Life on the Outer Coast

July 10

Left Pelican at 7am for Klag Bay. We left at the early hour because the weather was supposed to kick up a bit in the afternoon and we had some unprotected waters to cross.

We traveled via Lisianski inlet then strait and to the open ocean. Saw Red-necked phalaropes in the strait. The ocean conditions were a little rough at the entrance, we freely indulged in candied ginger and decided to take the more circuitous course took a behind several rocks (Porcupine Rocks) to avoid some of the less than perfect ocean conditions. Nice to have accurate GPS. Saw a few sea otters, White-winged scoters, a few Pigeon guillemots, Common murres, Pelagic cormorants, 4 Ancient murrelets and a rather large number of Marbled murrelets.

Took Imperial pass to Portlock Harbor. I remembered seeing hundreds of sea otters in this area in the past and was surprised to see very few (10) animals. I shouldn't have been surprised that things change over the years. It was nice traveling through the passages of West Chichagof again. We did find a small raft of otters in Ogden passage and saw a Brown bear in the estuary at Black Bay. We didn't travel through rough or smooth passage to the gate to Klag bay, but instead went through the beginning of the elbow. Not a path that I've taken previously.

Found at least 100 marbled murrelets in the bay as well as a few otters. We were almost to the anchorage in front of the old mine site when we found a bit of shallow water. Okay very shallow water. In fact, the boat stopped moving entirely, we were aground (about 112:15pm). Fortunately we were going slow and the tide was just about at the minimum level. The bottom was soft with eelgrass and mud. Okay, I packed my laptop and camera in my backpack and put on my boots. I wasn't really sure about what would happen next. How thin in the hull on a fiberglass boat? or was an important through hull fitting damaged? It wasn't exactly panic, but I thought it made sense to be prepared.

It was a bit embarrassing for the crew of the lead boat to find ourselves aground and one of the other boat captains immediately took advantage of the situation. The real comedy came from the boat with a weaker command of english. The italians had no idea why we had changed our plans about where to anchor, but they were going to follow our lead and join us in our cosy spot. Fortunately, the right words (and speed of delivery) were chosen to convey the facts of the situation before Lorenzo managed to ground his boat as well.

David did a dive without tanks and inspected the hull, he didn't find anything obviously wrong with the hull or with the props or stabilizers. The water was about chest deep on the shore side of the boat, he had to swim on the deeper side. Another good sign was that the bilge was clear of water. Jordan was confident that the boat would refloat without a problem as soon as the tide came in. I was impressed by the calm. There may have been some internal strong reactions but everyone was quite cool.

It was decided to send me and little Jordan to shore to lead the other boat crews on a hike around the old Chichagof mine site. Interesting choice, since I had only been to the mine once and he had never been there. It was a scary number of years since the last time I was on shore in this part of Klag bay. The last time I was here, there was a small crew of miners from eastern Europe working the mine. Only one building is still standing (where the last crew lived) and it was in very bad condition. It doesn't look habitable at this point. There was still an interesting collection of sinks, toilets, water lines and misc. household goods in the young forest. We walked the rail lines in search of one of the mine openings. That plan didn't work, found the tailing pile instead. Decided to head uphill, but didn't go far, as the new growth became older mixed cedar forest at about 4ooft. Sidehilled and went down a ways. LJ and I were happy to wander around looking, but the rest of the party wasn't too familiar with the idea of wandering around in the woods without a trail. They had all given up and were starting down, when LJ wandered over one last creek and saw some machinery. There was a variety of equipment from the 1980s on a gravel deck in front of a gated mine entrance. The gate wasn't terribly functional in terms of keeping interested people out, harrassment was a much more effective deterent. It turned out that the mine entrance was much closer to the beach than we had known. The easiest path was just west of the standing cabin and up a short gravel road.

The plant life wasn't very diverse in the ruins, but I did enjoy seeing the maidenhair ferns in the tailing piles. Mostly young spruce and a few species of moss (alas I didn't note which ones, but nothing unusual). Near the cabin we did find a couple of Nootka roses (may have been planted?) and many blooming foxgloves. Looked around for other domestic looking plants, but didn't find any other signs of a garden.

The boat floated free at 2:50pm. Emmelina put on the complete dive gear and did a more thorough inspection of the hull and moving parts. All seemed fine.