Valdez/Cordova

Cordova,AK, 14-JUL-2024 – We’re still above 60º. We still haven’t officially left Prince William Sound. We’ve had a wonderful week or so in the many places in PWS. There was no wind and we didn’t even put up the mainsail to keep us from rocking: the water was generally like glass.

We motored a few hours each day, after our initial 10-hour day, when we left Valdez, and then anchor, read, sometimes row in our dinghy and do the same thing the next day.

Valdez was a very nice town. Quiet. We spent one night, went out to eat, drank beer. We arrived around noon and left the next afternoon about 2pm. OpenCPN and Navionics disagree on the tidal currents by hours. We found that it doesn’t matter, the water flows south from Port of Valdez all the time. We looked for back eddies, anything to explain it. It just does or did so on the two days we were there.

The day before and the day after we were there, we anchored in Sawmill Bay, a quiet protected bit of water, with other boats, which was unexpected. The second night there were two fishing boats and another cruising boat. The cruising boat was a fifty-foot power boat that we never saw the crew on, and we left them and the fishing boats sleeping when we left at 530 am the next morning.

On AIS, we saw Min Zidel, a tug boat pushing a fuel barge, coming out of Valdez. We’d have a half-mile CPA (Closest Point of Approach) and watched her move into the southbound lane in the separation zone.

All of this part of the world is ringed and divided by mountains that were defined by glaciers. Although they are all receding, we can see that they have receded before and extended many times, each time leaving behind a crescent-shaped moraine. The height of the moraine means what? Some of the moraines are a three-foot tall circle of rocks, others a steep hill. All of the moraines are made of very sharp angular rocks that were carried on the back of the glacier, not the rounded river rocks that were ground by the glacier or the river that flowed beneath it.

We crossed the separation zone at less than 90 degrees because we could see there were no vessels on AIS coming. Any non-AIS vessel wouldn’t be large enough to worry us. It was clear with low clouds hiding the tops of the mountains; we could see Min Zidel for the next few hours as she left the separation zone and made her way to Anchorage. There are no supertankers in Valdez anymore. The huge tank farms are there on the hillside across from the town, but no ships accepting the crude.

Valdez and Cordova are much smaller than they were, like almost every waterside town we visit. The Homer area is an exception being chosen, recently, as the best town in America to retire in. Private jets visit the airport these days.

Cordova, we’ve been here three days waiting for weather, is on the Alaska Airlines puddle jump circuit with a 737 landing at ‘Mudhole’ Smith Airport. Cordova is not on the road system, like King Cove, Sand Point, False Pass and everything else west of there. Cordova has definitely shrunk. The definitive guide to the area was last updated in 2007. Many of the places recommended are vanished, leaving empty buildings.

A new generation may be moving in: families raising children. There is a school system and people seem prosperous and surface friendly. If we stayed a few weeks we’d know more.

We anchored for a night before Cordova in Sheep Bay, which is aligned east-west. Jennifer could see weather was coming, so we left the next morning for Cordova. There is a lodge in Sheep Bay near the entrance in a small arm and there was a fishing boat in with us, ‘‘Rocky Point.’’ I fished for a while and never caught a thing, nor even a nibble.

We anchored in weeds in 25 feet and felt as if we were dragging when the boat switched sides, but if we did drag, it was not very far. When we went to leave, the anchor was encased in weeds, but the point had been buried in gray mud – good holding.

Cordova is installing a new dock system and the docks are poorly labeled. It took a while to figure out where the harbormaster sent us, but we did. The harbor holds 760 boats, though I expect there are less than 200 here now.

While walking the docks, we spotted Rocky Point and I went over to speak with her. The captain is my age, or a bit younger, and he remembered us. He asked if we saw the brown bear on the shore as we were leaving. I said we did. He told me if we’d hung out a bit longer we would have seen two more including a very big boar.

I asked him about the weather in Sheep Bay. He said it was completely protected, unlike Cordova. He pointed to the east part of the harbor and the valley between two mountains. ‘‘The wind comes through there. In the winter, the wind in the harbor will hit a hundred knots. A hundred knots and no one even mentions it. Add an extra line to your boat here.’’

When I went back to the boat I added a spring line.

We’ve been in Cordova three days. We’ll leave tomorrow. Friday, Jennifer rented a car and took us the length of the road system here. The rental car was $85 plus 25% tax, plus $20 pick up and drop off fee in the Alaska Consolidated parking lot. It was a pretty cool drive. We went up to where the road ends, where a bridge collapsed. On the bridge we found three men fishing with three-foot circular nets on the end of long poles. They catch salmon this way.

The road, when it did continue, went up to the million dollar railroad bridge, which was how they brought copper ore down to Tacoma for smelting. That stopped in 1938 and I guess things were just left as they were, except the railroad rails were torn up.

One the way back we stopped at a couple of parks trails. We were harassed by a hawk. I guess we walked too close to its nest.

At a second trail, we followed it to a glacial lake. Every glacier we’ve visited has been a tidewater glacier. I’ve never given that name much thought, tidewater. It, of course, means that the glacier ends in saltwater. The other type, lake water?, end in a lake full of icebergs, and apparently fog because of the temperature difference. We walked down the trail and there was the lake. It was unearthly (to me), very much like a science fiction set. The colors was all muted and wrong. The glacier in the distance ended in clouds the same color as the glacier, or perhaps I couldn’t see the sky behind the glacier. Pictures give little sense of scale.

At the fallen down bridge on the copper river delta there was the Childs Glacier, which was large with many moraines between us and the glacier. In the distance was another moraine. Through binoculars I could see a pine-tree forest growing on the moraine as a tiny toothbrush bristle fringe. Behind it, huge and stationary, was the glacier in scale.

Yesterday was the forty knots at the entrance from PWS to the Pacific. It was quite calm here in the harbor, despite forecasts predicting 15-20 knots. We went to sleep last night and the wind and rain started blowing, blowing through the hollow, rocking and shaking our boat. Caro Babbo is a very dry boat at anchor and at a dock. But last night, the wind blew hard into the cockpit on to the dashboard and leaked in at the edge of the cover of the gangway. A nuisance getting up with bare feet and dismisses any thought of padding in socks. We listened to the weather report that said the wind in Cordova was ‘‘fifteen knots’’ and Jennifer and I looked at each other, ‘‘with gusts to 28’’ and we smiled. It felt more like 35 here on this dock, but 28 was good enough to understand.

This morning I changed the engine oil. We ate braunsweiger (me) and peanut butter (Jennifer) with hardtack (me) and celery (both of us) for lunch with beef broth.

Today, Jennifer worries over the weather and where we should wait and what forecast we’ll need to leave. GWF says it will be bad. ECMWF says good weather is coming, so we’ll sit and wait for concurrence. Jennifer says we won’t be bullied by a date to get home. Tomorrow, she’s certain we’ll leave, but she hasn’t decided where we’ll go to wait.