Well, I pulled it off! Perhaps/hopefully we can still motivate for a Valdez/PWS rendezvous...
But in the meantime, I found the 400 miles of carpet-bombed black diamond moguls that passes as road here in Alaska to be snow/ice free between Fairbanks and Valdez, so I packed up the skiff and headed down April 14th. The trusty Tolman and I spent 11 days on the water and covered about 600 miles of Prince William Sound. We worked our way counter-clockwise, heading south from Valdez and exploring Glacier Island, the Naked Island group and the Knight Island group, then east to Green Island and the north side of Montegue Island, then across Hinchinbrook Entrance and Orca Bay to Cordova for fuel (and an
awesome pizza!), then back north through Simpson Bay, Sheep Bay, Port Gravina, Port Fidalgo, Galena Bay, Jack Bay, and back through the Port of Valdez to to the Valdez harbor. Daytime temps were generally between 35 and 43 degrees, with overnight temps often running well below freezing. Several mornings found the skiff completely coated in about 1/4" of heavy frost, and in one anchorage we awoke frozen in about 3/16" of ice. Many days were cold, gray and overcast, but there was plenty of gloriously sunny beautiful weather, too. While no orca were sighted on this trip, humpback whales and Dall's porpoises were in abundance, and the Captain ate fish for dinner every night, save for one (pizza). During the 11 days on the Sound only about six other boats were sighted, typically at very great distance...and not a single one of them a Tolman.
Occasionally the water was like this, or a bit rougher:
https://vimeo.com/703406849But most of the time it was like this:
https://vimeo.com/703577873We caught several of these in the 54" to 57" range:
and brought home a limit for a total of over 250 pounds. All in all it was a pretty nice trip!
Now I'm up to my butt in mud season and thinking maybe coming back to land wasn't the brightest idea. Can't wait to get back out there!
