Day 44 –Juneau to Tracy Arm

Had a wonderful day yesterday and I thank you all for your birthday wishes online, facebook, email, etc. It’s hard to answer all of them and acknowledge individually when I have fleeting connectivity. Found my Eskimo spear fisherman carved out of ivory and whale bone and I love him. We had another fabulous meal at SALT and the Malmos insisted on treating us to dinner, thank you! After a stop at the Red Dog for the traditional Duck Fart birthday shot, we walked back to the boat and all collapsed into bed. This morning it is clear with a few clouds but lots of blue sky and fairly warm. A fishing boat decided to do a little gill netting right in the main channel this morning which is a good sign for us sports fishermen, are the salmon finally here? YAY!

An uneventful, no whale sightings, but smooth trip south from Juneau to a place called Tracy Arm, a beautiful fiord that stretches 25 miles in where it ends in at Sawyer Glacier, which spits out heavy amounts of icebergs. In fact, it is the source of the very first icebergs we saw out in the main channel on our way to Juneau a couple weeks ago. These icebergs are nothing like what we saw in Glacier Bay, instead they seem to calve off in enormous chunks and there are hundreds of them. We chose to anchor just inside Tracy Arm at the entrance to debate whether or not we will do the trip tomorrow all the way to the glacier as it will require some berg dodging. Our bay also had a few bergs we had to navigate around to find our anchorage. We named it “Bob Bay” because it has no name on the chart. Seemed like a fitting name since the neighboring cove is “William (“Bill”) Cove”. We of course put the crab pot down because that is just what we do – always in search of crab – but were skunked, I think it was too rocky. Hippy is very unhappy after a couple active days in Juneau, so I took a pain pill and had a long afternoon nap – was glorious. Late afternoon we went in the whaler around the bay and outside to investigate the bergs up close, the patterns are so fascinating and these bergs are bright blue, they are so pretty. We snagged more glacial ice for the evening cocktails, which the Malmos enjoyed. Dinner was tenderloin steak, baked potato, tomato-basil-mozz salad, followed by a round of Hearts. John won, again.

LOTS of iceberg pictures today and tomorrow, sorry but I think they are all so beautiful!