Today was our final day at anchor before heading in to Ketchikan tomorrow and finishing up the trip.  A lay day in foggy bay felt like the perfect way to spend our final day.  We slept in (all the way until 5:30am for the Thea crew!) and woke to another beautiful sunny day.  We sure have been lucky with the weather this year.

After a quiet morning spent sipping coffee and fixing breakfast, we were ready to go out exploring.  The Patos crew and Jim took the kayaks out for a paddle on the still water.  The rest of us explored around the bay by dinghy and visited with the other boats in the anchorage.  A thick fog bank rolled in from the open water, cooling everything down before the sun burned it off.

Later in the afternoon, we took an extended dinghy excursion to go run the rapids a few miles up Very Inlet.  Today we explored the left side of the inlet, motoring through two narrow sets of rapids into an open calm bay fed by a river on one side.  Forested hills surrounded us on all sides and the sense of wilderness and remoteness was palpable.  We killed the engines and sat in silence taking in the beautiful scenery and basking in the warm sunshine.

The trip back at low tide revealed colorful sea stars, sea cucumbers, anemones, urchins, chitons, snails, barnacles and lots more intertidal zone life.  Bright orange, deep purple, reds, yellows and greens covered the rock walls and the sea floor with colors unexpected in these cold waters.

To celebrate our final night out cruising together, we invited everyone over to Deception for a potluck dinner.  Captain Jordan spent the day smoking ribs, brisket and tenderloin and everyone else brought delicious dishes to go along side.  We shared a great meal together and reminisced about the trip and all we have seen and done for the past few weeks.  As the sun started to set, we bundled up for a late night dinghy excursion hoping to see some bears.  No luck spotting bears, but we did see a porcupine and had fun cruising through the still evening air.