Road Trip!

Utah Salt-flats - about as flat as you can get

11/9/11

I’m sitting in an auto glass shop in Santa Cruz waiting for them to finish replacing my cracked windshield of my “Nubaru” that I acquired specifically for my road trip in October.  The lady said it was going to take all day.  Argh!  No other means of transportation to get back to the house that I’m sharing with a couple of other people.  But, what the hell, it gives me an opportunity to plunk out this little intermediate blog about my road trip that I haven’t had an opportunity to do before (update:actually, they were able finish by noon, so I finished this blog later that day).

Zombie badger at Bill & Bird's rental in NH

Black Canyon in Colorado

My idea was that instead of flying to Boston and renting a car to drive up to New Hampshire, I would buy a car in Bend (no sales tax, plus my “mailing address” is at Rick and Chris’s house), drive to Santa Cruz for Andy and Allison’s big Fall party, then drive to the east coast.  Driving cross-country was always something that I wanted to do but never got around doing…it has always been on my bucket list on things to do.

Looking down at the rapids of Gunnison River

Initially I was going to try and find a used Subaru (or VW Jetta diesel, if I could find one), but there was nothing good available without a lot of waiting, searching, and time.  So, even though I swore I wouldn’t do it again, I bought a new car. And since I’ve lately been into retro things, I got one with a stick shift. So far, I don’t regret the stick shift, but I’m glad I’m not commuting in heavy traffic to go to work. :>)

My road trip took about 3 weeks.  I took the northern route going east, and the southern route going west.  Highway 80 was the main way going east (with lots of diversions off the beaten path), and Highway 40 (Route 66) was the main way going west (also with diversions).

Wind generators aplenty in Utah going into the Rockies

Instead of boring everyone about my road trip, I thought I’d spell out some of the highlights and my observations, in roughly chronological order.

Music:  during my old college years when I and a bunch of friends would take road trips in my old VW van and creep from Colorado to LA listening to old Stones albums and anything that we could get a tape to listen.  So before the trip started, I collected a bunch of digital tracks of familiar (to me) 60’s and 70’s music on my iPod so I could listen to them, as well as all of my varied jazz collection.  Between this and catching NPR on the radio in various parts of the country kept me well entertained and energized.

Lots and lots and lots of corn fields

Corn: most of the open fields that were not desert or high altitudes were fields and fields of corn. It’s easy to see that this is the US’s main cash crop, what with all of the higher percentages of ethanol that we’re seeing in our gas nowadays.

Looking west from the continental divide - middle of the Rockies

Wind generators: I was very happy to see that, in most places that were wide open, or had a lot of winds, there were more wind generators than I have ever seen before.  To me, wind generators are not an eyesore, if only because they represented a much cleaner source of energy than the local propane or coal-driven energy plant. I used to buy wind generators for West Marine (electrical department); the style very much reflected what I was seeing on the road, except the ones on the road were 4-5 stories high, and each blade would be 30-40 feet long.  Yikes!

Gas prices:  talk about variation - from almost $4/gallon in California to almost as low as $3/gallon in the east coast.  You have to wonder why!  My Nubaru is not like my old Prius – instead of 45-50g/mile, I averaged about 28 to 30.  I’m spoiled.

Looking at Colorado Springs from Pike's Peak

Switch-backs on Pike's Peak

Continental Divide:  the Rockies are really amazing.  I went to Colorado College for a couple of years, and I don’t remember grasping the subtlety of this mountain range.  It’s not dramatic craggy mountains like I see in Alaska or even the Sierras.  It’s just this giant, rounded ridge that gets higher and higher towards the middle with relatively unassuming peaks around it.  It’s only until you realize that you’re 10,000 feet up that you realize that you’re in a mountain range.  Despite it being undramatic, the Rockies were undeniably beautiful.  When I was driving south of Hwy 80 on two lane highways I was reminded of the trips that I used to do driving to Breckinridge (playing music for ski tickets and room & board) during the winter in my old Scout, and the wide open snowy valleys with a minimal amount of trees and giant, fenced ranches.  It felt like that now, except instead of the fields covered with snow, it was a beautiful green and yellow grass.

Looking up at Pikes Peak - notice the yellow leaves

Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Colorado: obviously not as breathtaking as the Grand Canyon, it still represented a more intimate connection on how the earth is shaped by water, as well as by plate pressures and glaciers.  It is also more dramatic at how steep the cliffs are. What was cool about it was that I could see the Gunnison River, a well-known and difficult river rafting/kayaking challenge, flow underneath my feet very clearly.  It’s also interesting to note that in both the Grand and Black Canyon, getting there requires going up several thousand feet.  It’s like building a big sand mound on the beach and taking a stick to create a deep path through it, the stick being trillions of gallons of water flow a year creating a deeper and deeper gouge. 

