Pacific NW

Expeditions

We awoke to rain this morning which soon turned to snow. At 0900 hrs we raised the jib and raced westward through Peril Strait in 20 knots of SE wind. The weather soon cleared and we had sun on our backs and whales spouting all around. So many whales! Neptune and I scarcely bother pointing them out to each other anymore, they have become as common as bald eagles! The gods smiled kindly upon my navigational skills today and we arrived at Sergius Narrows on the minute of slack water. The tide rushes into and out of the ocean at great velocity here, and today it was teeming with all kinds of wildlife. We saw our first sea otters of the trip here, followed by many more, lounging on their backs in the water. Another half-dozen Humpbacks were feeding both in the narrows and out in the ocean. I spotted a patch of trees that seemed to be afflicted with a white fungus. I was astonished when I trained the binoculars on them. There, before my eyes, was the greatest conglomeration of bald eagles I have ever seen. Hundreds upon hundreds were roosting in the branches of about 20 spruce trees and all over the seaweed and rocks on shore below them. It was surreal. Their white heads were so numerous that the trees appeared white! The boat scared them off as we passed by in the narrows and they all took to the air at once. When I say they blocked out the sun as they took flight, I mean it! All the spruce branches lifted and swayed momentarily when they were relieved from the weight of the eagles. We entered out into the swells of the North Pacific Ocean into a fantastic shoreline. I will not attempt to describe the scene, other than I felt like Dorothy coming upon the Emerald Palace in the Wizard of Oz. We turned south toward Sitka, through an incredible chain of archipelagos and narrow winding channels. We were then greeted by yet another tree loaded with birds, giving it a pink appearance in the distance. What kind was this?! Through the binoculars I spotted dozens of plastic pink flamingos! They were all carefully secured to the limbs of a giant spruce tree, all the way up to its highest branches! It was our first sign of civilization as we neared Sitka. We are now on a volcanic coast that has vast lava flows and blowholes. Several huge volcanic peaks complete with their tops blown off and craters dominate the western horizon, several miles out to sea. The combination of these volcanoes, the pink flamingos, the sun, and all these archipelagos make me feel like we’re sailing through a Hawaiian twighlight zone! I contacted the Sitka harbormaster on the VHF and received moorage for the night along the outer breakwater of the marina. I like Sitka. It has lots of ocean-going boats in the harbor, no big cruise ships, and is in the most beautiful setting (by far) of all of the SE Alaskan towns. We walked through town and watched the sun set behind the crater of Mt. Edgecumbe.