Thu Jun 30 2022
Monday night Isabel and I celebrated our impending arrival at Glacier Bay with a gin and tonic. Well, maybe two. Anyway, Tuesday neither of us were in the finest of condition, so last night we crashed around 2030 and didn’t awaken until after 0600. Even with the anchor and chain just laying on the bottom with nothing substantial to grip, and the occasional grinding sound as Sunset moved gently in the light breeze or tidal current. Sometimes a good night’s sleep is the best medicine. Anyway, we woke up to another blue sky sunny day and Sunset was just where we had left her, so all’s well that ends well. We decided that today we were going to chug North and check out a tidal glacier, as those are the coolest ones. Many of the glaciers up here are receding rapidly due to climate change and so from the water we see a bunch of dirt and gravel and a really dirty looking - not the super deluxe creamin’ photo worthy glacier we’re after.
After chugging past Reid Glacier and noting it was one of those less pretty ones, we continued Northwards until we arrived at Johns Hopkins Inlet. By then we had passed and avoided several “bergie bits”, small chunks of glacial ice bobbing around in the bay. They looked almost slushy so I wasn’t worried about hull damage or even scratching the bottom paint, but Isabel had a different point of view. At the entrance of Johns Hopkins inlet we spied a small exploration type cruise ship called the Safari Explorer, one of those who take their passengers ashore for a brown bear meet ’n greet, or sea kayaking. Tough customers, not those softies on the giant cruise ships. Speaking of which, that National Park allows 2 cruise ships per day to wander the water, and today was no exception with a Princess and a Holland America ship trying to avoid one another.
As we continued to penetrate Johns Hopkins Inlet we finally got a view of a true tidal glacier. Lamplugh Glacier became visible and lo and behold there was all that really spikey blue ice coming right down to the water. In the water were many more bergie bits so we wended our way slowly through the obstacle course until Isabel became sufficiently concerned about our safety or something. I shut the boat down and we drifted for awhile amongst the collection of icy chunks until Isabel finally corralled one with the boat hook and I got the fishing net on one end. It was actually rather large and heavy and very solid, not the slushy ice I had imagined; glad we hadn’t hit any on the way in!
Back in my Boeing flight test days I did a lot of differential GPS test range surveying, and had purchased a small sledge hammer somewhere along the way. On the last major flight test program I ran we taught our robot helicopter to exploit some really cool technology developed by Near Earth Autonomy, and we landed in a field of obstacles to demo the capability to the US Marines, Office of Naval Research, and various other hopefully important decision makers. The program was called AACUS. Since I hate acronyms I can’t remember exactly what that stands for. Anyway, my test pilot Roger Hehr carried the sledge hammer in the cockpit and upon landing he’d drop it out the door to mark the spot then the customers could come out and verify independently that we’d successfully navigated the obstacle field and found a suitable landing zone. That’s an LZ for y’all who hate acronyms.
Turns out a sledge hammer is just the thing for turning a very large chunk of ice into several smaller chunks of ice, and soon we had harvested enough ice to make an evening cocktail or two. Let’s hope we learned our lesson about gin and tonic already. Into the cooler the ice went and we continued enjoying the view and silence before finally restarting the iron jennys and carefully making our way out of the ice field. Given we had achieved our major super cool objective and also that diesel costs as much as gold bullion these days, we blew off Tarr Inlet where the cruise ships also went and instead routed Southeast around the East side of Russell Island, where our pals on Harborlark had seen harbor seals and whales and otters and lots of birds. We saw lots of otters and Isabel claimed she saw a harbor seal but I must have been below at the time. We continued on South, the cruise ships eventually overtaking us so we could enjoy rolling in their rather impressive wakes, then we pondered our navels and elected to aim for Geike Inlet and a smaller leg called Shag Inlet. I figured English folks would know what that’s all about, but maybe it’s just because of a particular bird. Into Shag Inlet we chugged and found another vessel we’d already seen here and there, a rather nice Diesel Duck called Alpen Glow. They had nailed a particularly nice spot in the bay, but we crept past them and dropped the hook to establish a superior position. Eventually a sailboat full of Canadians rolled in and outdid us both, tucking in a bit closer to the shore than we’d prefer. Hope the low tide doesn’t make life too interesting for them. Or us.
Now we’re on the flybridge keeping an eye out for bears. There must be bears here. It’s just a perfect spot. Even though it’s already after 1800 and will be light for a few more hours, we’re optimistic that Mr. or Mrs. Brown Bear (more impressively referred to as a grizzly bear) will grace us with his or her presence. The ultimate experience would be a sow with a couple of cubs. One can dream . . . and in the meantime we’re spritzing ourselves with a concoction of water, peppermint oil and tea tree oil because someone told us it would repel horse flies. Not sure it’s doing much good, but we both smell great!
Oh, and Isabel devised a delightful tequila beverage that exploits the glacial ice we collected earlier. Seriously dense ice cubes!
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