Pikes Peak Lake

Pikes Peak:  I’ve been up it once before, when I was going to Colorado College – I and some friends took my old VW van and went up it’s steep, switchback road all the way to the top at 14,000 feet.  The old van barely made it up, having to keep it in 1^st gear the last quarter of the trip.  Going up with the Nubaru was easier, but I still often had to put it in 1^st gear to come out of one of its many hairpin turns.  On top, the view is breath taking – easy to do when you’re that high.  My breath was taken as soon as I started walking around, feeling my heart beat a little harder, and taking slower steps and having to breathe deeper.  I felt like an old man up there.  Hmmm…

Mist and rainbows at Niagara Falls

6 million cubic feet per minute!

Colorado College:  Colorado Springs has grown unbelievably from a relatively small town to a metropolis as big as Pasadena, it felt like.  There were lots of traffic, the freeway going north and south had grown lanes, and suburbia looked like it has spread out quite some distance, both north and south.  I hadn’t checked it out, but I bet that there is little difference in housing between Colorado Springs and its neighbor to the south Pueblo.  The college, however, was the same…same buildings, beautifully manicured lawns, and same trees shading the streets.  The college still has the block system that they started just after I left the school.  In retrospect, I regret having left that college as it would have been nice to experience taking one class over a 3 week time, concentrating only on that class.  Well, I’m sure (surf) that I (surf) had my (surf) reasons…

Many rivers head to Niagara Falls

Niagara on top

On the Canada side

Hand made just for the Adirondaks

Niagara Falls: easily the most awesome display of water flow that I’ve ever seen, including waterfalls in Alaska. It literally dumps the water from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, the two lakes separated by a super wide river that seemed to come from everywhere. The Lake Ontario basin, sculpted by glaciers a kajillion years ago, looked like a giant drain sucking in all of this water, making a lot of noise.  I happened to be there on a nice sunny day, so the mist coming up, creating myriads of rainbows, brought in a whole lot more colors beside the greenery surrounding the waterfalls.  The combined water flowing into Lake Ontario is more than any other waterfall in the world (6 million cubic feet every minute!).  It was impossible to take pictures showing the whole grand concept.  One of these days, I’ll have to figure out how to take large landscape pictures – but you should check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niagara_Falls.  On the U.S side, there was a ton of tourists looking – almost all of them were from China, Korea, or Japan, although some from Europe.  I also drove across the bridge to the Canada side (the border guard gave me a big hassle because I didn’t have any license plate on my Nubaru).  On the other side, the mist from the waterfalls inundated the streets of the town next to the waterfalls, making the streets all wet, and people wearing waterproof ponchos. 

Lake Placid

Typical Maine lobster boat on the hard

Upper state New York: I have pushed through New York City plenty of times, mostly going down the coast from Boston to Annapolis on various boat-show related activities and trying to figure out how to get past the ever-present traffic gridlock.  But I have never truly visited the beauty of New England during the fall; it is inspiring. There was certainly an orange and yellow color scheme going on there, especially while traveling through the Adirondack Mountains in the northeastern part of New York state.  Although the elevation on the road didn’t go a whole lot past 3000 feet (5,300 is its highest mountain peak), the mountain range is north enough to get a fair amount of snow during the winter.  Lake Placid hosted the winter Olympics in 1932 and in 1980, so all of the motels and hotels had some sort of reference to the Olympics, especially hockey, where in 1980 the US team beat the USSR team for the gold medal.  It’s also well known for the skiing (at least on the East Coast), but I have to think that the masses of wannabe skiers coming up from NY City to ski would make the place uninhabitable. 

House where Joel and Robyn got married

Maine: was as expected, beautiful, but hard to really explore on the road.  I would have much preferred to be out on the waters discovering the plentiful nooks and crannies not accessible by road.  That could well be a goal on my bucket list in the future.  I stayed a couple of nights at Bar Harbor, which was overrun by tourists all coming from…are you ready?...cruise ships!!  Gagh!  I can’t get away from them!

Joel and Robyn’s marriage: beautiful ceremony with thought-provoking marriage declarations, magnificent yet quirky house on a prime waterfront New Hampshire property, lots of friends and relatives with a reviewing of old relations and discovery of new – all that and more merged to become a very memorable event.  I’m really glad I came.  Thank you Robyn and Joel for inviting me!

Apropos name at the marriage property

North Texas suburb

Motels and hotels: been there, done that.  I don’t have any desire to go to any more motels and hotels.  Despite giant differences in pricing, they smell the same; they almost always look the same and always with some kind of forced air pushing in.  Say, here’s an idea: tow a small teardrop mini trailer and use it for camping.  They are relatively cheap if you buy used, they don’t weigh more than 800-1000 pounds, and my Nubaru (jeeze, I’m going to have to call it a Subaru now, it’s got more than 10,000 miles on it now) can tow one easily.  While I was driving I noticed that there were a lot of camping spots, some in absolutely gorgeous surroundings. With more time to do exploring, I could spend a whole summer visiting different places in US, Canada or even Mexico and not have to spend another god-awful night in some stinky motel.  Hmm…it’s something to think about.

