JUNE 6, 2022 – FINGERS BAY TO MUIR INLET TO SANDY COVE

It’s windy today in our little cove! One thing we’ve noticed about Glacier Bay is that the waters are not usually very calm in here. Certainly not the big water you get in the straits sometimes but there always seems to be chop. Of course GB has a very deep series of inlets and passages, carved by the glaciers 300 years ago (sometime look up the story of the little ice age from 1700s in this area), so a lot of water has to move in and out with the tides each day. That, and the winds come screaming down the mountain peaks. We are getting buffeted around on our anchorage this morning, really testing out how well the anchor will hold, and it’s doing its job nicely. Today we have decided to cruise the Muir Inlet rather than Tarr Inlet (which is where the iconic Margerie glacier is located) just because we’ve been to the Margerie glacier before. Our goal is to see new scenery. The trip is about 35 miles to the head of Muir Inlet, then another 25 miles back to Sandy Cove, our anchorage for tonight. So today is an all day site-seeing day cruising in our water RV.

Glacier Bay is not only a national park preserved for us humans to enjoy, it is a fiercely protected sanctuary for our wildlife. As mentioned yesterday, the shorelines are protected waters for the humpback feeding grounds, but the park also protects seal breeding grounds and other key areas within the park, so you can’t always access every channel and cove. If you have a pet onboard your boat, it is not allowed on shore for “potty” breaks within the park; it is kept unspoiled by human/pet presence. On our trip today up Muir, we are only allowed to go so far, as the final leg of Muir Inlet is closed to motorized traffic this time of year. After cruising a couple hours, as we approached the demarcation line of the end of our permissible waterways, we found ourselves amongst icebergs, increasing in numbers as we made our way to the end. We cut our speed to 5 knots to allow safe passage through the bergs, as a direct and hard hit could do serious damage. As everyone knows the part you see above the water is a fraction of what’s below the water, so you can’t underestimate the danger. During our cruise up the Muir we could see a very large glacier looming above in the distance growing larger by the hour, and once we’d reached the end were treated to a magnificent view of this “hanging glacier” --the RIGGS GLACIER. We were fortunate that the weather cooperated this morning for our trip so we had good visibility, with the sun peeking through the clouds just enough to illuminate the glacier. The entire morning the wind was at our backs so the cruise up was very pleasant, but upon turning around and heading back, it became quite choppy and rough, complicated by a pretty significant storm that washed over us with pounding rain, and poor visibility. The weather changes so quickly here. By 2:30 we found ourselves, and 3 other boats on the radar, heading for Sandy Cove to find shelter for the rest of the day and overnight. With plenty of room to anchor for all, we found our respective anchorages and hunkered down. It was very unusual for there to be so many boats in one harbor. Glacier Bay is a much larger area than the San Juan Islands, yet only 25 boats per day are allowed in the entire park, but it is true that there are only a handful of viable places to anchor as everything is so deep.

We spent the rest of the afternoon reading and doing some light housework, and I prepped dinner which was Thai Street Noodles again (Pad Kee Mao). We contemplated asking the neighboring boat over for cocktails, they are from Kirkland and we met them on the dock at Hoonah, but the rain was relentless all afternoon, we figured they wouldn’t want to join us. After dinner the rain finally quit and we had the best surprise of all, a humpback came through our little harbor feeding on the perimeter, close up and personal! It circled the bay twice more this evening that we witnessed with our eyes, and then the most special of all was lying in bed tonight with the portholes open, and hearing that blast of expelled air right outside our window as the whale came through one more time. Lucky us.