Ketchikan Yacht Club, Ketchikan, AK, 07-AUG-2024 – The world has changed since we’ve last been here. StarLink is the major yachting change and the cities quest for more tourists is the other.
Here in Ketchikan, we’ve started speaking to the boats we’ve seen along the way. Everyone stops in Ketchikan. There are the groups that travel together, either from a yacht club, or a tour led by a manufacturer. These seem to be the normal number moving back and forth.
The power boats are oftentimes aging sailors who sold their sailboats and opted for a power boat. They seem to enjoy them. Other power boats are working people, who in years gone by could never have come here, but now with StarLink and no need to go to the office, are here. During this summer Ketchikan harbor became completely full with no slips available.
Some of what we’re seeing is because we’re here during the bulge when the maximum number of people are heading home to be there for Labor Day, something we’ve never done. We’ll be there for the boat show in Port Townsend, something we’ve never attended when cruising to Alaska, we’ve left before everyone and returned after. But it is still more people and fewer sailboats.
At Ketchikan Yacht Club we met only one person we recognized. There are only three sailboats here, the rest are either bulbous power boats or small aluminum fishing boats. The new yacht club harbor master is a by-the-rules guy who wants to get rid of the R2K people.
The people aboard Little Elsie were here for the first R2K in 2015 and we were here for 2016 and 2017. It was a joyous mess with people sleeping everywhere and the docks and clubhouse feeling like a fraternity weekend. The new harbor master harrumphs that they aren’t paying for this and they won’t get it again. He probably represents the new members. The others have died off or retired. It is different.
We’ve also started plumbing the depths of the local bars. Places that we were warned away from (by club members) when we were here previously.
We visited the Potlatch bar on Thomas Basin where the beers (in bottles and cans) are $5. The help and patrons were wonderful. The man I was looking for, Stretch, wasn’t there and his boat is missing from the harbor, but his look-alike, twenty years younger, was there.
We met Stretch in Klawok, northeast of Craig, on the tow tug he was running for a company. He proudly told us he had never towed. His boat, tied up in Thomas Harbor, was built in 1923 and he and his woman hung out at the Potlatch. That was in 2017 and Stretch seemed older than god. I should have approached the man in the Potlatch. Perhaps it was Stretch, though I doubt it, or perhaps he knew him.
Two kayakers staying at the Yacht Club joined us for a round of beers and we spoke with them instead.
From there, we went on a burger search and ended up at the Asylum, draft only, $3.50 a piece, and they serve free dinner, which we ate, on Mondays and Fridays. Jennifer chatted up the chef who remembered us when we returned the next night. (We’ll be here for three nights, not two.)
He started doing dinner when the bar opened with the question, what is your slowest night and it went from there. Friday is a ‘‘safety’’ meeting, which, according to the chef, ‘there’s nothing safe about it.’
The next day we went shopping for provisions. We visited Safeway briefly and met a blonde woman who told us the zip code for Ketchikan so we could use the Safeway app. Jennifer bought the Costco nuts she was looking for at Alaska and Proud, and we visited the Bar Harbor Docks looking for Eelyos. We looked then boat up online via their AIS and found them and Crews Inn on the same dock.
We spoke to each. Mike on Crews Inn told us his plans and that he would contact us when he learned what the flotillas of boats were doing so we wouldn’t need to scrabble for anchor space. (He forgot, apparently.) He was a Crealock* sailor who swapped out the stick for a fat, comfortable trawler hull.
And then we went to meet Eelyos captain, Theo, and we spent a long time speaking to him. He had been building a catamaran to retire to, but when Starlink came out, he bought a boat and came ‘‘sailing’’ in Alaska for the season. His boat is in need of a great amount of maintenance and upgrades, but is a very good boat and will be even better once he works on it and pours that cash he is able to into it.
We invited Theo to join us for dinner and then went shopping at Safeway. We ran into the blonde woman again and Jennifer commented, ‘‘won’t it be fun if she was Theo’s Eliza.’’ We spent $200 on provisions that should get us back to PT including some meat that I must can today.
We invited the kayakers to join us for dinner and I grabbed a short nap.
We met Theo and Eliza, the woman from Safeway, at Asylum. The kayakers decided not to join us.
The restaurant Asylum caters from closes at 7pm; we had a great time; on our second visit we were regulars. The bartender spoke with us, the chef, Jimmy D, chatted up both of us – he doesn’t drink – and a regular who had had a few trying to explain where he kept his boat.
Theo and Eliza started explaining their histories, and Jennifer and I explained ours. We all have kids and step kids in the same age range and we discussed the difficulties of growing up in the 21st century.
They walked back to Thomas Basin with us, then took a cab back to their boat in Bar Harbor.
This morning, Jennifer is planning our route and timing to get us home. The high pressure zone is stationary, meaning clear skies and little predictable wind. September third is twenty-eight days, four weeks, away.
* Crealock was a boat designer and builder. His vessels are still well-regarded.
Hey guys, it looks like you are in Ketchikan now cool I don’t know if I can ever work it. I gotta figure out if I can do this ride we’ll try it and if you don’t hear from me that means I did it wrong for I’m leaving you a message.