Grand Canyon

Religion: I noticed driving the southern route back to California that there were numerous roadside signs advertising different religious groups.  My friend Andy reminded me that the “bible-belt” takes up a huge part of the US, especially on the south side.  It was certainly evident even driving the highways, especially the mega-chapels that I saw driving through Tennessee and Arkansas.  Wow!  Big mansions, only differentiated from other giant mansions by having a steeple placed in some part of the structure, were dotted along the highway. “Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors and see all of the people”.  I could only envision a lot of money pouring in from lots of people supporting these rich organizations.  While driving through a city, I would scan my radio for NPR and hit bunches of religious stations, all with some sort of hell & damnation theme and quotes from the bible. Without making any “politically incorrect” personal observations (I’ll leave that up to Bill Mayer), I would simply say that social culture sure varies wildly from state to state.

Rest Stops:  these varied wildly from state to state.  I thought that California rest stops were pretty fancy until I saw some of the northern ones that had a travel center, restaurants, gas stations, etc.  I guess it’s how much money a state is willing to spend on that kind of stuff.  With the economy in the tank for the states as well as the U.S., those kinds of things will be bypassed I’m sure.

Me, after staring at the Grand Canyon all day...

Grand Canyon: this was the 3^rd time in my life that I visited it.  It’s worth it every time; but the grandeur of the place is so great that you often don’t see any of the smaller details that can be missed if you don’t sit down and stare out - which is what I did this time.  I was at the canyon almost the whole day, hiking around from viewpoint to viewpoint, but mostly finding a good comfortable spot, sitting on my ass and staring – trying to see small details.  Thankfully the weather was beautiful, and I left with a strong color sense of orange/brown in my head.  Perhaps one of these days I will go down the Colorado River to see the Grand Canyon from below.  I wonder if it will be just as majestic.

Missed opportunities: on my way back to California, I was “smelling the barn”, looking forward to playing music with friends or on gigs, so I bypassed a few places that I thought about visiting, but am now looking forward to visiting if ever I got the chance to travel again:  New York for the jazz clubs, New Orleans for the same reason, Oak Creek Canyon in Arizona where my mom took us 3 boys to visit on a familial road trip during one summer – and basically taking some more time to smell the roses. Also, it would be fun to have a kayak or paddleboard with me, while visiting the various waterways that I saw.

California desert driving

Now I’m in Santa Cruz, sharing a house with another couple, and soon to move to a small studio, only a few steps away from Pleasure Point.  It’s been tough getting back to surfing, trying to acclimate my muscles and joints (bad shoulders) and my sore ribs, as well as getting up fast enough on the board to not wipe out all of the time.  But playing music has been fun, and I already have at least 3 gigs a week, so that’s been exciting.  Fortunately (or unfortunately) my travel bug is still alive and well, and I may go on another trip – maybe to New Zealand as I threatened to do in my earlier blogs.  I haven’t figured it out that far.  I still have a lot of projects that need getting done here, including a complete health checkup.

Blue Bossa is still up in Wrangell, awaiting my return.  The guy who is taking care of it says the only problem is the cover on the stern – since it’s not fitting very well up there, it collects water in the pockets formed by the misfit, and when it gets cold, will turn into ice.  He has to pop out the water or ice every time he visits the boat. But everything else is fine.  I may fly up there after Christmas to see for myself and run the engine, but the flight costs are pretty high.  We’ll see.

Sitka to Wrangell

9/13/11

Well here I am in Wrangell’s Sourdough Inn.  A very nice place, very quiet and it has WiFi.  I think I'm the only guest in this lodge. I'm watching this huge screen TV, which is where the WiFi is.

I just spent the last two days “winterizing” Blue Bossa.  First I cleaned it – galley, head, floors, and rugs.  Then I put the kayak and paddleboard on the roof of the pilothouse.  Then I pulled the outboard off of the dinghy and put it on its bracket in the stern.  Then I put the dinghy on the forward deck, bottom up. Then pumped all of the fresh water out and put in special (ie: potable) antifreeze in the fresh water lines.  Then closed all of the thru hulls except the engine intake valve.  Then opening all of the cabinets and bunks to get maximum amount of air circulation, then putting out a couple of 110v fans and a couple of electric dehumidifiers in strategic places on the boat. 

Cover looks good except the back...

Oh yeah, and putting the cover on the boat was a real treat: it came in 4 pieces, and figuring out where what goes where was like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle without the picture.  Luckily I have prior experience putting the cover on the Siwash, which is also a very complicated set-up, so after laying each piece out on the dock I was able to figure how to put it all together.  It was an original cover made for the boat 12 years ago, before all the crap that was built up from the previous owner and myself on the stern – so it fit fine in the bow, but looked like scrambled eggs in the stern.  Hopefully I have plenty of line set up to hold the cover tight on the stern so that it doesn’t all come apart.

