Friday Funny 09/29 (mal de mer - seasickness)

ugh

While our friends from Dawn Treader V, (our cruising buddy-boat), are away on personal business, we decided to leave the dock in Auke Bay for a week. It's the easiest way to save money. What's weird about it, is that we were paying a daily rate, and if we had stayed longer, we could have paid the monthly rate, and paid less. Stay more, pay less....  who can figure this out?

We had another one of those rare nice days, cast off from the dock, topped up our fuel at the station, and headed out of Stattler Harbor for a small bay north. It was only about an hour away, so that makes for an easy trip.

Leaving Auke Bay, with Mendenhall Glacier view.

There are helicopter tours to the glacier, and they buzz overhead 5 or so at a time. It reminds me of gnats buzzing in your ear.

Lena Point

When I worked for the University of Alaska, I helped design, and build the video conferencing classrooms in this facility, for the College of Fisheries, and Ocean Sciences. I waved as I went by.

We anchored in Lena Bay, knowing that the wind was going to be from the north, and we didn't have much protection from it. After a day it was going to shift to the south, and get stronger, so we were better protected from that.

We got up the next morning at 5:30am, to check on the boat, and anchor, because we were rocking, and rolling from the wind, and the short chop waves coming in from Favorite Channel. I was feeling a bit woozy, and because it was still dark, all I could see was what looked like bobbing house lights on the shore, I took some Bonine, and decided to go back to bed. Fatal error.

Denali Rose is the circle in the cove.

I was about to crawl into bed, and I see that Gus has also become seasick, and he hadn't made it off of the bed to be sick. Oh no.... that did it for me.

I went back out to the salon, and told Bill he had better hand me the small trash can with a leakproof bag inside. I also told him that he was nominated to clean up the mess in our cabin, because as of now, I was out of commission. Poor Bill. All before coffee, he had to start the generator, throw the bedspread into the washing machine, get me a bucket, hunt for the bags, clean up after me, check on the boat, and find Gus. 

This is what I felt like.

Gus and I pretty much slept on the main salon settee, (couch), for the rest of the day.

The next day winds shifted to the south, and though we were dancing in the wind, there wasn't any more of the plunging up and down like the previous day.

I was texting my son the story, and he described me like this: Worst. Midshipman. Ever. I agreed. Geez, seasick at anchor......

I also thanked him again, for bringing to us our new spade anchor last Christmas during his visit to Denali Rose.

And then here's this morning's view:

Calm morning.

Do you get motion sickness? What are your remedies? Can you send me some Stugeron? You can't buy it in the US, but people in other countries say it's the best, and it's one I haven't tried yet.

As always, we enjoy hearing from you, either here in comments or on our Facebook Denali Rose Sailboat page.

Friday Funny 09/22 (Adventures in Juneau)

Yikes!

It wasn't exactly like that.

We have a good friend in Juneau, who was most gracious to let us borrow a vehicle to run errands, and grocery shop while we're here. It's twelve miles from Stattler Harbor to town, and the Fred Meyer grocery is about midway. That's too far to walk, and carry parts from the chandlery, and grocery store. 

We borrowed his Ford truck, and the passenger door had closing and locking issues, but the driver door was cooperating... all good. Our last stop was to get groceries, to keep perishables cool until we reached the boat. Everything accomplished, we walked back to the vehicle, and found the driver door was stuck in locked mode also. So we didn't lock ourselves out, the truck did it to us. We HAD the keys, and fob, and the truck refused to open.

I can imagine what it was thinking: "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that..."

John, (from Dawn Treader V, our buddy boat), and I left in a cab, with the groceries, and Bill stayed behind to wait for yet another cab- this one with a person and tools to open a locked vehicle...

Where's the magic Genie when you need him?

The guy with the slim jim came, and unlocked the truck. ($$) Bill and our friend delivered the truck home, and Bill back to the boat.  I suppose renting a car might have been more cost effective. Live and learn, life's little adventures....

I have no idea why I took this photo of the parking lot, but that's our buddy John.

