26 August, Ketchikan Alaska
Hello All,
This has been an eventful and decision filled month. Puffin and her crew arrived here in Ketchikan in mid July. By the end of July, her crew had decided to stay here in Alaska for the winter.
This makes sense when considered in light of the time to get here and the freedom to make decisions. We have enjoyed our two month travel to arrive here. Having arrived, why hurry back? What are we hurrying back to? The biggest reason we began this journey was the journey itself. We are not through traveling, we will probably never be through traveling. But here, in Alaska, we are in a place that is almost defined by the name itself.
Alaska.
To Americans, Alaska is the wild and woolly frontier. Or maybe just a block to be checked off in their travels. It was as a block that I approached Alaska. Oh, I wanted to see the land and the waters, to hike the trails, to dodge the bears, to catch the salmon and see lives lived away from the “Outside.” This checking the block attitude has long since passed.
Debi: A quote from a book I am reading says a lot about SE Alaska living: “Up here, the mind and eye are aware of the water, the trees, the islands.” Living here, instead of just traveling through, will give us a much different perspective. We are meeting people who have been here all their lives, or the last 5, 10 or 20. The scenery is spectacular but the people give it color and life.
I know the bus drivers now and they automatically drop me off at home or the hospital - except when we get into a conversation about traveling and forget to stop. I was able to participate in a totem pole raising, a community event.
One of the things I think is so interesting is the number of people who came here for a visit/vacation/contract job and stayed or came back to stay. It will be an interesting winter.
We have enjoyed the traveling to get here. We know that we will continue on, exploring South East Alaska in the Spring and Summer, continuing our journey to Mexico next year.
But now we are here. Debi is working in the Intensive Care Unit at Ketchikan General Hospital, after surviving a close brush with bureaucracy in getting her Alaskan nursing license. I am working as the counterman for Ketchikan Brewing Company, a micro brewery. Or as one wag has put it, “...at last, a square peg in a square hole.”
Debi will be flying to Olympia in September to pick up the car and Granby, our canine companion. Granby is getting on in dog years, which is why she is not with us on the boat. Because of her, we have moved into a small two room apartment here in Ketchikan.
Upon moving up the hill, we found that we have more storage space on Puffin than in the apartment. We are using the settee and v-berth cushions for seats and beds. We have milk crates for bookshelves and tables. We do not want, nor do we desire, to start piling furniture up, filling the spaces with sofas, tables, beds, dressers, etc.
After all, come May, we will be gone, leaving only a swirl in the water, smiles in the memory.
Yours aye,
Hunter
And so we came into Alaska, not with the sun shining on majestic, snowy peaks, but rather in a low, solid advection fog, scratching at the fresh blackfly welts on our scalps and legs.
Let it be known that the island formerly known as Dundas, at the edge of British Columbia, will now and forever be known as Blackfly. I have been pestered by mosquitoes in Tennessee, horseflies in Texas, sand fleas in Virginia, and plain old flies everywhere. Nothing even comes close to the short time spent blindly throwing the anchor out, backing down on it, and racing into the cabin to seal every opening against the onslaught of the silent, tiny, black, blood-sucking demons from hell that inhabited our corner of Dundas Island. Other boats reported the same, terrible conditions at other anchorages around the island. Why are they so terrible here? Who should know?
To all the ovenless boat owners out there, wishing for some fresh bread or other baked goods, there is a way, the pressure cooker. I have not tried to bake bread yet, although I do have several pressure cooker bread recipes. I have tried a chocolate cheesecake and that came out very well. The bread problem can be beaten by making the dough up on Puffin and then taking it to an oven equipped boat for baking. They get the aroma of baking bread and one loaf, and we get a loaf. This method has worked well so far.
The sourdough starter has survived neglect and abuse over the last several months but is just as sour and pungent as ever. Debi made apple and banana fritters yesterday and they were light and airy so the leavening factor is still high.
In the short time that we have been in Ketchikan, we have seen six cruise ships. That is a different way to travel. Merchants, when they ask us what boat we are off of, look thoughtful when we say Puffin. They have asked if it is one of the smaller liners. Their attitude seems one of politeness until they hear that it is our cruise ship and is only twenty-four feet long. Then they want to know her details, how long we have been on her, where we have been and where we are going. I think most folks have that itch to just get on board and go. We can help them scratch that itch just by talking with them.
After two months on board, with only the sound of the engine, other boats, waterfalls, whining eagles and limited traffic at all of our other stops, Ketchikan is loud. The narrowness of the streets, the non-stop traffic, and the clatter and roar of float planes all combine to make us look forward to moving on to quieter locales. Sensory overload, everything and everybody is moving way to fast and making way to much noise doing it.
One stop any future cruisers should make up here is the Forest Service’s visitors center, in the center of downtown. There are great displays, from the geology of the region, the animal life, the Native cultures, to the uses of the land and its resources. You do not have to agree with the corporate use of the forest to appreciate the quality of the visitors center. It was a fun hour going through the exhibits.
We are approaching the turn around time in our northern sojourns. We have not quite picked out where or when this will be, just that leaving before the heavy fogs and early gales arrive is a good idea. The bank co-owners and the insurance company feel likewise.