It was a real adventure getting here from Sitka.  On 8/29 we filled up with fuel, left Sitka about 2pm and went outside, heading for the outside coast of Baranof Island.  It was smooth seas with a 3ft swell to Samsing Cove.  Samsing Cove was very pleasant, landlocked and very quiet.  Inside was a fishing boat tied to a buoy further up the cove, but it left shortly, leaving the cove to myself for the night.

Singsam Cove

West coast of Baranof, heading towards the Rakof Islands

landing on Goddard Hot Springs

The shack

The view

The happy customer

The place

The next day we left Samsing to head to Herring Bay.  Winds were light out of the west, cloudy skies, and no rain.  Blue Bossa did a lot of twisting and turning around islands and rocks until we worked into Herring Bay and dropped an anchor, wind coming out of the north.  I launched the dinghy and, bringing a bathing suit, zipped out of the bay, headed east to Dorothy Narrows and headed north to Goddard Hot Springs, where there was a small shack and a place to land the dinghy.  Grabbing my bag, I walked the small boardwalk to the shack, which inside was a large round hot tub with a faucet to let in hot water.  It had a nice view from its window (no glass) of Kliuchevoi Bay with a lone ketch at anchor.  It isn’t as good an anchorage as Herring Bay, but, because it was calm, it looked good enough.  Anyway, the tub felt fantastic and I soaked in it for about a half hour before taking my shriveled body out. I pushed the dinghy back in the water and explored around until I ended back on BB.

BB in Herring Bay

The next day - 8/31 – we left Herring Bay at about 10, wormed our way around a bunch of islands and then shot through 1^st narrows, which brought me into the Rakof Islands, then squeezed through a narrow entrance to Baidarka Cove. It was like I was cheating the outside ocean, staying under the protection of these little islands and passages while still being out on the west coast of Baranof. The last 3 days had no rain and even some sun, but today, it started raining hard at about 5pm.  Weather forecast promised heavy rain and wind for the next 4 days. Yikes!  It rained and blew hard that night as promised.

The next day it was calmer and, with a high tide, I left Baidarka Cove.  We weaved thru the second narrows and went up the middle channel, which was rough because of the SE wind. There was no more free rides (protection from chains of islands) from the outside. We wound through yet another narrow pass called Cameron Pass then dipped into Scow Bay, on Beauchamp Island. Scow Bay is a bombproof anchorage separated from the Gulf of Alaska by just a few low-lying islets and rocks.  It was raining, so I didn’t do much except read.

Cruisn' the Raka Islands

Scow Cove

The next day I decided that there was enough of a window to slam against some 20k southeasterlies to make further south and anchor at Still Harbor, where I figured I would stay for a few days, as the forecast promised very high winds for the weekend.  It was a lumpy as well as a windy ride, but do-able.  It was a 3-hour bash.  Still Harbor was more picturesque than Scow Bay, and was very quiet and calm.  Since it was on Baranof Island and had a creek running into it, I was hoping that I would see some bears.  I actually did see a bear on shore the next day – he/she was looking for tidbits on the medium tide shore, pushing over large rocks to find goodies.  I rushed down to get my camera and tripod, but when I put my head back up, the bear was gone.  Darn!

By Labor Day, I was still waiting for the storm to hit – the weather forecast said that it was going to hit that night – gale to storm force winds - waves were suppose to be 18 feet and winds over 40 knots.  I was skeptical - I’ve already read two books and was on my third – I was bored and ready to move on, but I had to sit this one out. 

Baidarka Bay

That night, I almost lost my boat. 

The wind started to come up just when it was getting dark, the boat tacking back and forth on the anchor.  I was feeling pretty secure, thinking that the bottom was muddy and that the boat wouldn’t drag.  That feeling went down the drain in a hurry.  About 10pm, the anchor chain started making grinding noises, usually made when rubbing against rocks or boulders, the boat jerking.  Knowing that there shouldn’t be any rocks where I was anchored, I instantly became alarmed, looking futilely out in total pitch darkness with driving rain.  Since I couldn’t know where I was by looking out, I turned on the computer chart.  I was shocked to find that Blue Bossa was yards away from going aground on a small rocky island 100’s of yards where we were originally anchored!  Holy Shit!  I turned on the engine and headed into the wind, taking some of the strain off of the anchor. 

Scow Cove

I was in a very bad situation and needed to get out of it and the only way to do that was to raise the anchor.  Normally when I pull the anchor up, I'm on the bow pushing the buttons to raise the anchor, while the engine is just idling.  But the wind was blowing 30-40 knots - no way was the windlass going to pull the anchor up unless I took off the strain by using the engine at the same time raising the anchor. Even if the windlass could pull up the anchor by itself, as soon as the anchor was off the ground, the boat would go hurtling towards shore before I could get to the pilothouse and maneuver out of that situation.  Which meant that I had to stay in the pilothouse to maneuver the engine and the boat while pressing the remote anchor windlass switch in the pilothouse.  Plus I also had to keep the engine revved up enough to supply extra electricity for the batteries. At the same time, I had to keep the boat into the wind and the only way I knew where I was heading was looking at the chart and looking at the radar. 

