We Caught Sunshine!

And boy did we bask in it!

Bryant picked the boys and I up from Whittier dock on Friday evening after work. He is on the every other Friday off schedule, so he and his buddy took the boat out on Thursday night. In the boat harbor, I gave his buddy the car keys. He drove to Anchorage and we boarded the boat. First on our agenda was pulling the shrimp pots. Bryant pulled them in the morning and rebaited them for a day long soak. We figured if we pulled them tonight, we'd get in another overnight tonight, totaling three for this trip. The sun doesn't setting until 9:30 ish and being a clear night, we did have a little time to set up anchor before dark.

We anchored in Shotgun Cove Friday evening. It is the closest anchorage to Whittier. There were probably 6 or 7 other boats anchored in this area as well that evening. Under a star filled, moonless night, we discussed the latest news of Sarah Palin. Hard to imagine the same women, who walked in flip flops and shorts in the 2006 Colonial Days parade in Palmer, AK campaigning for governor, was now the GOP nominee for vice president. I know she lacks experience in D.C., but I've seen the way she connects with people and that means something to the everyday people who go to the polls. I think in some ways it matters more than the people who play games to get ahead. McCain looked for her. I also have a lot of respect for the fact that she won the republican ticket without the support of the state's republican party, who are quite the corrupt bunch, excluding Palin of course.

On Saturday, we awoke to beautiful blue skies. After a cup of coffee, Bryant and I went dingying around Shotgun Cove. The pink salmon were just swarming around this fresh water stream. The bears enjoyed a few meals of salmon as well. I could see where there was one or two bites taken out of a salmon. It looked like they wanted to say, "I'm full," but then decided that they couldn't hold back and tried another bite only to waste the remaining salmon. I even found salmon heads and guts in the woods when I was picking berries that weren't left behind by the careless fisherman. Of course, I quickly called for Ollie, our dog, to come and explore the woods with me. She usually does smell bears, then barks and hopefully succeeds in scaring them away.

We spent the first half of the day lazing around Shotgun Cove. Around 1:00, we motored out of Passage Canal to Port Wells. Huge mountains, hanging glaciers, and blue sky . . . . there was nothing not to like. We ended up trolling down by Granite Bay State Park, only this time we had the pleasure of seeing it in the sunshine, unlike the other 2 weekends when we spent the night down this way. The fish didn't seem to like the sunshine, as they refused to bite. But we really didn't care too much, as we were busy catching the rare rays that make their way into Prince William Sound.

Concerned about gas and time, we decided to head back toward Whittier. There was a small craft advisory for Sunday, so we opted to pack it up Saturday evening while the going was good. As we made our way past Ester Island and in front of Pigot Bay a steady breeze from the east caught our attention. We decided to raise our sails. For about 5 miles, we sailed on a broad reach at about 4 miles/hour. As we started to head back into Passage Canal, we lost our wind. After dropping sails, we motored to our shrimp pots. We didn't break any shrimping records, but caught a couple of meals worth.

The Whittier boat harbor was a mad house. On low tide, one of the launching sites is dry so all the boats are lined up in the water near the launch waiting to takeout. At a boat launch with parking only yards away this doesn't happen, but in Whittier, the main parking lot is 1/2 mile away. Inevitably there ends up being a lot of people holding boat lines on the dock waiting for their runner to return with the truck and trailer, while the rest of the boat traffic is idling in the harbor. There is nothing about Whittier that is normal, so none of this should surprise me, but it does. To add to the boat harbor madness, the Whittier tunnel is only one way. Every hour there is a 15 minute time block of opportunity to get through the tunnel from Whittier back to the main road toward Anchorage. So as we are busy flushing the motor, cleaning up our mess, parking the sailboat, and packing the car, the question weighing on the back of our mind and adding stress is always, "How many more minutes do we have?"

Then the question becomes, why do we come back? After all Whittier is the closest ocean boating port to our house and well, every once in a while you catch some sunshine.

