Hoonah to Elfin Cove, Cross Sound – June 3

Chug in Elfin Cove Outer Harbor

Elfin Cove General Store & Liquor Store

Away from the dock at 5:30 with the sun already up and many of the fishermen already at sea.  There is almost no wind or current in the harbor and we easily glide out of our slip and into Port Frederick.  As we enter Icy Strait, we are pleased to see that the waters outside the harbor are perfectly calm.  The skies are overcast and a light rain falls this morning.  The rain and low ceiling create limited visibility and we rely on AIS and radar to keep track of the boat traffic in the strait.  Our path this morning will take us through South Inian Pass.  Cousin Floyd tells us that it is best to take this pass at slack water as there can be significant tide rips.  He tells us the south pass is quite a bit shorter (and narrower) than the north pass but it is only a problem when strong west winds kick up the seas.  We are late arriving at South Inian Pass (in part because the time on the computer was not set to Alaskan Daylight time affecting CE and in part because we were slow to leave the dock this morning).  There are certainly tide rips but there is no west wind so we take the pass and find ourselves jockeyed about but completely safe.

Main Street

 

Fresh Fish

We arrive at Elfin Cove in the rain and at a minus 2 tide.  The entrance to the inner harbor is a maximum of 7.5 feet at low tide and we draw 4.5 feet.  Likely we could pass through the channel but the outer dock looks much more inviting.  This dock is used primarily by transient fishermen and float planes but when we arrive a 100’ sailboat is already at the dock.  It seems likely that this boat would NEVER be able to cross into the inner harbor.  We tie-up, don our raingear and head to town.  The “main street” is a boardwalk that goes in all directions.  There are no roads and no cars in Elfin Cove.  We also learn that there is no phone service if you are a Verizon customer.  Last year a major earthquake shook the area and while AT&T has restored service to this small community, Verizon has not.  We learn that there is intermittent internet service.  The downlink speed is very slow but at least it exists.  We shop at the small grocery store where I buy the book Graybeards that was written by an author from Hoonah and has a chapter about Cousin Floyd and his wife Marjorie.  We then step on the boardwalk and enter a door that leads to the other side of the counter to “enter” the liquor store.  In Alaska liquor stores are stand-alone entities.

We head back to the boat and settle in for a quiet afternoon of reading but soon find the entertainment outside much too compelling.  We watch as fishing boats pull into dock and unload box after box of fish.  There are so many boats at the dock that the fish boats raft up.  Next comes a stream of run-abouts from the inner harbor carrying passengers who line up next to the fish on the dock.  Within in minutes, we hear the sound of a floatplane that soon drops out of the clouds and pulls up to the dock.  Passengers and mountains of groceries are off-loaded (mostly from Costco in Juneau) and then fish and passengers are loaded.  The plane departs and within an hour the process starts all over again and the rain continues to fall.  We learn that today is the last day of the 3-day opening of salmon fishing.  All that fish is being flown to its final destination.  The wholesale price is $8-10/pound.  Barrie strikes up a conversation with a local fisherman who sells us a white King salmon at the wholesale price and his friend does the filleting for the four cans of beer that are left in our refrigerator.  We eat tonight!  And it may be time for another trip to the liquor store.