It took me a good half hour to finally get the anchor up, multi-tasking, sweating and swearing the whole time, looking at the depth sounder, which ranged from 49 ft to 6 ft., the boat tacking back and forth while I’m madly struggling to keep the boat into the wind while lifting the anchor up, constantly adjusting the throttle and trying to keep the RPMs up.  Argh!  It would have been a challenge with another crewmember in the bow – now it was an almost impossible task.  Thankfully all of the boat’s systems were working!

Still Harbor - when it was still

Finally the wonderful sound of the anchor hitting the pulpit informed me that I now had to work my way back up the bay in safer waters.  Still in pitch black, heavy rain, and 40 knot gusts, and working only on the radar, chart plotter, and depthsounder, BB made her slow way back up the bay, still tacking back and forth, me struggling with the wheel to correct (using only radar to figure out where you are makes it easy to over-steer), until it looked like the right place to anchor.  I let the anchor hurtle down, letting 200’ out.  Once it looked like it set, I revved up the engine to push the boat hard left for a bit of time, trying to move the anchor chain over to the left.  Once there, I ran up the deck and let my Bruce anchor (2^nd anchor on my bow) out in a hurry.  When it had set, I now had a V-shaped anchor arrangement, which stabilized the boat from tacking and taking the strain off of just the one anchor and my own peace-of-mind. 

I decided that I would keep my computer on and do an anchor watch until the wind died down.  The barometer started to go back up and the wind started moderating at about midnight and I finally hit the sack about 2am, turning the engine off, which had been generating all that time.  Thankfully, the only damage I got was spraining my shoulder – again.

So my blasé attitude in anchoring almost wrecked my boat in a very out-of-the-way place.  I think I learned my lesson. In forecasted gale/storm force winds, put out another anchor, and put out lots of scope.  Keep the GPS on and set the anchor watch alarm.  Yeah, it takes some juice to run it, but if it’s windy, I’m sure it’ll be useful and I can always turn on the engine to keep the juice up. I actually have an old 2^nd generation night vision monocular for dark nights. I didn’t use it that night -  I tried it out the next night and it was really bad – you can hardly see out of it.  I’m glad I wasn’t depending on it.

The next day, it was windy, about 20 knots, and partly cloudy and still blowing out of the south.  The weather report suggested that I stay in the bay, and maybe try for it on Wednesday. But the weather was forecasted to still blow out of the south for the rest of the week through the weekend - so no matter what I would do, it would still be a struggle to keep going south if I ever hope to get to Wrangell. 

Beautiful morning, but still washing machine conditions

So having stayed in Still Harbor for 5 days, with only contacting civilization via my satphone, I decided to take a very small window of opportunity where the wind was less windy to try and make my way south, hopefully far enough to get around the south point of Baranof Island.  So on Wednesday the 7^th of September, at 5:30am, we left Still Harbor, passing through the entrance with huge waves on either side (thoughts of the entrance to Morro Bay during the winter), with my engine RPM to 3000, we busted out of the surf area and, when far out enough, proceeded south.  The seas were an absolute washing machine, with waves from the north, west, south, - yes- and east, since the big swells were back-washing against the cliffs of the coast and coming out against the other waves making it totally chaotic.  I had started with a reefed mainsail, but quickly let it out all the way to help try to maintain some semblance of stability, especially since there wasn’t any wind to speak of.  It was so rough that I actually got a little bit seasick, which is really hard considering I didn’t have breakfast.

The south wind came up a little bit but never got over 10 knots; and the further south I went, the less the waves were.  There were a bunch of places that I would have liked to stayed, but I figured I’d better git going while the gittn’ is good. We rounded Cape Ommaney on the south of Baranof, continued south to Cape Decision on the south of Kuiu Island, started heading north to Port Protection, on the north side of the Prince of Wales Island, where we spent the night – an 85 mile trip.

Interestingly enough, the US Coast Guard stopped me.  I was just tying up to a public dock in Port Protection (a very small community of local fishermen), and I heard a couple of guys talking from off my stern, I turn around and there’s about 4 CG men in a big red inflatable waiting for me to finish tying up.  As soon as I was done, they came alongside the dock and wanted to do a safety check to make sure I had all of the proper safety equipment - which they did, being very nice about it.  I checked out fine, except I didn’t have a plaque stating that it was a big fine to pump oil out into the water.  But they forgave that and went along checking out other boats.  Whew!  An interesting finish to a very long day!

During the past week, it had rained so hard that the Stikine River and every other river outlet made it so that no matter which tide I was trying to take, the current was always going against me all the way up through Sumner Strait.  So it took longer than I expected to get to Wrangell the next day.  I found out later that the levels on the Stikine River hit a record high, destroying some property up there and causing some consternation.  All through Wrangell, it was the big talk about the heavy rains.  I also found that – really – this summer was non-existent as far as the locals were concerned – this from many people that I talked to.  So I guess I shouldn’t feel that Alaska is nothing but one giant monsoon.  Hopefully next year will be a much better summer, weatherwise.

