-handed. After a winter up in Homer AK, he is now southbound for the Panama Canal, then Florida and a return to working life. He's calling this past year his "practice retirement".

A couple days rain in Juneau hanging out with Jake, T&A and briefly Ron & Helen off FV Chatham, then a six hour run in rain and chop back to Tracy Arm. (Jake headed out to Glacier Bay). With the Disney Wonder cruise ship close on our heels as we passed thru the entrance, DavidEllis proceeded up the channel to Sawyer Glacier -- resisting a nearly overwhelming impulse to yell "Hey Mickey" on the VHF radio as the giant ship ran ahead of us.

Although the day had been mostly cloudy, enough sun broke thru at the glacier to highlight its incredible spectrum of blues. Of the half dozen trips we've made up to this glacier, this time we had the least amount of ice to wend our way thru, making it a much easier run.

Can I just say, the following day was brilliant! It started as a beautiful blue sky morning, so rather than moving on to another anchorage, we headed down into Holkham Bay's Endicott Arm. We've never run into Endicott before, although it has the distinction of housing the irresistible attraction of "Ford's Terror" -- really, no kidding! Gliding across a mirror surface, under a brilliant blue sky, in full view of Sumdum Glacier to the east, even before we entered Endicott, DE was surrounded by whales! We drifted with humpbacks for hours, Dorothy and Tjasa shooting hundreds of frames of diving, breaching, blowing cetaceans -- I shudder to consider what this day would've cost in the bad old days of Fuji slide film, processing and Cibachrome printing; thank you, thank you digital gods! Finally breaking away from the humpbacks, we headed up the channel only to spot more whale spouts ahead. I was going to pass them by, but looking thru the binos, I could see these were not humpback spouts, then saw the distinctive dorsal fins of male and female Orcas! And another couple magic hours passed amidst marine mammal perfection...

Eventually the Orcas headed towards the channel exit and we continued onward. As it turned out, the ice we did not encounter the prior day in Tracy, was there in Endicott blocking our way, just past the Sumdum Islands. We turned around to head back to the Tracy Arm anchorage. One might think this would be enough excitement for one SE Alaskan day, but wait! Leaving Endicott, we ran close to the eastern shore in the late afternoon sun and came upon a very healthy looking brown bear sow with 3 yearling cubs. They hung out and posed for pictures as we hovered offshore. This was the single best wildlife-viewing day we have yet had in AK.

The next several days we made our way down to the bottom of Admiralty Island and up the east side of Baronof Island with stop-overs at Cannery Cove, Warm Springs and Nismeni Cove before transiting Peril Strait and arriving at Sitka.

In Sitka, we once again joined MV Shearwater and MV Honu forming the duck-duck-turtle armada. After one night on the transient dock, the armada got underway in sunshine towards the north of Sitka Sound. The area around Sitka has many beautiful channels and anchorages, perfect for hanging out with friends, exploring, fishing, taking the dogs to the beach etc, etc

The 3 boats would raft up on one of the ducks, with meals, projects, card games, movies, visits and so on being pretty ad hoc. Considering that Wade and David C. have crewed on DE and all 3 of us (plus Roger) crewed Shearwater Hong Kong to Hawaii, it is no surprise we're compatible.

Aiden had a close encounter of the bear kind while kayaking; Tjasa caught major fish on her first ever attempt (under the expert tutelage of Shearwater's captain).

Back to Sitka, reunion with In Your Dreams, and after too few days, T&A departed -- Tjasa to Slovenia to reunite with her daughter Nela after a two-month separation and Aiden back to work and real life in Hong Kong.