Chapter 12: Long Day On the Water
Wait for it...
In our van, we pass by the Mendenhall Glacier on our way to Auke Bay. Existing since the ice age, the Mendenhall is receding about half a football field every year. As it melts one can see the remains of a long engulfed forest.
The morning began like any other for our breakfast host except for the complication resulting from the fact that Jeff collided with a porcupine on the way to work delaying our waffles and reindeer sausage by nearly a half hour.
Aboard RipTide we headed out, encountering more Dalls Porpoise along the way. The water went from flat to chop to swells to chop and back to flat. High clouds blanketed a warming day.
Imagine driving across Kansas. That was our morning. We covered lots of ground and saw nothing. Comparing yesterday to today is like comparing left to right.
Not long after noon we encountered a lone whale breeching and slapping its tail onto the water. By the time we slowed down, it had tired of both saving only two tail slaps for us to photograph. Nearby, an otter was snacking on a basket star. All of us, hungry for anything to photograph, snapped away at it. Yesterday, we would not have stopped.
Frankly, we don’t mind. Yesterday’s feast of bubble net activity was unprecedented, unexpected and unlike anything anyone on Riptide had previously experienced.
It’s a three-and-a-half hour run on flat water from Auke Bay to the Inian Pass, a narrow passageway between the Pacific and the protected waters of Alaska’s inner passage. Actually there is a North Inian Pass and a South Inian Pass. The trick is to arrive there at high tide—they call this area “the laundry” when the tides roar through.
For my Vero Beach friends, these two passes are reminiscent of the inlets from our intercoastal and the Atlantic. Watching video of boaters attempting to transit those points at the wrong time are illustrative of the stupidity of some captains.
Our detour there was due to the emptiness of the morning. It paid off. A family of orca was patrolling there. These orca appeared to be three: a mating pair and a calf. There were otters to be seen on the way there and again on the way back. I'm going to go overboard on orca pictures here as they are rare in these waters.
The reason for their interest in the area is the sea lion colony on a point on Inian Cove. Nothing says lovin’ like something from the oven—or, in this case, the point which is, on two levels, home to a few hundred seals below and lots of gulls and cormerants up top. A few inexperienced juvenile sea lions were trying to make it up the steep side, perhaps to dine on some eggs. They didn’t make it.
Other juveniles were quite interested in us. They didn’t exactly swarm us but they happily approached our stern where I stood enjoying the show they put on. I’m told not many people make it this far out from Auke Bay so the presence of RipTide and these strange but unthreatening creatures onboard was not to be resisted.
The long trip back to Auke Bay was interrupted by another otter sighting and a couple of whales offering fun but nothing out of the ordinary so our pauses were brief.
One might think a day such as this—ten hours long but with no more bubble net feeding sightings—would be disappointing. Given the majesty of yesterday, a day with multiple sightings of this rarely seen event coupled with excellent weather, nobody on this boat had a right to be down. I certainly wasn’t.
We were back nearly on time at just after 6:00 where our van waited to deliver us back to the Baranof. One thought for you if you come to Juneau (not aboard a passing cruise ship) and are looking for lodging: rather than the Baranof, check out an Airbnb instead.
