We enjoyed a routine day under way today, a rather short 30 miles in two foot chop with a 12kt wind on the nose. We plodded south down Chatham Straight, around the corner and into Frederick Sound. We were back where we were two weeks ago after a circumnavigation of Admiralty and Chicagof Islands, the A and C in the ABC Islands. It occurs to me that a worthwhile future objective might be an ABC circumnavigation, adding Baranof to the mix.
After a cloudy, blustery, choppy morning, the weather and the waves settled and we enjoyed another gorgeous afternoon. We pulled into Chapin Bay around 1pm and set out to do some beach walking.
The chart says the bay has been used for log storage, but it's empty of any such use now. In fact the bay is pristine and looks like it might have a thousand years ago, though perhaps the trees were older growth at that time. In any case, it just us, the trees, and ample numbers of deer flies and jelly fish.
The bay is a long one so it was good for a sorely needed three mile or so round trip leg stretcher. Now Kay and Vi are out scrubbing the hull with a boat brush and laughing themselves into hysterics (I won't ask.)
We play a game now and then trying to remember the names of the coves we've been to in order. It occurred to us that if we had given each place a nick name that might have provided clues that would have made each location more easily recalled. Perhaps this would be Boat Brush Bay.
Last night we gathered wine, cups, and cameras and motored the dinghy out of the cove, around the point and up to the base of a huge waterfall. We parked the dinghy on the rocks in the sun and enjoyed the waterfall with a cup of wine in the waning light. On the way back to the boat, we startled (or were startled by) a grizzly clambering along the shoreline close to the boat. Running out of passible terrain, he slipped into the water and paddled across the entrance channel and into the woods on the other side. It's hard to imagine getting that close to a grizzly on land. Even being in the water in something as insubstantial as a dinghy was a little unnerving at that distance of a hundred feet or so. How fast can Grizzlies swim? We were counting on something slower than a four horse outboard.
So last night it wasn't just Ell Cove we were in (so named for the shape of the cove), but Waterfall Excursion Bay, or perhaps Swimming Grizzly Lagoon.
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