Left Nanaimo, Newcastle and Protection islands, left Vancouver, left ours friends. Nearly one year we are here, and the way to Alaska is a long one. We will not sail directly by the open seas, the wind don’t allow it, and we prefer take our time to discover once again our favorit anchorages : Squirrel Cove, Octopus islands, Growler Cove where our mother bear is now with two cubs, Alert Bay and its totem poles. Then further North, God’Pocket, Fury Cove, Pruth bay and the Hakaï Institut, a real university nested in the islands, among red throted loons, sandpipers, tree frogs and wolfes we couldn’t see. Nature burst, the lichens are painters, carvers, the eagles nest, the whales blow, dive, orcas patroll, waterfalls abond with trouts, raven are in love, and this Prince Rupert, the border town.
On the other side, in Alaska, Ketchikan, the twin sister, still in the mood of the aventures of gold seekers on their way to the Yukon or the Klondike, where the hypothetic fortunes often went up in smoke…Small isolated villages, plenty of fishermen. Here in Alaska the whole family often go at sea, even on the big seine boats you meet women, girls and boys. Indiens villages welcome us, as in Hoonah, the Tlingit indian culture is really alive, it’s not only folk and nowadays artists are well worth the ancients ones, even if things have changed. Everywhere the same kindness, the same warmth, we don’t have to buy fish, it’s given to us. The scenery changes, the montains rise bigger, glaciers appear, grizzlis too, the houses more scare, villages or towns are turn to fishing. The salmon is the King, fortunes are made in a few months with seiners, gillnetters or liners. If the rich canadian villas are gone the tourists feed the economy with an average of 7000 a day and up to 12.000….
In Elfin Cove, last call in South East Alaska, we discover gold, sunset gold, before our Alaskan Gulf crossing. We have a good wind, at last we sail. The arrival in the Hinchinbrook Passage had been pretty hard and we are happy to take a good sleep in Deer Cove, well sheltered among the fishing boats, where we can actualy see deers capering on the beach,.
We are in the Prince William Sound.
