2025-03-28 Marguerite Bay Trip

The weather forecast was showing mostly sunny weather and light winds for 3 days, with a little rain on Saturday. I decided to schedule a 3-day 2-night trip. I had thought about going all the way up to Klu Bay up on the northern end of western Behm Canal, but in the end decided to go to Marguerite Bay in Traitors Cove, western Behm Canal.

Here is a map snippet from my Garmin InReach that shows my track. The little indentation that shows on the track is my brief stop at Loring, but more on that later.

I pulled out of my slip in Bar Harbor at about 6:15 AM. It was daylight by then. I haven't been running in the dark since my "incident" last October which caused a lot of expensive damage. I've mounted some lights on my bow pulpit, but they are not fully tested yet and I don't yet trust them for running in the dark.

My crew for this trip was my little dog, Nova. She likes to look out the windows when we are close enough to be able to see something.

When I left the dock, I still hadn't fully decided what my destination would be. If I was going all the way to Klu Bay that would be a long time for Nova to go without getting a dewatering walk. So, I decided to pull into Loring and take Nova for a short walk.

I pulled into Loring at about 9:15 AM, after logging 20 nm.

I had 3 tasks to perform here. First, I had to take Nova for a short walk. Second, I wanted to pull my big shrimp pot down and get it baited and ready to drop. Third, one of my friends asked me to scatter some ashes from his relatives. That was a new one for me. I've never been asked to do that before.

It took about a half-hour to accomplish these 3 tasks, and we pulled out from the Loring dock at 9:40 AM.

My plan was to pull into Traitors Cove and drop my shrimp pot. Then, take a look at the Marguerite Bay dock. If there was room for me there, I'd pull in there. But if not, we would proceed further up Behm Canal and head for Klu Bay. Klu Bay has a mooring buoy but no dock. With Nova aboard it is much easier to deal with her if I am at a dock.

We got into Traitors Cove, and I dropped the shrimp pot in about 300' of water.

I took a look at the dock, and it was completely open, no other boats there at all.

By 11:15 AM we were tied up at the dock, after logging 30.3 nm to this point.

This map snippet shows approximately where I dropped the shrimp pot. It is marked with a blue "X" on the left side of the map. The blue circle more on the right side shows approximately where the USFS dock is.

The weather was stunningly beautiful, and I felt very blessed to have the wherewithal to come out and spend some time at such a place.

Here are some scenic shots of the area. I used my wide-angle lens for some of them. I tend to forget that I have it, but for scenic shots of a large area it works pretty well.

Not a bad place to spend a few days!

Once I got the boat secure and Nova's needs taken care of, I deployed the raft and baited and dropped my 2 crab pots over in front of where the creek comes out, in about 50' of water. I checked and rebaited these pots a few times during my stay here.

During our 3 days here I took Nova on numerous walks up on the logging road. I would let her go off-leash on the logging road. As soon as I unhooked her, she would take off like a rocket and run about 200 yards before she would stop and look back to see if I was still coming. I always carried pockets full of treats and she knew that, so it was easy to get her to come back when I needed to.

After a few such walks I got pretty tired so in the late afternoon of that first day, so I laid down on the couch for a brief nap. I guess I got a short nap in, but Nova soon woke me up with her barking. We had visitors on the dock! Nova doesn't like visitors.

This is a US Forest Service vessel. They stopped in on their way back to Ketchikan. They were only on the dock for about 30 - 40 minutes. It was quite a vessel. Twin 400 HP outboards. I had a nice chat with a couple of the USFS officers. They had been up farther north in Boroughs Bay and attempted to launch a raft for a shore party. They said it got far too rough and so they had to abort that mission.

They turned out to be my only visitors during our time here.

While we were here, I had many diversions. With Starlink WiFi now I can connect with my iPad and my laptop. I also brought my old .22 rifle, that I have had since 1965. It's been years since I shot it. It was fun to drill some of my empty propane cannisters. And of course, I took numerous walks with Nova up the logging road.

When in remote locations such as this it is important to pay attention to what is happening around you. You never know when a deer or a bear or a wolf, or in this case a seal and some water birds will stop by for a visit.

Here is Mr. Seal. He was poking around the area for most of my time here. I apologize for the blurriness. I was using my telephoto lens with it cranked up to full power. When I do that, it is difficult to hold it still enough by hand. I took several shots of him, but these were the best of the lot.

There were also several water birds in the area that I believe were Mergansers, but I am not an expert on birds, so I could be wrong. They were quite shy and if I opened the back door to take photos as they swam by, they would immediately take flight. So, I had to be stealthy,

There was also some other type of bird, perhaps a duck of some sort? He seemed to be kind of a loner, but he would swim by the boat quite often.

Nova and I enjoyed our time here. On Saturday afternoon it rained and blew for a few hours, but that was expected and we just stayed inside during that time. I watched a movie on Prime Video.

On Friday evening we had a nice fire on the dock. I have a small fire pit for such use. I put a metal plate under it so that it doesn't burn the dock. I neglected to get some photos of that.

I pulled the crab pots a few times and got a few nice legal males. My crab cooker finally decided to work so I cooked the first batch right there on the dock.

On Friday night as I was sitting by the fire, I almost missed a terrific sunset happening behind me. These are usually brief in their splendor, so I'm glad I caught it before it disappeared.

Nova and I pulled out around 10:30 AM on Sunday. My first task was to pull the shrimp pot. There was virtually no wind but there was a strong current running, so it took me multiple attempts to hook the buoys with the grappling hook.

I was lucky enough to get a pretty good haul of shrimp this time.

On the way home we pulled into Loring again so that I could walk Nova and stow all the shrimp gear and process the shrimp. We were there for about 3 or 4 hours. I think there was another nap in there somewhere too.

The winds were predicted to get less and less as the evening progressed, so I didn't want to get back to town too soon.

We pulled away from Loring at 3:30 PM and made it into the slip at about 6 PM, logging 61 nm for this trip.

My next trip will be my annual run to Wrangell in mid-April for haul out and annual maintenance tasks.