George Inlet Trip

When I was up in Carroll Inlet recently, I realized that it had been a long time since I went up into George Inlet which is right "next door," so I decided to make a trip up that way.

I pulled out of Bar Harbor at about 6:45 AM in overcast but very calm conditions.  The boat next to me, the Edward R, was not in her slip, which made it somewhat easier to pull out.

Just outside the breakwater there are 2 wrecks which were not there when I moved away in May 2018.  I'm not aware of the circumstances that caused them to be there in that condition.

Just a little further up towards town there is an older wooden boat at anchor.  It has been there since I got back to town last July.  I don't know if someone lives on it, or just keeps it there.  I've never seen any activity in or around it.

Of course, the Jackpot, 164' yacht, is still anchored in its customary spot just west of Pennock Island.  My friends tell me it has been there at least a year before I got back to town, which was almost a year ago.  The tenders look small next to the big yacht, but they are actually about 26' or more and have 175 HP outboards on them.

Another vessel is anchored near the Jackpot.  I couldn't catch the name, but it sports a helicopter on the aft deck.

When I passed Cedars Lodge, I saw the 2 yellow and black hovercraft.  Someone told me they are operating tours with cruise ship tourists.  I have seen them running back and forth near town.  I don't know where they run their passengers, but it has to be somewhere relatively close to town.

Ellis Law firm has waterfront offices, and several years ago they built a couple of large docks right in front of their offices.  They offer moorage for yachts that are too large to fit into our regular boat harbors.  These yachts could choose to anchor near the Jackpot, but it is more convenient to be tied up to a dock.  I met some people several years ago who tied up their 76' yacht there and they told me it was $3 per foot per night to moor there.

As they say, "back in the day." if you wanted to cross an ocean in a pleasure yacht you had to do it under sail because at that time there were no power boats capable of carrying enough fuel to cross an ocean.  Then a few yacht makers like Nordhavn, Kady-Krogen, Selene, Fleming and a few others started building pleasure yachts capable of crossing an ocean.  The solution was to design a semi-displacement hull (sometimes full displacement) with enough tankage to carry thousands of gallons of fuel, and have a large, slow turning prop with an engine that sipped the fuel.  This is a Nordhavn, perhaps 50' or 55' at the Doyon Landing moorage dock.  These vessels are built like tanks, with multiple fuel tanks, fuel polishing systems, redundant systems such as 2 radars, 2 water makers, 3 GPS chart plotters, etc.  It had always been my dream to own a Nordhavn, but alas it is not in the cards for me.

Mountain Point is a popular fishing area, just a few miles from town.  I had to turn the corner there in order to head north into George Inlet.  The Fish & Game Dept had just recently opened up this area for King Salmon fishing and there were many boats fishing there as I passed by.  There were private (non-charter) boats, charter boats with cruise ships guests aboard, and a lot of commercial trolling boats working the area.  These power trollers use hydraulics to drop huge leads down on wires, and then attach multiple lines to those wires at various depths.  I have never commercial fished but when I was sport fishing, we liked to see these commercial guys around on the theory that they would not be there if there were not fish around.  These are just 2 of the dozen or so that were fishing the area that day.

The City of Ketchikan owns and manages several boat harbors around town, The harbor I am in is officially known as Bar Harbor North.  Without a doubt the smallest harbor in town is appropriately named "Hole In The Wall."  It is very small and can only hold a dozen or so small boats.

Out this way is George Inlet Lodge.  They offer tourist packages like a crab fest, nature walks and the like.  They have a couple of large fast boats and they run the tourists out to Coon Cove where they have crab pots already set.  The tourists get to see the pots being pulled, and the crab taken out.  It's quite the spectacle for them.

The teal green boat on the left of the photo is one of 3 that were originally built for Salmon Falls Resort.  They ran them for a few years, taking tourists out for thrilling fast rides to nearby attractions on the water.  Then they sat idle for several years.  The only reason I remember them is that the bank I worked for, First Bank, financed their original construction, and as part of that myself and a few other officers and directors got to go on ride.  These really are unique vessels.  3 engines, if I recall, with jet drives.  When we went out the driver did fast spins that made you have to hold onto your seat.

Just north of George Inlet Lodge there is a large abandoned cannery.  It seems that some tourist minded person would want to snap up that property and turn it into some kind of tourist business.

I had researched the area in my cruising guide book before making the trip.  Of course, you can anchor wherever you want (if it's shallow enough) but there are some places that are more protected than others.  I wanted to check them all out on this trip. Mahoney Bight, Leask Cove, Coon Cove, Bat Cove, Tsa Cove, I checked them all.  Coon Cove is a great spot but there are so many crab pots in there from the George Inlet Lodge boats that it would be hard to anchor in there. Some of these I may visit again in future trips, perhaps during the winter.

There are a few small islands in the northern end of George Inlet and there are lots of private cabins, floats, docks, etc.  

I finally settled on Tsa Cove as my anchor site for the night.  It has a bit of a tricky entrance, but if you have enough of a high tide and you pay close attention to your GPS and to your depth, it is not so difficult to enter.  This was the view "out my back door."  Not a bad place to spend the night!

This is Faraway at anchor in Tsa Cove.

When I am anchored up in little coves like this I am always on the alert for "critters" on the beach or in the water.  While I was dropping the anchor a deer wandered by on the beach right in front of the boat but I was busy with the anchor so could not get any photos or videos.

During the course of my stay here I did see some activity on the beach.

I was watching this black bear on the beach that was eating grass.  At this time of year there are no salmon in the rivers yet so the bears have to eat something else.  They eat a lot of beach grass, and they sometimes turn over large rocks on the beach and eat the little crabs hiding underneath.  I had been watching this bear for a while before I noticed there was a cub with her.  The grass was so tall it had obscured the cub at first.

I think this must have been a different bear because I watched it for a long time at various areas along the beach and I never saw a cub.  That "upside down" bear is the reflection in the water.

I saw deer several times in different areas, but it was hard to get good photos because they were usually pretty far away.  I have a 300 mm zoom lens but even with that they were pretty small.

I saw this doe on a far beach.  She came right out to the edge of the water.  There was a heron fishing there and she walked right up to it.

The herons are fun to watch as they fish in the shallow water.  They stand stock still, then sometimes move very, very slowly.  Then all of a sudden they pounce, usually coming up with a small fish in their bills.  When you look at an object through the water there is a refraction of light dynamic that comes into play, so that the object is not exactly where your eye perceives it to be.  Herons must instinctively be able to compensate for that effect because they rarely miss their targets.

That bear I was watching suddenly decided to play "King of the Mountain" and appeared on a little rocky crag that was near the boat.  There was just a small patch of grass at the top that must have been appealing to him.

The dinner menu that night was some halibut from that little one I caught on Memorial Day weekend, with rice.  The weather was so nice I decided to cook dinner on my Coleman stove on the back deck.  I remembered to bring some propane on this trip.  The Coleman stove puts out a lot more heat then that little 2 burner electric stove I have in my galley on board.

In the morning I checked the crab pot I had set the night before, but Nada.

There was a -4.1 tide at 8 AM and so I decided to wait until a little later in the morning to pull anchor and leave the cove.  

The trip back was enjoyable but uneventful.  It was sunny and mostly dead calm.  Around noon I shut down the engines and drifted for a while so I could enjoy lunch.

I got back into the slip at about 3 PM.  It was pretty breezy in town by then, and with a NW breeze it is hard for me to get into my slip when I am alone.  I was struggling to get in when a harbor dept guy walked by and grabbed my lines.  His help was timely and much appreciated.

Mileage for this trip was about 49 nm.