Pacific NW

Expeditions

Today was an Alaskan day, and a day of whales! Neptune and I began the morning with a large breakfast of eggs. We steamed out of Oliver Inlet just before highwater slack which gave us maximum water under our keel. I backtracked out exactly the way I came in and it was scary even with the extra 5 feet of water! The daylight revealed rocks, and sunken reefs everywhere. It is truly a miracle we made it all right the other night! Finally we gained the entrance and brought the boat up to speed in deep water. We motored up Stephen’s Passage in the sunshine admiring the Mendenhall Glacier to our right and the steep jagged peaks of Admiralty Island to our left. Suddenly a massive black hulk surfaced 30 feet from the boat. There She Blows!! Our first Humpback of this voyage! It was easily 50 feet long, a giant! It surfaced a few more times, sending forth plumes of spray from its blowhole each time, and eventually swam away from the boat. That was only the beginning of what was to come! Around noon we rounded the Mansfield Peninsula under sail in light winds when we saw three more Humpbacks. They were surfacing very slowly and throwing their flukes high into the air. An hour later we became surrounded by several pods of Orca whales, at least 15 total. Several of the whales made direct charges at the boat before resuming their feeding. The males had very tall dorsal fins and were swimming quite rapidly. An hour after that we sighted the plumes of three more Humpback whales, just as we were turning into our anchorage for the night. We drifted out and were approached by the pod at point-blank range. One of them set off the depth sounder as it swam directly under the boat at a depth of 10 feet. The spray issued forth from their blowholes enveloped the the decks and the crew of Silent Partner in a fine, musky mist. Several times they surfaced on their backs, bringing their mouthparts and heads out of the water. It was a spectacle the likes of which we have never seen. All we could do was laugh as they repeatedly surfaced, their mouths big enough to swallow “Modulus” whole. Just their arching backs were taller than the top of the lifelines on deck. We had the privilege of drifting among the pod for 1/2 hour until they swam slowly away. Coming into Funter Bay we were rapidly approached by a pod of 8-10 dolphins that flashed briefly by the boat. Tonight “Silent Partner” is moored to an old float in front of an abandoned gold mine. Neptune and I set to shore and explored the mines at sunset. Many of the buildings were in such disrepair that it would have been dangerous to enter, and others were dangerous to enter but we did so anyways. Huge broken timbers held back collapsing mine shafts that went deep into the mountainsides. We went a ways into one of the mineshafts, but it became flooded and the water was too deep to proceed further. Shipping crates were piled in many of the buildings and were stamped with a date of 1910. One of the buildings had a “welcome mat” presumably for the bears. It was a series of planks with nails driven through, facing up and at the base of the door, about 5 feet square. Outside we found some good dry alder, of which we cut and hauled back to the boat. “Silent Partner” has got a wood fire going now, and smells quite pleasant with the alder smoke. To the north the Aurora Borealis is giving us a grand show and the sky is riddled with twinkling stars. I stood out on the decks in my long johns for some time, breathing in the cold night air, and quite pleased with my present state of affairs.