JUNE 13, 2022 – JUNEAU TO TRACY ARM (ENTRANCE COVE)

Guess what, it’s POURING again this morning. I was up at 5AM again, and we have an extremely low tide this morning such that we can’t think about leaving our slip until the mega yacht ahead of us leaves, as there is no room to get past them. There’s really no hurry either, it’s 45 miles to Entrance Cove where we will hang out for the afternoon and overnight before transiting to the head of Tracy Arm for glacier viewing and exploration. By 9:30AM the giant “Mirabella” (157’ yacht ahead of us) left the dock we were on our way, and immediately had to turn on the radar as the visibility was terrible. Still pouring we made our way down to Tracy Arm through rather heavy seas but at least it was on our nose not the beam, but safe to say Esperança had a nice salt bath. As I was doing some cleanup at the kitchen sink underway, and gazing out the window, suddenly a giant body was out of the water right in front of me! Two killer whales were hunting between us and shore, one large and one smaller one. The smaller one did a second breach and that was it for the show, except for some dorsal fins slicing through the water. As we crossed the shallow bar into Tracy Arm, the icebergs began to appear through the dreary landscape, but not so many that we had to do any tricky navigation. They float down from the glacier and get hung up on the reef that stretches across the entrance, sitting there like giant aqua mounds. As we arrived at Entrance Cove around 4PM, we were surprised to see a number of boats already here, either staging for the trip up to the glacier tomorrow or they’d been up today. We were also treated to another brown bear sighting! At first we thought this bear was frightened of us (our engines) because it was running down the beach, then stopping to look around, then continuing to graze on the sedge grasses, then it would get up on its hind legs, sniff the air and take off again. But we think there must have been another bear in the vicinity that was posing a threat. This bear was clearly a youngster. Eventually he disappeared back into the forest and the show was over. We had a lively dinner (Pork Kalbi Rice Bowls) on our boat this evening, as Lucky Dog’s diesel heater had decided to go silent on them, otherwise they would have hosted. Shannon baked a beautiful chocolate bundt cake in honor of my upcoming birthday (6/24) to add to the festivities. After some Mexican Train post-dinner everyone retired to their cozy bunks. Not many pictures today due to the dreary nature of the day.