So this is a first! We normally don’t anchor at midnight, but today was a busy day. Someone who shall not be named decided to sleep in until 10 am. We won’t judge, but our day got a late start. We first dropped the dingy and went to shore to explore the Petrified Forest which is not really a forest, but a beach full of petrified wood. We collected a couple and were on our way.
As the dinghy was down we decided to pick up our Dungeness crab trap on the way back to the boat. But wait, what??!! No crab trap. We searched all around the area we marked on our chart. Then we thought maybe from Just Drifting we could get a better vantage because on deck we would be higher off the water. We searched until 3 pm until we finally gave up. We saw a white buoy just floating attached to no line that resembled our buoy, but we were not sure. Our thoughts are either a boat came closer to shore and cut the line with their prop or someone pulled the trap. Alaskan’s are wonderful for sharing and we hardly could think someone would actually take the trap because we’ve heard of people checking traps then putting beer in the trap if they take the contents. A third option is the trap is light and it could have gotten swept away because the current turned out to be very strong near where we dropped and there was also lots of drifting kelp. The good news is there is a safety line on the trap so that if it is left in the water too long the line dissolves and allows anything inside the trap to escape.
We motored in light downwind to Pavlof Bay where we found the location of the two traps the locals from Sand Point told us we were welcome check. We worked as a team and pulled up the giant crab trap full of King Crab. We were thrilled! We identified several as females because they were carrying eggs under their shell and were much smaller, so we put them back in the water. We sadly watched two males actually escape the trap before we had fully lifted it on deck, but a few remained. So on the menu tonight is 16 lbs of King Crab legs! No butter needed!
The sun had just sat and twilight hour continued to provide a stunning glow of orange across the land as we pulled between Ivan Island and two giant volcanos on the Alaska Peninsula and at 11:55 pm we dropped anchor.
Cheers,
Wade and Sara
Ivan Island 52 feet Sand Anchorage 55° 31.122’N, 161° 40.209W Petrified Forest 18 feet Sand Anchorage 55° 24.149’N, 160° 45.151W Good VHF Weather Signal, Unsure of SSB Signal, 5/5 Iridium Go connection
To find where are Wade, Sara, and SV Just Drifting, copy and paste these coordinates 55.5187,-161.67015 into Google Maps!
