Day is Done, Gone the Sun…

Homer, AK, 22-AUG-2022 – I hear the words to Taps in my head this morning. Our trip is over. We’re in Homer about ten days early. The weather in South Central Alaska has been such that staying a distance away risked not getting here by the first of September when Caro Babbo will be hauled out.

It looks like the Pacific High (pressure system) did not form this year – from what we see now that we can download large weather maps. Massive lows are coming in from Japan and up the Canadian Coast.

We’re rafted up with a 40-something-foot Hunter sloop. The Harbor Master says we’ll be fine as no one ever visits that vessel. We’d rather be in a slip than exposed to the traffic in the harbor. We also have to cross the Hunter any time we want to get to the dock. On the other hand, this is about as private as we will get – no one on the dock can see into our boat. I’m not sure they can even see our hull.

We’re deciding if and when to set up the enclosure. If the weather stays rainy then that will be a factor. Without the enclosure, we get much more light into the cabin and we easily see the sky. If we were in a slip, each of those would be much more limited.

As the trip progressed and we got closer and closer to Homer, we met more and more sail boaters. I guess I should qualify that, we met a total of three sailboats on this trip. For this part of the world that is a considerable number. My wanderlust yields a certain sadness meeting and traveling with other sailors. It makes no sense, I enjoy meeting and being with other sailors in the moment. Being away from life at home is what I crave. We’ll return home soon enough.

In Geographic Harbor, we met Julie and Kevin on Catharpin Blue. Julie is full of life, is a former Washington State Trooper (Lieutenant), and worked as a retail salesperson at REI for ten years. She is the only person I know who was management, left to become a single contributor, and did so successfully. Everyone else I know got sucked back into management.

Kevin was at a boat yard in Tacoma for 37 years. He knows everything about sailboat systems. It is, on the one hand, truly inspiring, on the other hand, what should one expect from a person whose career was those systems. We who sail are amateurs, Kevin is a professional.

Like Heinz and Andrea, and Jennifer and I, Kevin and Julie sailed up from Hawaii. Each had a good sail. Heinz and Andrea were on a forty-something Halberg-Rossy. Julie and Kevin are on a 46-foot Island Packet.

Kevin and Julie are true outdoors people. They have a cabin in Washington State that can only be reached by skis and plan to do all sorts of wilderness skiing and camping while they winter over in Seward. I’m not quite intimidated, but I am in awe.

This morning at 6:30, the tide was very low. I walked to the shore head looking down on the boats in the harbor. The walking path at low tide is about 30 feet above the water. Seagulls flying and cawing are eye level as they fly along the water parallel to the footpath. I could see them open their mouths to caw.

I’m not sure what we’ll do with our time here. Tim Gervais offered the use of his car when he was not here, so I will go over and get it later today. There is painting and varnishing that I had planned to do next year, but it might be nice to get a head start on it. I want to get the deck leak around the compression post fixed and find the leak that flows into the starboard aft cabin locker – that is the magic leak that flows into the locker with getting water on the mattress on top of it. There is no hull liner there, so the water is not flowing in the space between the liner and the hull.

Moving the boat from Seldovia to Homer, we passed Don on Hemingway. Don and Sherry own Grace Ridge Brewery. We recognized each other’s vessels and waved. There is a bit of coming home. Once we were rafted up, I walked around the harbor and helped Don put away his boat.

While I was helping, Don who owns Thetis, texted to welcome us back to Homer. Don and I were in the boatyard together in June. Don had added a bow thruster and was copper coating his boat’s bottom when Jennifer and I left. I asked where in the marina his boat was. He replied it was on the hard and he would explain when I saw him.

We are back in what feels like a big town. There are hundreds of cars parked at the harbor and just as many RVs. The spit, where the harbor is and the RVs are parked, is in many ways its own town. It is very much like the strip in Vegas or any large beach town. On Tuesday after Labor Day, the spit will close down. Almost every restaurant will close. The RVs will be gone. We were here for that in 2020 and 2021. We’ll be gone by then this year.

Don, who owns Grace Ridge, and I were talking about commercial accounts and outside sales. The hunt is for businesses that stay open across the winter. It’s that kind of town.

From when I was eleven until I graduated college, I lived in a small summer town on the north shore of Long Island on Long Island Sound in New York State. Come Labor Day, the summer people would leave, the weather would become winter dark and school would start.

This year, on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, Jennifer and I will fly, via Anchorage to Seattle and then make our way to Port Townsend. We’ll spend Labor Day at Jennifer’s house. We should have a barbecue. Then on the eighth, I’ll fly back to Long Island for my high school reunion, then onto my house in Atlanta for a few weeks. It is very much like returning to school after the summer vacation.

Jennifer and I always say we’ll stay put and not travel across the winter, but we never have. This year we may, rather than going to visit we are having visitors. Tony and Nancy arrive in October. Eno and Onyx will come for Thanksgiving. Then Jennifer will fly to Berlin for Christmas.

It’s a good life.

Caro Babbo will sleep in Northern Enterprises boatyard. Next year we plan to bring her back to the PNW, but who knows? Jennifer wants a summer in Port Townsend, her beloved town and her home. PT is changing and growing up. It might be better to spend a summer there sooner rather than later.

Thank you for staying with us through these adventures. Coming back to Homer this year is a bit melancholy for me, but Jennifer greets the end of this year with relief: we’ve made it.

Once Caro Babbo is on the hard, I’ll write more about her performance this year.

More soon. If you’ll be near Port Townsend, come visit.