Rainy Days in Ketchikan

Ketchikan is not called the rain capital of SE Alaska for no reason. What were light showers yesterday have progressed to just plain heavy rain yesterday and today as a weak low pressure zone tracks over us for the next day or so. This has been a maintenance day, changing genset oil and filter, getting a halibut spear (and pointers from the locals on the best way to use it), doing a little tourist shopping and getting our Alaska fishing permits at Tongass Trading Company. We also moved the boat from Thomas Basin to the new city floats behind one of the cruise ship piers to be closer to the center of town by a few blocks. The disadvantage is that it is at the end of the seaplane "runway", so periodically there is quite a bit of noise. The Artic Bar is also at one end, but we are far enough away to not be bothered.

We had halibut and chips from the shack on the cruise ship dock, asking for and getting the "local", non-cruise ship passenger discount, before heading for cover on the boat and watching all the unprepared cruise ship passengers running for their gangways in the rain, only to stand in line for security checks! It was sort of amusing to see how many of them had purchased new raincoats in Ketchikan, yellow, pink or blue, especially since we did the same thing three years ago.

We also realized just how small the world is. We thought Larry and Karen Nelson looked and sounded familiar. Turns out that Margaret worked with him before he retired a few weeks ago, and both she and Sean have been aboard their Apogee 50 "Panta Rhei", which in Greek literally means "everything flows". Our former Jeanneau 49, now "Dilligaf" is travelling with "Panta Rhei" and a Valiant 47 "Ponderosa". Another interesting note is that I had periodic contact with his twin brother Gary Nelson while at Boeing. To make the world even smaller, our taxi driver yesterday was a 1967 Lincoln High School graduate, one of Queen Anne High School's perennial sports rivals.

Tomorrow, Thursday May 20 we head for the fuel dock first thing in the morning and then North to Meyers Chuck, Wrangell, Petersburg, Tracy Arm, and finally Juneau, where we will meet Julie Gill and Kathy Bullock before heading to Sitka, route currently unknown.