Tracy Arm to Sawyer Glacier

Link to map

View from our anchorage in Tracy Arm Cove.  Sometimes the bergie bits come into the cove.  
 These were headed out to Stevens Passage.

We gladly left our barren Sandborn Canal anchorage and headed for Tracy Arm, a 25 mile long fiord with North and South Sawyer Glaciers at its head.

(I don’t know why it is not Tracy Leg.  I’ve asked.)  The predicted warm weather was accompanied by 15-20 knot northerly winds “on our nose”.  We had our poles out; we’ve been told they give us stability by lowering our center of gravity.  We’ve been told many things about our paravane system.  Everyone who is familiar with paravanes has a strongly held opinion.

There was only one other boat in the bay when we anchored in the late afternoon.  We chose our spot.   Doug untied the safety line on the anchor, pulled out the pin that holds all 110 pounds of it in place, and sent it 40 feet down, followed by its chain.  Well, part of the chain.  The usual procedure it that, as the chain pays out, I slowly back Greywolf down.  The chain did not pay out.  Doug used the electric windlass to haul the chain in a bit and tried again.  Nope.  Something was wrong in the chain locker.

An investigation of the chain locker revealed that the chain had somehow gotten all mish muckeled up (that is so too spelled right!)  Amazingly, Doug (HIGLY motivated!) got it un-mish muckeled and we set the anchor.  This has never happened before and we’d be just as happy if it never happened again.  Fortunately, we were anchoring in a shallow (for Alaska) spot and the wind was not blowing.  Incidents like that always seem less threatening when the weather is pleasant.

The cove soon had a number of boats anchored for the night including an excursion boat and this handsome 40-plus year old Australian boat that is cruising around the world.  One of the guests kayaked over to chat.

Another view from the anchorage.

The 7 Seas Navigator (950 passengers) dwarfed our “Nordie Forty” as we headed up Tracy Arm at      6:30 the following morning.

The 7 Seas Navigator turned around at Big Bend.  They had other places to go....

Early in the day, I said to Doug,
“My mother would have loved  this.”
“Well, she is with us, you know.”
He didn’t mean that her spirit was with us.  I have an alabaster jar (that was Doug’s mother’s) with some of her ashes in it in the main cabin.  I scurried down to get mom and put her where she could see everything.  (No, she did not need the binoculars you see sitting next to her.)

I’m not going to use any more words.  The boat you see in some of the photos is a Nordic Tug that must have done this before.  We followed her into South Sawyer.  North Sawyer had too much ice.  Doug did a masterful job of navigating through the ice, which we encountered in patches stretching clear across the fiord long before we got to South Sawyer. Ice does not play nicely with fiberglass gelcoat.  

We had a lovely experience.