Sincerely, Denise

PAVLOF HARBOR TO DEEP BAY

Sunday, June 28th

John is anxious to get to the fishing grounds, which for King Salmon is only on the outside – meaning the Gulf of Alaska, there is no King Salmon retention allowed in the interior. This meant he was chomping at the bit to get going. First though, Connie and I had to go retrieve our pots (at 6:30AM). Luckily no rain! Crabbing was a near bust with everything from a giant starfish, a rock crab, a spider crab, and a bullhead, and lots of seaweed in and on our pots. The last pot pulled had 2 nice keepers in it however! So not totally skunked. Speaking of which, we were completely skunked on prawns. It was really strange because normally we get at least one creature from below, one prawn, or spider crab, something…..but both traps had absolutely zero life inside. It was quite disappointing. Such is life on Huntress. Huntress needs to up her game.

Anyway, back at the boat, we soon left Pavlof Harbor headed to Deep Bay for one night with the Bryans, while the Abells headed for Appleton Cove which was on their bucket list for this trip. Whales again everywhere along the journey, especially on the opposite shore across Chatham Strait, spouts every few minutes in the distance. Chatham Strait is known to be notoriously nasty but today it was a millpond as we traveled down to Peril Strait which is the interior route to Sitka, making it super easy to spot the whale spouts. After a nice 4 hour cruise in beautiful Chatham, we turned the corner into Peril Strait and found ourselves in the wind and chop. You might think Peril Strait is named for the weather conditions or high seas, but it’s not. It is named as such because in 1799 a group of Aleut sea otter hunters (hired by the Russian explorers), perished due to toxic shellfish poisoning, over 150 died. Nearby landmarks in Peril Strait are named Deadman’s Reach, and Poison Cove, also in reference to this event. PSP or paralytic shellfish poisoning is something that we have to watch out for in current times as well – Red Tide is another expression. They say only eat the bivalves (mussels, clams, oysters) in months with R's which obviously doesn’t include May through August, which is when we travel. We do consume shellfish from one trusted spot up in Desolation Sound, and have done so for years, but it’s always a concern. As we approached our destination of Deep Bay through a shallow channel, a very large humpback surfaced right in our path. John cut the engines and coasted until it surfaced again so we could see where it was heading, but each time it surfaced it was headed a different direction and basically criss-crossing our route! So we had to pop the boat in and out of gear as we slowly made our way into Deep Bay where Far Niente threw down and anchor and we tied alongside. We ventured out later in the whaler in the wind (brrr) to explore the bays across the channel named Baby Bear Bay and Bear Bay, thinking maybe we’d see a bear, but no such luck. We did get another humpback show though! This humpback was feeding in water as shallow as 20’ at times! Our Garmin showed thick layers of bait in the water so not surprising. A sea lion was also feeding in the bay. We came together for dinner with our respective meals on Far Niente and had a lively discussion on all the transgressions we had as teenagers. Fun night.