Day 17 ~ Fitzgibbon Cove, Misty Fjords Alaska to Neets Bay, Alaska

We departed Fitzgibbon Cove with Dad and Gene in the dinghy and me skippering the big boat. In an effort to get us to the fishing grounds sooner, they raced out ahead of me to retrieve the shrimp pots that we had dropped in Saks Cove and I followed behind. It was exhilarating maneuvering out of the cove and heading up the channel by myself. By the time I reached them they had already pulled the first pot and they were working on the second. There weren’t many, but one shrimp was humongous. We started fishing around Curlew Point without any luck.

When we rounded Chin Point, Gene got a strike and we finally got a 12 pound king in the boat. Shortly thereafter we got a second one on which I lost – darn!  We fished all the way to Chin Point without any more success. Gene watched the poles, Dad fixed us Bloody Marys and I drove the boat. It was raining most of the day and the technology kept trying to connect with no avail.

When we decided to call it a night for the fishing, I stopped the boat so Dad and Gene could pull up the gear. After everything was pulled, I put the engine in gear and there was a loud noise that resonated through the boat which startled me so I quickly pulled it out of gear. Dad had me bump forward and backward on each throttle, each time the sound seemed to get worse. I had this flash of panic and I found myself looking out through the rain dropped windows for the boat that I had seen earlier. Dad and Gene jumped into action surveying the situation then Gene noticed the top of a big limb that was lodged under the boat. Dad got down on his stomach on the swim step and determined that in the rocking of the water the limb had wedged itself between the prop and the rudder.  Together we made sure Dad didn’t fall in the water while he reached under the swim step and wiggled it loose. Once it was successfully dislodged we slowly brought the boat up to speed to confirm and let out a sigh of relief when we determined all was well.   

We maneuvered ourselves, through tons of fishing nets and the pouring rain, all the way to the back of the bay to a cove were we selected to anchor. Our inspection of the cove determined that we had plenty of depth however there wasn’t much swing room nor was there much of anything to tie a stern line to on the shore. Dad and I had been talking about the feasibility of setting the stern anchor using the big boat, something that we learned in our power squadron course, and decided that it was time to give it a try.

We first backed up to the shore, dropped and set the stern anchor and then while letting out the line we moved forward and dropped the bow anchor. Then as we set the bow anchor we pulled in the line on the stern anchor. When we shut down the engines we were feeling very proud of ourselves, because we were anchored down snug. That being said we knew that if we couldn’t get it free in the morning when we were ready to depart we were going to have a totally different feeling.

For dinner, Dad filleted the freshly caught salmon and Gene grilled it to perfection in the rain. Finally, salmon for dinner! The rain was falling hard and operation ‘Control the Rain Drops’ was working. We were about 40 miles from completing our circumnavigation of Revillagigedo Island and we were planning on being back in civilization the next day.