We went on a nine and three quarter hour cruise yesterday… It was supposed to only be a nine hour cruise but we rescued a sailboat from some shallow rocks in a moraine in Northwestern Fjord. We saw a lot of sea live that we’ve NEVER seen in the wild:
- Humpback Whales
- Sterling Seal Lions
- Sea Otters
- Doll Porpoises
- Bald Eagles
- Puffin
I can’t remember them all. The highlight of the trip was a juvenile humpback whale breached himself not once, but twice and I got it on the camera BOTH times. Rumor has it that I’m the only person on the boat to catch this whale in the air. I do wish I had a more powerful lens, but I am quite happy with what I have.
These two shots were the cream of the trip.
We got to see many glaciers, including Northwestern Glacier which is one a few tidewater glaciers that still exist. In the past decade the glacier has receded about a mile… in the past hundred years it has receded about 10 miles. At the end of the last ice age it extended hundreds of miles out to sea and the state of Alaska was buried under ice like Antarctica.
We got to see some small bergs calve off of the glaciers and then when we started to make our way back we got word that there was a sailing vessel in distress about 4 or 5 miles from where we were… Apparently the keel fin got caught on a moraine just below the surface near another glacier.
The first picture shows the sailboat caught on the rocks and one of the sailors is in a rubber raft rowing a line to our boat. The second picture shows our ship pulling the sailboat off of the rocks with a line attached to the top of it’s mast.
It was a long day yesterday and we had to drive nearly 200 miles after to get to our room. The Alaskan Host Bed and Breakfast near Willow, Alaska.
Here are some pictures from yesterday:
