July 26 - Calder Bay, Prince of Wales Island

Here is a picture of the mother eagle feeding her young at water's edge

Calder Bay has a huge drying area at it's head so we had to kayak quite a way to the end

Will wonders never cease! We awoke this morning to what do ya know, sunshine. Now it was fairly short lived but appreciated nonetheless.

We started out down Rocky Pass so named because it is narrow shallow and rocky. The Alaska coast guard removed the markers from the passage some years ago because of the expense to maintain them but put them back in the early 2000's. The pass is well marked and if you are careful is quite doable. The advantage of taking the pass is that it cuts off a great deal of distance down to the base and around Kuiu Island. So we figured out which side we wanted green on and which side we wanted red and pressed onwards around Devil's Elbow and out.

We headed for Calder Bay on Prince of Wales Island as it represented a good location from which to tackle the narrow El Capitan Passage then next day. Calder Bay apparently was a location in which 7 bears were reported at one time but we saw none. We however got our kayaks out and played with a bunch of sea otters who were really curious to see blue bottomed kayaks floating around their home turf. They kept popping out to see who we were and followed Gord around the whole bay.

We also saw some eagles feeding their young on the shoreline. This looked pretty cool as we were quite close to them.

Well we will get some sleep tonight and tackle El Capitan in the morning.