Day 30; May 29: Rain wasn’t as heavy today so we got a few chores done so we can leave tomorrow. Laundry, groceries and hardware store shopping done. We went out for dinner to the pizza place, it was pretty good.

Day 31; May 30: Got up this morning expecting to leave and checked the weather. The first thing that popped up was a small craft advisory from NOAA. Checked few more sites and it was telling us 3-foot waves which is doable but not comfortable. We decided to be Petersburg residents one more day. Shortly after that we saw a boat that is the same as ours leaving, we thought. I heard something out the front of the boat and took a look. The boat we thought left was sideways in the double slip in front of us with the anchor between a power post and a piling. The side of the boat was against a piling. The current was very strong and when he tried to get into the slip the current swung his stern around and he couldn’t do anything. We tried to move him but couldn’t move the boat. We got a fender in place to protect the side and waited 45 minutes until slack tide. Once the current died down, we were able to get the boat moved where it belonged and surprisingly there was no damage.

In Alaska most of the moorages do hot swapping. When a regular tenant leaves, they let the harbor master know how long they will be gone. The HM then rents the slip to travelers like us; in some cases, the tenant arrives while the slip is sublet and the HM makes the traveler move to a new slip. That is why the boat was trying to move in front of us.

Day 32; May 31: Got up early to check weather, all was good. Decided to leave earlier than planned to avoid dealing with the current that caught the guy yesterday. Headed to Le Conte Glacier, the water was calm, the sky was grey and foggy. The visibility was limited to the point we couldn’t see the tall snow caped mountains in front of us. Once we got to the bar for Le Conte it was clear we weren’t going up the inlet, there was too much ice flowing out. We turned around and headed to Thomas Bay and the visibility got better as the day went on. The Baird Glacier is barely visible from the bay and is no longer a tidal glacier. The place we planned to anchor was already taken; we went across the bay to another anchorage by Ruth Island.