Juneau, Alaska

After such an amazing few weeks in this part of Alaska, it was time to get to civilization so we could get provisions and fuel to continue our journey south to Vancouver Island.

Juneau is the capital city of Alaska. Located in the Gastineau Channel and the Alaskan panhandle, it is a unified municipality and the second largest city in the United States by area.

The harbor is run by the municipality and is in excellent shape.  The only drawback is there are no reservations and it is a free for all, first come, first served craziness that leaves no one sure there will be a place to stay....  That and the 50+ whale watching cattle boats that come and go every day, leaves this place sometimes quite frustrating.

We lucked out that our new friends, Dewey and Debbie arrived in their boat a few minutes before us and scouted out a spot big enough to accommodate Blowin' Bubbles.

An hour or so after we settled in Dewey and his grandson, took us all the way to Costco for our much needed supplies...  It just keeps happening that people are so amazingly kind and generous here!

Shelley quickly became new "best friends" with Alison, one of the harbor staff when it was discovered they both liked wine...  (who knew).  On our second night, Alison, and her partner Steve visited us and invited Shelley and I to check their crab pots the next day...

As you might know, our freezer has been on the blink for almost a month now and getting the part up here has become an exercise in futility.  While it still works (sort of) we have to keep turning it on and off every few hours...  It turned out that Steve had a freezer he could no longer use so just GAVE it to us!!!  WOW!  Not only does it work great, it is actually a better model than the one we had and is bigger so we can store more food.  We took a day and installed it where the old one lived, but to do that we had to take a part of the wall out to get it in!  It is in now and looks and works GREAT!  Thank you Steve...

Everyone we speak to tells us a cruising guide is imperative when you travel the inside passage.  Finding one turned out to be a nightmare.  We did not have time to order one online so scavenged every local place we could think of to find one...  In the end, it was local people who rescued us.  Bob and Patrick from MV Alaskan Legend let us take one of theirs and we just had to order a replacement from Amazon, which they should get in a week or two...

On our last morning we fueled the boat and began our journey south.  We will arrive in Petersburg, AK tomorrow and expect to take a month or so to reach the south end of Vancouver Island.

Glacier National Park, Alaska - BEAUTIFUL!

We sailed (and motored) overnight to the area where the Glacier National Park is located Near Juneau, Alaska.  Thankfully it was completely uneventful!  The rudder repair is working great.

  
We arrived at Icy Straight at daybreak and decided that we would find a spot to anchor and get some rest.  Just about that time we received and email saying that our request to bring our boat into the National Park was approved and we had been issued a two day permit.

View from the mast! Outside the park.

With this news we anchored just outside of the park overnight until our permit kicked in the next morning.  The park issues only 25 permits per day 2 go to big cruise boats, 3 to smaller passenger boats then 10 to smaller commercial boats and only 10 of those go to private yachts... Lucky us!

Entering the park is very restrictive (in a good way) to protect the environment and the critters who call the park home...

We arrived for our mandatory orientation at 11 am and had some time to explore the area by foot.  They took the time to preserve some very large humpback whale bones that had been hit by a cruise ship a number of years ago... They also have an interesting museum that shows the flora and fauna from the area.

While we were checking in we met the crew from a lovely (Dutch built) motor vessel called Lakesider.  They had passengers and were showing them the park in high style...  We kept them on our AIS all three days as they basically showed us where to go to see the best stuff!  Thanks guys!

We underestimated the time it takes to get around the park so asked for an additional day to explore.  The folks there were kind enough to accommodate us so now we were all set.

The first night we anchored in Shag Cove in 75' (which is the norm around here).  We were surrounded by huge cliffs carved out by the glacier... Unfortunately, we have no pictures as the clouds settled in just above our masts!  The next morning we woke up to a bear on shore, so decided to make our way to the glaciers...  

Stunning is an understatement, as they were big, beautiful and sometimes scary as the creaked and groaned as they calved off massive chunks of ice...

  

MV Lakesider....

Calving glaciers1

  The next few  day we dedicated our time to finding as many animals as we could...  Shelley was in heaven! We saw seals, bears (black & brown), mountain goats, humpback whales, sea lions, otters, orcas and many kinds of birds...  It was like being in a zoo, only it was us who was in a cage....

At the end of our time we made our way toward Juneau  where we met more incredible people...  We stopped the for the night about halfway here and met Dewy and Debbie (and their daughter Misty and her son, Maverick) who within minutes of meeting us shared salmon and crab with us...  I keep saying this, but bares repeating.   The people of Alaska are amazing! 

Yesterday we arrived in Juneau were we will provision and get ready to travel the last thousand miles to Vancouver Island where we hope to spend the winter.

More soon!