6/3/2024 - 6/7/2024 After three days in the Ketchikan downpour, we headed on to Meyers Chuck.
Teaser, here is a glacier shot from our trip by small jet boat on 6/7/2024. We will get back to that, but the first photo posted is the cover shot, so here it is.
6/4/2024 Meyers Chuck is a tiny village of about 20 people in the summer. We are told only three families stay through the winter. Verne Meyers settled here in the late 1800’s, hence the name. We learned that a Chuck is a body of water that has multiple in/outlets. There is a 325 foot public float (dock) here and we managed to get all three boats tied up at the dock. The weather predictions called for strong winds overnight and this was a good place to wait it out. Meyers Chuck has a small post office, community workshops, forest trails, and friendly locals is an authentic Alaskan destination.
In a rare, non-rainy moment Brad removed the motor from the stern thruster to see if he could diagnose the issue that happened in Shearwater. The good news is that this coupler broke, doing exactly what it is supposed to do to protect the rest of the thruster. The other potential good news is that a replacement has been ordered and will be delivered to Juneau. This coupler can be replaced without pulling the boat out of the water. Hopefully that is the extent of our problem. In the mean time, Brad seems to do quite well without the stern thruster. Luckily for me, he actually knows how to drive a boat and can still get the stern close enough to docks for me to step offf and do my job with the lines.
6/4/2024 We left Meyers Chuck and headed to Wrangell. The weather is still pretty crummy with rain and wind. Second Verse was able to put out a bit of the Main sail on this stretch. It stabilized their run and boosted their speed. This photo is the first one I have with Second Verse in the lead!
I really should have more to say about Wrangell, but I’m at a bit of a loss. We spent two nights here. The marina is about 1.5 miles from the grocery store. We walked into town, hit the grocery store and the hardware store. The most exciting thing for me was functioning 50 amp power at the dock, which allowed me to get five loads of laundry done from the boat.
6/6/2024 We left Wrangell and headed through the Wrangell Narrows to end up in Petersburg.
6/7/2024 Jetboat trip to the Le Conte Glacier. We talked about taking one of our boats up to the glacier, but we had many reports of large amounts of ice floating in the water. Instead of putting any of our boats at risk we opted for a paid boat ride to the glacier. The tours were all booked up when we initially contacted the tour company. Our crack tour agent, Phil, talked them into adding an additional trip just for the seven of us. The cruise ship trips were early morning and mid-day ending by four pm. Our special trip was a five to nine pm. On the plus side, there weren’t any other boats there during our visit. On the negative side, the wind kicked up and we had a fairly rough ride back. We had the infamous “square waves” that happen when the current and wind work against each other.
This was an amazing trip for all of us.
Following the wonderful story of your trip!!! Just astonishing!!!
Judy