Friday Funny; 30-Aug-2018

Imagine this; a well maintained sailboat is anchored deep within a long bay among scattered small islands. It's early morning, and a couple of people are standing on the foredeck, enjoying steaming mugs of coffee while using binoculars, and cameras. The sailboat's cat is winding between their legs, purring with contentment. A small cruise ship, (about 150 passengers), has anchored out of sight at the beginning of the bay, not being able to squeeze past the closely knit islands.

There are a handful of kayakers from the cruise ship, weaving around the islands, and a small inflatable launch has deposited a group of hikers on the beach behind the sailboat. Both groups are a respectable distance from the sailboat, enjoying the still morning.

Suddenly everyone has stopped all movement, a loud exhalation, and spray has occurred in the middle of the bay. An orca pod makes itself known, coming to the surface to breathe, as they feed on the fish arriving with the incoming tide. A baby orca begins playing as it flings itself out of the water, and slaps it's tail, making a loud crack.

In the distant mountains, a howl begins, then another, and another. Suddenly it's a whole pack of wolves singing together, as they celebrate the morning. (Or something like that.)

Holy Cow! We were watching orcas, listening to wolves, with nearby kayakers, and hikers, while standing on the deck of Denali Rose, within the edge of Misty Fjords Natl' Park. I felt like I was living in an Alaska Visitor's Bureau travel brochure. Where's the camera crew when you need them!

(No internet way the heck out here, another SAT phone posting)

Friday Funny 8-24/18 (Whale Pass Rocks)

WORST. BOAT. NAME.

Seriously, who would name their boat after a disaster, it's like reusing "Titanic".

We recently went through an area on the east coast of Prince of Wales Island called Whale Pass, and we took it slow. It's reassuring to have good charts, and instrumentation to help with navigation.

This is not our main chart on the chartplotter, it's one of the backups with seaiq, on the Ipad at the helm.

Whale Pass behind Thorne Island

I've pointed out some of the rock hazard along the way. The asterisks, and the crosses with dots signify rocks, some of them are visible, some not, and some have surrounding reefs. The red and green symbols show the in channel daymarks, when returning from sea, keep the green on port, (left), and the red on starboard, (right). We went very slow, and had to go through some large areas of bull kelp. Nasty stuff to get wrapped around the shaft or propeller, we could hear the propeller slicing through it like salad. 

North entrance

South entrance

We stayed at anchor for a couple of days, enjoying the sun, and scenery, (the red/black dot beside Mabel Island), and then went out the south entrance.

An extending rock line, only seen at low tide.

This rock wasn't marked with the usual symbols, we had to zoom in on  the chart to see it,  and it would be under water at high tide.

We relied on the charts, the depth transducer, and watched carefully with our eyes, while leaving at low tide helped us to see everything that could be a hazard. As Bill says, "watch out for the hard bits."

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

Friday Funny 8-17/18 (ICE)

We don't typically have ice onboard, we save our limited freezer space for, (in our humble opinion), more important items, like meat, and ice cream. Lately however, we've taken to putting our two Yeti coolers onboard, and filling them with ice to keep drinks cold. This saves space in the refrigerators for other important items, like creamer for our coffee, and cheese.

We rarely have drinks that have ice in them, but with our recent run of hot weather, it was great to have a drink that was ice cold.

Our marina is right next to one of the local fish processor plants, and they're being a good community neighbor by supplying crushed ice for anyone who wants to shovel it into their containers. We have to keep in mind that this is not for consumption, only to keep things cold, like fish that I catch, if I ever catch one.

Ice totes, those are commercial crab pots in the background.

Filled with ice

Bill shoveling ice into a cooler bag.

Whenever I put a fishing line in the water, I usually end up losing my bait to the crabs. I can even feel them pulling it off of the hook. Then I reel in the line, rebait it, put it back down, and the game starts again. It's depressing, everyone here catches fish, but me. You can't even buy it in the grocery store here, because everyone catches their own. 

I don't want this crab.

I'm trying to schedule a blog post again. We'll be out of cell range by Friday, and hopefully this will post to our blog automagically. Good luck.

