July 17, 2008, Snug Harboer Anchorage

We spent the evening of the 15th doing laundry after saying a tearful goodbye to Debbie. She had a wonderful time and we will miss her unbridled enthusiasm for everything Alaska. We had pizza for dinner and brought the leftovers back to the boat and stored it in the refrigerator. Later that night I told Chris that something smelled in the refrigerator but did not think to much more about it. We did a little more shopping for groceries and wandered down the street to look at a jacket that Chris wanted my opinion on. I thought it looked good so she bought it and we ended up talking to the proprietor for about 30 minutes about just about everything including raising kids. We had stopped in a small store that was also the offices of a guide and outfitter. We ended up spending an hour in there talking to the owner and his volunteer summer helpers. They were a husband wife team who were retired from the forest service. He was a former type 1 Incident Management Team Planning Section Chief so he and I talked about incidents we had been on for quite a while. He had been a regular cutomere of the guide for years and had asked if he could work for the guide outfit when he retired from the forest service. For the last two summers he has been coming up with his wife and working on the boat having a grand time. They were kind enough to give me a hand drawn map of some good fishing grounds and guaranteed that if I went there I would catch salmon. I had to promise to not share the secret spot with anyone however so the map is now shredded and the location secretly marked on my own maps. We decided to alter our intended course south and try out hand at fishing there. They were headed out the next morning and would be down there with clients so it sounded like a good bet if we were going to catch any fish before we met us with Glen and Liz.

The morning of the 16th we got up and prepared to get underway. I was just ready to cast of the lines when Chris came on deck and said we might want to wait a minute, the refrigerator seemed to be not working, everything in the freezer was thawed out. Uh oh. I checked the electrical connections and the kitchen outlet had popped its breaker. I reset it thinking that was the problem but in hindsight, the light in the refer never was off and when I checked later the refrigerator was not on the same circuit as the reset circuit.
We ended up throwing out all the frozen foods including several sealed bags of frozen fresh caught crab. That was the most painful part of the whole deal.As it turned out the refrigerator was simply no longer making things cold but we did not determine this until we were well on our way south out of Wrangell. We might have been able to find a refrigerator in Wrangell but it would have been difficult for me to remove the old one and replace it by myself. .

I decided the best option right now was to head south for Ketchikan and hope they had a refrigerator that would fit into the same space. We were out of phone contact so we just had to keep heading south. I tried calling Glen a couple of times to let him know of our change in plans but could not raise him on the air. We stopped for a short while at the secret fish spot and tried trolling a green hoochie but had no luck. We spotted the guide boat about half an hour later just south of the location but still in the area he had identified as a hot spot so I know we were fishing in the right spot but our luck remains bad when it comes to fishing. I wanted to stop and try again but it was getting late and if we were going to make Ketchikan before dark we needed to keep going.

I finally raised Glen as we neared Point Stanhope and discovered they had stayed in a cove in that area and were just getting underway heading south. Between the two of us over the radio we decided to alter plans. They had enough room in their refrigerator to take on what was still good from outs. He had phone contact so he called Ketchikan and found a store that had several refrigerators that would fit in our space. So we decided to hold up short and anchor in Snug cove on the outside of Thorne Bay on the East side of Prince of Whales Island. We would then get into Ketchikan either Thursday or Friday and have time to purchase and install the new refrigerator before Sherm and Nancy arrive on the 19th.

We entered Snug Harbor cautiously because the book again says there is only two feet of water over the entry bar at low tide. We were at mid tide so we were expecting 10 feet or less. We discovered a minimum of 25 feet of water over the lowest point so once again the book is overly cautious and the charts are less than accurate. The nobeltec shows 16 feet at low tide so it appears to be much more accurate. It is a perfect little protected anchorage that no one goes into because of the caution and charting showing such a shallow clearance.

Glen and Liz caught two good sized salmon at their stop last night, alright it was from right in front of a fish hatchery so does that count?

We tried fishing again and again the fish won. I trolled for an hour out to a point off the entrance to thorne Bay where there were dozen other boats fishing. No luck. I watched others pull in salmon but nothing on my line. Of course when I reeled in the line to head south I discovered that the flasher, hoochie and all were gone, all that I was trolling was the deep 6 diver. I guess without a hook and bait the chances of catching anything is pretty small. No idea when it broke but the line between the deep six and the flasher was broke in half. Hmmm!

Were now in Smith cove with 20 plus MPH winds blowing outside. The sky is blue and it is a gorgeous day except I am watching Glen filet his fish while I have nothing to do but type.



Eagles everywhere you look

Before leaving Snug harbor we took a little dinghy ride into Thorne Bay which is a large community as far as Alaska communities go. It was a large logging center which is still a fairly important part of their lives. We will miss the biggest logging rodeo in the country which is next week. Oh well, another time. Apparently this is not a show but an actual logger competition with real loggers going head to head with chain saw throwing and axe throwing. We were told we could throw a chain saw if we attended. Oh boy, I guess I will have to practice for next year.



We found a Piper Cub on floats at the dock so we had to take some pictures for Steve and Ed.



Piper Cub on floats

Were having Glens fish for dinner and the shrimp we caught in my trap. Glens trap was missing when we went to pick them up, adrift in the current somewhere. He found it a mile or so down from where he dropped it hung up on a shallow spot. No shrimp however. This is the second time his pot went adrift, the first time off Taku inlet and we never did find that one.