Dear Chubby Fans,

It was a wet and gloomy Sunday morning in Petersburg but I met up with Gary Lundgren, the fellow I overtook in Wrangell Narrows who was rowing from Anacortes Washington. We had a nice breakfast together and swapped seafaring tales. The pace was liesurely because the ebb did not start until about 1 pm so there was no way to get out of town until then. After breakfast I tried to take a walking tour of the town but the fine drizzle finally started soaking through the layers I was wearing, so I went back to the dock and got ready to depart.

Had a quick 20 mile run up Frederick Sound, riding the tide. Put into Portage Bay, a large and completely protected inlet with a very narrow entrance. We anchored in 25 feet of water and tried a little fishing. First I caught a rather large sculpin which is a remarkably ugly fish with a huge mouth and inch-long poison spines on its gill covers. I dispatched it quickly and filleted it, not to eat, but to use as halibut bait. I put out two lines with the tempting looking fillets but after an hour or so, I got tired of waiting, pulled in the gear and tidied up the boat for an early departure in the next morning.

One of the lines came up with quite an effort but not with the usually theatrics of a hooked fish. Turns out it was a huge 20-armed starfish repleat with a scattering of spines borrowed from its cousin, the sea urchin. Not wanting to argue with the second spiny monster of the afternoon, I cut it away and let sink back to bottom to enjoy its windfall meal along with the 10-foot strand of kelp it was trailing.

These spiny encounters fit right in with the gruesome tales related to me in the morning at the dock by a group of three old-timer retired fishermen. They were hanging out in the Harbor Masters office when I walked in to pay my slip fee and somehow after a brief exchange of pleasantries, I got them started on the subject of sand flies. Turns out these voracious little crusteceans which live on the sea bottom, will immediately swarm any fish that is hooked by the long-liners and thus immobilized. These fisherman said that if you didn't pull your longline within three hours of setting it, you could pull up a 30-40 lb halibut that would be nothing but a bag of skin with a skeleton in it. When dropped on deck this yard-long bag would burst open and thousands of squirming sand fleas would swarm across the deck. They assured me unanimously that if I ever wanted to get rid of my mother-in-law or wife, that would be very efficient way to do it, though they cautioned that "it might take a little longer than three hours if there's any size to her".

About that time I looked out the office window and saw that the tide was starting to pull the entrance buoy to seaward, so I politely said "Listens fellows, I'd love to continue this conversation with you, but I've got to catch the ebb. Take care" And so it was that with images of poison spines, prickly starfish, and the nibbling hordes of sand fleas patiently waiting 20 feet below Chubby's hull, I snuggled under my sleeping bag and prayed for a dreamless sleep.

The next day was punctuated by encounters with whales on all side as we made our way northward toward the glaciers of Tracy Arm. Late in the afternoon as we rounded Point Astley and headed into Holkham Bay, from which the Tracy Arm extends 20 miles eastward, we encountered our first iceberg. Not of the size that would sink the Titanic but nonetheless exciting as a new experience. With tide running against us and not wanting to burn fuel running against it, we decided to anchor in a beautiful little inlet just at the entrance to Tracy Arm. I turned in early in order to catch the start of the flood tide at 5 am the next morning. The alarm went off at 4:30 but when I stuck my groggy head out the hatch, all I could see was fog and rain. It rained hard until noon and the peaks and glaciers surrounding the anchorage did not become visible until noon. By then I had missed the tide so we had no choice but to hang at anchor and hope for better weather the next morning.

Late in the day, a couple motored in aboard their Alberg 38, Nanook, and anchored nearby. In the meantime, I was exploiting the little fragments of evening sunlight to take a kayak tour of the cove and the surrounding geology. When I returned, I stopped by Nanook, to chat a bit. After checking my social calendar, and finding the evening open, I suggested that we have a little celebration regarding my passing of the 1000-mile mark the previous day. They readily accepted the offer so I paddled back to Chubby and secured a brand new bottle of Bristol Cream Sherry reserved for the occasion and returned to Nanook.

