Category: By John

Port Townsend on Parade

Lord’s Pocket, AK, 14-AUG-2018 — I’m not writing as much as I’d like. To be honest, as much as I feel I should. Traveling in Caro Babbo has become life, it is not an adventure or a vacation. It is our life, or at least my life. Jennifer is feeling she has had enough of this trip and wants to return home, wherever that is now. But we are headed south and it is nice traveling.

We’ve traveled from Juneau to Baranof Warm springs, after Tenake springs, and then Cosmos Cove.

Cosmos Cove was lovely. It is wide with nothing particular to recommend it looking from a chart, but from inside it is silent with a focused view of the mountains across the strait. The trip to Cosmos had been a long 10 hour motor with mirrored water rather than the predicted 10-15 knots. We’ve been shadowed recently by two sail boats, Laiva and Balloon. We’d seen Laiva in Juneau, where it sat empty for a few days before showing signs of life. Continue reading “Port Townsend on Parade”

One Hot Spring to Another

Chatham Strait, AK, 12-Aug-2018 — Caro Babbo: Malaspina, Malaspina, Malaspina. This the is the sailing vessel Caro Babbo, on one-three. Caro Babbo, on one-three.

Malaspina: Malaspina on One-Three. Go ahead Caro Babbo.

Malaspina is a one hundred meter Alaska Ferry that, according to AIS, is due in Auke Bay, Juneau at 10 pm tonight, meaning she’ll make a number of stops along the way, possibly including Tenneke Springs, where we we yesterday.

Caro Babbo: We’re the sail boat ahead of you. We show a very tight CPA. What is your advice? Continue reading “One Hot Spring to Another”

Leaving Glacier Bay

Icy Strait, North of Hoonah, 5-AUG-2018 — I lay in bed for a while this morning after the alarm went off at 4. I wasn’t tired, but I thought it might be darker than we wanted to leave. Sunrise is around 4:50 in the morning these days.

It probably wasn’t, but I lay there anyway. About 4:20, I got up, used the head and found my clothes in the main cabin where I left them. Socks are always the problem. Without turning on the lights, dark socks in dark shadows are generally found aboard Caro Babbo by feel: either underfoot, or on hands and knees. Continue reading “Leaving Glacier Bay”

Cloudy Mornings, Glorious Afternoons

We’re anchored in front of Reid Glacier this morning. The Inlet is large, much more than a mile long, which gives scale to things. A small dot in the distance is a 60-foot boat, which we learned was there on AIS.

We’ll dinghy over to the glacier later this morning and walk around.

Each morning has been overcast, but has burned off in the afternoon. For the cruise and tourist boats this hasn’t been the best. They arrive in the early morning and leave around noon. Yesterday, Eurodam, told us they saw neither of the two big glaciers because they were fogged in.

By the time we arrived at Johns Hopkins Glacier, around two pm, it was bright and sunny, but the two miles in front of the glacier were choked with small ice.
We have our trip track from 2016 loaded into OpenCPN on my laptop. We see that we were able to travel more than a mile and a half closer that year. The ice, then, was larger with more discrete pieces that we could thread our way through.
Continue reading “Cloudy Mornings, Glorious Afternoons”

Glacier Bay

South Bight of North Fingers Bay, Glacier Bay, AK, 30-JUL-2018 — We’re in Glacier Bay! With good weather no less.

The Glacier Bay web information says that e-mails are given precedence over phone calls when trying to get a short notice reservation. On the advice of Megan, who works in the Glacier Bay Office, we sent an email and called. When Emily answered the phone, she told me that she didn’t have our email, unless my name was Brian, but why didn’t she just process a permit for us. Seven days would be fine.

The NOAA weather said 20 knots and three-foot seas. The PredictWind grib doesn’t give inside waters weather. A second grib said ten knots and a third said five knots. Five knots was the winner, more or less. We motored.

