{"id":748,"date":"2006-07-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-19T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/?p=748"},"modified":"2009-04-15T08:58:57","modified_gmt":"2009-04-15T13:58:57","slug":"s_logs-dashew-dashew269","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/s_logs-dashew-dashew269\/","title":{"rendered":"Juneau"},"content":{"rendered":"
Juneau – a neighbor goes aground.<\/div>\n

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Juneau is a normal looking tourist city – well, almost. The first thing one notices is the trash containers at the marina.<\/p>\n

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It takes one person to crank the top open, and a second to toss in the trash. This is supposed to be bear-proof, but hey, bears can operate as couples too! And from here on this is the norm. We’ve been told not to leave garbage on deck, not because of rats (with which we’ve had experience) but because of bears! But can you imagine a photo of a bear on our aft deck?<\/p>\n

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Then there are the covered gangways. This either says something about the weather or the desire to have a nice ambiance. We suspect it is the former.<\/p>\n

Juneau is on the cruise ship itinerary, so the shops around downtown cater to this lucrative trade. It is also a fishing port, the capitol of the state, and a generally interesting town. We stopped to see if we could get last-minute permits for Glacier Bay and the Pack Creek bear viewing area. <\/p>\n

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There was no room in the marina the first evening, so we anchored out. There are not a lot of choices – you anchor either north or south of the bridge. South is less crowded, but deeper. On the north side you share the anchorage with unattended barges, tugs, and fishing boats. In neither location were we totally comfortable leaving the boat – hence the decision to go into the dock when a space was found for us the next day.<\/p>\n

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At anchor there is a constant stream of yachts, fishing boats, cruise ships, and sea planes.<\/p>\n

In this era of GPS, chart plotters, and radar, we need to keep reminding ourselves to stay with our old habits. Mistakes are easy to make, and this is not a forgiving locale for mishaps. Our rule is to always back up one nav position with another. Radar and chart plotter, or paper position with chart plotter, perhaps confirmed with the depth finder. This is a habit developed from many years of cruising when dead reckoning and celestial were the only form of position fixing. <\/p>\n

Yet we occasionally find ourselves relaxing, and we need a reminder of why this is important. When we awoke the morning after anchoring in Juneau, visibility was limited in light fog. However, we could still see that a yacht had gone up on the shallow spot across the channel from where we were anchored.<\/p>\n

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Checking the tidal cycle, it appears he must have struck sometime near high water.<\/p>\n

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As you can see from the Nobeltec tide predictor above, the afternoon tide is slightly higher. But as the moon is waning, each succeeding day will bring a lower tidal range. If he doesn’t make it off on this afternoon’s tide, he is stuck for three weeks.<\/p>\n

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The Coast Guard came out to fill in some forms, and a spill protection barrier was fitted around the boat.<\/p>\n

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You can see the bridge in the photo above. If you look closely at the top of the bridge, you will see the discolored water of the shoal. There is a red nav marker (a piling) on the corner of the shoal.. <\/p>\n

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The shoal can be more clearly seen here, and in fact you can see the top of the nav marker – a white dot about an inch in from the right edge and an inch up from the bottom.<\/p>\n

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We were returning from town about 1600 when we stopped to watch the tide coming up. There was concern that the boat might flood through starboard side air intakes, and these were sealed. They also put a line over the flopper stopper boom, which you can see deployed above, to the rear of the outboard, to try to pull the boat upright.<\/p>\n

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We were surprised to see just a small fish boat, with a pair of 125HP outboards as the tug. While this is a lot of HP, small, fast-turning props are not efficient at getting torque into the water – and torque is what is normally required in this sort of operation. However, they were in luck with the tides and had just enough water to float off. The harbor master later told us that they suffered no major damage.<\/p>\n

We’re going to use one of these photos as a screen saver on the computer, as a constant reminder. This can happen to anyone!<\/p>\n

As a general rule we do not like docks, and much prefer to anchor out. Docks do have one advantage. They make it a lot easier to meet the locals. And it is the locals, especially in a place like Alaska, that add a layer of enjoyment and knowledge to cruising.<\/p>\n

Juneau harbor was no exception in this regard, and we met a series of very interesting water and land people. In the process we gained some valuable insights into where to visit – there are so many choices here it is hard to know what to choose.<\/p>\n

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Among other things, Alaska is known for its fishing, shrimping, and crabbing. Almost everyone carries at least a crab pot and often more than one, plus a shrimp trap.<\/p>\n

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There is a lot of art to this process. How to bait the traps, where and when to place them, and then what to do with the rewards. Do you cook these guys for breakfast? Or keep them alive until dinner? And, do you make crab cakes, eat them straight, or have a crab salad? Alaska is a land of too many options…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Juneau – a neighbor goes aground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dashew-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}