Wilderness, not fish, three alarm day

Dear friends and family,

A couple of you have inquired if everything is ok, and indeed it is.

Presently, I am enjoying the summer in Alaska that never arrived earlier in the season. It has been sunny for almost two weeks with little wind. The marina is mostly empty as the fishermen are still out fishing and the pleasure boaters are soaking up this sun out away from the marina as well.

Why not me? I am using this weather window to do two things:

1. To clean up the rust on this 24 year old boat in hot and dry weather. Maybe this time the moisture will not be there under my patches and the rust will stay away and the boat will last well for another number of years. 
2. Other maintenance issues to save me time and stress for next spring to be ready easier and earlier. 
3. To row and bicycle in this calm and beautiful weather. I have been wanting to use my expedition wherry on long rowing excursions and this weather allows for that to be done safely. Also, I sure enjoy the long bike rides in dry weather, since all my spring rides have been in steady rain. It doesn’t hurt that these two activities get me fit for planned future adventures, which I will share as or if or when they come about. All in planning and logistics stage now. 
4. And, while the paint dries, instead of watching it dry I am taking the time to continue to publish my bike tour blogs into books. Number two just went online (about riding the Southern Tier route across the US) and the Europe trip from this past winter is almost ready. 

Liz visited and cruised with me for a month and we chose to find remote places to explore that were relatively close, but near lots of wildlife. So that took us to the south end of Admiralty and the coves indented into the south end. 

After the Wrangell Narrows passage and a brief stop in Petersburg, we continued north. On our way we came across about eight whales bubble feeding right near us. This is where, even though humpback whales typically feed independently, they communicate with each other to share this feeding activity. They all dive together, release air (bubbles) which creates a kind of trap for the herring school above them, then they blast all together to the surface with mouths open to gather as many herring as they can as they charge to the surface and up from the water.  It is an amazing thing to see in person, especially close at hand.  Think about this: they have to communicate together to orchestrate this, then it appears that they are able to stay clear of each other during the execution of it and then they decide whether to go their own way or do it again. In our case they did it again three times and then I assume either had enough herring for them or the herring were gone, so they adopted their independent ways.

We both felt very privileged to witness this.  We chose not to try to photograph it for now as a kind of reverence for the whales allowing us to witness it.

I am still amazed at the opportunity to get to remote places and just enjoy staying at anchor and explore the tiny creeks and inlets nearby in our rowing dinghy and inflatable kayak. Don’t even have to burn much diesel to get there, now that I am learning where to go to get away from the crowds. That is kind of a joke as this is such a big area and has so few boats.

We had to cross Frederick Sound to get to Admiralty and so we could see a steady stream of large and small cruise ships heading north and south. Itt is made me think that even though we saw them in daylight, it is typical that they change destinations during the night, so that the passengers can disembark into a new town during the following day.

Somehow to me this seems all wrong.  I do enjoy these small towns in Alaska, and I tend to stay away from the ones that host the huge ships of thousands of passengers like Juneau and Ketchikan. 

But to me what is important is to see and feel the wildness of Alaska, the miles and miles of no sign of human impact. In our slow boat we can sail for hours with no sign of humans. And it is not just because we might be sailing at three knots.

There are not a lot of places on this earth that are accessible and still remote enough to be where you can go for miles and not see a single sign of human impact. No boats, no houses or camps or remains of canneries, no roads and no antennas. Just trees, water, mountains and wildlife. One of my favorite animals here is the sea otter. Completely wiped out here many years ago since their pelts fetched the highest prices around the world and now brought back to thrive in volumes. What could be cuter than a group of them sleeping on their backs, the young ones on the breasts of the mothers and all joined together, holding “hands” as we might think looking at them. They often sleep in a bed of kelp as that protects them and dampens the waves that could wake them. 

But even the miles and miles of just trees, rocks and water. I believe this has an effect on the human  psyche with large doses of it clearing the mind and freeing one of troubles. This is the part of Alaska that I wish more people could experience with more time spent here. 

I am often asked about fishing or crabbing and why I don’t partake in either. For now, just being in these wild places and spending my time soaking this up is enough, instead of being focused on harvesting. I am sure that there are other boaters who feel the same here in Alaska, I have just not met them yet!

The last day of my solo trip I got to experience a three alarm day. Sounds like a Mexican food order for those who like hot food.  The reality was much less fun.

I awoke to a very loud alarm going off. My low heartbeat from the deep sleep changed quickly to one of rapidity. I first checked  the usual suspects: the smoke alarm battery being low or the propane sensor malfunctioning. Neither one was the culprit. Now wide awake my brain and rational thinking connected my ears with my problem solving and I heard and saw that it was the “high voltage” alarm on the electrical panel. Finding that this was the cause did not ease my fears, as this was installed to protect me from what caused the catastrophic fire on this same boat eleven years earlier. 

No need for interval training today to get my heart rate to its maximum, this knowledge accomplished that. 

With more investigation, I realized that this same alarm would go off if the voltage was too high or, what I was seeing, it was too low. 

Since I planned on motoring back to Wrangell this same day, I allowed the voltage to get dangerously low to save running the engine for charging and hoping that the batteries would hold until morning. Well, they held until morning, but three AM versus my planned eight AM, when I planned my start.

My solution was to shut all the appliances off that were drawing power. Phew, solved the alarm sounds. What it also did was create a few more problems like having the watermaker alarm go off as it restarted itself once the engine was running and the power turned back on. This alarm isn’t quite as loud, but if the situation isn’t solved in time, can create a big and expensive fix to the watermaker system, so had to be addressed. 

Ok, I solved that one. Now I had adequate battery power and the alarm off and the watermaker back in action. 

Made for a tiring day, with my system being stressed from the alarms and the lack of sleep, so I went to bed early, only to be awakened soon after by the earsplitting propane alarm going off. The only way I could get it off and to reset was to climb my tired self down into the bilge compartment to find and pull the fuse. 

Then quiet. I waited for about a half hour for the next alarm to sound and got nothing so eased myself back into bed to sleep almost ten hours straight. 

This boating business can be such fun.

Sending Love,

Charley