We saw billions of seals (well, maybe 300), house-sized icebergs, the usual assortment
of stupendous waterfalls hundreds of feet high, sheer rock canyons, and plentiful
birdlife. It was pretty well as advertised: one of the most awesome visual
experience of the trip, all packaged into one day!
Later we had the pleasure of having to re-anchor at midnight (see Jane's log).
That evening, after dinner and a frenzy of vacuuming (I'm in charge of that job), we
read (I'm currently reading Alaska by James Michener), we watched a bonfire
blazing on the beach: the locals celebrating July 4th ...
Jane's log:
"Great trip up Tracy Arm.
"The glaciers were not as impressive as Glacier Bay but the scenery, seals, and
sheer size of icebergs make it well worth a visit. I lost count of both the number
of waterfalls off the cliffs and the number of seals on the ice floes off South Sawyer.
We witnessed a huge calving on North Sawyer, and were stunned to see a huge
house-sized berg roll on our way back down.
"We're all up at 12:00 midnight. The wind has picked up and Ian, taking a
look outside, noticed we were very close to Kelly Too. We hummed and hawed and
finally decided it was best to move. Going to bed we had felt they anchored too
close to us, but did nothing about it. The engine had trouble starting: we had
to turn starter flywheel to get it going. We confirmed when we weighed anchor that
we had not dragged, but had just pulled back on our chain: they must have had less thane 3
to 1 scope. It was hard for Ian to determine how much chain went out when we
re-anchored in the dark (we must repaint the marks on the chain) and even harder to judge
if we had set. We went below to stay watch for a while; we dragged about 20 feet
after 15 minutes and that seemed to hold it. I went to bed about 1:30 and Ian
followed later at 3:30 when he was sure all was OK.
