Hydaburg and Soda Bay

(July 15th, 2017)

After leaving Hunter Bay for Hydaburg, we trolled for salmon, managing to catch one more 24-inch Coho on the way.  About an hour outside of Hydaburg my phone picked up an AT&T signal and managed to get a few bars with 4G data.  Just enough for some email.

When we pulled into the docks, there were several townspeople there talking to all the boat crews about the history of the Haida people, about Hydaburg, fishing, native traditions, etc and about the carving house they wanted us to visit and the longhouse they are currently building.

The docks in Hydaburg are very nice, build only about two years ago, including a nice large fish cleaning station.  The locals helped our crews clean and filet a couple dozen salmon, even showing us how they filet very quickly.

One of the issues with small towns in remote places is that utilities that we take for granted don’t always work as well as we expect.  Even though they have nice new docks, new power pedestals, dock lights, and plumbing, the potability of the water supply is suspect and the pedestals don’t actually have power available.  The harbormaster said the power company came down and took all the pedestal power meters to “fix” something, saying it would be a couple days, but they haven’t come back and it’s been a long time, so no power.

While the locals told stories and helped with fish preparation, local kids were also hanging out on the docks, apparently nieces and nephews of Haagoo who was the most talkative of the local men.  We filled out the moorage paperwork, called the town hall to pay the fees over the phone, and we were all set.

If you need cellular service in Hydaburg, it’s not a problem, as long as you only want AT&T.   There is no other service available here.  It was a very strong signal and calls and texts worked perfect, but the data was 4G (probably more like 3G since Apple and AT&T collectively renamed 3G to 4G on iPhones at some point in the past) and seemed to be limited to about 100kbps.   I have T-Mobile service and my phone roamed to AT&T just fine, but if you are a Sprint or Verizon user, you are out of luck.

In the evening as we worked on dinner, there were four local kids on the docks roaming around to each boat, looking to see what they could get or who they could talk to.  One boy had fireworks and set them off occasionally, throwing them in the water most of the time for the neat little underwater explosion effect it created.  I joked that these kids were the local welcoming committee complete with fireworks to celebrate our arrival.

One boy dragged a child’s fishing pole behind his bicycle as he “trolled the dock” for gawkers.

After the local children left for home we were treated to an awesome fiery-red sunset in the broken clouds.  A few biting flies came around at dusk but it wasn’t too bad.

I did manage to get a couple of blog posts uploaded, but due to the slow cellular speeds I had to downsize the images and use FTP to upload them outside of the WordPress web interface.  Once I got a process down it wasn’t too bad though.   I even managed to upload the photos for this blog post before leaving town but I hadn’t finished writing it, and unfortunately it would be a week before I had enough Internet again to finish it and get it posted.

In the morning, Devon watched Jim Rard prepare the roe from salmon, making an instructional video for the process, then we walked to town to see the carving house.  It was really cool to see the young men create new totem poles, paddles, and other carvings.   Haagoo told several Haida stories, and some history of the town, especially how the mayor has been working on cleaning up the typical broken down cars, trash, and other detritus you see in poor towns, applying for government grants (ie: the new docks, longhouse, etc), and encouraging the children to learn the Haida language, woodcrafts, and other skills to keep the culture alive.  Haagoo himself talked about how in the past the locals would run visitors out of town, and he’d be one of those same locals, fueled by hate of the government, integration, and alcohol.  But he’s sober, and the town is doing everything they can to encourage visitors to learn about their traditions, including allowing cameras and video of their stories and carvings, something they wouldn’t allow in the past.

A few crew bought paddles, bentwood boxes, and other carvings, some of which were quite large.  I found a small paddle with an abstract painting of an Orca (the only small paddle in the place) that would make a good decoration on Mobert.  After that we walked to the coffee trailer, then the “grocery” store, back to carving house to pick up the small paddle, and then back to the boat to get rolling to our next destination.

I really enjoyed visiting Hydaburg, it’s very much one of the small, native, friendly, villages I had hoped to find in our travels.

We got the boat out of Hydaburg on our way to Soda Bay, not too far away, and slowed down to troll for fish again.  We caught one salmon, then lost a couple (one due to my completely non-excellent netting skills), then we lost the net overboard and as we retrieved it we got another fish on the line, that turned out to be a copper rockfish.   After that we got back to cruising speed to get in to Soda Bay.

We hadn’t had a good battery charge in a few days, and at our trolling speed of 1000 rpm the engine alternator doesn’t make enough power to get the batteries charged back up, so I ran the generator for a couple hours while we trolled.  We finally got the batteries to 100% charged and the alternator could keep them full the rest of the day by itself.    We also ran the watermaker for most of the day, which still didn’t fill the tank.  I measured at the dock in Hydaburg and found that the watermaker is only putting out about 5.5 gallons per hour rather than it’s rated 8 gph.   This is putting a dent in our ability to keep up with consumption.

I cleaned all remaining dishes, the counters, the stove, and put as much food away as I could to get the galley very clean.  I also vacuum packed the latest salmon that Devon cleaned.  The girls played with Legos most of the day.

We anchored in 24ft of water in Soda Bay, unfortunately in the rain, but we took the dinghy over to the creek anyway to see the mineral deposits from a soda spring. The deposits seemed to come from everywhere, down the hills on both sides of the creek.  Throughout the creek, we could see bubbles coming up from the bottom, with several warm spots as well.    Really quite fascinating.

Devon made had pork sausage lettuce cups for our late dinner and I started reading a book for the first time since we got on the boat and then we slept.

In the morning, my bum toe was bothering me a bit too much to imagine taking on today’s hike in the woods, so I opted out.  I spent the time doing dishes, trying to organize the boat a bit more, finding permanent homes for a few more things, vacuuming crannies and nooks, cleaning the aft head, and finally taping the anti-slip mat to the bottom of the salon rug.  I even mounted the Haida paddle on the bulkhead above the forward cabin door in the salon.   The Orca is the protector of seagoing people from sea monsters so I figured a location over our heads in the salon would do well.

Meanwhile, Devon and the girls were on their hike for 5 hours, during which time the rain came down hard for some time.  I also saw a black bear on shore with two cubs, somewhat near where the fleet’s dinghies were waiting.   But the bear was gone by the time the crews came back to shore.   Back at the boat, the girls were super wet and super tired, so they had some soup and hot cocoa and then they went to their beds to rest.  It sounds like this hike was even more challenging than the bear hike in Hunter Bay, and certainly about twice as long.

In the morning we leave for Craig, AK, a “first-class city” of about 1200 people.  We should be able to fuel up and get groceries there, and apparently there are pizza parlor choices to be had.