After four days of rain in Juneau, it was finally time to start heading South again.

On Monday morning, 12 August, we woke to news of an event in Endicott Arm which had caused a tsunami wave and sent millions of tons of debris into the water, there were no confirmed reports of what the event was of where exactly it had occurred. We had arranged to meet friends in Tracy Arm Cove later in the day. As we left Juneau, it was quite foggy and a bit wet but the water was calm. We had also had a flood warning from the Juneau authorities because the Glacial Lake at Suicide Basin alongside Mendenhall Glacier was about to burst its banks causing a jokuhlaup. Luckily the marina we were in is South of Auke Bay where the flooding would be prevalent. So off we went into the fog.

Within an hour we started seeing huge trees floating in the water, and heard two cruise ships asking each other about how much debris they were seeing. At about the same time, I saw a notice that in fact there had been a massive landslide on the North (left hand side) cliff face at South Sawyer Glacier. It was estimated hundreds of millions of tons of rock had slid down onto the face of the glacier and into the water, causing a wave to rise about 1000 feet up the South (right hand) side of the arm and sending a 10 foot tsunami down the arm, carrying all the associated debris with it. What a mess. We were seeing whole 40 foot trees and massive logs floating down the passage. The birds thought this was heaven, there were so many places for them to rest. Not so much the captains who had only about 50 feet visibility playing dodgems with all this debris. When we got to the entrance to Tracy Arm, we found Isla Mera had abandoned their attempt to enter Tracy Arm Cove after having a few bumps and scrapes with icebergs on the move. Due to the thick fog and wall of debris, we decided it would be safer to just keep going so we headed down to Sandborn Canal. This was a lovely spot, very tranquil and safe.

Next stop was Ruth Island in Thomas Bay, then we tackled Wrangell Narrows. This time, we entered on slack low tide. Its very different at low tide, the channels are much narrower but it all went smoothly and we exited the South side and had planned to anchor in Anita Bay but when we got there, there were a whole lot of fishing boats so we decided to continue. This meant tackling the Zimovia Narrows, another winding zig zagging narrow channel, just a lot shorter than Wrangell Narrows. We eventually dropped anchor in Santa Anna at 20:30pm.

Next we went over to Thorne Bay, we met Dino and Cathy from N62 Giramondo who we had communicated with on Instagram over the years.

We stayed only one night and had another long day to Nakat Inlet, the last stop in Alaska. This was a beautiful spot, and we had it all to ourselves. Not even a whale or seal came to visit. We did see a Bald Eagle on the way out tho.