The next update may be a bit slow in arriving. Fear not, one will arrive, eventually.
Yours aye, Hunter and DebiYou cannot put a border around the scenes up here. The scale is too large, far too spread out. Photos will only capture a small, small portion.
I am struck by the fact that, contrary to regular boating scenery, up here it is all up. On the helm, I spend as much time craning my neck as I do looking ahead or behind. This is not the long, open vistas that I am used to seeing on salt water. The flow of hillside, to draw, to cliff, to hillside, fading off into the twelve to fifteen mile distance is hypnotic. The waterfalls spring from the near sheer rocks and trees, springing out or glissading over rock to meet the cold waters of the channels.
The clear cuts, brown and gray swathes across the green. The young cutblocks, still stick strewn, trashy piles of scraps and stumps. The teen agers, covered with a bright green alder cover, thick and impenetrable tangles. The adults, evergreen, softening the rocks and ridges.
This is just too big a country for any one or two people to try and capture in one summer. This Northern world is years in the living, seeing, experiencing. We will pass this was way twice, up and down the Inside and then we will try to remember the coolness, the greens, the grays, the snow and the waters for the rest of our lives.
The passage from Port McNeill around Cape Caution to the North Coast does indeed separate the month long chartered boats from the people with time. Since making the Queen Charlotte Strait crossing, we have been seeing the same boats or hearing of the same boats all the way up to Prince Rupert. We are becoming a smaller and tighter group the further North we go.
After leaving the Port McNeill area, we crossed Queen Charlotte Strait to the Walker Group of Islands. These islands sit in the middle of the Strait, at the edge of the Sound and offer a really great anchorage, very snug, very protected. We were right on the doorstep of the QC Sound, ready for our weather window.
Which came the next day. Hazy, with ten to fifteen mile visibility, no wind, just some lumpy, rolly, greasy, low, slow swells on the beam. Did I say lumpy and rolly? I was not in the most energetic of moods for the crossing. Debi stayed at the tiller and I napped, getting up to make her some tea or lunch or to work on a canvas project. Once we were up to Rivers Inlet, above Egg Island Light, the sun came out, the wind increased, the lumps flattened out and we decided to sail for a few hours before dropping the anchor. Great sail up Fitz Hugh Sound to Phillips Inlet. Another great anchorage, just us, the eagles and a loon.
We have seen our first orca of the trip. While anchored in Fancy Cove, Lama Passage, we could hear the big breaths of a whale outside the entrance. Just as Debi looked through the binoculars, the lone whale breached, framed in the entrance, as if performing just for us. We could hear his breathing for another half hour, as he grazed out in the passage.
Another special anchorage was in Boat Inlet, Cecilia Island. Here, the neighbors were a pair of red throated loons. I cannot begin to describe the racket those birds made. Our Peterson’s Guide to Western Birds describes the call of this loon as “...a falsetto wail...” I think it sounds more like a murder taking place, slowly.
The following day, the seventh of July, was our biggest mileage day yet, sixty-three miles. We transited Percevel Narrows into Mathieson Channel, went through Jackson Passage where there is a beautiful new Marine Park, across Finlayson Channel, under Boat Bluff and into Graham Reach up to the abandoned cannery at Butedale. There we tied up to a log boom in the small harbor, in front of the collapsing, sagging wooden buildings, with the roar of Butedale Falls vibrating the air.
Bishop Bay, off of Ursula Channel, is the site of a great set of hot springs. There is a wash tub outside and a large soaking pool in the small cement block building. It really was a great stop, coming as it did six days since the last shower. The sun came out, we aired bedding and got rid of some of the moisture inside Puffin.
Grenville Channel is long, narrow, steep and long. It has some spectacular scenery, the snow fields are very much in evidence above the canyon walls, but it is long and can get crowded in a hurry when the tug with log boom, the cruise ship, the motor yacht and our small boat all try to pass through the same physical point at the same time.
We stayed one night in Baker Inlet, on the other side of Watts Narrows. We absolutely recommend this stop for anyone coming North. At the head of the Inlet, the shore is flat, graveled, has two streams feeding into it, the mountain above is still covered with snow fields and waterfalls and the solitude is glorious. We had two bears for company on shore and the usual assortment of eagles, loons and gulls. Another boat did come in and the captain dinghied over and asked us how we heard of this anchorage, that no one ever came in here. The view as we rounded the first point was a scene from a B.C. tourism guide.
And so we have arrived in Prince Rupert. This is a large town, with well stocked stores, lots of fishing boats and some really nasty wakes and washes in the harbor. We are at the Prince Rupert Rowing and Yacht Club, right near the downtown. Very convenient.
We had not charged our battery since leaving Port McNeill on the second of July, for a total of ten days. We thought that we were getting great power and good charging from the engine. When we went to attach the battery charger here in Rupert, we discovered that we had never attached the engine output leads. Now we know that the battery is still in great shape. Simple mistakes, simple problems.
To any cruisers who come to Rupert, try the Cow Bay Cafe, just around the corner from the yacht club floats. Really terrific menu, never the same twice in a row. Just remember to make reservations as there are only thirty-six chairs.
If the weather permits, we will be departing on the 15th, on the last leg before getting to Alaska.
Yours aye,
Hunter and Debi