Looking at the bright side, the day had clear blue skies and warm. That's a rare day in Juneau, and we enjoyed it.

The view from the harbor.

That's Mendenhall Glacier behind the harbor, and when the clouds lift, it's a beautiful view.

Mendenhall view from Stephens Passage, as you head towards Auke Bay.

Talk like a Pirate Day, September 19th, had us smiling at a local decoration.

Cool boat name, and passenger.

We are in Statter Harbor in Auke Bay. They have approximately 324 transient spaces for vessels, depending on how long the boats are. There aren't any slips, so everyone parallel parks on three floats, two of the floats have power and water. It's a very full marina, and if you arrive late, then you can expect to circle around looking for a spot, usually ending up out on the outer float without power. Because it's so busy, there's a rule about moving your boat every 10 days, May 1st to Oct 1st. It's kind of like boat musical chairs, you never know who'll be your next boat neighbor. It might be like us, a private cruiser, power or sail, a commercial fishing vessel, a large whale watching charter craft, or an aluminum skiff. We've only moved once, but a fellow cruiser has moved 5 times, each time, getting closer to an open power plug.

Interesting boat name.

I took the bus to town to the Alaska State Museum, I encountered free-range chickens at the bus stop.

I put most of my museum photos on facebook, Denali Rose Sailboat, so I won't repost them here, but here is one of the best things in the museum.

Shipwrecks

Whales

Weather

This is a large rotating globe, with hundreds of programs that you can request to see different topics around the world. This first globe was what someone else requested, Historic Shipwrecks. The second one is the Migration of Whales, and the third one is real-time NOAA weather. I spent the most time in this room.

I'm entering a coloring book contest, but I'm not going to tell you where or what. I don't want you to compete with me. More to come later....

Have you ever borrowed a vehicle, like visiting museums, or enjoy coloring books? Let us know your experiences.

As always, we enjoy hearing from you, either here in comments or on our Facebook Denali Rose Sailboat page.

Friday Funny 09/15 (Fall cruising)

I apologize for last weeks post. I opened up the page on my phone, and discovered that the captions were too small to see, and blurry. So that experiment is over. I thought it would be easier, and fun, but it wasn't. (At least for you anyway.)

Read the smallest line you can.....

Our first stop was St Johns Harbor, we always get a beautiful sunset there.

Lovely

The next morning, we discovered a problem, and after a call to American Diesel, fixed up a work around. Thank goodness for a cell signal, except of course, we could have used the SAT phone.

Leaky part replaced.

Morning inspection

We set off for Petersburg in the fog.

Hooray for radar!

Bill had a birthday in Petersburg. Since our oven is still not operational, I had to get creative. Voila, a stacked apple cookie cake! We also had a really good pizza from Papa Bear's, huge and delicious.

Happy Birthday to you. 🎶

Leaving Petersburg to continue north. (We're kinda going backwards to what most the summer cruisers have done. They're putting their boats away for the season, and we are just getting started.)

Comorants, and sea lions

We headed for Thomas Bay, because we wanted to see what Baird Glacier looked like. 

Disappointing

It's not much. This is as close as we can get, due to shallow water, and it's just a small lump of ice.

Le Conte Glacier

This is the view of Le Conte Glacier, (southernmost tidewater glacier), that can be seen when leaving Petersburg. That's the kind of scenery I like.

Motor-sailing

Leaving Thomas Bay, where we had anchored behind Ruth Island for the night, we encountered some wind, and lumpy waves. Bill put up the main sail, which helped scoot us along, and leveled out our ride. We started with one reef, (Reefing is the means of reducing the area of a sail, usually by folding or rolling one edge of the canvas in on itself.)  Later he went out and reefed it again, which was good since the wind picked up even more. 

By the time we turned right into Cleveland Passage to anchor, the winds were gusting to 34knots, and seas were 4-5foot. It wasn't fun (for me, Bill, as usual was in his element), when we were broadsided by wind and waves as we entered the passage. Denali Rose heeled to 30degrees at times, wheeee. I'm still getting used to, and learning to sail, time, it takes time. We stayed for two days, while waiting for more favorable weather. One night a small cruise ship joined us in the anchorage, they must not have liked the weather either. 

