The first official day of summer smelled like winter. The entrance to Tracy Arm was dotted with large icebergs, some as big as houses. And as we passed them, we could feel the cold and smell the ice and snow. We moved up the inlet, slowly, anticipating what was to come. The water turned the most amazing shade of aquamarine. The channel grew narrower, more intimate, with every...

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The summer solstice may be the Northern Hemisphere’s longest day of the year, but we’ve had 24 hours of light for some time now. The sun rises around 3:40 each morning and sets at 10:30 pm with twilight in between. Some nights, when the sky is clear, you can see well enough to read outside. Certainly well enough to move if we wanted to. And this morning we...

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MV Island Spirit entering Fords Terror Fords Terror is a geological wonderland . . . and one of the most beautiful places we’ve ever seen, though you wouldn’t know it by its name. The story behind the unflattering moniker is well-known by those cruising these waters, but bears repeating: In 1889, a crewmember on the US Coast and Geodetic Survey vessel the Patterson entered the fjord in a...

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We left Sandborn Canal at 8 o’clock Tuesday morning and weaved our way through the crab pots that filled the inlet. Our experience left me wondering if we shouldn’t just cut our losses, pack it in and move south – not solely because of this one incident, but the culmination of several disappointing anchorages and too many 50-mile days to reach them: My hope was that Tracy and...

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Coming out of Thomas Bay Friday morning, the wind was already blowing 15 knots out of the west (right on our nose) and we seriously considered tucking into an anchorage along the way before the seas built up. But the conditions subsided with northing, so we carried on. The 50-mile day was long . . . and boring. The clouds kept the best of the scenery hidden and...

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We said good-bye to Petersburg and slowly made our way up Frederick Sound Wednesday morning to our next destination – Baird Glacier in Thomas Bay. It was a short run, only 20 miles, and our early departure had more to do with the currents than anything else. The mouth of Thomas Bay is two miles wide, but the actual entrance has been narrowed down by reefs and shoals...

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