Agrapina Bay

As you make your way into Agrapina Bay you go past little islets and it is quite convoluted to get inside. I am sure as the guide tells us, it is stunningly beautiful, however the fog clouded much of the scenery for us.

We scoped out the large bay where we were anchoring and found the end was very shallow and more like a wetland. We had already spotted a few bears grazing so we wanted to give ourselves a little buffer from them.

We dropped anchor in about 8m and it grabbed immediately. The air was more wet from fog than rain but regardless of what you call it, it soon made you damp and cold if you stood out in it. Dean, already in his wet weather gear stayed out on deck and I stayed under our bimini and we were soon counting out the bears. I have lost my running tally now. There are a LOT of bears here. We will NOT BE setting foot ashore. This will be another dinghy experience.

In the water we saw seals and otters and salmon jumping with regularity around the boat. There seems to be a few different types of birds. I tried throwing a bit of bread over to bring the gulls closer but although they sat in the water and watched me from a distance they didn’t try to get the bread. I did have this black and white bird that was maybe a cormorant (below) and he tried a bit of bread as it floated by and spat it out. I say maybe because I thought it was until I looked at my photo and now I am not sure.

We left the bears to their grazing and had dinner downstairs. I had a quick peak before we went to bed and I could still spot one without setting foot outside the cockpit.

When we arrived we had noticed a few bugs but on getting up in the morning we found the surfaces of the cockpit covered in thousands of dead midges. They must have been attracted by the light of our instruments and I guess they have a short life span and just died there. Don’t follow the lights.

The day was drizzly and foggy. Occasionally it would start to clear, then fog up again. And there were no sign of the bears. The photo below shows the meadow we were watching for bears. We weren’t going out in the dinghy in the miserable weather if we couldn’t see a bear so we checked on and off all day and into the evening but otherwise got some jobs done.

Dean serviced the winches on the mast that were sadly overdue. And I cleaned up some areas where the moisture had started to creep up on us downstairs. We are doing remarkably well with all of the interventions we have put in but suddenly we will just notice somewhere has become manky.

While it was disappointing not seeing the bears a bit closer up, it was good to just have a day in a pretty place. And we had fun watching a seal making its way around the bay, and also looking at the various birds around.

There are these tiny birds that I have no idea what they are. They are about the size of a day old chick and fluffy like one except brown. But they duck under water really quickly and I found impossible to get a photo of since it was too cold and wet to just sit and wait for them. I am just not that dedicated.

Big blobby jelly fish that looked like flowers occasionally floated past. They had masses of tentacles streaming into the depths behind, and small fish attending them.

We woke up on Saturday morning to the alarm going off at dawn so we could get an early start for Geographic Harbour. It had started to rain heavily during the night and it was really difficult to get out of bed. Dean was up instantly thinking it was our drift alarm going off. I procrastinated a bit hoping, crossing my fingers, my arms, my legs, that by the time he checked the weather he’d say, “No, we need to stay here”. But alas, no cancellation was forthcoming.

By the time we left the bears were already grazing on the meadow but the visibility was low so we could only see them through the binoculars. We were in for a big day, so we up anchored and got into the sea which already had a bit of a roll.

It was cold and wet so I went back downstairs while Dean tried to sail. I had fallen back to sleep and by the time I popped my head up a few hours later we were nearly back to Agrapina Bay. It had certainly felt like a washing machine downstairs and Dean said it was getting worse. Cold, wet, windy, swell, seasickness all contributed to it being too hard. And we are here for the enjoyment, not a hard slog. So if the forecast looks a bit better we might try for an overnight to Geographic Harbour tonight.

In the short time we were away a fishing boat had taken refuge in “our” bay. Rechecking the weather, it was actually a small low that had passed over. Dean thinks he missed it because he had trouble downloading the GRIB that morning due to the surrounding mountains so made the area he checked smaller,, so it would download.

We are already about a week behind our schedule. While we are cruising we do have some leeway however we hold the Alaskan weather in total respect and we have a deadline that we need to be leaving to cross the gulf by, cruising or not cruising! While the days are still very long by Aussie standards, already we have seen a shift and every day they become noticeably shorter. The locals tell us even by Alaskan standards this has been an overcast wet summer! It is such a balance, enjoyment, cruising, and very real deadlines.

Very few foreign yachts come here to cruise. It is a long way to come for a relatively short season, and without careful planning and consideration of conditions, is downright dangerous. To be honest there are very few US cruising yachts here, but we have found out that of the ones that do come, many will actually have the boat trucked in. It saves a lot of time especially when they only get a couple of weeks holiday/year. We had expected to meet more cruising boats by now.

After reviewing our options we decided to leave after lunch as the low had passed by, and head for Jute Bay. It is described in the Coast Pilot as an “indifferent anchorage”, whatever that means. I made up a spaghetti bolognese and sago pudding and popped them both in the slow cooker so we had a hot meal when we got in. I love my thermal cooker on the boat! Once you have made the meal it uses no power and the meals are still piping hot 8-10 hours later.

There was definitely a weather change because after all of the time we had spent in the harbour, we hadn’t seen the snowy mountain in the background that decided to show itself for probably half an hour before becoming shrouded in cloud once more. I should be used to this happening but it takes me by surprise every time, and I never tire of that wonderful surprise.