Day 15 ~ Ketchikan, Alaska to Punch Bowl, Misty Fjords

We departed at 9:15 with Gene on board under clouds, a breeze and no rain. After I got us off the dock, Dad and Gene took over so I could work while we were still connected. Shortly thereafter, a local shoreline resident came on the VHF radio and fussed at Dad for going too fast!  Once the engines were warmed up, Dad went down to inspect and was pleased to report that all leaks were fixed. We were looking forward to circumventing Revillagigedo Island and exploring the fjords but the thought of being disconnected for several days was less than desirable.

As we left Ketchikan the ETA on the first heading was off an hour so Dad started razzing me, then went off to do his daily engine check. Gene and I started talking and decided that the Garmin unit didn’t automatically change to the new time zone. I messed around with the setting and figured out how to set the clock. When Dad came back up he noticed that it was different. He saw this dotted line across his electronic chart and commented that it must be the official date line. We decided not to say anything.

Soon after we entered the Southern entrance of Behm Canal, Gene thought that he was hallucinating when he saw ‘smoke’ rising off the water and thought it was an Arizona dust devil.  It was a hump back whale, so Dad slowed the boat and changed our course towards where the whale was eating. As we approached it, the whale gave us the tail and we didn’t see him anymore.  

We left the crab pots at Carp Island on our way to tour Smeaton Bay. At the top of Smeaton Bay we cruised around both Blackwell and Wilson arms. On a submerged rock, we saw a family of sea otters, lounging on their backs. Upon leaving the bay we pulled the soaking pots and found them rich with crab. As we continued cruising Behm Canal, we proceeded past New Eddystone Rock which is a 230 foot monolithic outcrop right in the middle of the 600-800 foot deep channel. Soon afterwards we entered Rudyerd Bay and approached Punchbowl Cove which has 3400 foot shear granite walls. At the South End of the Cove we found a convenient mooring buoy to which we secured the bow of the Simbalaut.  

Gene and I tried our luck at bottom fishing and Gene caught a flounder within minutes of putting his hoochie in the water. I didn’t catch anything but a buzz because the bar was open. Dad on the other hand was extremely successful with his crab pots. We had so many crabs that he started throwing them back. We created an assembly line on the back of the boat to kill and clean them and then Dad cooked them all up! 

We had a delicious dinner on the upper deck of crab, crab and crab. In the end, we couldn’t eat it all so we removed the shells and ended up with two Tupperware buckets full of crab. Dad took the hose to the deck to wash up the mess that we had created. We were the only ones in the Punchbowl Cove with the exception of the wildlife that we could hear moving around. We spent the remainder of the evening working our way through a few bottles of red wine and talking about everything under the sun.