On August 8th I have my niece and her husband and 3 children coming in from the East coast for a visit of about a week. On that same day my daughter Jennifer and 9-year-old grandson Hayden are coming in to participate in the visit. One of our planned for/hoped for activities during their stay is to go to the USFS cabin at Fish Creek, which is in Thorne Arm. I've been there many times, but not recently, so I thought it would be a good idea to make a run out there as sort of a "recon" trip to scout out the area and possibly get some photos of the cabin.
Here is a map snippet that shows my track for this trip. There is a segment missing, which runs from Fish Creek to Ice House Cove. More about that later in the post.
It's about a 23-mile run from town out to Fish Creek, so about a 3-hour run for me. The run out there was uneventful, and I piloted from the flybridge. I left Nova down below but went down to check on her a couple times on the way out.
It's about a 10 mile run North into Thorne Arm once you make the turn into the arm. As my luck usually goes, I saw no vessels at all, until I got within about 15 minutes of the mooring buoy. Then a small metal boat ran up there and tied up to the mooring buoy in front of the cabin.
There is another mooring buoy a couple of miles away from Fish Creek at a place known as Sea Level Mine, so I made for that one. The seas in Thorne Arm were glassy calm as I tied up to the mooring buoy there at about 10:30 AM.
Here's another map snippet that shows the relative locations of the 2 mooring buoys. The one circled at the top is the one in front of Fish Creek, the one I wanted to get. The lower one is at Sea Level Mine, the one I ended up at.
Here's a shot of Faraway on the mooring buoy a couple of hours after we got tied up. The seas were starting to pick up by then and it wasn't glassy calm any longer.
It was fine being on this mooring buoy, but it negated a couple of my goals for this trip. I wanted to go ashore and see the cabin, but that would not be possible from this location. My little electric motor on the raft does not have enough oomph to make it that far, and in any case, the seas picked up and it would not have been comfortable nor safe to try to run over to the cabin in the raft.
I deployed the raft and took Nova to shore for dewatering and then just hung out on the boat.
After lunch the seas really picked up and the big boat was "horsing" up and down on the mooring buoy. It wasn't too uncomfortable because the boat was facing into the waves, and my plan was still to spend the night here.
About 2 PM I decided to take Nova to shore again and when I went back to the swim step and the raft, I quickly saw that it was not possible. The big boat was horsing up and down violently and the raft was tied sideways to the swim step, and it was cavorting up and down to a different rhythm than the big boat. The raft was getting beat up and was in danger of being damaged. Getting into and out of the raft was a real challenge and I knew that I could not take Nova to shore in these conditions.
I made the quick but difficult decision to make a hasty departure from Thorne Arm with my goals left unmet.
I secured the raft as quickly as possible, which was very difficult under these conditions. We pulled away from the mooring buoy at about 3 PM.
As far as planning for the upcoming trip in August, this was disturbing to say the least. This was not a stormy day; it was actually a quite normal day. Thorne Arm is notorious for acting like a funnel and when the north wind blows it all funnels up to the head of the arm.
As we departed Thorne Arm, I actually had no definite destination in mind, but I knew I could not stay the night on that mooring buoy. If I had been alone, I could have handled it. But having Nova aboard and needing to take her to shore made it not feasible.
I made my way out of Thorne Arm and the seas were not calm, but they were not at all dangerous either. As I said, just a normal day in Thorne Arm.
My departure was so hurried that I neglected to start the tracking function on my Garmin InReach, which is why there is no track showing from the Fish Creek area to Ice House Cove, which is where I ended up.
While I was underway, I made a plan. Ice House Cove is a little protected cove that is not far from town, and there is a mooring buoy there. I decided that I would poke my nose in there and if the mooring buoy was open and available that I would go in there and spend the night.
Here's a map snippet that shows Ice House Cove in a little bit of detail. It is right across the channel from Mountain Point.
When I got there, I saw that the mooring buoy was open, so I went in there and got tied up at about 5 PM. Nova had not been to shore since about 11 AM in Thorne Arm, so I made my best effort to deploy the raft & motor as quickly as possible and get her to shore.
Ice House Cove is a nice, protected spot to spend the night, but as far as dog walking goes, I give it a C-. Most places along the shoreline are too rocky and steep to get a raft to shore. I could only find one spot that had even a small patch of green beach grass, so that's where we went to shore during our time here.
Here's a short video that shows Faraway on the mooring buoy in the cove.
There is a trailhead here, and in past years when I was a much younger man, I hiked the trail a few times. Here's a shot of the sign they use to mark the beginning of an "officially recognized" USFS trail.
We had a nice quiet night on the mooring buoy with dead calm conditions and no visitors.
On Sunday morning we were sitting there, and I think I was doing a crossword puzzle. But Nova likes to look out the window. Suddenly she started growling, so I looked out. There were 3 very colorful double kayaks paddling into our little cove.
Ice House Cove seems to have more than its share of jelly fish floating around. On Sunday morning it was so calm in the cove that I took the raft out and tried very hard to get some photos and videos of the many jelly fish in the area. It turned out to be much more difficult than I thought it would be. The lighting had to be just right, or they wouldn't be visible, and the jelly fish had to cooperate by being very near the surface. Out of all the stills and videos that I shot these are the best of the lot.
And to finish out the photos I just have to share this photo that I took way back in 2007. It was one of my first trips in this boat, and my friend Len and I went over to Moira Sound, which is across Clarence Strait on Prince of Wales Island. We weren't shooting video back then, so this is a still shot of a small fish that appears to be taking small nips on the jelly fish, essentially eating it.
We stayed in this idyllic spot until just after noon, and then I took Nova to shore for one last de-watering, I secured the raft & motor, and we pulled away from the mooring buoy and we headed for town.
We got into the slip safely at about 2:30 PM, after logging about 45 miles on this trip.
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