It is highly unusual for us to have such a run of sunny calm weather at this time of the year.
I was just out last weekend, but our good weather continued and so I decided to make another overnight trip, this time to Marguerite Bay, which is in Traitors Cove in Western Behm Canal.
This trip was to be unique in that for the first time I was taking both my new cat, Luna, and my new dog, Nova. Nova was on my trip last week, but I left Luna home for that one. She scolded me soundly when I returned so I decided to take her on this trip.
Here's a map snippet that shows my route NW out of town, around the corner at Clover Pass, and then North up into Western Behm Canal. It's a little over 26 miles one-way.
At my normal traveling speed, it would take a little over 3 hours to get there, and I wanted to get there as early in the day as possible. So, I made the decision to leave early, while it was still dark. I have to run a little more slowly in the dark, but at least I could get a few miles underway before the sun came up.
I had everything on board, including the pets and all the stuff they needed, and I was ready to go by a little after 6 AM. Large ships, tugs, ferries etc. are required to make an announcement when they are about to enter restricted waters. While getting the boat ready to go I heard a call from the Gulf Titan, a tug with a barge getting ready to pull out of the AML (Alaska Marine Lines) barge line dock which is right next to the harbor. I had to wait for him to pull out and get out of the way before I could depart. We pulled out at about 6:35 AM.
On the way out of town I was travelling in a northwesterly direction. I looked behind me to the southeast and saw an amazing sunrise happening behind me.
Luna and Nova are still sort of working out the pecking order, so I was a bit concerned about them being in such close quarters on the boat, but they ended up getting along pretty well together.
Luna is the first cat I've owned so I am not used to cats' lack of boundaries. She explored places on board that I would not have expected.
Most of the time they did very well with on board living.
I should have known better than to hope for a spot at the dock in Marguerite Bay. The weather has been stunning, and the deer are in the rutting season, so when I got there the dock was already plugged with boats full of hunters.
Since the dock was full, I decided to anchor the boat. I did so, and then quickly prepared the raft because I knew Nova needed to go to shore for dewatering. When we were at the dock, I saw that the mooring buoy which is fairly near the dock was open. So, when Nova and I got back to the boat in the raft I immediately pulled the anchor and made my way over to the mooring buoy and got hooked up to it.
On a good weather day like today this area is really beautiful, and I could not resist taking some scenery photos of the area around the boat. Not a bad place to hang out.
After getting the boat secure and having some lunch I got my gear together for a hike and Nova and I went in the raft over to the dock for a long walk up the logging road.
Here is Faraway tied up to the mooring buoy.
Here are some closer shots of all the boats at the dock. There was a deer hanging from the pilings and another one hanging from the davit on the large boat the "Selah." The front of the dock is considered to be a loading zone and boats are not supposed to tie up there long term, but some do anyway.
In this last shot the Faraway can be seen off in the distance on the mooring buoy.
Nova and I took a long walk up the logging road. I am still keeping her on the leash because she is still so new to me. I don't trust her to come back to me if she runs loose.
This is the US Forest Service camp just up the road from the dock, and their vehicles. They used to keep pickup trucks here but now I guess they have gone smaller.
The USFS got a new outhouse since the last time I was here. It's right across the road from their camp.
When I was here in early July there were two of the new outhouses on flatbed trucks, together with the large pits that go underneath them. This is my photo of one of them from back in July.
There's a large RV parked on the big clearing just a little way up from the dock. Maybe I'll stay in here tonight.
They've been working on the road and on our walk, I came across this worksite. That's one huge culvert. I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but you could drive a pickup truck right through it.
Up the road a mile or so is the cutoff to go down to the fish & bear viewing platform. I didn't go down there this trip because I had Nova, and she was hard to control on the leash. There has been an old outhouse near the cutoff for the tourists to use that come in the summer to see the bears and the fish.
This is the old outhouse that was there for a number of years.
They've replaced it with one of these new ones like the one down by the USFS camp.
A quarter mile up the road from the cutoff to the bear & fish viewing platform you come to the first bridge and the outlet from Margaret Lake. On a good weather day like today it is a great place for photos. I know I already have many photos from here, but each day is a new day, and the photos are all unique and special to me.
For the rest of our trip, it was hard to keep bringing Nova to shore in the raft. Once the sun went down it got very cold very fast. Everything was covered in ice, and it was not only difficult to take her to shore it was also very dangerous. I need to find a better solution.
It was kind of a rough night for me as both Luna and Nova wanted to be up on the bed with me. Not much sleep for me, not sure about them.
When I was walking Nova on Saturday morning for the last time before we pulled out, she got loose. When I had hooked her leash to her collar, I was wearing gloves (it was 28 degrees) and I inadvertently hooked the leash not to the ring, but to a small tag that was hanging on her collar held on with just a thin wire loop. She immediately went into doing the zoomies, and I had a real hard time catching her. I won't make that mistake again.
On Saturday we pulled out about 10 AM. I had dropped 2 crab pots on the way in, and I set out to pull them. The first pot had zero crabs. I searched for about 40 minutes but could not find my 2nd pot. I had a track on my GPS chart plotter that showed me exactly where I dropped them, but I just could not find it. That's the first time I've lost a pot.
We got into my slip at Bar Harbor at about 1:30 PM with about 53.8 nm logged for this trip.
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