I started writing this over a year ago.  Better late than never.

I didn't tell many stories from this past summer but I find myself looking back at the adventures often with fondness.  We sailed almost every weekend spending two nights at anchor and sailing three days.  We explored some islands, some shipwrecks, hiked a small mountain, chased ice, and didn't sink. 

I want to cover a few of the adventures we have now that I seem to have time on my hands.  Some posts might have multiple stories, some will be dedicated.  This one is dedicated to a special place.

Tracy Arm

I visited Tracy Arm three times; once alone, once with Kelli and I, and once when our friend James came up to visit from Utah.

Tracy Arm is a deep fjord that dead-ends at North Saywer and South Saywer glaciers.  The entrance to Tracy Arm passes through Tracy Arm Inlet which is a wild narrow passage with remarkable currents.  The inlet is marked by buoys, shore-based markers, and a fancy light system that seemed to never work for me.  The Fjord itself is over 30 miles long and often filled with glacial ice.

The trip from Juneau to Tracy Arm is a long one.  If you want to take your time, you can spend the night at Taku Harbor or Limestone Inlet before continuing on the next day.  Along the way we stopped at Midway Islands to listen to the seemingly limitless birds and watch the seals.  I stood on a rock one of these times and closed my eyes.  My ears were overwhelmed with the amount of birdsong in the air.  I could discern different species of birds but the volume and the numbers of birds was astounding.  It painted a picture in my mind that my eyes couldn't see.

When you enter Tracy Arm Inlet, you need to plan your entrance with the tides otherwise you will either not be able to enter, or get a really wild ride.  As I said, the entrance is narrow... and shallow.  When I say shallow I don't mean 10 feet, it's still 60 feet deep, but for the amount of water that goes through the entrance, 60 feet is nothing.  Think of it this way, Tracy Arm is 30 miles long and fairly wide.  The tide swings about 18' twice a day so 18 vertical feet of water for 30 miles has to rush in or out of that 60' deep entrance in about six hours.  Then it goes the other way for the next six hours.  If you try to enter Tracy Arm when the tide is going out at peak flow, you will easily experience 8kt currents going against you.  Northern Light could only motor at 6.5kts on a good day so there's no way to battle those currents.  Along with the current, you will get a violent mixing of water creating whirlpools, eddies, and rapids.  I have seen ten foot wide standing wirlpools in the few passes through the entrance I have made.  One time when I was going out of Tracy Arm, I could barely see the six foot tall buoys.  They were getting pushed by so much current, they were almost completely burried under water with only a foot or-so still poking out above the torrent.  It's a wild place and so much fun to explore.  I have a photo of a the buoy on a medium current day but I was too focused to take a photo when it was worse.

Once inside the entrance, a short float into the fjord gets you to Holkham Bay, the only anchorage I would trust inside the fjord.  It's a shallow cove with a low saddle looking north up Tracy Arm but protected from ice floes and most wind and waves.  You can easily take a tender to shore and hang out on the gravel beach, find drift wood for a fire, or just stretch your land legs.  You can also run aground here if you aren't paying attention.  Ahem.

There is almost always grounded ice around Holkham Bay.  It's a sign to keep a sharp lookout at all times.  Ice is continually breaking off the Saywer glaciers and flowing out Tracy Arm.  This ice is found out in Stephen's Passage from time to time but is always found in the fjord.  My first trip up Tracy Arm was halted by excessive ice.  I followed a cruise ship in after a night at anchor.  For six hours I dodged ice endlessly.  I hit one small piece of ice, no larger than a large ice chest but I though it put it hole in the boat with the amount of noise it made.  I spotted it behind me after the fact with a little red paint on its surface, a warning that this fiberglass boat is not made to run into any ice at all.  A lot of the floating ice is clear and hard to see until you are right on top of it.

I lost sight of the cruise ship early on as it was steaming a lot faster than me but eventually the cruise ship came back into view but this time it was coming at me.  I hailed them on the VHF radio and asked them about conditions ahead.  They said they turned around due to the ice pack; it was just too thick to go through.  That wasn't a good sign for me in my little fiberglass boat but I pressed on just to see what I could see.  When I got to the point they turned around, I immediatly understood why.  There were several bends in the fjord and the ice was endless, there wasn't enough space to get around it.  I turned around without ever seeing either glacier at the end.  Following trips didn't take us to the glaciers either mainly due to the amount of time available.  Even though we never made it to the Saywer glaciers, it's still a breathtaking place. 

