Tracey Arm in Southeast Alaska is a place we’ve been meaning to revisit. We were here 15 years ago and it had such an impact on us then that afterwards we thought maybe we’d exaggerated the experience in our memory.

There are a pair of active glaciers at the head, which means lots of ice to see and work through. You can see the glaciers on the right side of the image above.

The narrow entrance to Tracey Arm, along with the adjacent reefs, tend to lock the ice bergs into the channel, leaving an amazing collection for us neophyte ice watchers to look at and wonder about.

We were fortunate to have a couple of hours of sunlight in which to take a photos and enjoy the sculpting done by Mother Nature.

The channel abounds in shear granite cliffs.

There are several spectacular valleys off the channel from which glaciers have retreated. These photos do not begin to do justice to what we were actually seeing.

A few of the icebergs had groups of sea gulls.

But other than one whale at the entrance, and a solitary seal (the head of which you can just see at the lower left corner of the photo above), we saw no other animal life.

This was the first chance we’ve had to test our radar in ice. We knew the big pieces would show up, but we were wondering if we could actually use the radar to thread our way through an ice field (not a good idea if it can be avoided!).

The photo above has the radar on 1.5 mile range. At this scale, you can get a feel for the pattern of the ice, but it would not be safe for navigation.

Here we are down to 0.25 nautical mile range, a lot more interesting. The smaller targets represent blocks of ice which are the size of large trash barrels. Not big enough to damage our hull, but if caught in one of the props, certainly enough mass to bend a blade.

Keep in mind this is from a commercial grade radar (Furuno 2117) with 12kW output power and a 7-foot (2m) antennae. A smaller radar would not show the smaller pieces.

Big blocks, like this one, could do serious damage to the boat. In smooth water these will show up at a distance of several miles. But in waves this ice could easily be masked by sea-clutter.

Notice the gear Linda is wearing. Heavy hat, gloves, and lots of layers underneath the slicker. The wind is blowing down the channel, off the glaciers, very chilly. After threading our way through the ice, two miles from the head of the channel, we came to an ice field much thicker than the rest. In the photo this looks clear on the left, but further up there is a solid collection of ice.

These guys came along and we were thinking about following them through. But then the sound of the ice crunching against their hull reverberated back to us, and we thought that this might be too hard on our brand new props.

Or, maybe we just need to get some more experience in these conditions…

And to think, this is the middle of July. Just three days south and we could be water skiing in Desolation Sound!

Having been denied our glacial goal, we found a pleasant spot to stop for lunch. We posed this photo for our friend Ruben Duarte. Ruben owns the best Mexican restaurant on the planet. It is a tiny spot, located in Ojai, California. That’s one of Ruben’s burritos we’re sharing. We never leave without at least 20 pounds (9kg) of Ruben’s provisions in our freezer. We’ve eaten his burritos throughout the South Pacific, the Caribbean, Panama, and now Alaska.

We decided to launch the dinghy so we could grab a few photos of Wind Horse with ice in the photo.

After 250 photos trying to get the dark background and the hull to balance with the snow capped mountains, we gave up. (It is an amazing world when you can take this many photos, and then come back aboard and know if you’ve got what you want within minutes.) Maybe next time we’ll get it right.

OK, so we didn’t get to the glaciers, but the sun is out, the scenery is wonderful, and nobody’s complaining.