For more photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/jillcaho/CatchingSunshinePWS

Staying Home on Saturday Night

I have not spent a Saturday night at my house since the weekend before Memorial Day . . . . and other than my trip south for 3 weeks, all those Saturday nights were spent on the boat. Being gone on Saturday nights in nothing new to us, but usually we divide our time between boating and other weekend adventures where we are camping. This summer has definitely been more focused. This weekend we stayed home to catch up on house chores and make the annual pilgrimage to the Alaska State Fair. As usual, the fair wasn't super exciting, a lot of people dodging and overpriced food, which I did have to sample. The kids had fun. I was too cheap to buy Tracy Lawrence tickets, but I sat outside the gates and listened to his concert, while the kids waited in line for rides. In the evening, there was the best firework show I have ever seen. Three times I thought they were shooting of the grand finale and two times I was wrong. Target, who will open 2 stores up here in October, sponsored this event.

I was also able to catch up on the lawn . . . the never ending lawn. It is especially hard to keep up with it when I work during the day. The kids started school on Monday and I started the Wednesday before. Oh well, at least tomorrow I have a clean house to wake up to. I guess there is something to be said for just staying put once in awhile.

Surprises in Surprise Cove, PWS

Surprise Cove turned into a surprise weekend getaway for Bryant and I. Wyatt was invited to a friend's camp for the weekend and when Gus found out he was the "lone ranger" on the sailboat for the weekend, he quickly got on the phone and rounded up a friend where he could spend the night. Imagine that, kids preferring to hang out with friends, and then thinking they are being tortured when they are forced to come with us. The truth is that both of them are learning quite a bit more about the ocean and also spending more time reading or listening to books on CD. So in the end and as years go by, I suspect they will look back on the "sailboat days" as being quite fun, and hopefully the torture treatment contributed to their intellect.

Even though it is nice seeing the boys experience the ocean, it is also nice to have the weekend to ourselves. We decided to meet up with Bryant's co-worker and his wife in Surprise Cove State Marine Park about 12 miles out of Whittier. They bought the same boat as us after seeing ours last fall. We left early Saturday morning and the day continued to brighten up. By late evening, we were all eating birthday cake in the cockpit of our boat witnessing an almost full moon rising in the horizon.

Although we tried trolling for salmon on the way out to our destination, we didn't catch any, which just meant we didn't have to clean blood and guts out of the boat. And sometimes that isn't so bad. Once we set anchor, Bryant inflated the dingy and we spent a considerable amount of time rowing around Surprise Cove jigging for rockfish and hiking on a nearby trail. Copious amounts of rain do wonders to the vegetation, and as long as it isn't raining buckets on me at the time of observation, I find myself quite impressed. Green moss coats and hangs from the spruce and hemlock trees. Skunk cabbage lines the boardwalk area through the bogs and salmonberries thrive in this moist environment, which I couldn't help but sample. They taste a little like a cross between a juicy rasberry and seedy blackberry.

I think one of the highlights of this trip had to be when it came time to pull the anchor. While Bryant is in charge of pulling shrimp pots 500 feet down, I put myself in charge of pulling anchor at 40 feet down. We often joke about the fact that people pay good money in a gym to get the exercise we get by pulling anchors. Anyway, nothing to unusual at first as I started to get the slack from the anchor line and stack it into the locker. Then, I yelled back to Bryant okay, "Okay pull us free." He gave the engine a little power to loosen the anchor from the deep mud so I could continue with my job. It wasn't long before I realized something was wrong.

Bryant came up front to help me pull. In the past, I've pulled in starfish, jellyfish, kelp, tiny rocks, and loads of mud in with our anchor line and nothing felt nearly as heavy as what we were pulling up now. I guessed it had to be a ton of kelp that we had gathered while circling around our anchor with the tide. To our astonishment and delight, we pulled up a 22 lb claw anchor and 20 feet of chain. Because of the lack of ocean grime on the anchor, we figured that sometime this summer someone hadn't tied the knot onto their chain very well and lost their anchor. Their disappointment of not having an anchor the next morning turned into our amazement of having two. Right now, we have a lighter danforth anchor and Bryant's been talking about buying a claw anchor. So imagine my statisfaction when I was able to give Bryant this unexpected birthday present from Surprise Cove.

