If you don’t have a plane, or can’t afford a charter, you need a boat to get to Excursion Inlet.
But when you arrive, you might not be able to come ashore.
The isolated community in the southwestern corner of the Haines Borough doesn’t have a functioning harbor.
Last winter Excursion Inlet resident David Gibson attempted to tie up at the community’s airplane float, but the “wind came up real bad.” There’s no breakwater to protect the float. It’s also illegal to moor boats there, but much of the time residents, especially those with larger boats, don’t have a choice.
Gibson headed north a few miles to Sawmill Bay, where the water usually is calmer, but it was frozen, forcing him back south through the storm, he said. A few hours later he found a safe mooring at Pleasant Island, near Gustavus. He spent the night at sea in “horrible” weather.
“If we had a harbor, it would’ve been no problem whatsoever,” Gibson said.
Technically there is a harbor – or what remains of one. It can be accessed only at high tide, and much of it goes dry at low tide. There are some old pilings and shaky docking.
OBI Seafoods sets out floats near its cannery in the summer that fishermen, tourists and local residents can use. The plant will do so again this year, even though it won’t be processing fish, said plant manager Tom Marshall.
But for nine months of the year residents don’t have a safe place to tie up.
Jon Geary, who has lived part time in Excursion Inlet for 10 years, said the lack of a harbor has prevented his father from visiting. “My dad is a disabled handicap veteran now. He can barely walk. He wants to go out there to visit,” Geary said. “There’s nowhere that makes sense to get him to my place, so he doesn’t go but would love to.”
Geary’s boat broke free in the inlet while he was eating Thanksgiving dinner last year. “It blew off anchor in a storm…because there’s nowhere to safely put your boat,” he said. “Luckily we rescued it, and nothing happened. But it was pretty spooky,” Geary said.
Without a dock, Geary said he has invested in mooring buoys. A few weeks ago he hired a diver to rest his fifth buoy, a 6,000-pound block with a three-inch line on it. “The currents are so bad they last about two years,” Geary said. Each one costs $4,000, not including the $1,000 to install it.
Jack Campbell, who has spent summers in Excursion Inlet for 30 years and now lives there full time, said safety is his main concern, not only for boats but for residents who need help. “To have a little harbor with a boat ready at all times – that would make people feel a lot more comfortable.”
Campbell said he is one of a few residents who sometimes stores his boat, an 18-foot Lund skiff, in the harbor, dry. He said the harbor has been in its same old state for as long as he can remember.
“My boat’s in there right now because we had a pretty good blow there the other night,” Campbell said. “In the winter time here, it’s a raging sea a good part of the time, and it’s so important to have a place to hide if you come in here.”
Campbell said once the harbor is dredged he’d like to see a few small floats with slips.
Campbell, Geary and Gibson submitted proposals to rebuild the harbor through the Haines Borough‘s new initiative to solicit public suggestions for capital improvement projects. Borough staff set aside $25,000 from the capital improvement fund in the manager’s draft budget for a feasibility study to renovate the harbor.
“We don’t really have any idea what that entails – how much work it needs, or even if where it is currently located is the best location for it,” said borough clerk Alekka Fullerton at an April finance committee meeting.
Residents say the biggest need is dredging. “Three days with an excavator down there would save everybody a ton of heartache,” Geary said.