South OZ Adventurers - Adventure, Travel, Expeditions


Warm Springs Bay to Petersburg

Ahh Baranof Warm Springs Bay. A place where you can soak away your worries in a hot tub over looking the dock watching all of the Purse Seiner fishing boats coming in.

Warms Springs Bay is about two thirds of the way up the eastern coast of Baranof island and is home to the tiny community of Baranof. There isn't much there, a small store; which unfortunaley doesn't take visa, or sell beer, which probably saved us a lot of money; a state dock; a few houses; but most importnantly it has three hot tubs right on the board walk hanging out over the water.

We had spent three days paddling up to Baranof from Port Alexander, and as soon as we got there it was srtaight into the tubs to soak for an hour or so. We spent a day and a half just soaking and relaxing in Baranof, getting to know the boats who were tied up to the dock.

When we first paddled into Warm Springs Bay at about 3 o'clock there was one large charterboat, a small sailing boat and two small power boats. One os which belonged to Victor, an artist from Seattle who spends the summers carving masks. By about 11 that night there was another large charter boat, two more power boats and about a dozen seiners, which are large, 50 foot fishing boats.

After what we thought was enough soaking we finally summed up the courage to leave. We had been tossing up between paddling to Kake or Angoon, and decided on Kake, being a little bit closer and a bit larger. As soon as we were out of the bay we hit a wall of fog which was thicker than anything either of us had ever paddled in, it wouldn't have been a bother except for the boats we could hear all around us, but had no idea about where they were. We decided to head back into the bay, soak and wait until tomorrow to try again.

As we were paddling back into the bay, Jim, off the Loon Dancer invited us on board for a drink once we had warmed up a bit. After a few good Australian Chardonnays we headed down the dock for our dinner invitation. Kim had taken a few more wines than myself and decided to go off and have a quick nap.... whilst she was having a sleep I was chatting to Ben, the skipper off one of the seiners and he offered to take us across to Kake if we liked.

After finding Kim and carrying her and all or our gear onboard we were off, once we had worked out how to untie from the boat that was tied up onto the outside of us.

We had left at about 9:30 and it was going to be about 1 am when we were going to be heading past Kake, Ben wasn't too keen on dumping us out in the middle of Frederick Sound, about 6 miles form Kake, and offered to take us with him through to Petersburg. To be honest I wasn't too keen on the idea myself, so was pretty keen on his offer. 10 hours later we were pulling into Petersburg harbour.