Takatz Bay

Takatz Bay is beautiful! (And we were here for three days, so there will be a whole lot of photos!)

We anchored near the waterfall on the south west side of the anchorage and as soon as we were set, we took the dinghy out exploring. The water is icy blue in here (glacier melt).

  

It was nearing high tide, so we were able to go really far up the head of the bay and almost to where the roaring salmon stream enters the bay. There are a ton of salmon in here (including a bunch of dead/spawned out ones), and the birds are having a constant feast along the shoreline. We have seen not one bear, which is kind of weird. Maybe they’re stuffed full of salmon and sleeping it off somewhere.

We had one more crab in our crab trap the morning we left Half Tide Neck, so the first night in Takatz we had fresh crab, grilled corn on the cob, and caesar salad for dinner. The forecast for Chatham (and Frederick) wasn’t great for Saturday and Sunday, so we planned to stay in Takatz Bay here where we have internet and a nice protected spot for the weekend. We’re just getting a ton of work done (while it’s raining and raining and raining). Rain, work, glacier blue water, super pretty…just really wet. The clouds cleared a tiny bit yesterday morning and I noticed a giant granite cliff we hadn’t been able to see until then…with two giant waterfalls cascading down the face of it. Sweet!

There are so many eagles in here. These two juveniles were hanging out on the little island next to our anchorage:

This guy has gotten a lot of his white head and tail feathers:

Even though the weather was crappy and we mostly just worked from the boat for three days, we got out and explored several times by dinghy…saw lots of spawning salmon, eagles, kingfishers, seagulls, and other water birds, but no bears. The couple on another boat anchored in here our last night said that four or so days before when they were here they did see one bear up on shore eating fish. We’ve not seen that bear.

The day before we left, we were out in our dinghy and we noticed a fast, metal, official looking boat zoom straight over to our boat (we’d just finished talking to the other folks anchored in here and were heading up toward the head of the bay, but these guys looked like they were AT our boat, so we headed over there). They noticed us in the dinghy and redirected our way. They asked us if we were out fishing, and we said no, we were just cruising around…and…you know what? This really should be a post of its own. So hang tight for the whole story in another post.

The fog started the clear and blue sky was showing through when we left Takatz Bay on Monday morning.

Hey look! the mountains have tops!