6/14/2024 - 6/17/2024 St. Florian and Kinship arrived in Juneau in a light rain and tied up in Harris Harbor. Second Verse is too tall to go under the bridge before Harris Harbor (an issue for sailboats) so they were tied up in Douglas Harbor on the other side of Gastineau Channel in Juneau.
The sun came out! This enabled us to have all sorts of adventures in Juneau. The city is named after Joe Juneau, a gold prospector, who along with his partner Richard Harris, found a large gold deposit in the late 1800’s. Juneau was named the capital of Alaska in 1906, when the government of what was then the District of Alaska was moved from Sitka as dictated by the U.S. Congress in 1900.
Today Juneau has a population of about 32,000 people, but that swells each day by about 6,000 cruise ship visitors.
6/15/2024 We used some of our time in Juneau to take care of some projects. Phil and Annette rented a U-Haul truck to make a run to Costco and Safeway. One of the locals gave us the tip that renting a U-Haul at $20 per day plus miles was much more affordable than the rental cars in town that were aimed at cruise ship visitors. Annette and I also knocked out laundry at the large laundromat walking distance from the marina. Phil changed the oil on Kinship (well, Brad changed it while Phil watched. No one took pictures of this for me while I was out grocery shopping). Brad also worked on his broken stern thruster. If you remember the post from Shearwater (5/22), our stern thruster made a horrible noise and then gave us no-thrust. Brad diagnosed it as a broken collar and ordered a new one to be delivered to Juneau. He was able to install the new part through the lazarette and confirm the fix worked. This was great news as we were afraid the entire gear unit might need to be replaced and the boat must be hauled out to make that repair.
Meanwhile, Bill and Mike spent the day fishing with their friend Mike, who lives in Juneau. I am pleased to report that Mike finally got his fish!
6/16/2024 Sunday Phil, Annette, Brad and Marya decided to take a ferry ride. Our original plan was to take the ferry from Juneau to Haines. Some other boaters had suggested this as an alternative to the long trip up and back in our own boats. The Lynn Canal and Chilkoot Inlet are very long, 62 miles from Juneau to Haines, 74 miles from Juneau to Skagway. There are no good anchorages along the way so it is either run the whole way to Skagway in one day or make it two days up, with a stop in Haines. Due to the long fetch on Lynn Canal, seas can build quickly when the winds are up. The ferry leaves from just north of Juneau, in Auke bay at 7:00am and returns to that same point at 9:45pm on the same day. Our original plan to get off the ferry in Haines hit a bit of a snag when we discovered the ferry lands four miles outside of town. The Purser on the ferry convinced us to stay on and go all the way to Skagway to take in the view. We decided to do this and have no regrets. While it was a very long day, we were able to fully enjoy the view without periodically yelling “log”. The view was stunning. The ferry handled the seas well. The ferry had a full service galley and served breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Our little boats would have been quite uncomfortable on this trip due to wind and waves on this day.
Meanwhile, the Second Verse crew of Bill, Sally, and Mike took a seaplane flight over the glaciers.
On our return from Skagway, we were treated to a sunset. An actual sunset. You must understand we have been going to bed long before sunset for a while so this is the first vivid sunset we have seen since we set out. We only have about three hours of real darkness at this point. Only a few days until solstice!
6/17/2024 Monday we had a later start after our very long day trip to Skagway. Juneau Mike (friend of Bill, Mike, and Phil from work days. The same friend who took Bill and Mike fishing.) gave us a ride to the Mendenhall Glacier National Park. We couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful day for this trip through the park.
We had a wonderful day in the Mendenhall Glacier National Park, but were exhausted by the end of the day. My Apple Watch tells me I walked 7.5 miles. I definitely felt it by the end of the day. We leave Juneau tomorrow to spend a week meandering around the area west of Juneau. We have about 10 loosely defined days until our reservation to go into Glacier Bay.
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