Totem Bay to Wrangell

After coming through Rocky Pass and watching humpbacks yesterday afternoon, we anchored for the night at the head of Totem Bay. Totem Bay is a large, flat, fairly shallow bay, and if you wonder why they call it Totem Bay, I think it’s because of these very cool rock formations on the shore:

Lots of otters in here:

This one photobombed my postcard photo (and made it better):

It was a beautiful, calm evening in Totem Bay.

And then the almost full moon rose:

Not bad!

This morning was glassy calm and we could see it was a bit foggy out in Sumner Strait:

We left Totem Bay early (by 7am) and cruised in the fog with radar for most of the way to Wrangell. Like this:

Well, and also like this…but radar in combination with AIS is great for situations like these:

Nearer to Wrangell the fog started to lift:

We’re now at Reliance Harbor in Wrangell and it’s about 70 degrees Farenheit and gorgeous.

We walked up to the post office to mail a birthday present, got some groceries (yay fresh veggies! also, City Market is better than IGA for this, in our opinion), picked up a new raw water washdown pump (hose that uses salt water for washing down the deck, cleaning fish, washing of the anchor after you bring it up) because ours failed, again, and then grabbed some beer and wine at the liquor store. Once back at Airship, Kevin replaced the wash down pump (the new one is much better!), and then we pulled the dinghy up onto the dock so we could apply another patch to the tear we got in Klag Bay. The jury’s still out as to whether this patch-on-patch trick worked. Next we’ll grill some veggies and make some fresh salsa, probably grill something for dinner and sit up on the top deck with a beer or a glass of rosé (because it’s sunny and warm and why not, right?) and enjoy the weather. Last year around this time when we were here in Wrangell we saw the Aurora for the first time. The Aurora forecast doesn’t look that great for tonight though.

While we were working on the dinghy, we chatted a bit with a woman from the Alaska Vistas tour company, and she gave us a good tip about the Anan Bear Observatory, so I think tomorrow we may do some fishing on our way down to Thom’s Place, anchor there for the night, and then go over to Anan on Friday morning. Rumor is there are permits available that day.