Resurrection Bay

When I last left you we were getting ready to cross the Gulf of Alaska.

We had careful timed our exit from the Inside Pass by hanging out in a couple small Alaskan towns waiting for the perfect weather.

We got lucky and made it straight across without having to duck into Prince William Sound to hide out from nasty weather.

When we got to the other side we had to head north into Resurrection Bay.  Seward sits at the head of the Bay.  Ironically, the Bay got his name when someone had to hide out from bad weather back in the day - when the storm had passed it was Easter Sunday.

We round the corner into Resurrection Bay and it was blowing 50-60 knots with steep chop.  We were bucking into it and trying to make our best time so we could dock in Seward during daylight hours.

I have honestly never taken so much spray on the wheelhouse windows in my whole career.  

I'm sure for the tugboat world this was a drop in the bucket but I was like, 'holy smokes'.  

Alaska is notorious for having fierce wind channel down through Bays and Passes.  Sometimes you'll hear the weather forecast and it will say something nuts like - 15 to 20 knots; 80 knots in Bays and Passes.  

I took a video so you could see!

Honestly, we were so lucky that we only had a few hours of the spray because by the time we were tied up we had a fair amount of ice accretion.  Accumulating ice due to freezing spray is one of the most dangerous things that can happen to a vessel at sea.  It makes a vessel very top heavy and destroys it's stability.  You can see in the video how iced up the railing is from about two hours of spray.  

Once in Seward we working on de-crewing the boat and then it was time to head home.

An eight day trip turned into thirty.  You seriously don't want to know what I found in my fridge when I got home *wink*!