Ikatan Bay is a waterway in the U.S. state of Alaska. The bay and Isanotski Strait separate Unimak Island from the Alaska Peninsula. They have been used by light-draft craft, intended for service on the Yukon River, in making the passage from Puget Sound ports to St. Michael.
A waterway is any navigable body of water. Broad distinctions are useful to avoid ambiguity, and disambiguation will be of varying importance depending on the nuance of the equivalent word in other languages. A first distinction is necessary between maritime shipping routes and waterways used by inland water craft. Maritime shipping routes cross oceans and seas, and some lakes, where navigability is assumed, and no engineering is required, except to provide the draft for deep-sea shipping to approach seaports (channels), or to provide a short cut across an isthmus; this is the function of ship canals. Dredged channels in the sea are not usually described as waterways. There is an exception to this initial distinction, essentially for legal purposes, see under international waters.
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are currently 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory and shares its sovereignty with the federal government. Due to this shared sovereignty, Americans are citizens both of the federal republic and of the state in which they reside. State citizenship and residency are flexible, and no government approval is required to move between states, except for persons restricted by certain types of court orders. Four states use the term commonwealth rather than state in their full official names.
Alaska is a U.S. state in the northwest extremity of North America, just across the Bering Strait from Asia. The Canadian province of British Columbia and territory of Yukon border the state to the east and southeast. Its most extreme western part is Attu Island, and it has a maritime border with Russia to the west across the Bering Strait. To the north are the Chukchi and Beaufort seas—southern parts of the Arctic Ocean. The Pacific Ocean lies to the south and southwest. It is the largest U.S. state by area and the seventh largest subnational division in the world. In addition, it is the 3rd least populous and the most sparsely populated of the 50 United States; nevertheless, it is by far the most populous territory located mostly north of the 60th parallel in North America: its population—estimated at 738,432 by the United States Census Bureau in 2015— is more than quadruple the combined populations of Northern Canada and Greenland. Approximately half of Alaska's residents live within the Anchorage metropolitan area. Alaska's economy is dominated by the fishing, natural gas, and oil industries, resources which it has in abundance. Military bases and tourism are also a significant part of the economy.
Ikatan Bay, on the north side of Ikatan Peninsula, is about 3.75 miles wide and 5 miles long in a southwest direction, and is free from surf except with winds from north to east. Sankin Island, lying 1 mile from the north side of the bay, is high, with a rounded, grassy summit; a reef extends from the island toward the nearest point of the peninsula. Sankin Bay is northwest of Sankin Island. The southwest end of Ikatan Bay is separated from Otter Cove by an isthmus, 20 to 30 feet high; a river enters Ikatan Bay at the middle of this lowland, and a submerged spit, which drops off abruptly to over 20 fathoms, makes off from its mouth. Approaching Ikatan Bay from southwestward the only known danger is Pankof Breaker, lying a little over 2 miles from the southeast point at the entrance to East Anchor Cove. There is a good anchorage in the bight on the west side of Ikatan Point. The south point at the entrance to the bay in about 9 fathoms, sand and mud bottom, with protection from winds from southeast to southwest. The best anchorage in Ikatan Bay from all southerly winds is on its south side off the low divide loading to Dora Harbor. Anchorage can also be made on the north side of the bay, 2.25 miles westward of Sankin Island, in 10 fathoms, sandy bottom, sheltered from ordinary northerly winds, but badly exposed to easterly and southerly winds. Isanotski Strait has its southerly entrance at the northwest end of Ikatan Bay. Traders Cove, on the eastern side of Isanotski Strait about 7 miles above its entrance from Ikatan Bay, is a good anchorage. Morzhovoi, a mission and native village, is on the south side. The mean rise and fall of tides in Ikatan Bay is 4.5 feet. In the narrow southern part of Isanotski Strait the tidal currents have a velocity of 7 to 9 miles or more, and it is said that there is practically no slack and that the current turns about three hours after high or low water in Ikatan Bay. [1]
Ikatan Peninsula is the southeastern extremity of Unimak Island in the U.S. state of Alaska.
