25 July we departed Petersburg at 0430, heading out into Frederick Sound in fog with about a quarter-mile visibility. As the morning progressed, the fog eased a bit, but for several hours we had gray sky, gray water and gray mists hanging between. While this may sound monotonous (literally), it is in fact quite beautiful with nuanced shades and visibility over long distances under the low strata of cloud / fog, with glass-smooth water below.

A couple of hours out of Petersburg we came upon two humpbacks "bubble-net" fishing and hung-out for awhile watching them work - magnificent animals.

After a long-day's run - 73 miles - we anchored in a small cove just inside Tracy Arm N57º47.54' W133º37.65' off Stephens Passage. Rusty & crew to the beach in the dinghy, but we did not stray beyond the foreshore; earlier in the week Alpenglow had heard from one of the Tracy Arm rangers that brown bears frequent the beach in that cove. And sure enough, later that evening after we'd returned to the boat, a brown bear emerged from the woods to prowl the shoreline near where we'd been ashore earlier.

But in the meantime, we collected some floating bergy bits - glacier ice which Rusty licked at to the point of giving himself an "ice-cream brain freeze" I'm sure - and returned to the boat overnight.

26 July 0800 both boats started up Tracy Arm; beautiful place, glorious weather, magnificent glacier! couldn't be better; I'm running out of adjectives.... The photo tells the story.

After a full day in Tracy Arm, we ran up to Taku Harbor N58º03.45' W134º02.32' (against a bit of current); through gill netters and a few humpbacks (including a baby). Molly had helm watch for a good portion of the run; took the task seriously; and did a good job - even tried her hand at steering by mag compass which is counter-intuitive and comical at the start (if one is not attempting it in the midst of a lightning squall off the north end of Taiwan). Taku has a very nice public float which made overnighting there easy.

27 July 0430 underway, under a bright full moon, headed for Juneau - actually north of Juneau at Auke Bay, where we docked last year at the end of our North Pacific crossing. Dorothy, Molly & Kelly headed for the Mendenhall Glacier, the fish hatchery and downtown shops, while Mac, Rusty and I made a visit to the Juneau Urgent Care facility.

Those bug bites back at the beautiful white sand beach at Pruth Bay... while everyone else's eventually healed, mine developed rashes, and in the past few days the rashes turned bright purple-red! Still itching like crazy too! Concerned that I might have some local version of a flesh-eating bacterial disease, I thought I should get it looked at while there was still a chance to save my limbs. After an exhaustive medical history - including parents, siblings, kids and g'kids histories (one does acquire a fair amount of medical history in six decades; in response to a question on the form which asks the cause of my listed orthopedic injuries and subsequent multiple surgeries, I simply stated "full-contact life")... anyway when I finally did get to see the doc, he looked at the rashes, said "wow!"; "does it itch?"; "I don't think it's infected.. (I didn't either)" and "come back if it gets worse". Apparently my limbs are not in immediate jeopardy of amputation.

28 July we took Molly & Kelly to the Juneau airport for their flights to Seattle, then Santa Rosa; very sorry to see them go; they've been good sports and great company and we hope they'll come back and crew with us in the future. Rusty misses them too. Dorothy, Mac and I spent the day getting the boat into some kind of order after the rushed departure and 3+ week cruise. Writing this the morning of the 29th, we're not done yet, but made a pretty good dent in things yesterday. This morning we picked up a rental car and will do some touristy things this afternoon.