7/16/2024 - 7/21/2024
7/16/2024 We left Baranof Warm Springs in early morning after assuring ourselves the small craft advisory had dropped and took the four hour run to Security Bay, Kuiu Island. My cruising log entry says “Rain, rain, and more rain”. We spent a very calm, but wet night in Security Bay. We did another scoop and run on a crab trap with no results (Where are all of the crabs?) We delayed our Security Bay departure until almost 1pm waiting for a storm to blow through the Chatham Strait. Brad was watching buoy observations in the strait to see when the winds and gusts started to fall off. At one point we were seeing 22 knot winds with gusts to 30 knots. I am sure the boat can handle that kind of weather, but I don’t see the need to prove that I can tolerate that. With our delayed start the storm passed through and we had a very tolerable ride over to the town of Kake.
7/17/2024 Kake, Alaska on Kupreanof Island is a small village of about 500 residents.
The region of Kake has been inhabited by the Tlingit indigenous people for thousands of years. The Tlingit of the Kake region gained a reputation among early European and American explorers of being strong and powerful. Some conflicts with early explorers have been documented by historians. (Ref: Wikipedia)
While walking through town we met a local man (Tim) who teaches the Tlingit language to the locals. He is working with the last three “First language speakers” left in the area, one of them being his grandmother. He told us that during the first half of the twentieth century the town of Kake was a much larger community fueled by logging and fishing. However by the 1960’s the logging and fishing industries collapsed, many people left, and the community is now trying to create a sensitive, sustainable village focused on the Tlingit tribe activities.
7/19/2024 We left Kake and traveled to Portage Bay inlet on Kupreanof Island. It was a cloudy, foggy day to start. The weather improved some as the day went on, but it still was not sunny. We anchored just inside the bay in about forty feet of water with a good mud bottom. We got a little bit of non-rainy weather (I still can’t call it sunny) and then it poured again.
7/20/2024 After another very calm night we started motors at 0730 to pull anchor at 0800 and head in to Petersburg. There was a massive amount of kelp in the bay, which made pulling anchor a challenge. We had put a crab trap down the day before smack dab in the middle of the three boats. When we woke there was no sign of it anywhere. Brad deployed the drone to see if he could spot the red-and-white float. No luck. He deployed the dinghy and zone-searched the area hoping the dinghy sonar would pick up the trap and/or line. No luck. Kinship and Second Verse were anchors aweigh and waiting for us so we decided to give up. We were not particularly happy about losing the trap, but were more unhappy about leaving a hazard to navigation behind with our name on it! Just as we were leaving I caught site of a trap float in the middle of the bay opening. Brad turned the boat around and we went back to chase it. The float was up for a few tantalizing minutes and then disappeared again. Now the hunt was on. The chart plotter helped us pinpoint where we saw it. We made a few more circles around the area and were getting disheartened. Brad put the boat across the tidal flow hoping to disrupt it enough to get the float to come back up. That worked enough to get sight on the float. The boat drifted sideways towards it and I snagged the float with a boat hook from the cockpit (back of the boat). There was so much kelp wrapped around the float that it was preventing it from, well, floating. The flood tide had gotten so strong that it also held the float under water. We were just shocked that the tidal flow coupled with the large amount of kelp drug the crab pot all the way into the center of the bay opening. The crab pot was empty (no crabs) and the bait bag had been picked clean (somebody had a good snack). The trap itself was beaten up and looked like it had been drug upside down over rocks. We have put a note in our logbook, never place a crab trap here again!
7/20/2024 We tied up in Petersburg for a few days. We all did lots of laundry and shopped at a very nice grocery store that actually had a large variety of fresh fruits and vegetables. We enjoyed the local dining scene which gave us many choices. Petersburg is a great place to refresh and restock.
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