March Boating with Larry

Larry sent me a text on Wednesday evening that he was going to Tenakee for a trip to pick up some lumber and did I want to go.  We’d had one of the biggest storms in a while raging on Wednesday, but by the evening when I got the text, it had mostly blown itself out and was supposed to lay down the next day. 

Off we went the next morning about 6 am.  There was still a little chop heading down Chatham Strait, but it was laying down more and more the whole way.  By the time we got to Tenakee about 2.75 hours later, it was flat calm and blue skies.  I drove most of the way as Larry was working on little projects on the boat, or just enjoying having someone else drive.  

While we waited at the Tenakee dock loading lumber and waiting for the lumber owners riding back with us, we watched a pair seals swimming in less than 10 feet of water in crystal clear water, right below us.  I had never seen a seal swimming this clearly before.  They move their back feet side to side, like a fish moves its tail, and not up and down, like a whale moves it’s tail.

As we were getting ready to leave, a pair of humpback whales came past the point by the boat harbor.  I wasn’t sure if it was a cow and calf, but by the closeness of the two, it sure looked like it.  Seems real early for a cow and a calf to have swum from Hawaii to here already, but there they were.

We loaded lumber and the couple and their 1 year old daughter and started back to Juneau.   Now it was flat calm in Chatham Strait.  Larry handed the wheel off to the father as the two of them talked, and I took a seat on the bench with my back against my survival suit on the back wall, and was soon put to sleep by the sunshine beaming through the windows. 

We came all the way to the downtown Juneau dock, arriving at dark, and they decided they would unload in the morning.

We awoke the next morning to another blizzard of sorts, which lasted til about noon.  We had threaded the weather needle perfectly.