I was going to haul my boat out at the Wrangell boat yard and store it on dry land.  But there is heavy construction going on in the yard with new cement and they couldn’t haul out until complete – and who knows when that would be.  There are two harbors in Wrangell.  The first one (Reliance Harbor) I was familiar with – old and kind of grubby.  The 2^nd harbor (Heritage Harbor) is new and not quite finished yet (parking lot).  It has brand new docks, all new electrical system, and it’s in a very quiet, very un-exposed breakwater completely surrounding the harbor.  My slip is practically right in the deepest part of the harbor. Plus keeping it there is only about $85/month, not counting electricity – cheaper by far than the storage fees on land.  So that decided me to winter in the water at Wrangell.

Along with double docklines, full cover, and a security guy that will be checking the boat every other week, I think I should be OK.  It’s a bit nerve-racking to be leaving my home for so long, wondering if it will be all right when I get back.  I met a nice couple on a 40’ Willard trawler who, in their younger years traveled on a sailboat 8 years going around the world.  They now live in Wrangell and cruise Alaska during the summer time.  They’ll help keep an eye on my boat too.

So that’s it, folks, for Blue Bossa Blogs for 2011.  I may come out with a piece or two on some adventures that I’m planning on doing this winter, so you should keep checking out the site – I’m going to keep it active, but not put in as much diatribe until I get back to Blue Bossa in early April.  In 2012, I’m planning on taking BB down the coast of Prince of Wales Island (outside), sail south and explore the Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Guaii), then sail on the west coast of Vancouver Island.  There should be a lot of opportunities for more adventures.

Auke Bay to Sitka with Alex

Leaving Auke Bay

8/24/11

I am just in the process of getting out of my bunk on another rainy day in Sitka Harbor when I hear a combination of scraping, clattering of hardware, and yelling, with BB being mildly jostled, followed shortly by a frustrated “fuck! fuck! fuck!” Staggering to the cockpit, I see a dark blue-hulled Valient 42 sailboat wedged stern first between BB and a large steel trawler yacht called “Teddi Bear”.  At first I thought that he is trying to dock between us, but the guy at the helm, middle aged, dark haired, explains, with abject humility, that he couldn’t get the boat out of reverse and was forced to turn the engine off.  Unable to stop, the boat therefore wedged between two boats, mine being one of them.  It turns out that his shift cable picked that moment to break.

ah - another rainy day

I ended up with a deep gouge in my paddleboard plus some paint scratches and shallow grooves on my starboard side, to share with some other scratches and fender rubbing on that side, since I normally tie up on my starboard side and gets brutalized more than the other side; I was tied up on my port side this time. 

Well, I need to get my boat repainted when I get the boat back to Seattle anyway, since it’s definitely getting wear and tear on this trip to Alaska, along with my many mistakes that I’ve done in learning how to dock this thing (it's taken me awhile to get used to how wide this boat is).  It rains too much to have any work done here in Alaska.  I’ll touch it up so it doesn’t look so bad. 

Elfin Cove-outer harbor

One of the problems with a blue hull is that it shows scratches a lot more than a white hull.  Maybe I should strip the blue off and paint the boat white. It would also serve me better in more tropical climes as it wouldn’t be so hot below. But, then, it wouldn’t match her name of Blue Bossa.  And it wouldn’t look as good. Hmmm, decisions, decisions.

And, in the future, I’ll put fenders on the opposite side of where I’m tied up so that things like that won’t be as bad.

Anyway, I’m ready to move on.  Sitka is not going to be a place where I want to leave my boat. The harbormaster here won’t commit any space for the winter, and the place is too exposed to swells and surging and wearing out dock lines is a real issue. Plus it’s really expensive (more so than other ports in Alaska). I haven’t gotten any answer from Hoonah, because nobody is ever there. 

I think I’m going to head back to Wrangell and haul the boat out and dry-store it over the winter.  I won’t have to worry about docklines wearing out from aggressive swells made by winter swells, electrolysis, expense of high dock fees and the expense for a boat watcher.  I’ll just need to winterize the fresh water pipes, and put on a full boat cover (which I have) over the deck. It would only cost $172/month to store and there’s lot of room there too.

Fish'n with a downrigger

Now most people living in one of the lower 48 states would expect Alaska to be at least pleasant during August – I mean, isn’t August the warmest time of year to most of  that area of the world?  And I know the rest of the US has been sweltering in the August heat.  Well I’m here to tell you that this does not at all apply here in Alaska.  And, as far as I know, there’s no such thing as “Indian Summer”.  It rains the heaviest in September and October. So it shouldn’t be any surprise that Alex’s week with me was mostly raining, with occasional few hours at a time where you could actually see blue sky (note: I have found out since I wrote the above, talking to a couple of locals, that this was an unusually wet August - last year, the temperatures were an all time high with lots of sunny skys - so I think this wet summer may be El Nina relate).

