June 28
Fresh baked cinnamon rolls for
breakfast on Magic. Glen helped Dave install his new throttle
cable. Pulled up crab pots --- starfish
2, crabs 0. Hunter gatherers failed
again.
Today's plan is to travel up Stephens
Passage toward Endicott Arm and Tracy Arm.
Depending on the winds etc... we may stay in Sumdum Bay off Sumdum
Island. The former home of the Sumdum
indians. Ya gotta love that
name. Where are you from ..... 'Sumdum
Island'. Sumdum is inside Endicott Arm.
Panacea found the route with
the whales. Glen chose the shoreline
route and so while we saw the whales off in the distance we kept our eyes
peeled for black or brown furry critters on the beach.
The water is flat calm again,
and the skies are blue with fluffy clouds ... this is really rough to take!
1:45 pm Rendezvous and Magic
ducking into Windham Bay to check it out.
Pete wanted to see the bay, as his father was on a Navy ship named the
Windham. So far big furry critters,
but we did see a large family of otters running up a rocky bank and into the
brush.
2:00pm ice berg dead ahead, not a really big one but
pretty none the less. Glen motored up
to it went around for a look and then nudged it with our bow rail and
burgee. Nice photo op. He distrubed nature just enough to get the
berg to tip a bit. One side went down a
bit, but not really noticable while the side came up out of the water about 5
feet. This created a different view of
the berg .... more like mushrooms of ice.
Reflections came up and we got some great photos of them behind the
berg. The mushrooms settled back down
in the water and all looked the way it was when we arrived. Turned into Endicott Arm; great shots of Sumdum glacier.
It is very interesting that
there are very few bergs of any size (small to large to huge) in the area this
year. Tom said he went into Tracy Arm
yesterday and found the same thing. A
local guy in Petersburg told Glen that even LaConte glacier had very few bergs
this year. I had noticed that from the
plane when I flew into Petersberg a couple weeks ago. A local from Wrangle on the plane told me
that the amount of snow in the winter has in influence on the amount of calving
in the summer. More snow = more calving, or less snow = less
calving? He did not say. From comparing today to our photos of 2008
there appears to be less snow this year; we are about 10 days later this year
than in 2008 for this section of our adventure.
Last time it was somewhat cloudy.
Who really knows but ice coupled
with the beautiful sunshine, makes for a totally different view this year. We set the anchor in Sumdum bay. Very pretty
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