Pacific NW

Expeditions

The morning was again clear, with 25 knots of wind on our nose. Clarence Strait was ugly and we pounded into it for hours and hours, waves sweeping the deck, but we remained dry behind the dodger. It was our first taste of Alaska’s bigger, wider and windier waterways. Around 2PM we entered Ernest Sound and had a fantastic 22 mile tack into Santa Anna Inlet, where we spent the night. Thousands of moon jellyfish (non-stinging) filled the bay, looking like ghostly baseballs. Ice lined the shores, and an old rusting steam donkey lay neglected on the beach. Near sundown we explored on foot a river that empties into our anchorage. The river led up to a lake, and what we found there stopped all three of us in our tracks, speechless. There, in the still evening twilight on the lake, were a dozen or so trumpeter swans. They called out as they slowly paddled around the lake, and their calls echoed and reverberated into the snow-covered mountains and hills beyond the lake. While I cannot find the words to describe it, I can say the whole scene and the echoing trumpet calls were sublime, they sent shivers down my back. I will never forget that sound, nor the effect it had on me. A truly amazing moment in time. We walked back to the boat in silence, and on the way Lee and I found a set of wolf fangs and teeth in the moss in the woods. For dinner we cooked a pizza of Alaskan proportions. It was so large that it continued to cook itself hours after we took it off the fire, and it was, of course, delicious.