CRUISING ADVENTURES: July 2013

JUNE AND JULY 2013

After arriving in Ketchikan we spent the first month or so here catching up with all our friends we have made. Chuck was able to go fishing several times and was successful catching King Salmon and Coho Salmon. We had a terrific thunder and lightning storm here followed by a magnificent rainbow.

Exercise, or lack of it when traveling on the water, can be a significant issue, so Chuck added a "spinning bike" to the boat for "working out". Here he is pedaling fast going nowhere! :)

We left Ketchikan to do a round trip around Prince of Wales Island, which was about a 360 mile trip. Almost all the islands up here have north/south channels of water and the land runs the same direction. Probably because of the advance and retreat of glaciers many years ago. While this is not exact science, there seems to be three runs of islands, eastern, central and western. The island Ketchikan is on would be east. POW was central. The waters around POW are quite remote and total wilderness. While there are several communities on POW, the city of Craig, on the west side, is the largest, at 2000 people prox. We have been to Craig several times before and enjoy being there. The docks are filled with commercial fishing boats, and pleasure boats are almost non existent. We went out to eat in Craig for a fabulous meal. If you go to www.sheltercovelodge.com you can see where we ate dinner. It was a special night. We were out about two weeks before returning to Ketchikan.

On July 4th our good friends Gary and Ruth flew to Ketchikan to spend 10 days with us. The island we are on is called Revillagigedo. The waterway around the island is called the Behm Canal and is also known as Misty Fiords National Forest. This is some of the wildest and most pristine area you could ever be in. We spent six days going around the island. In the process, we caught Dungeness crab, salmon and halibut. We caught and cooked about 15 of these wonderful babies.

The halibut weighed about 30 lbs. and they are, in our opinion, the best eating in the fish world!

In case you aren't familiar a curious couple of facts about halibut. There are born with two eyes, one on each side, but then the one eye migrates so that they are both on one side of the head. The white side lies flat on the bottom and the dark side up, which is where the eyes are located. Also the really large ones, 200-400 lbs. are all female. The males change sex mid stream and become female. Amazing.

We also caught a small Coho salmon. We actually prefer eating them more so than King Salmon. We are becoming more discriminating about salmon after coming up here so often. They are quite fun to catch as they usually jump out of water and fight quite hard. It was raining this day.

The other highlight in July was the 4th of July parade in Ketchikan. At this time of the year it doesn't get dark until around 11PM before they can shoot off fireworks. Needless to say, we usually don't see the fireworks! There is quite a large parade that goes on for an hour or so, with lots of homemade floats, cars, trucks, equipment, you name it. The highlight is the "duck race" where they sell tickets representing a small bathtub style yellow duck. I think first prize of the duck that wins the race is around $2000. They take these ducks about a mile or so up the road and dump them in the creek that flows to the ocean. The first duck to be caught in the pollution boom that is stretched across the creek is the winner, followed by multiple small $ prizes. There are thousands of ducks. This probably would not be possible anywhere but Alaska due to EPA and environmentalists complaints. Ducks were floating around our marina for days after as our marina is located at the exit of the creek.

This area is called Creek Street with lots of tourists shops. In the old days these were all houses of ill repute. There is even a trail at the other end winding thru trees and slight wilderness called the "married mans trail" leading to the houses. Now it is tourist shops and restaurants.