July 29th - 31st, Taku Harbor & Return to Juneau

Sun Aug 28 2022

Friday morning at Gilbert Bay we arose to mizzle rather than heavy rain, with a good dose of fog thrown in. By the time we hoisted the dinghy aboard the mizzle had let up and soon we were underway for our last planned stop, Taku Harbor. Taku Harbor is a lovely sheltered bay with a large state park float - no charge to tie up. There was once a salmon cannery there and now one can wander around in the woods and inspect the ruins - lots of rusty machinery and crumbling, rotting foundations where the buildings were. The state park facility includes a bunk house complete with wood stove and firewood, along with an outhouse. A bit further up the cove are a couple of large buildings which must be some sort of guest house. I saw folks scraping and painting there. Not my idea of a good time.

I got talking with a lovely young couple who had motored in on a nice little aluminum landing craft. Turned out the fellow was a tug boat captain who had to chug up Lynn Canal to push ships and barges around during all times of the year. I commented about our own luck going up there with flat water in both directions, and he replied that he’d been up there at times when the waves were washing over the wheel house. Not my idea of a good time.

Anyway, I got talking with them about crabbing and how we’d had good luck, but that we didn’t do any shrimping because we didn’t have a pot puller (an electric hoist for the shrimping trap line). Shrimp seem to like hanging out around 250’ to 500’ deep. I’m too lazy to pull that much weighted line up by hand. His wife tells me that they have several shrimp traps set, and next thing I know he’s gone and filled up a gallon ziploc bag and given them to me. I tell you, these Alaskans are the nicest people!

We had just baked a batch of brownies so I brought them a bunch for their dessert that night and planned on bringing them freshly baked bread in the morning, but they buggered off first thing early. Somehow I figured if they came all the way from Juneau that they would hang all weekend. Maybe work called. Shucks. Would like to have spent some more time with them and their puppy named Endicott. She was a rambunctious little bugger.

Later on that afternoon we had another sort of encounter. The nice NOAA Fisheries Enforcement fellows decided to come into the harbor and inspect all the boats for any halibut they might have onboard. Turns out they were very interested in our poxy amount of halibut, and ultimately took it away from us. The rules are that when one catches a halibut, as long as the fish is still onboard it cannot be cut into small pieces, AND the skin has to remain attached. Essentially they want to know that the halibut is of proper size. We were aware of this rule, but our freezer is too small to hold a large halibut fillet. Instead we had portioned up the halibut into chunks that Isabel could vacuum pack and fit in the freezer. This all has to do with international fishing conventions and is heavily enforced in coastal Alaska and Canadian waters. Our bad. Ultimately they took our fish as evidence and gave us a receipt, then advised us on the regulation we had broken and the likely fine. I have to give the officer credit though, as he ignored the package of halibut Isabel was thawing in the sink for our dinner. When he asked her what that was, she squeaked in a tiny voice “that’s our dinner”, and he even said out loud “I didn’t see that”.

The next day, Sunday, we chugged on up to Juneau so we could nail a mooring while the gill net fishermen and women were all out working. When those folks are in town there’s no space at the inn, so it’s critical to take a mooring when they’re off at work. We got in just fine and were tied up by around 10 am, then contacted Mike McVey the boat broker who we were working with. Mike had a few hours of work to do on a boat in Aurora Marina next door, so he offered to loan us his truck so we could all go visit the Salmon hatchery. What a guy! Anyway we all piled in and off we went. The sockeye were running so the mature fish were returning to the hatchery where they were born, and we got to watch heaps of them swimming their asses off to get to the fish ladder and begin their ascent towards their demise. We watched a movie to learn how the fish are processed to remove eggs from the females then fertilize them by squeezing the males over a bucket of eggs. The dead fish are processed in various ways but nothing is wasted and the process of making baby salmon proceeds. The salmon hatchery turned out to be an awesome stop, educational and entertaining.

We dropped Nicola and Charlotte downtown for a final shopping spree, and pondered our dinner options. Ian wanted to take the lot of us out for dinner and since our favorite curry house Spice was closed on Sundays, we elected to try the Hangar Cafe. I’ll say this for the Hangar Cafe, which occupies the old downtown seaplane base, the food is good and the draft beer choices are plentiful, but the service lacks a bit. Nevertheless, we enjoyed a fun evening there and then had a final walk home by the humpback whale statue.