Before heading into Petersburg we thought we'd check out one more glacier in Thomas Bay. The ice sheet itself no longer reaches the sea but is separated by a moraine field, about 500 metres wide. We tried our hand at crabbing and shrimping here but to no avail. We anchored at the mouth of Scenery Cove about 2 kms from the glacier in the pouring rain – temperature about 4 degrees Celsius. It was high tide when we anchored (there is a 4 metre tidal range) and unknowingly we anchored over the top of a huge sunken spruce tree no doubt carried down by floodwater. When the tide fell the top portion of the tree became visible about 10 metres away and it ran down to beneath the bow of Monkey Fist. Initially not seeing how big it was we thought it was a simply a floating branch and tried to pull it off with the dingy. On top of that we had been swinging around a lot on the anchor, moving backwards and forwards over the tree so all the ingredients were there for an anchor tangled up. With water around the 4 degree mark also diving on it was out of the question.

As darkness was rapidly approaching (of course) we needed to attempt to weigh anchor and see what we were up against (worse case scenario would be we would have to cut the anchor chain). So we started the engine and slowly pulled the chain onboard, counting down the metres left as we did so. To our undying relief it kept coming and coming and finally the anchor appeared on the surface – we were free ! What a tremendous feeling.

Due to the deep water it took us some time to find somewhere clear of the tree which was shallow enough for us to anchor (as well as clear of a number of commercial crab pots that were located in the area). However, we managed to do so just on dark and sat down and had a quiet beer....all good. We think we were lucky !