Making Memories

Val and I have always thought that it was better to build memories rather than just acquire stuff. When we started cruising in 2006, we realized that the boat was a great tool that allowed us to get to remote places, and with friends and family, to experience things together that would be exciting and different.

Our kids have visited and traveled with us a lot and this year it was daughter Kari, her husband Ryan and their son Liam who visited us for a week in Alaska’s Prince William Sound.

Prince William Sound is a protected body of water encompassing over 10,000 square miles and containing over 150 glaciers. The principal  town is Valdez, which is home to about 3,500 permanent residents. We chose Valdez as our hub for the summer, mainly due to it having an airport, a Safeway grocery store, a marina, and some funky bars and restaurants. The town is known for its great commercial and sport fishing for halibut and salmon, spot prawns, and winter skiing and ice climbing. 

The Valdez we visited was relocated to its present location in 1964 after the original Valdez a mile away was destroyed by a tsunami generated by the largest earthquake ever in North America. It measured 9.6 and the ground shook for almost five minutes. Valdez is also known to many as the site of the second largest oil disaster in history when the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in the Sound in 1989. Its radar had not worked for over a year and was not repaired due to cost and was not turned on. Eleven million gallons of oil leaked into the Sound. We found the Sound spectacular and mostly recovered, but each time we passed Bligh Reef I found myself pausing to consider how much damage was done to both flora and fauna after that oil tanker’s nighttime departure without working navigation electronics. 

Kari and Ryan cruised with us in Japan, but this was Liam’s first boat trip, so we wanted to get him familiar with the boat. Engine room checks…done. Navigation electronics…done. Cold-water survival suits, PFD’s, fire, life raft, EPIRB’s, VHF…done.

So, the first order of business underway was one of the most critical: get an iceberg on board ASAP so we could have a proper cocktail hour. 

We headed up Columbia Fjord towards Columbia glacier. We knew from a previous trip that this large bay was full of bergs, so much so that a few weeks earlier we could not get to the glacier face due to ice. No repeat of the Titanic for us! We also knew from that trip that even a tiny berg (called a growler) weighs a lot more than it looks. But with Liam and Ryan and a fishing net working together, we were able to pick up two bergs which stood up to my hammer and screwdriver for the week. Scientists tell us that the ice calving from glaciers in the Sound today was formed by rain or snow that fell about 12,000 years ago. It’s a lot of fun to have a beverage with ice that old and it’s so dense due to compression by the glacial weight that it seems to last a long time. 

Spot prawns are an Alaskan favorite, and we had two prawn pots on board that we bought in Valdez. The idea is to bait the traps with whole herring and a smelly cat food-like kibble, attach about 500 feet of leaded rope to the pot and the other end to a floating buoy and then drop the pot in about 300 feet of water for part of a day and then retrieve the pot and see what you caught. The prawns crawl into the netted pot to get the food and then can’t figure out how to escape.

We did really well with prawns and everyone participated in the preparation and cooking of these unique creatures. They are different, tender and sweeter than the typical shrimp and are totally sustainable.

We did less well with fishing because the salmon had not arrived in the Sound to spawn yet, and the weather prevented us from getting to the best halibut areas, but we did catch some rock fish which are good eating. Dungeness crab have not recovered from the Exxon Valdez so it is illegal to catch them in the Sound. We’ll be trying for them as we move south towards Victoria in British Columbia.

We have the same Circa dinghy that we’ve had since 2013 and it continues to serve us well. Some of the anchorages are simply beautiful and we can “get a feel for a place” by riding around the shore.

In Landlocked Bay a departing cruiser hailed us on the radio and told us there was an old, abandoned log cabin “up the hill from the rock with moss on it”. It took us about an hour to find as it was totally hidden, and there are tons of rocks, all with moss on them, but wow, it was amazing. Tools, a water catchment, a fire pit and small rail tracks supported a miner a hundred years ago in this bay that yielded tons of copper.

There was bear evidence around the cabin including a wooden structure used as a claw sharpening tool. Glad we missed the bear, but we did carry bear spray with us whenever we went ashore. 

We never tired of watching sea otters. They float on their backs and move backwards. In July when we were there the females had babies with them that clutch their moms and ride on their chests. When mom dives the young ones hang on and go with them. Because their fur is so dense, otter pelts are a favorite for winter clothes. There are roughly one million hair follicles per square inch of skin on an otter, which is why they can tolerate constantly really cold water. Adult otters weigh between 40-60 pounds.

In 1742 Russian Captain Bering made his voyage of discovery to Alaska and found and killed sea otters for their pelts which were used to make clothes. Russian, American and European trappers reduced the population to less that 2,000 by 1911. On the brink of extinction, an international treaty prohibited the future use of otter fur in much of the world.

The otter story, like those of the the bald eagle and peregrine falcon, is a great success story, and today none are severely endangered. However, human activity and climate change still pose a threat. The Exxon Valdez oil spill killed over 2,000 sea otters.

So what’s a family blog without some horsing around. We did a lot!!