2025-03-12 Naha Trip

Maintenance issues, time constraints from my other commitments, and bad weather have combined to keep me in port since my last trip in late January. However, the maintenance issues are solved (for now), many of the time constraints have fallen away, and we finally got a 2 day stretch of good weather in the forecast. So, I made plans to head to the Naha, one of my favorite places in the whole world. It just seems to enrich my soul.

Here is the track from my Garmin InReach device. I took the exact same route on the way out and the way back, but this track just shows one way. The Garmin InReach sends a waypoint to the website every 10 minutes while I am underway. Anyone with the link can go out there and see where I am. There is a bit of a time delay, but not very long. It's about 21 miles one way out there.

I pulled out of my slip at about 7:25 AM in cool, calm, and very foggy weather. The weather forecast predicted sunny weather so I was hoping that the fog would dissipate soon.

Here is my track off the Garmin GPS chart plotter immediately after leaving the harbor in the fog. That very wavy red line shows my track for those several minutes right outside the harbor. Believe it or not I was doing my best to steer a relatively straight course just relying on the GPS chart plotter. You can see that I wasn't doing a very good job of it. So, I activated the autopilot on the correct compass course, and it did a much better job of steering straight than I was doing.

My dog Nova was my crew for this trip. She likes to look out the windows when we are close enough to land to be able to see anything. She does pretty well on the boat, but she has not been in what I would call really rough seas. Also, I sure wish I could train her to go potty on puppy pads. Then I wouldn't have to take her to shore in the raft. On this trip we would be at a dock, but for many trips I have to launch the raft and take her to shore, which is not only difficult, but it can also be somewhat dangerous.

I dropped my one huge shrimp pot on the way to the Naha. I really "heavy baited" it in an effort to get a good load of shrimp. More on that later.

I pulled into the dock at the Naha at about 10:20 AM. No other boats were there which didn't surprise me at all. It's the middle of March and it's the middle of the week. In the summer this dock can get very busy, but not at this time of the year.

Check out the reflection of the bow of the boat in the absolutely flat water.

I set up the tripod and took a few selfies of me by the boat.

Here are few scenic shots of the area down by the dock. As you can see the weather was stunningly beautiful. We have had some absolutely atrocious weather recently and when it gets like this it is just so wonderful. I have to be outside to experience it.

Of course I took Nova on many walks during our time here. When we are on a logging road, I let her run off leash. But this isn't a logging road, it is a trail that winds through the woods. I didn't feel comfortable letting her off leash here. It was hard to get any good photos with her pulling all the time on the leash, but I managed to get a few while we were up in the woods.

This is the same trail sign that was here on my first trip here back in the summer of 1978. It has fallen down off its post, but the Forest Service has so far not deemed it important enough to either make a new sign or to remount this one. Maybe I'll make a new one in my shop and just mount it myself. That would probably be a violation of federal law, and I'd end up in jail.

Even though she was on leash Nova still enjoyed our many walks in the woods. Many new scents for her to sniff out. And every now and then a squirrel would taunt her by running across the trail in front of us. Of course, Nova has no chance of every catching a squirrel.

This is Roosevelt Lagoon. It's called a "lagoon" rather than a lake because it is fed by the Naha River on the inlet side, but then it connects to the salt water on the outlet side. When the tide is coming in it rolls up through the rapids and mixes with the freshwater from the river. So, it looks a lot like a lake, but it isn't a lake.

In the fall salmon make their way through the rapids into the lagoon, and then eventually into the Naha River to spawn. No salmon here at this time of year though.

I don't even know what to call these next 2 shots. The sun was just so bright in the woods, and the shapes just looked unique to me, so I took some photos of them.

Here are a couple shots of the trail itself. It runs for many miles up into the wilderness, but on this trip, I only went a very short way up the trail. It is in pretty good shape here, but it's not like this everywhere.

The sunshine in the woods was just great to see after such a long streak of truly bad weather.

People keep skiffs and canoes and other watercraft here at the end of Roosevelt Lagoon ostensibly so they can cross the lagoon and get up into the Naha River for fishing. But what usually happens is that they just abandon them over time. Then they sit here and deteriorate and eventually become unusable.

When you go up the trail from the dock you can branch to the right and go to the picnic shelter area. There is a big shelter there with a picnic table inside and a fire pit. It gets a fair amount of use in the spring and summer. The trail that goes to the picnic shelter was completely blocked by a huge brush pile from some downed trees. In the winter there are some horrendous storms that roll through and it is not uncommon for numerous trees to get blown down. When I got back to town, I emailed these photos to the USFS in the hopes that they will send a team out with chain saws to clear this up and open up the trail.

In the evenings on these trips, I would usually watch a movie. I used to watch DVD's but now that I have Starlink WiFi I have access to streaming services so I can watch pretty much whatever I want. But on this particular evening the weather was just so stunningly good that instead of spending the evening in the cabin I decided to make a fire on the dock and sit out there for a bit. I have a fire pit, and I had brought some firewood, so Nova and I enjoyed a nice fire on the dock.

Nova and I had a quiet night at the dock. The moon was full and the stars were out. A great night to be out at a spot like the Naha.

On the way home the next day I stopped and pulled my shrimp pot with very disappointing results. There were only 16 shrimp in the pot when I was hoping for more like a couple hundred. There were 12 of these "rock crabs." I don't know if that is a scientifically accurate name, it's just what I have always called them. I call them that because when they curl up they look just like a rock. I don't know if it is legal to keep them, and I don't know if they are edible. But these ones were way too small to think about keeping even if they were legal, so back in the water they went.

The rest of the trip in was uneventful.

I got back in the slip without difficulty at about 4 PM.

It was good trip and I'm glad I was able to finally get back out on the water.

I logged about 42 miles on this trip.