What's this?

Submarine

While on watch, I saw this in the distance, at first I thought it was a rock. I decided it was a submarine disguised as a large tree from the Tongass forest. You can decide which agency, and which country it belongs to.

Are we crazy for starting our journey when everyone else is done boating? Should we go back to our slip in Wrangell, and batten down the hatches? Wind, yay, or nay, after all we are a sailboat.....

As always, we enjoy hearing from you, either here in comments or on our Facebook Denali Rose Sailboat page.

Friday Funny 09/08 (Slipping the Lines)

Being away from an urban area will have it's bandwidth, and cell signal challenges, so for the next couple of months, the format will have a change. Some Fridays may even be a bit late, as we wander in and around the islands of Southeast Alaska. I hope you will enjoy following along.

Friday Funny 09/01 (Oddness Alaska)

Cicely Alaska? Nope.

While we are away from Wrangell, even with our preparations, we'll have limited cell signal, and bandwidth. Our friends at Zak's, Katherine, and James lent us a small bag of dvds to fritter away our evening hours at anchor. One of  the sets they lent us, is the entire series of "Northern Exposure", a series that was supposedly about a small community in rural Alaska. It ran from 1990-1995. Back in the '90s, when the series was running, I couldn't stand to watch it. There were too many inaccuracies about Alaska, now, I'm just laughing at it's silliness.

FYI, if you watch ANY of the so-called "reality" shows about Alaska currently on TV, they are NOT real! I watched a season of "Deadliest Catch", and I did like "Flying Wild Alaska", but the drama that the producers create became annoying after awhile. Hopefully, not everything these people did in real life, was a life or death situation. My brother was a Sgt in the Anchorage Police Force, and he did an episode of "Cops". It was interesting to hear how it was filmed. 

Northern Exposure, was about Cicely, Alaska, a nonexistent town, but most say it was based on the small community of Talkeetna, Alaska. Talkeetna is just north of Anchorage, and has a population of about 800. Their latest newsworthy event was that their honorary mayor died. 

Stubbs, the Mayor of Talkeetna.

Beautiful sign?!?

When I googled Stubbs, the cat, I got articles about his death on CNN, ABC, People, Mashable, Smithsonian, Time, and Fox, apparently he was a very well liked mayor.

To film Cicely, the producers choose the locale of Roslyn, Washington, in the Cascade Mountains. The moose that wanders through town in the opening credits, was named Mork, and was part of a captive herd at Washington State University, they lured him around with food. Now you know just how "Alaskan" it was. I could list all of the incorrect Alaskan references in the show, but that would be boring.

The series is about Dr. Joel Fleischman, from New York, who has had his degree paid for by the state of Alaska, and in order to absolve him of the debt, he must practice in Alaska for a period of time. Alaska used to have a forgiveness clause in their student loan program, (not to that amount though), and it's no longer in existence. Joel thinks that he will be in the modern town of Anchorage, but they send him off to backwoods Cicely, and it's cast of odd characters.

That part of the series is true, Alaska has more than it's share of odd characters. I've lived in Alaska my whole life, and I've known, and could name a few, but I don't want to end up on the wrong side of a lawsuit.

This references the ratio of men to women.

There are several websites, and articles about the oddness that is in Alaska.

20 Extremely Weird Things That Only People in Alaska Do.

Abandoned Igloo Hotel - flickr Travis

1974, Sitka Alaska.

The Dr. Suess house, out in the woods.

I guess people like oddness coupled with Alaska. Northern Exposure received 57 award nominations, and won 27 of them.

Are you part of the oddness?  Have you been to odd places, do you live in an odd place? Have you seen Northern Exposure, and did you like it?

As always, we enjoy hearing from you, either here in comments or on our Facebook Denali Rose Sailboat page.