For more photos of this trip: http://picasaweb.google.com/jillcaho/BryantSBDayPWS

Shrimp for dinner, anyone?

. . . . and feel free to eat as many as you like. Prior to this past weekend's catch, I'd have to limit how many shrimp everyone was allowed to eat at a meal. With tonight's meal, shrimp won't be the snack or the appetizer, but the main course!

On the way out of Anchorage on Friday, we bought another shrimp pot that someone was selling on Craigslist. You're allowed to have 5 pots and so far we are up to two. Along with having another pot, we placed them in a different location in deeper water. Not only did we have more shrimp/pot, but we also had bigger shrimp. We must have done something right.

Here's how shrimping works. I have the easy job of manoevering the boat to the correct spot and in this day of GPS navigation it is a very easy job. Bryant stuffs the bait of cat food and left over herring from the halibut days into the container, closes up the shrimp pots and drops them down, both are attached to the same piece of line. When the pots hit the bottom of the ocean, the line slacks off and he attaches a buoy. We leave it there and set up anchor for the night. The next day, Bryant pulls on the 500 feet of line with two pots attached. Who says we need a shrimp pot puller that fits neatly in a downrigger system and effortlessly pulls the pots from the bottom of the ocean?

As Bryant sweats profusely, we all wait anxiously on deck to see what the pots holds. As soon as the pots are on the bow of the boat, we start twisting the heads off and saving the meat in zip lock bags. The shrimp move along and can wiggle their way free, so we have to be quick. The kids play with the small crabs that find their way into the pot, and they also manage a few oohs and aahs at the size and quantity of shrimp we were able to catch this go around. I see pictures and hear of people catching a lot more than us but I suspect with a little more experience, we'll figure it out. Once all the shrimp are out of the pots, Bryant rebaits the containers for a second soak, and we are off to find a new place to explore for our second night.

So far, we haven't sailed in Prince William Sound because wind is non-existent. There are a few localized breezes that blow into our anchorage, but nothing that will get us anywhere. We figure there is plenty of time to sail, and in some ways for a our "weekend warrior" expeditions where we don't have a lot of time the motoring option of a MacGregor is quite nice. For about 1 1/2 hours, we trolled for salmon. Bryant caught 2 and I caught 1. Saturday is our official fishing day. We decided that cleaning fish and blood off the boat on Sunday, while we are packing up to head home doesn't work out too well. While we were anchored up in the South Arm of Granite Bay Marine Park, Gus and I each caught rockfish, but we didn't bother keeping them. I also spent a little bit of time casting from the shoreline and caught some pink salmon. Again, I didn't bother keeping them, but I had a lot of fun reeling them in.

For more photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/jillcaho/PrinceWilliamSound8808

A Birthday Weekend in PWS

For better or worse, we decided to leave the boat in Whittier for the next two months. Yes, he - meaning my husband, who hates rain and cloudy weather, has committed to this town of 190 inches of rain a year. It is well known around the state that a nice day in Whittier is one where it is not raining or blowing or both, which means that nice in Whittier often means it is misting or cloudy. Once in a while, a gift of sunshine blesses all with its presence and mountains, glaciers, fjiords and waterfalls abound. Whittier proclaims itself as the "gateway to Prince William Sound (PWS)," which is probably because the town itself is a little strange is nothing in it worth mentioning. Whittier was founded during World War II when the U.S. Military was searching for a stratigaclly located ice free port to bring supplies into Alaska. Nestled down Passage Canal deep in Prince William Sound the makings of the town Whittier was established. In order to connect this town to the rest of Alaska, two tunnels were built through the mountains and rail tracks were laid and tied into the railway from Seward to Fairbanks. Until 2001, the only way to access this port town of approximately 300 people was via train. Tourist traffic used the passenger cars, while locals and ferry traffic had the option of loading cars on flatbed rail cars.

Finish later . . . .

More photos at: http://picasaweb.google.com/jillcaho/PrinceWilliamSound