They have been living aboard their beloved Nanook for the last 12 years and generally "stay afloat" by doing caretaking jobs at various resorts throughout the Inside Passage of British Columbia. Nancy was Canadian and Don was English. Their boat was lovingly maintained and looked great even though it was of a 1968 vintage and one of the very early production fiberglass boats. Remarkably enough, after 12 years of wandering the BC coast, this was their first sojourn to Alask. They had exactly the same impression that I did: Alaska is grander, wilder, and richer in wildlife than BC. They were very excited about their trip so far. The swarms of late evening blackflies finally convinced us to end the little party, so I paddled back to Chubby, hoping for a clear sunrise the next day.

Now, with the flood tide an hour later the next morning, the wakeup call wasn't as brutal as the previous day. Like a prayer answered, I awoke to a blue sky and a bright sun peeking over the horizon. Nanook had already left and I got the anchor up and we got out into the flood stream as quickly as we could. A rare sunny, blue-sky day is something to behold and appreciate in this country.

An interesting phenomenon that took me a while to understand makes predicting tidal currents in these fjords a little more complicated than one might think. In a narrow arm of the sea, starting at low tide, the water flows in strongly, producing the flood current that should make for a fast trip up the fjord. Then as the tide falls, the ebb flow gives a fast ride down. In the fjords with the large glaciers and icecaps at their heads, the system is a little more complicated. The tremendous discharge of fresh water from the glaciers actually neutralizes the flood tide current. The salt water is pouring into the channel at a prodiguous rate of course, in order to cause the water level to rise the 15 or 20 feet that it normally does twice daily. However, massive fresh water flow continues unabated by simply flowing over the top of the denser sea water. Thus a boat going upstream must still fight the downstream flow because it is imbedded in the fresh water veneer riding over the incoming saltwater. The flood tide does serve to mitigate the fresh water flow to some extent though so the advantage is not completely lost. The effect is doubled though on the down stream run when ebb and fresh water flow work together. This produces a quick ride out of the fjord.

The Tracy Arm in its first five miles is quite unremarkable. But at the five-mile mark, the north trending channel takes a ninety-degree bend to the east. At that point the drama explodes without the least prelude. Towering three and four thousand foot cliffs of black metamorphic rock drop staight down into thousand foot deep glacier carved channels. Waterfalls come tumbling and leaping down every possible crack and crevice from the glacier draped peaks on all sides. Gull wheel and soar on the updrafts, white specks against the black rock, 2000 feet above the water.

Each bend in the channel reveals new wonders more outrageous than the previous. But then after 15 miles and three hours of motoring up this wonderland, the first of two tidewater glaciers is seen in a side channel off to the north. The air temperature drops 10 degrees to a chilly 40 while the water becomes more and more crowded with icebergs.

We continue straight east, though, to exploit the last of the flood current and come to the end of the fjord where the South Sawyer Glacier unfolds itself in a huge river of chaos. This great tumbling catarac of ice winds its way down from the icecap of the Coast Range. Upon reaching saltwater, its shattered front is constantly dropping giant masses of blue ice into the water, sending large breaking waves radiating outward. Each block emits a thunderous report, like a cannon shot, as it cracks away from the face. This is a humbling and fearsome display of nature's inexorable forces at work.

And as inconceivable as it might seem, "it is the little snow flower" as John Muir put it, collecting over the eons, that create this massive force which carves mile-deep, mile-wide valleys out of solid granite. One might try to imagine his excitement when he first arrived in Southeast Alaska to see his first living glacier after years of developing his theory of glaciation based only on the remnant glacial landforms of the Yosemite, but never having seen the actual process at work.

Then after 20 minutes or so of tacking back and forth near the glacier terminus, an especially loud booming crack came resounding from the ice wall. The volume of that sound, which ominously enough had no accompanying toppling of an ice block into the water, convinced us that all our good fortune for the day had been used up, and it was time to catch the ebb back to the safety of the little cove and another peaceful, soundless night at anchor.

A long and sometimes rough 50-mile day brought us to Auke Harbor near the Juneau Airport and 12 miles north of downtown Juneau late last evening. I was able to contact the National Park Service this morning and obtain a cruising permit for Glacier Bay. Only 25 boats per day are allowed in Glacier Bay and permits are normally applied for in advance. With 1200 miles to travel before arriving, there was no way I could predict my arrival date, so as recommended by experienced sailors in these parts, I just called and asked for the permit of a party who had cancelled. I'll arrive there on August 5th and then start my journey southward on August 8th towards the Berkeley Marina (where the wind always blows) and home.

Love...Bill