It’s 5:30 a.m. and National Geographic Sea Lion is cruising north through an area called Chatham Strait, between Admiralty, Chichagof and Baranof islands. The weather has taken a slight turn for the worse, with wind and moderate rain greeting us as the ship begins to come alive with more and more activity. Our destination this morning is a place called Funter Bay, on the northwestern coast of Admiralty Island. About 8 a.m. we arrive at our anchorage, and soon start shuttling ashore for a long hike and deploying expedition landing craft to do small boat cruises. A short time later there are short and medium hikes also offered to explore this lightly inhabited area with a long history of human presence for mining, logging and fish canneries.
Soon it’s lunch time, and the start of an afternoon of cruising to look for wildlife. We continue our northerly route along Admiralty toward Point Retreat, and a wonderful view of the historic lighthouse that is also incredibly photogenic, with snow-capped mountains as a back-drop. Along the way, Sea Lion encounters a single humpback whale, but it seems to be just cruising to a destination that it alone knows. So we eventually make an about-face, and motor across to the western shore of Lynn Canal to look again for wildlife, this time along the mainland coast. We head back south toward Icy Strait, and a path that will take us to the area for our operations the next morning.
Whoops, “hold-the-phone.” Two humpback whales are spotted nearer to shore, so we make a turn and head that way. Wow, a double breach! We watch them for a while longer, but we must be on our way, and besides its dinner time. So off we go to the dining room for another wonderful meal. Suddenly, right when everyone begins eating, we hear “Killer whales in front of the ship!” Will the excitement ever end, and will we ever finish our dinner? Just another magical day in Southeast Alaska!
