When the ocean
is your grocery
store, meal planning
consists of salmon,
shrimp and Dunge-
ness crabs. Not a bad
way to go.
can add a licensed skipper—sometimes
optional, sometimes not depending
on each tugfitter. The upside is that
captain’s for hire take the worry, work
and uncertainty out of the adventure,
prevent sudden rocky stops, chart the
here-to-there navigation, keep track of
fishing laws, and explain what you’re
looking at along the way. Reach a little
deeper and some Southeast tugfitter
services will provision the package.
Our tug comes with a licensed skip-
per, David Carnes, and all the carefree
vagabonding that comes with having
him on the bridge.
Nothing left for us to do but eat, fish,
oooh, ahhh, nap and do it all again for
several days of over-the-top, bucket-list
indulgence.
We’re two-days into a multi-day
adventure south of Juneau when the
wind slams us sideways while docking
at Taku Harbor Marine Park, sends the
big displacement boat windsailing in
the wrong direction, the passengers
scrambling and Captain David earning
his keep.
Just part of the adventure and that’s
what this is; a modern Alaskan adven-
ture—four guys in a upscale Nordic tug
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explore: NW | The Official Magazine for kenmore air | Spring 2019
with 500 gallons of fuel, days to wander
with rods, reels, pots, traps, crab boiler,
hard-bottom inflatables and kayaks.
Flop when you want in staterooms with
polished teak, dark blue leather setae,
three-burner stove, BBQ grill, micro-
wave, and enjoy the best fish-finding,
rock dodging, bottom-reading electron-
ics out there.
Four guys dressed down, geared up
and turned loose to wander around
Southeast pin-balling from one superla-
tive to the next. When you finally reach
the point where you need to reach into
the bucket and pull out THE list, this
could be on it.
I had been hungering to Tug since
seeing a chartered rental tug anchored
by its lonesome, in a spectacular cove
deep inside Glacier Bay National Park.
Two guys were on the starboard railing
jigging for dinner—halibut probably, or
ling cod or rockfish or …? Smoke curled
from a grill on the aft deck. A third guy
was just a lump in a hammock soaking
up sun. Sea otters floated past. The place
was full of whales—humpbacks, minkes,
killers. Mountain goats above the boat.
A few years later, a couple of Boeing
737-hours north from Seattle and a
shuttle down Egan Drive we find the
MV/Legend moored in Aurora Basin, one
of four full-blown work-boat marinas in
this waterfront town, possibly America’s
most abnormal capital city. A fittingly
adventurous place to launch adventure
extraordinaire.
Not only is Juneau—surprise—the
biggest town in America, but Wyatt (OK
Corral) Earp’s Smith & Wesson incon-
gruously hangs in the Red Dog Saloon
down on Franklin Street. How it got
there is a good story. Ask.
The water side of the business district
ends in a tidal channel that fills with
seasonal runs of salmon from one of the
largest hatcheries in the state. Strikes
me as more of a fish town than the
legislative heartbeat of America’s biggest
state. The capital is cut-off from not
only 99 percent of the state that it rules
but from the rest of the continent, by
a wall—one constructed by nature not
campaign sloganism. The Juneau barrier
is a massive ice field 1,500 square miles
of prehistoric ice 790 to 4,590 feet deep.
Fly, boat or don’t come.
With just 32,000 workaday resi-
dents Juneau also has the implausible
distinction of being America’s second
largest city. City limit signs are sepa-
rated by 3,254 square miles; mostly an
unoccupied puzzle of saltwater, forests
and islands. Every summer day 15,000
tourists disgorge from six cruise ships
into the bauble and tee shirt district.
Ten minutes after our rented escape
clears Gastineau Channel not one of
those 15,000 is in sight. We’re on our
own, slow-boating south at 9.5 knots,
toasting adventure, lighting cigars and
grinning. Ahead is a maze of islands,
channels and who know what Alaskan
adventures in a land and water jigsaw
puzzle 90 miles wide and 250 miles
long.
Twenty miles later, maybe less, down
Stephen’s Pass we slip behind brown-
bear infested Admiralty Island, cross the
wide mouth of Taku Inlet, round Butler
Point and set up a silver troll along a
steep shoreline.
Perfect sculptures slide past, blue ice
bergs smooth, and dimpled with sun
scallops. Twin seal pups ride on one. A
humpback whale surfaces, blows and
rolls behind a jam of bergs in a little
bay. A ragged rock pile shouts ling cod
and begs to be fished, but there’s better
ahead.
Fords Terror, Tracy Arm, Snettisham,
Sumdum are in the distance, for tomor-
row, maybe the next day. No rush. No