hi folks,

just got back from juneau alaska and thought i would mention some
things about it related to sailing. i was on land, not boat, but i did
stop at one of the marinas and talked to someone at the harbor office
and picked up some materials. there was a large dock with a fair
number of sailboats there, and also fishing vessels, and some others.
the way juneau is situated is back away from the ocean behind some
sizable islands, so big in fact it's easier to imagine land being
honeycombed by a lot of channels creating islands, and the landscape is
very tall mountains that have been worn vertical and tall by glacier
action. juneau itself is sort of divided in half by one of these
channels, half on the mainland, the other half on douglas island, the
two halves connected together by a bridge. i didn't read much about
the bridge but there was information there about sailboats going under
it, height restrictions, etc, so it is an issue for sailors. i was
told that the channel is dredged up to the bridge and that large
numbers of cruise ships come through the channel to get to downtown
juneau where the tourists spend a day on their journey along the coast
of alaska. the tide in this channel is amazing and ranges across about
20 feet in height through a single day! there was information provided
about using this large tide to land your boat for repairs and i
personally paid attention to the tide and it really is huge leaving
large areas of the channel dry at low tide and rising up to fill the
channel at high tide. it was a new moon when i was there. the cruise
ships, i was told, will start coming into juneau this coming week and
the entire character of the place changes when that starts to happen
nearly doubling the population. by all accounts it transforms the town
from a sleepy little place into a carnival of activity, crowded, with
folks everywhere. there is a glacier there to see, and from the things
i read and asked about there are other glaciers that you can see by
boat nearby and further along the coast. the channel bottom from what
i could see at low tide seemed to be a mixture of rocks and mud and i
didn't see any sand. the scenery was amazing, the whole place was
amazing really. juneau is not connected to the rest of the world by
roads, interesting trivial, so there's really nowhere to drive to since
you just reach a dead-end no matter which direction you go in, but if
you have a vehicle there are places worth going to such as the eagle's
crest ski area and other sights. food in juneau was fantastic. people
were fantastic, helpful, friendly.