The day before, we reached Tracy Arm Cove and anchored there at 1550. The following morning, we got underway at 0730 and began our journey into Tracy Arm, one of two fjords that terminate in Holkham Bay.

(In fact, we wanted to explore the other fjord − Endicott Arm − because we wanted to see Ford's Terror. However, the tides did not support this option: we would have had to enter or exit Ford's Terror in the dead of night. So we proceeded into Tracy Arm instead.)

It wasn't long before we saw the first "bergy bits" − small icebergs, each rising one to four metres above the water, created by calving glaciers. I hadn't seen one before, and was struck by the preternatural blue colour. (Fun science fact: glacial ice is so dense that it absorbs every colour of the visual spectrum but one: blue light, whose wavelength is shortest, and which is therefore not absorbed, but reflected.)

Not long after that, we saw a black bear. Little did I know this would be the only bear I'd see on the entire trip.

(I have a theory about my failure to spot many land animals. It's loosely based on science. On June 4, there was earthquake whose epicenter was in Glacier Bay. We didn't feel it − the Merry Fortune was far away at the time, crossing Chatham Sound − but I think it sent all the land animals into hiding.)

At first, I thought that Tracy Arm was merely a body of water between mountains.

Then I began to learn the true meaning of steep.

Steep is a body of water so nearly vertical that your eye can follow a trickle of running water up the rock wall to see where it begins as a frozen ribbon of ice.

Steep is being not ten feet from the shore and looking at your depth finder and seeing that there's more than four hundred feet of water beneath your hull because a remorseless piece of moving ice cut a gash through solid rock, centuries before you were born.

And while we're on the subject of instrument readings: cold is −

(That's the water temperature, by the way. The air temperature was pleasantly higher.)

As we pressed on, the bergy bits multiplied. They are a navigational hazard to small vessels: if one should punch a hole in your hull, you're in trouble. That's why, when the Merry Fortune last ventured into Tracy Arm a few years ago, The Captain had to turn her back quickly. But we were lucky: despite what the photo below might lead you to believe, the bergy bits were relatively few and far between. So we pressed forward, The Captain steering the Merry Fortune slowly while I stood on the bow, wielding a pole to push bergy bits away from her hull.

Bergy bits are a hazard for ships, but a habitat for marine life.

At 1345, we sighted our destination: the South Sawyer Glacier, the creator of the fjord and the source of the bergy bits. This was the first time I'd seen a glacier at relatively close range. It would not be the last.

By 1645, we were anchored back at Tracy Arm Cove. It had taken us twice as long to get up the arm as to get back down, despite favourable tides on the first part of the trip. That’s the glacier current for you.

On our way back, before we were entirely clear of the bergy bits, we knew we had one last deed to do: we needed to bag a souvenir of the South Sawyer Glacier.

Hacked into manageable pieces, it helped to chill one of the most memorable martinis I've ever consumed.