You and me riding somewhere, going nowhere….

Port Chatham, AK, 2-aug-2023 – We’re two days from Homer, nine hours sailing to be exact but we’ll stop in Seldovia for a day. There’s unlimited internet there, some restaurants, and a place to stop. We found we haven’t enjoyed this trip as much as others. We’re not entirely sure why, perhaps because we’ve done this part of Alaska for three years now and this is enough.Perhaps it is something to do with my stroke. Jennifer brought me here to get me out of the house to do things that I was familiar with. It was a very nice thing to do and these are things that I am familiar with and that came back to me easily.The weather here has been mostly no wind. The last three days, it is turning into summer weather and perhaps we will now be upset that we returned.

We sailed across the Barren Islands to get from Shuyak Island to the mainland where Port Chatham is. The weather is good for the first time in a while, not blowing hard and not dead calm. It was probably 15 knots in the morning and we sailed as far as the Barren Islands before the wind stopped.

It’s a full moon now and the tides here are very large. Today in Chatham the low tide is on minus 5 feet, which is startling. It was very interesting to see rocks that the chart mentions become exposed at extreme low tides become exposed. We could see the edges of the flats of the beach as they came out of the water.

As we came across yesterday, we ran into tide rips, which we expected, but as we came into the bay outside Port Chatham, it took us a while to realize the entire bay was a tide rip and that we needed to hug the shore to get around. That’s not to say anything dangerous would happen, but our speed dropped from five and a half knots to two and a half knots and we were pushed sideways at two and a half knots, when we weren’t being spun in whirlpools.

There is another boat in Port Chatham with us, Peregrine, which is a charter landing craft, we think. It was here when we came by on the way down. We’ve anchored with one other boat this entire time, which given the number of weeks that we’ve traveled is not that unusual, but time does has seemed to have dragged.

On the way down, I requested we spend five or six days in Blue Fox Bay on Afognak Island. It was very nice but we never left the boat, never put the dinghy in the water, never went anywhere. But it was five or six days relaxing. I am healing still, and continuing that. I look back across the weeks wonder about my empty thoughts and not much to say; I hadn’t always been like that. I wondered if it would ever refill.

My mind is filled with thoughts now. It ought to be like that, to think that I remembered having a head full of thoughts and many things to think about, things to say, and to find that I didn’t have them. I had very little to say other than to respond to what people said to me. It was interesting to wonder why it all disappeared, whether it would all come back, and who the new me would be. I still don’t know if there’s more of me to fill in, but I’m feeling better and better.

( I forgot to mention I’ve had vertigo from the day we left until today. I don’t know why, and none of the remedies worked, but today it finally passed.)

When we get to Homer, and we have three weeks there, the entire time we were gone. We have a number of things we can do. Depending on how expensive a rental car is we might take a car for a while and travel around by land. There is also maintenance on the boat that has been left for five years that I need to attend to. I had figured I would just come up for a month next spring and do that work, but perhaps I can do most of it now. It’s not work that impacts the safety of the boat, it is just the boat is getting a bit shabby. It’s been about 10 years since she was last redone.

During our time in the yard and sailing, I’ve felt like as teenager: no energy for anything. I did what needed to be done, but somehow time for other things never made itself present. The boat was never cleaned, the joker valve never replaced, the countertop never painted. Was it because Jennifer was here, or just me?

At home (Port Townsend and Atlanta), there have been things, minor catastrophes which because we have an iridium have been able to reach us and have our impact: overdoses, of the non-lethal type; housemates who refuse to move out of the house, or pay rent and; other excitement. It makes being here alone together important.

Jennifer is kind and bright and happy as she ever is.

However, I still feel I’m not quite who I was when dealing with Jennifer. At the beginning of the trip, she talked about how frightened she was of the weather, the boat, things related to sailing trips, and I just went along with it all, which probably had something to do with the shortened trip, but maybe not. I’m not sure what I would do normally, I think I would be more upbeat, more countermanding of those thoughts. In the last week, Jennifer has been planning trips where we sail in decent wind, where on the way down she avoided that.

I’m hoping as I continue to heal that I’ll return to being that person.

Port Chatham was quiet once we came in. There is no port here. There once was, but like so much of Alaska, once fish could be frozen there was no need for canneries and saltaries. There are two cabins along the shore, but we’ve never seen people in either one. One is completely stocked, with a sign asking people not to enter the house or raid their stocks except in an emergency. A nice sign.

We’ve seen charter boats, like Peregrine, anchor here and receive guests. In Larson Bay, the southernmost point in our trip where we went to fuel, there are eight or ten lodges around the bay.

It’s a long boat ride from Kodiak to Larson Bay so all of the guests fly in. It is busy there in the mornings when guests are changing out. It’s kind of cool that there are so many airplanes flying in and out. There are many black flies and the workers wear hats that look like beekeepers hats and gloves and are completely covered. Larson Bay, like many of these Alaska towns has 35 people full-time; when in business, the processing plant employs a thousand and the lodges probably account for another hundred or so with all the guests. We went there for fuel and found that Icicle processing plant would sell us some but we would be tied up to a dock with a hose lowered down to us, so we went to walk over there to see what it was like. Along the way, we found some fuel tanks and two trucks standing talking about it. We asked whether they would sell us fuel and one of the men said yes the city will sell it to us. His name was Bill and he was mayor. The next day he had John, his assistant, sell us some fuel. John then took us by truck to the town hall where we paid by credit card for it: $97 for 15 gallons of fuel, not bad all in all. It was also the day of our adventure.

Shortly outside the marina, the temperature sensor went off, the engine was overheating. First, let me say that we use permanent antifreeze, which has a boil temperature of 300 degrees Fahrenheit, which means when the engine overheats, the coolant does not boil over.

I looked at the front of the engine and both belts were loose. I can’t quite explain how that could happen, but we tightened the impeller belt up and replaced the large belt. and we’re on our way. The next day the large belt was loose again, but it was brand new so perhaps it just stretched. Perhaps I’m not tightening these things enough.

And so, we’re on our way home, to Homer.

Adventuring for this year is over. Thank you for reading, and being my friend.