Fish'n

Alex flew into the Juneau airport, near Auke Bay, on the 14^th of August.  Since I had already stocked up with food, fuel and water, we decided to head out immediately the same day to spend the night in Swanson Harbor, where I had stayed previously with Rick and Chris.  This was a good move because it was so noisy and active in Auke Bay, and I wanted to get a head start on this trip because there were a lot of new places to visit and little time.

My plan was to get to Sitka the long way around Chichagof Island, going through Icy Straits almost to the Pacific Ocean, but then dipping down to Elfin Cove, then going through Lisianski Inlet to Pelican, then Lisianski Strait to the Pacific Ocean, then heading south along the coast until we reach Salisbury Sound, which ultimately leads to Sitka.

A Mighty Catch

After a quiet night tied to the public dock at Swanson, we headed west 40 miles to Elfin Cove. Elfin Cove is a tiny and tidy little community with a public pier and dock (where we tied up) in the outer harbor, as well as another dock for float planes.  The inner harbor has a fair amount of slips for permanent boats (all small). Elfin Cove has little houses all tied together with boardwalks with no cars.  We spent an hour or so walking around dressed in our foul weather gear and boots (of course it was raining), checking out the houses and the inner harbor, where there were a lot of small charter fishing boats.

The next morning, we left early to head to Pelican Harbor, stopping in a few places on the way to try fishing.

I should mention that as soon as Alex came on board, the first thing he wanted to talk about is all of the fishing we were going to do (isn’t Alaska the fishing center of the US?), even spending $50 on a fish license (for a week!). I should mention that he is a very enthusiastic free-dive spear fisherman, having caught some major big fish in Mexico (of course, spearfishing is a much more proactive way of getting fish, versus using fishing poles and lures which is more passive).  I was embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t done any fishing yet, but was more than willing to give it a try, since I had some new fishing tackle and a downrigger, which I had never tried.  Three problems immediately came up:

1)    Where does one fish for salmon or halibut? –  Close to river entrances, mounds, close to rocks – all of these questions I found myself woefully ignorant.

2)    Type of fishing tackle – I found myself also woefully ignorant on the right tackle to have for the right fish, so, of course, we had mostly the wrong stuff to fish with.

3)    We agreed that we’re both too impatient for fishing.

What added insult to injury was that there were tons of salmon (pinks) jumping out of the water all week in every place we went to, teasing Alex to angry frustration. 

The result of our fishing to Pelican resulted in catching a somewhat small rock bass, which didn’t fight at all due to being pulled up so fast that it’s stomach came out of it’s mouth. Ha ha!

Pelican waterfront

Pagen statue

Endless boardwalk

Pagen sacrifices

The next morning looking out from Pelican

Pelican Harbor, tucked way up in Lisianski Inlet, is a very picturesque place, prompting lots of pictures.  Kudos to Alex, who brought with him a modest and worn out, but still good, small digital camera for taking some outstanding shots; also, when he started using my SLR with a 300mm lens, he was like an enthusiastic soldier with a bazooka.  The town of Pelican offered a myriad of rustic scenes (beautiful scenery intermingled with artistic junk littering various places). The pictures above will tell the rest.

Like Elfin Cove, it’s all connected with boardwalk, only on a much larger scale. There were schools, a public library with odd hours, a combination harbor master’s office and police station, with the one cop going up and down the boardwalk on an ATV (all terrain vehicle - again, there are no cars).  There was one general store that was closed, a breakfast and lunch cafe (which served delicious omelets), and a laundromat/showers.

Famous or Infamous?

We decided to have some dinner at the famous (or infamous) Rose’s Bar and Grill.  We walked into a dark cave with a ton of bar kind of things hanging on the wall, an old honky-tonk piano sitting in a corner, and about 10 locals drinking and chatting away.  They saw us walking in and immediately said hi, how are you, with one woman coming up (pretty drunk, I think), telling us her life history, both of us trying to look interested.  We ordered some food and a couple of beers.  One of the customers, a weathered and grizzled old bearded guy named Hans (I later found out that he was 57, Rick’s age), started enthusiastically chanting at the top of his lungs:

“Oh Pelican, Oh Pelican

Little city by the sea

Where a whiskey glass and woman’s ass

Made a horses ass out of me!”

After singing that a few times, he went up to where I was sitting, picked up a small one-handed sledge hammer that I noticed was sitting on the bar, and started to swing it back like he was going to hit me with it – I quickly got off the stool, but what he was really swinging at was a fixed, battered bronze bell, also sitting next to me, which I didn’t notice at first.  It made a very loud “bong!”

