We spent three weeks in Kodiak, recovering from our less than ideal passage from Hawaii to Alaska and getting ready for the next leg of our adventure, cruising the Northern Gulf of Alaska along the Kenai Peninsula. We knew we wanted to revisit Shelikof Strait, which we'd last visited in 2015 after arriving in Alaska from our North West Passage transit and also see Prince William Sound. What we weren't sure about was whether we wanted to visit the Kenai Fjords. After talking to other cruisers and reviewing a cruising guide to the area (
Exploring Alaska's Kenai Fjords, David Wm. Miller) we decided to go. Are we glad we did! The Kenai Fjords and its national park, has to be one of, if not the best, cruising ground we've ever visited. It had all the elements we look for and love, spectacular scenery of mountains, glaciers and waterfalls, uncrowded (mostly empty) anchorages within easy reach of each other, abundant wildlife, mostly benign weather and not too many tour boats.
But, I'm getting ahead of myself, first, the boat needed some work. We had to fix the autopilot which was a fairly simple job once we had located the right parts for the drive coupling. G worked very hard to relocate the hydraulic pump so that it is now more accessible for the next time it needs rebuilding.
Also, after relearning what being wet and cold in the cockpit (hand-steering 800 miles without an autopilot on our last passage) feels like, after the last few years in the tropics, we also took the opportunity to turn on the heat ready for the wet and cool Pacific northwest climate we're anticipating this fall and winter. We refurbished the marine diesel heater that was already on the boat, but, had been disconnected. It now works really well, almost too well. We've been really enjoying it on the few dismal, rainy days we've had. We also installed a hydronic heater, a Dickinson Radex2 that cycles the Yanmar engine's coolant through pipes into the cabin where fans distribute the heat. What a treat to come down from the cockpit to a warm, dry and cozy boat, at least when motoring which we expect to do a lot of here.
We set off from Kodiak, through Whale Passage and had a rough crossing of Shelikof. We were aiming for Hallo Bay on the mainland side where we'd hoped to find Kodiak bears. This time of year the bears are eating vegetation and clams and this was supposed to be where we'd see them. Later in the year, when they're feasting on salmon, they move to other areas. We spent two nights there, adjacent to the Hallo Glacier which was so immense it looked surreal. The anchorage was open and fine during the day, but, at night the wind piped up and we found ourselves on anchor watch with 35 knot winds. We thought it was just a fluke and decided to stay a second night so that we'd have an opportunity to go to shore in the dinghy. It turned out to be too rough for the dinghy and we had a second night of 35 knot winds at anchor, which must be regular, katabatic winds at this location. We left the next day and cruised as close to the shoreline as we could get and we did see bears, there were a few huge specimens hanging around on the beach, too far away to get good photos, but, still exciting to see them.
We crossed back over Shelikof and passed by the sometimes problematic entrance to Cook Inlet (Anchorage) without incident, it was mostly calm and relatively windless. We started into the fjords area. The landscape started off green and tranquil.
Then, snow-capped mountains appeared...
...followed by the raw elements of ice, snow and rock. We particularly liked the Northwestern Glacier area. It truly was, as the cruising guide said, "...a spell-binding glacial enclave...filled with valley glaciers, towering cirques, hanging valleys and three tidewater glaciers.".
From the Northwestern Glacier, we moved to the Aaliak Glacial Basin, in the next fjord. It didn't have quite the appeal of the Northwestern, but, had its own charms. We anchored for a couple of nights in Abra Cove, right under a 1,000 foot vertical granite wall. For scale, look very closely at this photo, you can just make out Gjoa at the bottom of the cliff, towards the right.
There were numerous waterfalls cascading down the wall into a small, deep lagoon at its base. We took the dinghy for a little tour along the lagoon.
In front of us, we had an incredible view of the Aaliak Glacier face. Although we were probably 2-3 miles away from the face, we could hear loud, thundering booms in the night, huge ice chunks calving off. The sunset, at 11 p.m., over the glacier was amazing.
We spent a couple of quiet weeks in the fjords and thoroughly enjoyed them. The weather was mostly superb: dry, sunny and warm, but, not too warm. There wasn't much wind, but, it didn't matter, the distances between anchorages were short and we just enjoyed puttering along under motor, enjoying the view.
It was sometimes tricky to get the anchor to set as most anchorages were very deep. Often the anchor would be clinging to a narrow ledge along the shoreline. The conditions were very benign and we always chose a very sheltered anchorage, so, had no issues thankfully. Mostly we had the anchorages all to ourselves, but, we did have to share a few times. There were 3-4 other boats following the same general route that we leapfrogged with. This Swiss boat also made the passage from Hawaii to Alaska a few weeks after us and much more quickly than we did!
Next, we headed towards the town of Seward. On the way there, the seascape was very different, dotted with many islands, rock spires and arches, just as entrancing as the glaciers.
In the next post, I will show you some examples of the wonderful wildlife we encountered during our cruise through this amazing area.
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