When I headed back toward Holkham Bay, I raised sail and ran downwind almost the entire way.  It was fun to dodge ice under sail.  With the narrowness of the fjord, the wind followed straight out Tracy Arm without much variation.  I stopped for a short time to scoop up some glacial ice and have a sip of whiskey.  I had found an iceberg that appeared to be grounded and I tossed the tiny anchor for the tender on the ice and tied off the bow of Northern Light.  I knew the dangers of ice flipping but this thing didn't appear to be moving.  Later on when looking at my GPS tracks I noticed that the ice was still drifting, just very slowly. 

The rest of the trip back to Holkham Bay was quite nice and relaxing.  But as you could guess, no adventure is complete without some... misadventure.  Remember how I said Holkham Bay is an easy place to run aground if you aren't paying attention?  I had decided to anchor a little further west than the night before and while making a slow circle, choosing where to drop the hook, I lost track of what my depth sounder was doing.  Before I knew it, I felt the boat slow and come to a stop even though the engine was still in gear.  I quickly reduced throttle, put it in reverse, and powered back up.  Spinning the wheel back and forth to try and wiggle the stern and get the keel free of the bottom didn't help.  After about three minutes I realized I was really stuck.  I quickly checked the tides to see where I was in the cycle.  I was on a falling tide but luckily the tide only had an hour and a half left to go.  As I stood there thinking about what I had to do, the boat kind of settled a few degrees to starboard then stopped.  I though, "this is fine."  A couple minutes later, everything was not as fine.  The boat fell to starboard quite a bit and everything inside shifted hard.  I went from perfecty okay to scrambling to get everything to the downhill side of the boat that I thought could fall.  I went outside after moving things and started wondering if water would be able to get into the cabin if the boat heeled enough.  Looking at the toerail, cockpit combing, and position of the companionway I couldn't imagine water getting into the boat and thankfully the boat leaned toward shore which would be uphill so it wouldn't be able to tilt as far even if it went completely dry under the keel.  I then realized I should remove any heavy items from high on the boat.  The only thing I really had was the dinghy on the davits.  I dropped the dinghy in the water then rowed over to the low side of the boat and tied the dinghy to the toerail.  I figured the dinghy would act as a little floatation device to keep the boat out of the water a little more if it continued to drop.

About thirty minutes into this mess I realized there was nothing else I could do.  Calling for help on the VHF radio wouldn't do any good.  What would someone do for me even if they showed up?  I then hoped no one would come around at all to see my embarassment.  So with nothing to do, I laid down in the only flat spot available to take a nap, the dinghy.  It was getting pulled down just a little by the toerail but was otherwise level in the water.  An hour later the tide was as low as it was going to get and any concern about sinking was gone.  I untied the dinghy and took some photos and checked out the bottom of my boat since it was visible. 

Another hour and a half later, the boat was upright again.  I started the engine, put it in gear, and tried to get out of my conundrum.  Strangely, I still wasn't going anywhere.  According to the time, the tide should have been at least six inches higher than when I ran aground.  Here I will explain a quirk of Northern Light.  The throttle lever makes sense.  Forward on the lever is faster, back is slower.  The gear shifter on the other hand doesn't work that way.  Forward on the shifter is reverse.  I had the lever pulled back trying to back out of the shoreline but... I was powering further forward since the shifter was backward!!!  Insult to injury.  I finally shifted into reverse and the boat happily got off the sandy bottom of Holkham Bay.  I anchored in water deep enough to not make me quiestion my decisions any more for the day, and went to sleep.  What a day.

When our friend James came up to Juneau to visit we went out to Tracy Arm over the weekend and poked around floating ice in the dinghy.  There was more large ice floating later in the season and it was beautiful.  We rowed up to some ice in the dinghy that had bubbles rising up through the crystal clear ice as it was melting.  When looking straight down in the dinghy you could see little bubbles coming out of the water then you remember, there's a lot more ice below the water than above.  Kind of sobering when you think about growlers rolling over and you right up next to the ice.

Of course I had to scoop some glacial ice out of the fjord for my Utah whiskey and have a toast with James.

I look forward to getting back to the inside passage and going all the way to Sawyer glaciers next time.

Joshua