I had no idea why he did that, but not two minutes later, Alex and I each got another beer “on the house”.  Later he came up to swing at it again, and once again, Alex and I got another beer, which Rose (a nice old lady in her 70’s, who has been working that bar for the last 30 years) said came from Hans.  Well, it wasn’t too long when we were talking to Hans; he was a real colorful character who owned a very small house in Pelican (he was going to sell it for $70K), had a small commercial fishing boat in the harbor, wanted to hire Alex to crew for him (I could see that Alex was tempted), owned a place in Mexico, where he lives about 6 months of the year, and loved to drink (he was quite drunk).  I think I remember that he suggested that I bang the bell with the sledgehammer – which I did and was very much satisfied with hitting it hard and it ringing loudly. Hey! What do you know? - We got another two beers.

All I remember is that when I asked for the bill, it was well over $80. Alex and I figured out that when you ring the bell, you’re buying a round for all of the people in the bar.  Ha ha!  The joke was surely on me!  Luckily when I rung the bell, there weren’t near as many people in the bar than when we came in.

Bears in Lisianski Strait

The Pacific Ocean from Lisianski Strait

The next day opened up beautiful, with blue sky and lots of clouds.  Alex got up early to take some very scenic shots showing blue sky, patches of fog or mist hanging over the water, and the water being utterly still.  While most of the time is rainy, when Alaska clears up, there is no place that’s more breathtaking.  We took off to head to the Pacific Ocean.  On our way through Lisianski Strait, we saw a bear with two cubs playing around on Yakobi Island.  We hung around with Alex taking pictures before moving on to hit the open ocean and heading south 8 miles to Portlock Harbor, bouncing against a southeast wind and chop.  Up to now in the interior, there was not the amount of deadheads that I saw in Canada.  Out here in the choppy waters, there were deadheads everywhere, all hard to see.  Even though we were both looking for them, it didn’t take long to hit a small one anyway, causing a bump (but no damage).

Portlock Harbor, where the entrance is just south of Hill Island, is a series of islands that create on a minor scale an inland harbor filled with small coves.  We stayed at Didrikson Bay, a beautiful, somewhat landlocked bay.  We first tried to find where there would be a good place to anchor and ended up scaring another mother bear and her two cubs at a river entrance, they dashing madly to hide from our smelly boat and us.  Once we anchored, we launched the dinghy to revisit the bears, and then try to fish a little bit.  In both areas we failed.

Didrickson Bay

Bears in Didrickson

Bird watching in Didrickson

Armed and dangerous

We could have spent at least 3 or 4 more days visiting each of the coves of Portlock Harbor if the weather allowed, but I was hearing on the weather report an approaching low, promising do-able south-easterlies for the next day, and then 30-35 south-easterlies the day afterward.  Since we were on a strict time schedule because of Alex’s flight out, I decided we should leave the next day to go straight for Salisbury Sound, since I didn’t feel like pounding against gale force winds.

So we left early the next day, carefully finding our way through a maze of islands and narrow channels (Alex doing the rock-watch at the bow in a few places).  We checked out Kimshan Cove, noting a couple of old cabins nestled amongst some trees, looking abandoned.  We twisted along until we reached Smooth Channel, which evolved into Rough Channel, and by 

Alex - exercising the dinghy

then, we were in the open ocean.  At first it was rough, but it quieted down very soon afterwards and before we knew it, we were in Salisbury Sound, going into Kalinin Bay, which I had been to before.  Since it was warm (the quiet before the storm), we launched the kayak and paddleboard and explored the bay hoping to find bears.

Kalinin Bay - taken by Alex on kayak

That night, it started blowing and raining hard.  The next day it was still raining and blowing hard, a couple of more boats coming in from the storm to anchor with us.  Since we couldn’t really do anything outside, and since Alex didn’t have a book, we decided to pass the time by playing games – dominoes (atomics), which I won more often than I lost, and chess (via the computer), which Alex won all the time.  We were trying to play cards, but we both realized that we didn’t remember how to play any card games.  I remember hearts being my favorite card game, but I forgot how to play it!  Wow! Has it been that long?  It’s pretty obvious I need to get a book on card games.

What to do on a rainy day

The day after (Saturday), we left Kalinin to head to Sitka going through the familiar and crowded channels to Sitka, where we found a slip and tied up.  The Sitka harbor has a lot of night-lights on its docks, which I never notice as my forward cabin doesn’t let in a lot of light (claustrophobics need not apply).  But the main cabin, where Alex was sleeping, has big windows with no shades – so Alex got really creative in hanging towels and blankets in strategic places around the cabin to make it sleep-able.  I do need to get shades for the windows…I just got to know how and who to order them from.

Lisianski Strait - interesting rock formation

Alex left the next day, back to San Jose (90 degree weather and no rain) preparing for another full year’s schooling at SJSU.

Route from Auke Bay to Sitka

So here I am in Sitka.  I’ve finally got the long-awaited water heater, but I’m going to hold off installing it until next year, since I have to winterize the boat, and having a water heater would make it more complicated.  I’ll probably leave Sitka next week.  Which way I go, I’m not sure.  I have to deal with some more storms due in a couple of days, so we’ll see.