The weather has not been the Alaska we know. It has been sunny and warm with highs climbing into the 70s. There is a drought.
Continue reading “Glacier Bay”

Leaving Juneau

At 5 am, after I had showered and returned the key fob to the marina office, Jennifer and I cast off from the dock at Juneau’s Harris Harbor.

Caro Babbo had been on the dock 16 days, while Jennifer and I went off to Atlanta to get work started on some properties there. We are currently hands-on investors and are trying hard to transition to hands-off by selling our real estate investments there and giving the money to Roy who handles the rest of our money.

We arrived Juneau Sunday evening, shopped for groceries Monday, and cleaned house Tuesday before Erwin and Laura arrived. This is the third of four years that Erwin and Laura have joined us. Last year we didn’t feel we could have guests while we were dealing with Hilary’s needs.

We hit the gift shops yesterday and were treated like cruise boat tourists. It is a very different way to be treated. The sales people quickly qualify a prospect, deciding whether there might be a sale. Jennifer and I were in the way of people making their living.

Continue reading “Leaving Juneau”

Leaving Juneau

At 5 am, after I had showered and returned the key fob to the marina office, Jennifer and I cast off from the dock at Juneau’s Harris Harbor.

Caro Babbo had been on the dock 16 days, while Jennifer and I went off to Atlanta to get work started on some properties there. We are currently hands-on investors and are trying hard to transition to hands-off by selling our real estate investmemts there and giving the money to a Roy who handles the rest of our money.

We arrived Juneau Sunday evening, shopped for groceries Monday, and cleaned house Tuesday before Erwin and Laura arrived. This is the third of four years that Erwin and Laura have joined us. Last year we didn’t feel we could have guests while we were dealing with Hilary’s needs.

Continue reading “Leaving Juneau”

Sorry to be out of touch.

Decatur, GA 14-JUL-2018 – Everyone, I’m sorry we’ve been out of touch.

We went a few weeks with no internet, except for the Iridium, which does terrible internet. I did not write posts to be posted when we received internet and still haven’t set up the facility to post by email. I don’t feel like a slug, but apparently have been.

It has been a busy time, divided amongst sailing, motoring, and surprisingly, engaging in social activities with people we’ve met before and people we’ve met for the first time. Continue reading “Sorry to be out of touch.”

Dear Dear Deer, Thoughts on Unintended Consequences

Dundas Island, BC 15-JUN-2018 – At Windy Bay, the Watchmen are two men named David and Tory. David is all teeth, practiced at dealing with visitors in his sixteen seasons, and is an eager talker.

Tory is handsome, tall, muscular with black hair streaked with gray. Between twenty-eight and thirty-two years old, Tory has been working in the Alberta oil fields for ten years. While Jennifer was speaking to David, he told me that he missed family; family was part of who he was. In the ten years he’d been gone, he’d only come back twice. He was home now and did not intend to live away again.

 As we walked from the watchman residence, we saw a couple of deer walking out in the open, grazing. Tory told us he hadn’t asked what equipment he could bring with him onto the island: he would have brought his compound bow; he intended to kill all of the deer on the island. Continue reading “Dear Dear Deer, Thoughts on Unintended Consequences”

Hecate Strait: Advance Class in Feeding The Fishes

An unnamed cove west of Welcome Harbour, BC, 13-JUN-2018 – We’ve crossed Hecate Strait twice now. Jennifer says it’s not too bad this second time. In the past she is thought of this as the worst possible thing that could happen. Now, she tells me you just vomit and get it over with, again and again and again. No pictures in this post, the waves are never as impressive in pictures as they are on the water, and the rest of the activities we engaged in are not pleasant to watch.

Hecate Strait, we were told by more than one person, is the fifth most dangerous body of water in the world. It is quite shallow, generally less than 80 feet, winds of 50 knots are not uncommon nor are four meter waves.

You pick your weather carefully.
Continue reading “Hecate Strait: Advance Class in Feeding The Fishes”