I pulled out of Bar Harbor at about 7:45 AM under gray skies, but on calm seas.
On the way out of town I took a few pictures.
This is a private moorage area in front of a local law firm. Those lawyers are smart. They realized some years ago that they had waterfront property, so they built just a few docks that are large enough for those yachts that are too large for our other harbors. I have heard they charge about $3 per foot per night. Not a bad business for the summer months. Don't you just hate it when you park your beautiful yacht and then someone pulls in in an even larger more beautiful yacht right next to you? Yeah, me too.
This is a vessel called the Wilderness Explorer. I think it is owned and managed by National Geographic. They do cruises all throughout Southeast Alaska. I have always said that if I ever went on any kind of cruise it would be on one of these, not the big 3000 passenger cruise ships. I looked up their website a few years ago and sadly the costs were prohibitive for me. But it's nice to dream once in awhile.
The above vessel Carolina was moored at Doyon's Landing, another private dock near town. Looks to be about 130' or so.
The above picture is the first, one and only 120' Nordhavn, named the Aurora. I follow boats all over the world, many of them Nordhavns. The Aurora was built in the Nordhavn boat yard in Xiamen, China, and then run on its own hull from there to the new owner's home in Vancouver BC. This is a voyage of about 6500 miles, taking 45 days. I followed the whole journey as it was happening via their blog in the summer of 2013. They had a professional photographer/videographer on board, and they sent me a DVD they prepared for the journey.
And now it is in Ketchikan.
I had started to notice USCG (United States Coast Guard) vessels moored at odd places around the harbors in town. In the Saturday morning paper there was an article about the base and the construction going on there. They are replacing all or most of the existing docks and piers and adding significant moorage space as well. That is why they had to move all their vessels.
The sea conditions were excellent today so I could go pretty much wherever I wanted. My goal was to catch some halibut so that's what I set out to do.
I bounced around the islands near Dall Head, which is on the southern end of Gravina Island, but to no avail.
When I got out to Dall Head proper I made the decision to run over to the Percy Islands. I had heard good things over the years about bottom fishing in that area, but I have never been there before today.
I made my way over there and found what looked to be a good spot. I had to be a little careful because right in this general area is Annette Island, which is an Indian reservation. You are not allowed to fish within 3000 feet of Annette Island unless you have a permit from them allowing you to do so. Of course judging 3000 feet over the water is not an exact science.
In any case I made sure I was at least a few miles from Annette and began bottom fishing. It's literally been a couple of years since I caught a nice sized halibut, but all the conditions were good here. The depths were good and I had a nice slow drift across the area. So I was hopefull.
Lo and behold after a couple of hours I hit a good fish. He ran off quite a bit of line before I could get control of him. Landing a decent size halibut by oneself is a challenge, but I did manage to get my gaff hook into him and haul him in over the side rail.
Once I got him on board I whacked him a few times with my gaff, and then got a small line through his gills which I tied to his tail. Halibut are notorious for flopping around long after you think they have expired.
I fished a bit longer in that area and got one more good hit, but it got off and I never saw it.
Since I had never been in this spot before, and I came here by way of a somewhat circuitous route, I really didn't have a good idea of how long it might take me to get back to the harbor. I figured at least 2 - 3 hours, but that was really just a guess. I can run in the dark, and this was the longest day of the year as far as daylight hours go, so I wasn't worried about it. But I did hope and intend to get home before dark.
I fished until 5:30 PM and then pulled the gear, fired up the engines, and headed home.
About 7 PM or so I was getting hungry so I slowed down a bit, fired up the generator, and grilled some Omaha Steaks pork chops (thank you Marilyn and Sara!) They were terrific.
As I was heading into town I passed 2 cruise ships that were heading out of town. Here is a shot from my nav unit that shows what a cruise ship looks like on radar as it approaches.
This particular nav unit shows the chart information together with the boat, and superimposes the radar information on top of all that. In this show the boat is a small black triangle in the middle of the display pointing up. The bright red areas are radar reflections. Directly ahead of the boat is a large red blob - that's the cruise ship coming towards me. It was still light enough to see with my eyes, but just to be safe I had the radar running as well.
The other information on the unit is:
SOG (Speed Over Ground) - 10.3 knots
COG (Course Over Ground) - 291
DPT (Depth) - 411.7 feet
POSN (Position) - Lattitude & Longitude
My estimate of 2 - 3 hours was a bit off. I pulled into Bar Harbor at about 10:15 PM. So it took me almost 5 hours to get home.
Here's a small map snippet that shows my circuitous route that circumnavigated Annette Island. I stopped numerous places along the way to fish. Find the spot the farthest away from town along this route, and that's where I got the halibut.
I don't carry a scale so getting the weight on that halibut is a matter of measuring it and then using a length to weight conversion table. Here's one last shot of the halibut after I got back to the harbor and before I filleted it. Length was about 44" which converts to about 40 lbs. Yahoo!
It was a late night for me, and I only did a fraction of the boat clean up chores that I would normally do. The rest of the chores could wait until tomorrow.
Now I just want to get back out there and get some more halibut!
I logged 77 miles on this trip - a long way to go for 1 fish, but it was fun.
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