May 25, 2005 Deep Water Bay to Seward Day 86
Our plan was to spend the day and night at Tiger Glacier. But when we got to the fjord it was completely packed with icebergs and a wind was coming up. I am getting tired of ice navigation in the wind. Then I called in a satellite weather report. It was grim. Either we go directly to Seward right now, or face a week of waiting out Easterly gales. Then we would have to go back to Whittier to drop my Dad off, and that was just not a good option to us. So we made a run direct to Seward and travelled all through the night. At dusk we watched a pod of whales and several bears roaming the storm-beaten capes of the outer coast. We sailed out into the Gulf past a string of desolate capes and vertical shores. Just before the light faded I spotted the first puffin seen from the decks of “Silent Partner”. It was a tufted puffin, a really weird looking bird. We rounded Cape Resurrection in darkness and spotted the lights of Seward through a light rain 18 miles away. They just rebuilt the harbor last year, unbeknownst to us. I almost ran smack into the unlit breakwater, which was 500 feet south of its charted position. We pulled into a slip and went to bed just as the sun began to rise.
