June 6, 2025
We left Ketchikan this morning just before 7 a.m. to be the first boat at the fuel dock. We were down to about 50% of our fuel capacity and I wanted to top up before we continued our journey north. Our intended destination today was to return to Punchbowl Cove here in the Misty Fjords where we had spent two lovely nights in 2023. We had about a six hour journey so we knew that it would be questionable if we could snag the singular buoy in the cove, but we thought we would give it a try. During our entire six hour journey we had glassy sea conditions and few lone fishing boats. Our hopes were high—until we were just about to enter the entrance of Punchbowl when a fishing boat with two large outboards sped by and entered the cove. “There goes the buoy,” Marlene said. At this point we still had to go inside to check. Interestingly the speed boat wasn’t there in time either. There was a large sailboat on the buoy and two other boats waiting for what we didn’t know. So, for the first time in our boating history we had to back track an hour to a cove we stayed in last summer, Shoalwater Pass. We set anchor in about 50 feet of water at 3:00 p.m. and remain the only boat.
This is a picture near the entrance and this is the cove.
We are planning on getting up around 7 am tomorrow and decide if we want to give Punchbowl another look tomorrow morning or continue on to Walker Bay, which also only has one buoy. If both of those are full we will proceed with our four hour journey to Fitzgibbon Cove where we can again anchor.