Cruising the Alaskan Fjords (part 1/?)

Alaska Travelog #9
Seward - Sun, 16 Jun 2024, 9am

Today we're embarking on one of the centerpiece activities of our Alaska trip: a cruise through the fjords to see Northwest Glacier. Friends and relatives who've been to Alaska all tell us that the view of glaciers is so much better from aboard a ship, that you really can't see much of them while touring on land. So here we go.



After a stunning day yesterday, with brilliant sun and temperatures up in Anchorage reaching the mid 70s, today is a letdown weather-wise. Kenai is all fogged in, and the temperature today may not break 60. Of course, here at 8am as we boarded it was closer to 50.

"It's actually a sunny day today," the ship's first mate told us.

"Yeah, the sun is always shining, just today we can't see it," I snarled. That was a joke one of my high school teachers made every day the weather was cloudy or rainy. Every. Single. Day. The students all loved Mr. Rumberger... despite that overused joke.





We saw a fair bit of wildlife as we motored out into Resurrection Bay. The first, this bald eagle (above), we didn't even have to leave the harbor for. It was perching on a breakwater.

As we motored out further into the way we saw various other birds (though no more eagles) and a few sea otters. I noticed this group of 4 otters playing together and got my fancy camera up with a long zoom lens in time to capture it.

Watch on YouTube

Link: Watch video on YouTube

A few fun facts about sea otters: First, they grow up to about 100 lbs., so even though they often look small at a distance they are the size (and weight) of fairly large dogs. Second, they stay warm in the chilly water because of their extremely dense fur. They have upwards of 1,000,000 strands of hair per square inch (150,000 per square centimeter). The average adult human has just one-tenth as many hairs on their entire head. Third, sea otters are members of the weasel family. Thus we really should call them sea weasels. 😅

Stay tuned, more (much more) to come!

Trouble at Sea (Kenai Fjords 2/?)

Alaska Travelog #10
Asea in Resurrection Bay - Sun, 16 Jun 2024, 10am

Things are not exactly... ship shape... on our cruise today. We're idling out in Resurrection Bay about an hour out of Seward because one of the ship's engines is overheating. It seems that the coolant impeller has gotten gummed up with seaweed. The captain is belowdecks in the engine room trying to wrangle the problem. His first approach to fixing it didn't work, so we limped over to a spot with mobile reception so he could call an expert engine mechanic for advice. He's said he's hoping he can McGyver a solution here at sea. I hope he can, too, so today's 8 hour tour doesn't become a 3 hour tour. A three hour tour!

Ship Fixed. Spire Cove. Convective Fog.

Alaska Travelog #11
Asea in Kenai Fjords NP - Sun, 16 Jun 2024, 11am

I've got to hand it to him— our cruise captain MacGyvered a fix for the engine problem that was hobbling the ship. It turned out seaweed had gotten into the coolant intake pipe and made it past the filter. The ship's engines use sea water as coolant. Seaweed got wrapped around the impeller, which is like a rapidly spinning gear cog that pulls water through the pipe, causing it to overheat and start to break down. This further caused too little cool water to reach the engines, causing them to start to overheat. There were replacement impeller wheels aboard the ship— the first mate explained that carrying a variety of replacement parts for hot-swaps at sea is standard when I expressed surprise— but the captain also had to improvise tools to pull the seaweed out of the long supply pipe. Well, long story short, we were under way again about an hour after the problem first appeared.

The captain pushed on ahead to Spire Cove to help make up for lost time. Normally he might have gone slower looking for aquatic wildlife, but we'd already seen a lot. There was a bald eagle right at the marina and playful otters just outside that. Then we saw humpback whales, too. The video I tried capturing of them didn't turn out well. But hey, I was talking about Spire Cove....

Watch on YouTube

Link: watch video on YouTube

Spire Cove is interesting for the tall, rocky spires jutting up from the sea. This is a situation where the morning's foggy weather was both good and bad. It was bad because it foiled long-distance views and muted out the colors around us. Those colors would've been striking in the sun, especially with all those wildflowers and trees improbably growing atop the spires. The good side of the fog was that it created a certain aura of mystery around the spires.

Will the fog lift by the time we get to the glaciers? I certainly hope so, because that's a place where long-distance views absolutely will count, and I want to see the glaciers. For me that's the number-one reason to spend the time and money on this cruise.

The crew says that this fog is a convective fog. It's caused by warm air over cold water. Yesterday was an extremely warm day for Alaska— we enjoyed 74° highs up in Anchorage! So now this is like our punishment for having such a nice day yesterday. 😧