MAY 30, 31, JUNE 1 and 2.

MAY 30, Tuesday

First thing in the morning Vaughan called the customs in Ketchikan to let them know that we might be going to Foggy Bay in the US that night. We were planning to anchor on Dundas island, but, once we were underway and since the weather and the current were so favorable, we all decided to continue on to Foggy Bay, our first stop in Alaska. We went through the picturesque Venn Passage, just outside Prince Rupert, where we saw the pleasant white houses of the village of Metlakatla. Quite an interesting story about this village near Prince Rupert and the Metlakatla in Alaska on Annette island.

https://www.krbd.org/2016/08/03/a-tale-of-two-metlakatlas-part-1/

 

At 13:10, Alaska time, 14:10 BC time,  we crossed the border into Alaska and Vaughan went out and raised the courtesy flag.

Crossing the border into Alaska 13:10, May  30, 2017.

Raising the American courtesy flag upon entering US waters.

We went to the ‘Outer Cove’ of Foggy Bay. Our buddy boats ended up in the ‘Inner Cove’. We joined them later in the more protected anchorage, since we wanted to enjoy the ‘yummy’ dessert Mejan had made for everyone.

Foggy Bay, coming back from enjoying dessert on Curtsy.

Gnarled, old, wild tree, leaving Foggy Bay, looked to me as a symbol for Alaska somehow.

MAY 31. Wednesday.

We were underway from Foggy Bay to Ketchikan, when I received a text from Mejan at 11:32, “We just hit a rock “, “We are in trouble “. We radioed back and forth and decided to turn around to be close to them if they needed any help. They had hit an uncharted rock. Mejan was very upset and in shock as all kinds of things were broken inside the boat and they weren’t sure of any other damage. After a thorough check by Bert it turned out that they had no water in the bilge and the motor still worked fine. They carried on and Waterford and Baraka Bashad stayed by their side to make sure they were ok. ‘ Curtsy’ appears to be as strong as a tank to take such a hit.

We made it all the way to Ketchikan and upon approaching the town we saw our first cruise ship docked in the harbour, the ‘Radiance of the Sea’., overwhelming the small town of Ketchikan.

We contacted the Harbour master and were directed to float 10, dock 12. He confirmed that we had to keep float 10 to our starboard. We noticed right away that we were on the wrong side of the float, which meant we had to somehow get out of there again. Vaughand did an excellent job backing out of the narrow channel, using our, now, trusted bowtruster and we found our slip on the portside of the float. We took a taxi to the New York Cafe for a well-deserved Alaska king Crab dinner for Vaughan.

June 1. Thursday.

The first thing we did was go to a store, Vaughan had previously contacted, to pick up our 4 new AGM, 31 DTseries, batteries. The store, O’Reilly’s, was kind enough to drive us and the 4 batteries back to the marina. This is were the real heavy work began for Vaughan. He had to drag 6, 110lbs batteries out of the engine room to replace them with 4, 70 lbs ones.

3 of the 110 lbs old batteries and one 70 lb new one.

It took him the whole day to work on this project. I went off to town, did some laundry and spend two hours at McDonald’s as it was the only place with free wifi in town.  Bert, in the meantime was assessing the damage on Curtsy. He had a diver look at the bottom and he found a big chunk of their keel was gone. They needed to get their boat hauled out, so Bert made arrangements to have this done on Saturday, in Refuge Cove, at Air Marine Harbour. It rained most of the day and Mejan, Ann and I were all splashed from top to toe by big trucks passing us on the road. Not giving us a good feeling about the people in Ketchikan. It was pouring with rain today and the cruise ship the ‘Nieuw Amsterdam’ was in town, the one Robyn and Em were just on, on the ship’s repositioning trip from Florida, through the Panama canal back to Victoria.

Even though, both men were exhausted, they were still game to go out for dinner and we went back to the New York Cafe. This time we invited Gail from ‘Cruzeiro do Sol’ and Ann and Don from ‘Imagine’ to come along.

And, because of the enormous job replacing the batteries all day, Vaughan felt he deserved ANOTHER King Crab dinner. Rightly so. ;-0

June 2, Friday.

Stayed in Ketchikan for another day and took the free bus in the afternoon to do some sight-seeing. We ended up going to the old ‘Creek town’. Creek Street is built along the shores of Ketchikan Creek. It was built over the water. Apparently, it was too hard to blast away the rocks. It is known as Ketchikan’s old red-light district. There were over 20 bordellos on Creek Street alone in the mid 1920’s! In fact,  Ketchikan’s #1 industry was prostitution at that time..

 

Entrance to Creek street. A total tourist area with lots of little souvenier shops, totally catering to the Cruise ship clientele.

 

 

 

There were 3 huge cruise ships in town, the Noordam was one of them.

A real cruise ship town. Sometimes up to 5 cruise ships dock here a day. Today there were 3 of them in town.

We had a nice Prime rib dinner on our boat with Bert and Mejan that night.