FORD’S TERROR TO TAKU HARBOR
Sunday,
June 14th
Last
night around 6pm, John and I decided to go pull the shrimp pots because we
weren’t sure what the weather would be today, as it’s predicted to pour. There’s
nothing less fun that pulling up shrimp pots in the rain and wind. It was a
calm and beautiful evening so why not! John bought these cool line reels at the boat
show this year that work like a hose reel, you just turn the crank and your
line neatly wraps up. For years we’ve been hand coiling which is a lot of work
and bulk. Anyway, the pots didn’t yield much, I think we got a total of 35 prawns
and not large ones by any means. As we pulled the first pot out of the water and set it
on the back of the whaler, these little tiny creatures the size of a maggot
were dropping all over the bottom of the boat. They had made their way into the bait box feeding on the pellets and got caught in the fine mesh. At first I though it was sea
lice but on closer inspection they were teeny prawn larvae, so clearly we had
dropped into the maternity ward! We tried to return as many as possible to the
water so they can grow up and be BIG prawns!
Today
we lounged around most of the day because we had to wait for slack water at the
narrows. As mentioned in previous posts, it’s a tricky entry into and out of Ford’s
Terror because all the water to and from the upper reaches of the fjord has to
flow in and out of a narrow and shallow entrance. If you don’t catch it at
slack the currents can get up to 12 knots which is a lot, and being narrow you
wouldn’t have any control over where the currents would push you which would be
basically onto the rocks on either side. It is prudent to be respectful of
nature’s power and wait for slack! Anyway, slack occurred around 2:30pm and we all slipped through the narrows effortlessly, after
which we made our way north nearly 5 hours in the pouring rain to a place
called Taku Harbor, about 25 miles south of Juneau. This will set us up for a
shorter cruising day tomorrow to get to Juneau. Upon arrival at Taku around
7:30pm we all grabbed a spot on the public dock and hunkered down for the night
as it continued to pour.
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| Many photos of our favorite waterfall, the pitcher. It's raining today so the photos are gray and dark |
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| Fleet departing Ford's Terror, raining so it's a dark pic |
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| Lastly, a cute photo from Wrangell where they have several bear sculptures decorated with murals |
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