Lu-Lu Belle

Day 31 Friday July 15, 2016                                                    Valdez Glacier Campground, day 2

0 miles towing

This was another one of those great days of the trip.  An 8-hr cruise on the Lu-Lu Belle.  It is one of two cruises offered out of Valdez and is the smaller of the two.  The boat is about 100 feet long and is a beautiful piece of marine work.  The inside is all teak and mahogany woodwork and the floors are carpeted with oriental rugs.  The boat is in immaculate condition.  Capt. Fred Rodolf owns the boat and has been giving tours since 1979.  He is always at the helm and narrates every trip.  His crew was two female college students who handle the lines, spot the wildlife, take pictures for the tourists, and prepare fresh baked goods for the snack bar.

The Lu-Lu Bell

We left the dock at 11:00.  It is located in the Valdez small boat harbor where all the fishing boats are located.

Coast Guard Cutter Chandeleur

Although not in the harbor, this Coast Guard plane was flying around all day

It wasn’t very long after we started out, we saw sea otters.  They are cute little creatures that float on their back and have a wonderful time.  Usually seen in groups, called a raft of sea otters. 

Marsha's zoom and cropping ability really brings them to life.

They just lay back and float with their feet up.

We speeded up again and came across some more sea otters and he slowed so we all could take pictures.  

Then we speeded up to full speed until he saw humpback whale flukes about 3 miles ahead.  He got us close.  When you see the flukes, the whale is sounding.  They can stay down a long time.  He was timing it and it was 4.5 minutes before we saw the spout and down again he went.  This time he was down 6 minutes.  He once again surfaced and spouted but farther ahead than expected and we pulled ahead to catch up.  The next sound was 6.5 minutes.  And we went through one more cycle.  The last one was 7 minutes.  We never saw the whale other than his flukes when he dove and his spout when he surfaced.  Pictures were difficult because we didn’t know when or where he would surface.  I got some spout shots and some poor fluke shots.  It really was quite exciting.

Those are humpback whale tail flukes framed

by windblown hair of the girl in front of me.

Another spout.

Tail flukes again.  People along the rail hard to avoid.

You'll notice in the background of all the whale shots, there is some dots of white at the base of the mountains.  At first I thought it was fishing boats.  But it wasn't.

After all that, we went full speed towards Glacier Island.  On the way we started seeing floating sea ice.  Something most of us has never seen.  Capt. Fred told us it was from the Columbia Glacier which we will visit later.  We all were excited to see it and took a bunch of pictures because most of us had never seen it.

The reason for going to Glacier Island was to see more wildlife.  On the rocky, narrow beaches, beneath rocky cliffs, were hundreds of Steller sea lions.  They were quite noisy, especially the 2500 lb. bulls.

Then he took us close to the cliffs and told us to look for nooks and crannies for puffins.  They like to hide in the cracks and lay their eggs to keep aggressive seabirds from taking them.  There was a cave-like feature in the rock face and he said this was a good spot.  “I’ll get in closer” and he drove the boat right into the cave to the point where you could touch the rocks on either side of the boat.  Didn’t see any puffins in there.  I think he was showing us how cool he could drive the boat, and he had the right to brag.

Followed the cliffs further up and there they were.  There are two kinds of puffins, horned, and tufted puffins.  These are horned puffins.

This one is a tufted puffin.  No white on the belly and they have two tufts of

feathers just behind their eyes, not easily seen in this photo.

At this point we turned around and headed for the Columbia Glacier at full speed.  It was about an hour away.  It is in a fjord off the Prince William Sound.  He explained all about glacier dynamics on the way there.  When he started his tours in 1979, the face of the Columbia Glacier was 9 miles further out from where it is now.

He took us to within ½ mile of the face of the glacier which is 1000 ft. high.  On the way to the glacier, there was more and more ice.  Some of it was blue ice, some white, some clear, and some dirty.  It all depended what part of the glacier it came from.

We saw an ice floe with sea otters laying on it.

Sometimes seals.

We spent an hour at the face of the glacier.  It was only 42^o F air temperature and 37^o F water temperature.  We were told to dress in layers and have hat and gloves.  Some listened, some didn’t.  We listened, but were still cold and had to come inside to warm up.  A lot of hot chocolate was selling during that hour.

Sitting at the glacier face was to watch it calf.  It was hard to get any pictures of calving and we didn’t succeed.  You don’t know when or where it’s going to happen.  The glacier face is 2 miles wide.  When it happens and you see it, it’s too late to catch the shot.  But pictures of the face of the glacier was easy.

From about 9 miles out

They also took our picture with our cameras, standing on the bow pulpit, holding up a Lu-Lu Bell life ring with the Glacier face in the background.

Which one is the captain?

We left the glacier to head back to Valdez Harbor, the captain promising to get us back before dark (Alaska humor). 

Leaving the glacier, the ice was more packed together.

The Discovery.  A tour boat out of Whittier.

On the way back, one of the passengers spotted a humpback fluke and we doddled around for about 15 minutes, no longer seeing it.  We continued on and the captain took us along the oil terminal to show us where the tankers fill up and the oil is temporarily stored.  There were no tankers there at the time.

After the Exxon Valdez spill, there were a lot of rules put into effect that were very expensive.  Every tanker leaving the facility had to be escorted by two 10,000 hp tugs all the way out to some designated point.  These tugs have to be available and fully crewed 24/7.

This tug is owned by Crowley Maritime Corp.  A company

I worked for in San Francisco from 1975-1978.  They were

instrumental in transporting the materials for the pipeline to

Prudhoe Bay during its construction at that time.  These tugs are

40 years newer than the ones I worked on in San Francisco Bay.

Barges had to be situated at strategic locations throughout the sound in case of a spill.  These also had to be manned 24/7.  There is a C31 transport in Anchorage that is on alert and crewed up 24/7 at a moment's notice.  It is filled with spill control equipment.  He mentioned numerous other restrictions that I won’t delve into, but the bottom line is that another spill like the Exxon Valdez will have a ready response team in place immediately.

All this cost money of course and we were told that Arco raised the cost of a gallon by 1 cent all across the US and it covered it.

We returned to the harbor where one of the young college bound girls, Lindsey, was allowed to dock the boat by herself (with the captain watching).  The harbor is very congested with fishing boats so this was not an easy task.  She did OK and didn’t harm anything.  After we were tied up and she came down from the wheelhouse, the passengers all clapped for her and she was so proud.

Capt. Fred watching Lindsey bring the boat in.

What a wonderful experience this day was.  It was one of the highlights of the trip.

Here’s a last photo that is kind of cool looking.  Taken as we were docking, looking through a row of fishing boats and seeing the TRUMP flag.