We have arrived in Juneau, Alaska!
06 August 2008
After enjoying Thomas Bay for several days, we decided to say goodbye and push on further north towards Juneau, the capital city of Alaska. We had a wonderful overnight stay at a floating dock on Entrance Island in Hobart Bay. The dock filled up quickley with boats, allowing us to meet a few new friends, which we love! Our favorite was a character named "Ed", who is the owner of the Five Fingers Lighthouse here in Alaska. Since he is a local, he regaled us for hours with his stories! What a great time sitting on the dock of the bay while the clouds here malfunctioned and forgot to rain that day!
The next day, we headed north and stayed in a bay that has no name which we called "Iceberg Alley." While we were there, massive blocks of ice circled our boat menacingly all night long! We left the next morning at first light for our journey up Tracy Arm to see the North and South Sawyer Glaciers. What a spectacular day! We saw scenery that is too beautiful to even try and describe - like taking a picture of a rainbow it just pales in comparison to being there. We severely underestimated what this type of trip would involve on both of us, Missy, and the boat! The icebergs became more numerous and larger in size at about the halfway point up the channel. Our biggest challenges were trying to slow our "race boat" down for the conditions while trying to move slowly enough to prevent collision damage to the hull! Another challenge was myself on the bow of the boat with boat hook in hand, trying to push these hundreds of "bergy bits" out of our path! Poor Missy was locked inside the boat where the noise of these things was the loudest. By the � mark, we had to stop for lunch as we were absolutely exhausted and stressed out! After a feeding frenzy and some re-grouping we tried to relax and formulate our next move while the ice was closing in around the boat! Newly refreshed we attacked the icebergs with a new vegence and slugged it out for the last five miles at a crawl. Once we arrived at a position between the two glaciers and surrounded by block ice, we were rewarded with undescribable scenery, and the feeling that we have now both seen Alaska! This was for us, by far the best Alaska has to offer! We also enjoyed the unlimited amount of ice we had for our cocktails! Even Missy enjoyed a bergy bit in her water dish! To top off this spectacular day, we also arrived back at Iceberg Alley with 1001 nautical miles under our belt thus far!
After a few more challenges enroute, we are now in Douglas which is across from Juneau. We couldn't stay in any of the marinas in Juneau, or re-fuel as they are on the other side of a 50' bridge. Our mast height is 56' !!!!! A dilema we didn't anticipate! The charts we have indicated the bridge to be 215' and it turned out to be 50' high! Thankfully the suburb of Douglas was able to accommodate us in their marina, which is lovely! Darren will have to commute by dinghy to Juneau to re-fuel the boat, but we'll manage. The alternator also packed it in today during our travels, but thankfully we have a spare on hand and a fabulous, but "grumbling" mechanic that can fix that right up!
We hope to stay for a few days and do the tourist thing...........................next adventure.....who knows!