Day 20 ~ St. John Harbor, Zarembo Island, Alaska to Ruth Island, Thomas Bay

The day started with bright sunshine according to Dad and Gene, I however, missed it because I was sleeping, although I was up by 8:15 a.m. so we could go fishing. We departed our quiet cove and headed for the big words of ‘Halibut’ that the previous owner of the chart had written, which was a knob near Vank Island. As we approached the area, Dad heard a shot of a gun and was very excited in anticipation that he was finally going to get to shoot a fish. A local fisherman and his “winter heat” stopped by and told us we were fishing in a hot spot then they flew off with the halibut in the back of the boat flopping around.  We unfortunately had no luck.

We cruised to Point Alexander through sage green waters towards the entrance of Wrangell Narrows. There were 60 navigational aids within the 21 miles. At some points the channel widths were reduced to 21 feet. Fortunately, the only barge that we saw was just as we were entering the Narrows, which we traveled much easier than we expected. The wind was calm and the sun was shining and it got dog-gone hot on the bridge. We were surprised at the number of inhabitants along the narrows and as we approached the 60^th aid to navigation, just prior to Petersburg, we saw our first bergie bit a.k.a. williwaws. As we came out of Petersburg we could see our first glacier (Le Conte Bay Glacier) and the chill in the air was also noticeably cooler. We cruised north crossing Fredrick Sound to Thomas Bay entering around Wood Point. We anchored behind Ruth Island after doing a tour back here where Dad and Gene believe they saw several cows!  Cows are highly unlikely in that area, which immediate caused accusations, that I had spiked their salmon burgers that I had fed them for lunch with something interesting.

There were several eagles in our harbor that were interested in the crab that Dad and Gene were cleaning. I told them that they couldn’t fish anymore until they had everything cleaned that we had already caught. For dinner we had crab with spinach fettuccini and white wine. In tradition, we spent the evening working on our float plan for the next day and listening to Yanni.