Sleepless in Alaska

For whatever reason, neither of us could sleep much last night, so we decided to just get up and underway at 0515.   Way too early to be up, but why fight it.   If your up, your up.   We've got about 75 miles to go today; might as well make use of the favorable currents this morning.

The weather report for today calls for sunny skies, but those weather predictors should all be hauled off as it is anything but.  I will grant them that at least it isn't raining this morning.  That's an improvement over the last week's weather.   

When we were just getting ready to go this morning, my Garmin navigation instruments notified me that they needed to be updated.   That's kind of a weird process, but it makes sense; I wouldn't want any of my critical navigation systems directly on the Internet.   I have to use an app on my iPhone to connect to Garmin's cloud, download the update, disconnect from the Internet and connect to the Garmin systems and push the update to the devices.   That process took about an hour, so we were without part of my nav systems this morning.   No big deal as I was familiar with this area from our trip to Glacier Bay last week.   All back up and running now.

We are heading up the Lynn Canal to Haines and Skagway.   The Lynn canal isn't a canal, but rather a fjord.   It is the longest and deepest N. American fjord running about 90 miles inland with an average depth of over 2,000'.   Like all fjords, it was carved by glaciers.   Haines is about 75 miles up the fjord and Skagway is all the way at the end.   Our destination is Haines tonight and maybe tomorrow too, then Skagway, then we will make our way down to Juneau to meet up with our friends, Katherine (Kippy) & Dean.  Looking forward to seeing you guys!

The mountains on both sides of the canal are snowcapped, glacier-filled, and very tall at well over a mile high.

OK, the weather is clearing and the sun is now peeking out between clouds.   Better.   Maybe I'll cut the weather prognosticators some slack...

Dalls Porpoises galore in Lynn Canal!   This pod stayed with us playing in our bow wake for about 15 minutes.   We could see their "killer whale"-styled coloration.   You can see it in the picture too.

We arrived at Haines, AK.   Cute looking little town, at least from the water.   We will go exploring in a bit.   That's Haines behind the cruise ship.   This was the big one; there were 3 small ones in the harbor too.   We tied up at the small boat harbor, not the big boat harbor.

Breathtaking scenery today.   They Lynn Canal gets panned a bit in the cruising guides, but I think it is well worth the effort.   It's a long 90-mile straight shot.   But the enormous mountains on each side of the canal are magnificent.    We saw glaciers, hanging glaciers, tidewater glaciers, Dalls porpoises, fish jumping, flocks of birds, and verdant green steep forested mountainsides.

I learned a new word today when I was reading a Canadian periodical, The Tyee.   Last year the American Dialect Society chose as it's word of the year, "enshittification".   The word was coined by writer Cory Doctorow to describe what happens to people as a result of the declining levels of service and product quality due to the misapplication or misdirection of technology.  

The word has a much broader application than just its technology basis in our culture.   I don't want to go all political here, I just thought it an interesting word and an unfortunate process with which I am all too familiar, as I suspect most of you are too.

Lastly dinner.   Yup, it's that time of the day again...   We are having salad and pizza paired with a 2011 Miner Oakville Cabernet Sauvignon.  The age and the depth on the Oakville allows it to go well with the pizza.