SITKA TO TAKATZ BAY
Sunday,
July 5th
We are now officially
on our way back down from Alaska, as we made our way from Sitka to Takatz Bay,
a 10 hour run. We didn’t really want to go that far in one day but the weather
always dictates, and tomorrow is predicted to be SUPER ugly in Chatham Strait
which is where we are headed this week. Very high winds are coming in late
tonight into tomorrow with gusts up to 40mph, and torrential rain, so it was
our goal to get somewhere we could hide out. It made for a very long day of 6AM
departure and 4PM arrival. It was another whale show today as we transited the
narrower parts early in Peril Strait. So many whales it was crazy! We saw a Mom
teaching a baby to tail slap, we saw groups of humpbacks bubble feeding and fin
slapping, it was so fun! That was when it was calm. The worst water was the
last 20 miles of Peril Strait, exactly where it was nasty when we were headed
the other direction on our way to Sitka. We turned south into Chatham around
2PM to some wind and 1’-2’ seas but nothing as bad as what we’d just been
through. All along we were taking on the nose (bow) with wind and tide moving
together (although coming at us) so it wasn’t too awful. The last 30 minutes outside
Takatz Bay, a giant catamaran style yacht went barreling 20 knots+ past our
three boats clearly trying to beat us to Takatz, and threw us an ENORMOUS wake
to contend with that sent things flying. Such an ass. When we got in the back
bay of Takatz, sure enough he was anchored in a prime location all settled in.
I wanted to go say something but I am TERRIBLE at confrontation, and John decided
it wouldn’t do any good anyway, but we were all furious. Huntress threw down an
anchor and the other two boats rafted on either side of us as we quickly settled
in, everyone a tad cranky after a long day of travel. Takatz is another
stunning anchorage with high peaks surrounding us and waterfalls everywhere. I’ve
also seen bears here before so convinced John to take me out on an exploration
cruise. Bryans were too wiped out from the long day, but Abells joined us and
it became our Happy Hour cocktail cruise. It was high tide and just very
lightly sprinkling, and I knew tomorrow would be an indoor day with the rain coming
our way. We were able to make it nearly all the way to the head of the bay
which is out of the water at low tide, but about 4’-6’ for us – and the reward
showed up! A beautiful brown bear was grazing on the shoreline, tearing through
the sedge grass. The bear was completely unbothered by us so we were able to
drift in pretty close without scaring it, to the point we could hear it tearing
the grass and chewing, it was just so COOL! After a while we murmured our gratitude
and goodbyes to this beautiful creature and headed back to the flotilla.
Everyone is beat as mentioned, so dinner on our own. John and I played cards
for a couple hands before calling it a night at 8PM – we’d been up since 5AM to
see the kids off to the airport at 5:30AM, so it was a very long day.
 |
| Gorgeous Brown Bear, have a lot of pictures I loved |
This is the jerk that swamped us
Map of Our trip today
No comments