Dear friends and family,
I sit at anchor here, alone in this very safe cove called Takatz. It is like being in a refrigerator in here, as i am surrounded by mountains covered in snow. The snow melt keeps the water cold at 36 degrees F. Thought i might skip my normal swim today, as freezing up and drowning could ruin my whole day.
Every day I like to get in my rowing dinghy and go exploring. I like it being engineless for the quiet. Today at high tide i went up the river until the rapids blocked my way. This is a combination of exercise, meditation, and exploration. I had the whole place to myself, and felt really spoiled to be here.
It seems like the summer cruising crowd of boats is lower this year. Maybe it is a bit early, but typically this is the start of the season for boaters to already be here if they come up from Washington or lower BC in the beginning of May. I suspect there are a lot or reasons. The price of diesel is often cited, at $7 per gallon in Washington, but it was only $5.68 in Wrangell last week, so the difference should probably not keep anyone from getting here. The inflation of other costs of boating have been significant though. Insurance, repairs, and parts costs are all way up. Moorage continues to rise as well. And for someone to drive their boat up here from the lower 48, it would take about a three month period of time to explore it well, and not everyone has that capacity or wish to be away from home that long. All guesses as to why.
Yesterday, after a nice sail up Chatham Strait with minimal chop I started to dream again about other places to sail. Weird because I think this is my favorite place on the globe to be, but it seems each year I go through this exercise: Since now that I am a few days into the trip and feeling like I remember how to navigate and sail, the dreaming starts. What would it take to get this boat up to ocean crossing standards?
I go to my journal and look up my notes from this same exercise last year. The list, including guesses at prices, is already there. From last year and the year before and before that. Must be an every year process. So, I didn’t need to add anything to last year’s list and I even listed why I might not choose to go elsewhere.
Putting in tens of thousands of dollars in improvements like new sails, rigging, electronics, etc. needed for oceans, but not for Southeast Alaska is one reason. The others are the fact that I don’t like heat or the tropics, it would be crowded at the usual cruising destinations, and I like people but not crowds. Then it would take a full time life aboard and I would not be doing other adventures during an off season. And I really like sleeping well every night and ocean crossing is about sleep deprivation if solo or limited crew. So, the very same reasons I left last year’s list I leave again this year and just enjoy Alaska. Oh, I guess this might have been triggered by my re-reading of the book NORTHWEST PASSAGE SOLO by David Scott Cowper.
Before I left Wrangell, I hired a diver to replace the hull zincs. He is a high school senior and brought along his sister and girlfriend, both high schoolers. While he was in the water the girls wanted a boat tour and were fascinated and wondered what the barometer was. I let them know that before the internet and satellites, that i had to use that to forecast the weather out in the middle of the ocean. Just give it a couple of taps and if it goes up, the weather is getting better, and the reverse is also true. I think they might have thought they happened across an ancient mariner by the looks on their faces. Maybe they did.
As I was eating dinner last night, i heard the exhaust blow of a whale. Turns out that two humpbacks swam way into the deep cove I was in, swam around a couple of times and then left. I felt like they were just checking it out for a meal, didn’t find much, so moved on.
Sometimes I wonder if I am dreaming.
Sending love,
Charley
