Friday, June 12, 2009

Ketchikan and beyond . . .

Monday, 6/8/2009 - 11:00 PM. The last couple of days have been busy so I have fallen behind on my updates. Let’s get caught up. We apparently had an uneventful Friday because I can’t seem to recall anything to report about it, just more cloudless skies and beautiful Canadian shoreline. Saturday we crossed back into American waters and Alaska. We finally had our first whale sighting .First a single Humpback not more than 150 feet in front of our boat crossing from port to starboard, sounding right in front of us with a show of his tail as if to say “welcome to Alaska”. Within an hour we also saw a small pod of Orca. I am not sure we would have gotten this great show if the weather wouldn’t have been so nice because it all happens so fast and if you were inside taking a nap (like Chris and Rhonda are now) or had your nose buried in a computer (like I am now) we would have missed it. We stopped at Ketchikan for the night, cleared U.S. Customs and had a late dinner at a restaurant called the Landing - about a 10 minute walk from Bar Harbor Marina. After dinner Chris, Rhonda, and I decided to find the Ketchikan night life but turned around a few blocks before a tunnel that separates the old town part of Ketchikan (and I assume the Saturday night nightlife) from the north end of town. We were a bit disappointed and walked back to the boat but a least got a nice walk and were chipper and rested (instead of hung over) on Sunday morning. The plan had been to take care of some last minute shopping at the Safeway get a shower and head out but when Jack was listening to the weather report he decided to stay another night and get an early start this morning. So with the shopping done and after fueling up the boat before noon, Chris , Rhonda and I, along with a better understanding of the lay of the land, made our way back downtown and were greeted by an old town business district bustling with three cruse ships of tourists. Chris thought that he had only packed one pare of work pants so we stopped at a big outdoor sports shop right next to the cruse ship dock and he bought a shinny new pare of Carharts and a new set of suspenders. I found, in the same store, a memory card for the camera that I borrowed from my friend Don.
By the way, I would like to thank my friend Don for trusting me with one of his nice Digital SLR cameras. I have taken some, what I think are, pretty nice pictures that would have been impossible to get with the little Sony pocket camera that I have had with me on my last two trips to the lighthouse. I did not want to take this once in a lifetime trip up the inside passage and not have a decent camera with me. It would have driven me crazy. Don is a great friend and great photographer and if you need a picture of your boat worth framing look Don up @ Don Jutte Photography on the World Wide Web and tell him Scot sent you.
Anyway, back to our big day of being tourists. After stopping at Ace Hardware, Murray Pacific, and the down town sports and outdoor gear store, we walked over to Creek Street (felt right at home on the board walks and houses on pilings) then off to try to find the Totem Park. We did end up at a nice looking Totem museum but decided not to spend the 10 bucks per person to go inside. Instead we walked past the fish hatchery and followed the river back around to Creek Street via a wonderful path thru the woods called Married Man’s Trail. The first building that we got to on Creek Street marked #1 and #2, we all immediately fell in love with. In need of repair (like most of the things that I am attracted to, Boats, etc.). We will have to look into that later. We next found the library that had a third order Fresnel lens from the Tree Point Light House in a window facing the street. We decided to go in to see if we could get the current Alaska fishing regulations from the internet and print off a copy for Jack. Chris accomplished the task in a few minutes and we were off to find a bar that Jack had told us about that had a picture of his Halibut boat the Grant on the wall. A few blocks away we found the Sourdough, a Ketchikan version of the Pioneer Bar in Sitka, where we found the picture and Jack sitting at the end of the bar watching the Mariners game on TV. The bar was thinly populated with locals as all of the tourists had been called back to the cruse ships by a blast of the horn about a half hour before. So we had a few Alaska Oatmeal stouts (yum), looked at all of the boat pictures on the walls, and had a nice conversation with the nice woman tending bar after Jack left to start dinner back on the boat. We hiked back to the marina and Rhonda volunteered to do a load of laundry while Chris and I were getting showers. Everyone was clean and hungry at 7:00 when Jack served up some baked king salmon boiled potatoes and green salad. Unfortunately, we were all too stuffed to have any of the apple pie we had warmed up for desert but it made a great and easy breakfast this morning. After dinner Jack walked over to visit with an old friend that was moored in the same marina and after doing the dishes Chris offered to walk over to the Landing with me so that I could use the free wireless to post to the blog. I was happy to have the company and tech support, it defiantly would have taken more than the hour that it did.
So, we are on our final leg of the journey to the Cape Decision Lighthouse. The plan is to meet up with Karen and the boat that she shanghaied called the ”Log Dog“. We will probably spend the night anchored out in a bay on the east side of the cape called Port MacArther. It’s not like the intimate little harbors that we have been staying in up to this point. It is a wide, long bay of a harbor and, depending on the wind direction, we’ll snuggle up to one side or the other. Hopefully, the west side near a beach that has been dubbed Wolf Beach (by the Cape Decision Lighthouse Society beach naming committee because wolf tracks are found in the sand every time we visit the beach). This spot is a couple of miles closer to the lighthouse in case we need to unload from there due to bad weather.
It is about 4:30 and Jack is in his bunk taking a well deserved break while Chris takes us up to Pt Baker where we hope to raise Steve and the Kirsten Ann on the radio as we make our turn west and into Sumner straight. Rhonda is up topside on wale watch and I think that I will go join her.
7:45, just dropped anchor in the back of Port MacArthur bay in about 8 to 12 fathoms. As we were slowly moving into position Chris and I both spotted something on the beach that the crows and eagles are eating. We both agree that is going to need to be explored sooner than later. In the meantime, our dinner fixing instructions from Jack are to stay out of his way so Chris is breaking into the Alaskan Smokey Porter and Rhonda is holding her position topside where she has been all afternoon.
Dinner was great, as always -smoked black cod, rice, and veggies. I think that it is the best tasting fish I have ever had. A round of beers on the upper deck and in the still of the night at the very end of the bay we can hear a waterfall in the forest. Time for bed; tomorrow is moving day and it promises to be a long one. We heard from Karen on the Log Dog and they are staying in Cape Pole tonight. They will meet up with us first thing in the morning.

1 comment:

  1. Sounds like the trip of a lifetime. I'm so glad you two can share it together. It sounds like the weather has been fabulous for you.

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