We have a permit to stay here 5 days and 4 nights. We had a mandatory boater orientation upon arrival; which we attended at noon, which also was attended by a couple of our favorite YouTubers from the Pacific Northwest, Allison and James. I saw on Instagram that they were in Juneau when we were and they were headed to Glacier Bay, so was kind of expecting to see them. They did that Ocean Falls video that I linked to a while back.
We could not have ordered better weather! Wow!! The sea state was super smooth – hardly a whisper of wind. The low lying clouds lifted and the sun came out in full force. The trip was utterly glorious!
We had a bevy of sea otters greet us at Barlett Cove. Up to this point, we have probably seen less than 10 the entire trip. They are thick up here! We also saw a couple of whales, some sea lions, and porpoises. According to the ranger, sea otters are endangered: in an effort to preserve them some were reestablished here and are thriving. Some folks aren’t thrilled, as they eat a lot of crab.
We took a nice walk to stretch our legs after the orientation. You can only be on the dock for 3 hours in a 24-hour period, so after our 3 hours, we headed out into the bay to anchor. While we were setting the anchor, a gigantic storm blew in. We only had one chance to set. We are a little closer to one boat than we care for, if it were calm we would have moved. We had winds over 30 knots and taking the swell on the beam, it got quite spicy for a bit! The entire evening was rolly. This is such a benign adjective – rolly = uncomfortable. After having our set anchor tested in gale force winds, we decided not to move, we are 180 feet from the closest boat and we are leaving the boat to take an 8 hour tour first thing in the morning.
Our neighbors Knot to Worry are out somewhere on their dinghy and the crane is not secured and is banging repeatedly on their boat. It is painful to watch. Jim would have gone over to secure it somehow, but it would have been too dangerous to deploy the dinghy. We were relieved when they came back.
After the gale, Isla Mera anchored next to us. That is our friends from Bozeman, Tom and Corrine. We met them in Anacortes. They have shared their wisdom and experience and am grateful for their friendship! They are recovering from a bout of covid, so did not come over. We waved heartily at each other.
We woke up to dead calm this morning. We had a good sleep! The tour loads at 6:50 am, so better get ready!
Talk Soon.