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

Friday Funny 8-10/18 (Adventure delayed)

Well, some of them anyway.

It's was number two I laughed at, but plans change.  

We had some weather systems coming in, mainly wind, and heavy rain, and we were getting ready to depart the marina. We were supposed to rondezvous with our friends on Pacifier, Susie, and Dan, in a bay on Prince of Wales Island, but they texted that they were coming in because of the weather. The power boaters were all heading for the marina, and we were going out in it. (That doesn't apply to the commercial fishing fleet, those guys go out in anything.)

While my brother, and sis-in-law were here, we had glass calm waters, and they were grateful for that, but I've found that over the last year, I've gotten better at being okay with some "sporty" weather. I used to be very stressed by it, and now, I cope much better, it's almost fun. 

We left the marina, and headed over to the fuel dock to fill up. A BIG, LOUD alarm went off, and it was one we hadn't heard before. Bill went below to the pilothouse to check the gauges, and he came back up, and said the engine was overheating. We were almost to the fuel dock, so we continued to motor there anyway to fill up. While I held the fuel hose, Bill went below to look in the engine room, and in a few minutes, came back up with a toasted belt, and he had already replaced it with a spare.

Shredded belt.

I'm thinking that was an easy fix, I love it! We finished filling both diesel tanks, started the engine, and got ready to head out. As Bill was untying dock lines, the engine started to overheat again, rats, not the easy fix. We slowly motored back to our slip in Heritage Harbor to suss out the problem. 

The next day, Bill started by cleaning out the bilge, look what he found.

The top side

The bottom side, and rubber ring

I don't have all the technical jargon, but short explanation is that the water pump has an unused hose, and this was the plug for it. It got caught in the belt, and both got chewed up. (Or something like that.) Bill can do the rest of the story, I could never do justice to the full technical explanation. He might add his two cents worth to this later. 

No crutches 🚯allowed.

I'm throwing the crutches overboard! Not really. They're not mine, and I need to return them to my niece. For now, they'll go into storage, and I'll figure out a way to get them back to her. I'm sooooo glad to be done with that! (knock on wood)

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

Friday Funny 8-3/18 (More fun in the sun)

"HEY Dad, can I ring the ship's bell NOW?"

In the last couple of weeks, we had a great time exploring new areas south of Wrangell Island. We couldn't have asked for better weather either. We had over 2 weeks without rain, and hardly any clouds. That is an awesome accomplishment for the nation's largest rainforest. 

Bradfield Canal. That's a small unnamed glacier at the top of the mountain.

Those of you from warmer climes would probably laugh at us, but we were HOT! The temperatures during the day were 70-85F, and it cooled down at night low 70s. We tried to keep all the hatches wide open, and at least one fan on during the day, but even then, inside Denali Rose was 80s to 90F. 

Warming for the day.

I took that photo to show that it was already 81F inside at 8:26 in the morning. The cats just lazed around and napped all day. They had no interest in playing in the heat, and rotated their resting places as the sun, and boat moved. 

Can you see Gus in this photo?

There he is! Hiding behind the line duffle.

Bill took the opportunity while we were at anchor to reorganize the cockpit lazerettes, (compartments for storage on a boat), and Gus decide that was his opportunity to find a new place to nap. Elsie took whatever she could find to stay out of the sun.

In the cockpit

In the salon, notice she is cozied up to the battery powered bug paddle.

Lower dinette.

We enjoyed company every morning when the tide went out and exposed a sandbar behind us. 

The "gang".

We usually awoke to the sound of seals barking, and had our coffee watching them as they sunbathed. I counted about 20 of them every morning, and as the tide came back in, they would slip back into the water.

Forward view into Bradfield Canal.

Aft view with the afternoon breezes, and tide in.

The view was even spectacular at night

Full moon

We're back in Wrangell, with town chores, and reprovisioning to accomplish. Bonus information:

I"M WALKING without aids, well mostly. I'm carrying my cane with me just in case, it feels like my security blanket now that I've had it so long. I told my physical therapist, that I borrowed the cane from, I would have it back to her by September 1, so the separation anxiety must be overcome. 

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