2025-04-25 Bat Cove Trip

I decided to make a trip up into George Inlet. There are a few little coves up there that one can anchor up in but I enjoy going to one named Bat Cove.

Here is a map snippet from my InReach track that shows the location of Bat Cove way up at the head of George Inlet.

It's not very far, just over 21 miles.

The weather forecast was good, not great, but good enough to go.

I pulled out of the slip at a little past 7 AM in full daylight.

I'm still not running in the dark, although at this time of the year daylight comes pretty early.

There were no cruise ships at the docks in town as I passed through.

This is the front end of the cruise ship season, and I think there are some coming into the docks at Ward Cove now.

Not far after you make the sharp turn at Mountain Point there is a resort of sorts called George Inlet Lodge on the left side.

I have never been there, but I looked up their website. It appears they are mostly a tourist attraction now, offering various types of tours and unique Alaskan fare in meals. I thought that they were like a local restaurant where tourists and locals could go and have a meal.

I know they take that reddish brown metal boat on the right over to Coon Cove where they have crab pots permanently set and the tourists Ooh and Aah as they pull up crab pots.

Note the teal-colored boat on the left.

Many years ago, Salmon Falls Resort commissioned 3 boats like this to be built. My employer at the time, First Bank, financed them. Because of that a bunch of us from the bank were able to go out on a ride in one of them when they were new. If I recall, they have 3 big engines, with jet drives. On our short trip the pilot did spins, and 180-degree turns at high speed. It was quite a thrill.

Apparently, they have had several owners over the years and now at least one of them has ended up at George Inlet Lodge.

Right next to the lodge is a large, abandoned cannery. It surprises me that this site has not also been turned into some kind of tourist business. It looks like a large facility and must have had a colorful past. As far as I know it is totally abandoned.

I dropped my one huge shrimp pot in the vicinity of Leask Cove, and then made my way just a little further into Bat Cove. As I expected, no one else was around. I got anchored quickly and secured the boat.

Bat Cove can be quite scenic when the weather is nice, as it was when we first got there.

My first order of business was to deploy the raft so that I could get Nova to shore for "dewatering." I had a hard time finding a suitable beach to land the raft on because it was just full high tide when we got there. But eventually I found a small patch of beach grass that we could get to, and Nova took care of her business.

Once I got Nova back on board I went back out in the raft and got some good photos of the boat in the sun on the anchor. I wish that I was able to fly a drone above the boat, but I just don't have the wherewithal to do that just yet.

I came here in 2023 and there was a wanigan of some sort set up way at the head of the cove. This is what it looked like then, in 2023.

It was quite an elaborate set up and somebody spent some time and money on it. I got up very close to it in the raft, but I still could not discern what its purpose or function was.

I came back in 2024, and this is what it looked like. We have harsh winters.

Not functional anymore but most of it still there and visible.

When we got there on this trip at high tide, I could not see any sign of it at all. But when the tide dropped, I could see that there is just a small remnant of the original wanigan still visible. There are some "skookum" ropes running to it from trees and rocks on the shore.

We had some pretty heavy rain and a few gusty wind squalls late in the afternoon, but the next day when we were getting ready to leave it was quite beautiful again. I got some shots with my wide-angle lens. I don't use that lens enough as I tend to forget that I have it.

I shot this short video of the snowcapped mountains right before I pulled the shrimp pot.

In these conditions I didn't have any trouble hooking the buoys and pulling the shrimp pot. Sometimes if it is a bit breezy, I have a hard time hooking onto the buoys and getting the groundline into the pot puller, but not this day.

I got a pretty god haul of shrimp this time, somewhere between 150 - 200 I would estimate. I got 4 quart bags of tails. Some of them were quite large.

The run back to town from there was uneventful. The weather was so nice I piloted from the flybridge. I have not brought Nova up there yet as I don't trust her to be safe. So, when I run from up there, I go back down every 45 minutes to an hour and spend a little time with her, so she doesn't feel like I deserted her.

I got in the slip at about 3:15 PM after logging a little over 43 nm for this trip.