Laguna San Rafael
08 March 2019
Annette and Mike
We welcomed the little break we got while waiting for the rain to pass. We enjoyed leisurely mornings, time to futz and get things organized and especially hanging out with the company of our friends.
Thursday March 7 the skies cleared and it was glacier day for Rum Doxy and Sea Rover ll. We waited for slack tide then headed out into the bay. It was a beautiful day with a nice breeze and clear skies . As we tacked up the estuary to the entrance channel we were treated to the dramatic views of Mt San Valentine and glacier Grosse, which were hidden under the clouds previously. It was another 9 miles of motoring up the river, ripping with currents and bergy bits, to get to the entrance of Laguna San Rafael. Huge icebergs flanked the entrance of the laguna so we had to full throttle our way through a swirling current which would pick us up and carry us in opposing directions, kinda like hitting black ice, hoping we would not hit anything floating. But once in we got our glacier and Sea Rover ll and Rum Doxy had it all to ourselves. The lake is large and the glacier about 7 miles away from the entrance. Because of the large volume of ice in the water it was Impossible for us to get very close to the face. It didn't matter, though, we made it to the glacier, and it was really cool (tee-he)! And we got our margarita ice! After we had our fill of playing in the ice we needed a place to anchor for the night. The guide book recommended a small river branching off of the main channel. We squeezed ourselves in, came to a small basin and thought, âwe can do thisâ. It was another beautiful anchorage, a river running through a tall grassy meadow surrounded by green mountains, birds twittering, so calming. Then we dropped anchor and everything changed......
Thinking we should move a little up stream we began to raise anchor and soon realized we were stuck. We tried everything but getting into the water and it would not budge. With a high tide and setting sun the problem would have to be addressed the next day. So we proceeded to enjoy our evening of solitude, with glacier ice margaritas, pizza and a good night sleep. At 3:00am Kabammm! Thump,thump,thump. What the hell! We bolted out of bed to see an ice berg the size of a VW mini van that had drifted in on the rising tide jammed up against the side of the boat, wedging itself underneath. We were lucky, everything happened in slow motion and no damage was done, but it was quite frighting. Needless to say it was hard to get back to sleep when bracing myself for the next impact. The next morning freeing ourselves became the priority.
Mike:
We tried hard to get the anchor un-stuck by motoring in different directions, but that just made it worse so it looked like I was going diving. Rotting trees and such had stained the river water the color of strong tea and the visibility was about one foot, plus there was a lot of ice and a strong current, so it wasn't as appealing as it sounds.
I set up the hookah, got into my 40 year old diving suit (which still fits, although a little snug around the chest and shoulders), got in the water and headed down the anchor chain. It was completely dark after about 6 feet, but was only about 15 feet deep, which is too shallow for monsters and stuff, so not so bad. When I found bottom, I could feel that the chain was macrame'ed around a big log. It took an hour of fiddling until we got the chain and anchor free, but free it we did and headed out the river. When we got to the main channel the ebb was at full steam and the current was full of ice. We found an opening in the bergy bits, merged into traffic and flew down the channel at 8-9 knots, getting spit out into the estuary a short time later, glad to be free of the river and done with ice for the time being.