A hot time in the old tub tonight!

A delicious soak in a big tub of hot, slightly sulfurous, mineral spring water in a small wood-paneled room with a curtained open side facing mountains and a 100-foot frothing waterfall concluded Thursday’s journey—how luxurious!

We left Angoon in the afternoon on Thursday, August 11, when the current was safe to pass through with minimal whirlpools and eddies, and motored for a little more than four hours to gorgeous Baranof Warm Springs Bay on the east coast of Baranof Island, while long rows of guard-mountains, in their white-and-blue-striped hats and sweeping, dark blue coats, watched over us. The bay is surrounded by snow-tipped mountains and there are nine hot spring pools of differing temperatures, from very hot to lukewarm, reached via a trail that takes a visitor to the top of the roaring falls.

There is also a wooden bathhouse near the docks containing large tubs that can accommodate two adults each; these fill with very hot water, to which cold water can be added with a hose to produce the desired soaking temperature, a very pleasant feature! After bathing, one drains the tub and cleans it with a brush for the next guest.

When Braesail arrived with her crew at about 7 pm, the docks were full and we were scouting for a place to anchor when a man on Third Watch, one of the large moored power boats, motioned to us and then told us that we were welcome to “raft up” to his boat for the night to make access to the bathhouse easy. How kind and generous! So we lowered our fenders, as did he, and we tied our vessels together, side by side. After dinner, we climbed over Braesail’s starboard side life-line and onto Third Watch’s portside deck, walked across her foredeck, and lowered ourselves to the dock for the short passage down the boardwalk to the bathhouse. What a dreamy hot-water soak we enjoyed before making our way back to our boat at about 10 pm as darkness was gathering, and what a restful night we had!