A beautiful day at sea.

 Today was a perfect day for sailing along the coast of Alaska toward Sitka (which we will reach tomorrow morning).  The ocean was almost perfectly flat, the sky bright blue and visibility near infinite.  That did not prevent me from feeling slightly sea sick in the morning….. As I’ve said before, I get seasick when I look at boats for too long…. But in this case I think that the problem was the scopalanime patch:  It seems to do the inverse for me than for most people – rather than alleviating sea sickness, it causes or aggravates it…..  So I removed it and have been feeling much better.

This was a lazy day:  No packing bags, no early morning excursion.  So we slept late (7:30!), had leisurely breakfast , and spent some time discovering the boat.  

 It is VERY nice, and so is the room! (picture of our little living room below)  It is not one of these giant cruise ship one sometime sees in NYC harbor, only holding about 600 passengers – the perfect number not to feel crowded, but to have a boat big enough to stabilize waves.

By lunch time, the scopolamine had worn off, and I was even able to eat some – the view and fresh air helped at lot!

We arrived at “disillusion bay” around 1:30pm (the bay is so named because the Italian explorer who found it was convinced he found the North passage, until he saw the Hubbard Glacier blocking his path. Also, it’s not a bay, it’s a fjord, but the people who named it did not know that, and the name stuck).

The day was so clear (indeed, the captain said that this was one of the top 10, and that he had very rarely been able to see all the peaks around us) that we got a great view of some of the high peaks that surround the bay.  Mount St Elias (18,008), and Mount Hogan (19551) were particularly impressive.  Mt Hogan is the tallest  peak in Canada (Canada is about 35 miles away from where we were- that tells you how big this thing is), and the second highest in North America.  Having failed to see Denali, this was a nice consolation prize….

 Mount Hogan - the tallest peak in Canada- in the back grown.  Below - Mt Elias- at 18008 feet.

 Then we arrived at the enormous Hubbard glacier, the 76 miles long tidal glacier that starts in Canada, near Mt Hogan.  We could only get about 1 mile from Hubbard glacier, because it is famous for calving large iceberg, and is thus dangerous to ship.  But to give an idea of it’s scale:  The face we are looking at is 400 feet tall, and about 3 miles wide.  

We got to see some of the “calving”  (chunks of ice falling from it into the see.  From where we were, the chunks did not look that big, but then we saw some of the resulting icebergs ), and, more impressively, got to hear the groan and boom of the glacier when large chunks fall.

 

There are also several tributary to this large glacier, such as this one – so covered with moraine it is hard to distinguish from the mountain itself.

As we left the glacier, we got a lovely view of the entrance to the Fjord, and – of course- had some drinks on the deck, with the glacier in the background. 

Nice dinner followed, and now it’s 9pm.  They have some entertainment every evening, but it starts at 9:30pm….  This ship is full of old people – some are even older than Joe and me if you can believe that – I wonder how many people stay up till the end….

Hoping for more of this weather tomorrow, although it seems to be clouding up a bit right now…..