Adventures on Blue Redd

We departed Read Island this morning just before 0900 and made our way southward in Frederick Sound.  Our destination is Petersburg, about 23 miles away.   This shot is looking towards the east side of the channel, which is the mainland of Alaska and just at the ridgeline it becomes Canada. For some reason our autopilot started wandering about 15 degrees off course without changing its heading readout.  Most peculiar. With Brent's guidance, we looked at the data source of the autopilot's heading info and found it to be the autopilot itself.  I changed it to the SMX20, which is my Furuno satellite compass. Too early to tell if that fixed anything, but I didn't experience the problem once I'd made this change. This photo is of the autopilot data source configuration screen - how exciting!   Livin' on the edge! Back to our regularly scheduled scenery...   Those high glaciers look like the Baird and Patterson glaciers.   All the glacier...

  A bald eagle fishing near our boat this morning.  He successfully shopped for breakfast, snagging a nice fish. We saw between 25-30 whales today on our southeastward journey in Frederick Sound from Cannery Cove to Read Island, about 25 miles north of Petersburg.    The humpbacks were everywhere; and I mean everywhere. It was really nice of someone to gather all of these whales here for our viewing pleasure today.   We almost ran over this sleeping humpback... We crossed in front of a Carnival cruise ship.   I'd hailed him on Ch 16, switched to 13, then we each confirmed our plans.   They were the "Stand-On" vessel (meaning they had the Right-of-Way).  He said they would take our stern and that we should hold our course.   So, we did.  They passed safely behind us. They can sneak up on you very quickly.   They are quite fast and large. We adhere to the "Law of More Rivets".   If they have more rivets (...

  Apologies for the fuzzy shots, but this brown bear is about 1/4 mile away.   It looks like a juvenile to my untrained eye.   A bit later it was joined by another slightly larger brown mama bear and two small cubs.  I don't know if they were all one family or not, but my understanding is that would be very unusual for them not to be family.   Probably last year's cub, two from this year, and one very tired mama bear. We just hung out at Cannery Cove on the south side of Admiralty Island today, going nowhere.   Karen & I caught up on some business conversations, homework, chores, reading, and a nap (for me).  Taylor & Lizzy did some serious lounging, gaming, & reading.   All-in, it was a good day. The juvenile bear is back, or at least we think it is the same bear. Between the on-again/off-again rain showers throughout the day, we caught this photo looking southward down Frederick Strait towards the LeConte Gla...

  Same waterfall as yesterday, just at low tide this morning rather than at high tide yesterday afternoon.   The weather for today was supposed to be excellent.   Not so tomorrow.   So, we elected to make wake and head across Chatham Strait towards Petersburg.   We ended-up stopping at Cannery Cove on Admiralty Island.   This is the same anchorage we were in when we were headed up to Glacier Bay a month ago. At the southern tip of Admiralty Island, Point Gardner, Chatham Strait and Frederick Sound meet.  We came upon this humpback at that confluence.   I'm guessing that these two large bodies of water collide and make for a lot of upwelling and good feeding opportunities for everybody. FWIW, this is the same area where Bill caught his salmon last year.   We are hoping for a repeat when he and Nicki join us in Prince Rupert a bit later in our trip. This is the light at Point Gardner. Looking back across Chath...