July 13, 2019 Fords Terror

Last night Steve and I planned our trip to Fords Terror.  Yes, planned.  You have to enter at exactly slack water because the currents prevent you from entering or exiting at any other time.  When we got up the next morning we sat around chatting and finally starting pulling the anchor at 10am from Tracy Arm Cove.  Once underway we saw that we were due to reach the entrance to this majestical place right at high slack when we had planned to be half an hour early to wait and watch for the perfect entrance time.  The books say 30-40 minutes after high tide at Juneau is the time to enter.  So we head down Endicott Arm, speeding up as much as possible, racing toward it, only 18nm away.  As we approach, a large vessel is exiting and we hail the captain to find out if he thinks we can still transit through in 15 minutes when we arrive and before 2-3 foot rapids form in this narrow entrance.  He thinks we will just make it.  Anxiety to say the least!  We made it with a nice calm entrance at 43 minutes past estimated high tide in Juneau, phew, this was on our bucket list of places to go on this trip as many people suggested this stop we know who have spent summers in Alaska.  

Fords Terror entrance - does not look scary now!

Going out for a dinghy ride

The view in Fords Terror.  Adagio to the left, one other boat on the right

more kayaking

Our view

As we sat on the bow, we watched two bald eagles fishing

One of two bald eagles trying for a fish

As mentioned a few times so far, anchoring can be challenging here in Alaska.  Ford's Terror is a great example.  There is a shallow shelf that extends out into the bay from the river.  At low tide is is dry.  That shallow shelf then drops off sharply into deeper water.  That deeper water is also a shelf, that is sloping downward, starting at about 30 feet deep and going to about 70 feet.  At the edge of that shelf, the depths plummet into the hundreds of feet range.  Your only option is to drop the anchor on the deeper portion  of the 30' - 70' shelf.  If you drop it too close to shore you run the real risk of running aground at low tide.  Here are two pictures showing the situation.

View from overhead.  At high tide the shore is actually about 20' underwater.

You can see the drop-off in this picture.  The boat is in about 30' of water.  The anchor
is in front of the boat in about 65' of water.  The boat is about 2 boat lengths away from
the drying flat (low tide). About 50' beyond the water plummets to 200'.
 It's a challenge to get this just right.

Beautiful water fall.  Teal green glacier water.

The entire crew as we are getting ready to depart Fords Terror

A few of our favorite bergs from Tracy and Endicott Arm

This one must be on it's side