Travellingoldies: KETCHIKAN TO SEATTLE

We arrived into Ketchikan early and those that were disembarking here were farewelled by the crew as well as the twenty-two of us who are travelling on. We were then asked to come to the dining room for a chat before going ashore for part of the day. The chat was the Captain telling us that all the weather reports indicated that we would be having a very rough night at sea and suggested that it would be a good idea to start taking seasick medication early in the afternoon.   The crew then started battening down everything that even looked like it might move and by the time we arrived back to the boat even the bottom windows were sealed up with metal covers.
We spent the morning looking around the township, visited an art gallery, found a coffee shop with wifi and a post office and generally just mooched around. There was a great bookshop to browse through which I did whilst Ian walked up to see some salmon fishing. It is spawning time and the creek was full of dead fish and I was happy to stay further away from them.
We all left the dining room and lounge early and went to bed hoping to get some sleep before we would be awakened by the big seas and plenty of rocking.

Sunday morning.   Well much to everyone's surprise the really bad weather did not evenuate so we had a relatively good night. Ian was very relieved as he much prefers to have his feet on solid gound than being on a boat.

We are now cruising south through Canadian waters and will continue cruising until we are back into US waters which will take three days.

Towards Butedale - An old cannery operation which had been abandoned. One man lives here and it is customary for the crew to drop by with a package as it is a long way from anywhere. We had been cruising for about 24 hours from Ketchikan to here

.Dropping off the care package. Much to the crew's surprise the man had a lady friend and he called out and said he may be there when they called past next year now.

End of another day at sea.

Tuesday afternoon. We anchored and went to shore on Stuart Island, found our land legs went for a long walk to the lighthouse on the other side of the island.

Not far from the jetty we discovered this 'chest' stocked with Tshirts, Caps, sleeveless vests and fleece tops, packaged with an honesty payment system. You could leave the money in an envelope attached to the garment or pay be credit card online later. How enterprising and trusting is that? The lady who owned the goods drove down the road later and Ian and I spoke with her. She told us that was how they made ends meet on the island. I almost felt bad that I hadn't bought some Tshits.

Wednesday morning we left Stuart Island very early in heavy fog and cruised on to Friday Harbour. We were ferried ashore in the skiffs and the first port of call was the Marine Museum where we learnt about the Orca Whales which was extremely interesting. We have seen the fins a few times but nothing up close as we have been cruising. We then boarded a bus which took us for a tour of the island. Unfortunately the driver suffered from verbal diarrhoea and Friday Harbour according to him had the most expensive real estate in the world, the most important people and celebrities to visit, the most rabbits to have ever been on earth etc. etc. Eventually someone asked to have the tour cut short and taken back to town. What we did see was interesting though.

Lighthouse at Friday Harbour

Two couples missed the bus to do the island tour and decided to hire these fun three wheelers to do their own tour. We caught up with them at the English settlement site. How lucky they were to miss the non stop commentary.

Thursday finds us at Orcas Island. Ian went off on the first skiff and did the walk to Mt. Constitution along with 8 others while the rest of us decided to do the walk around Mountain Lake. Ian's group decided to walk back down to the lake (a total distance of about 14 ks). Our walk around the lake was only 4 miles. We both enjoyed the day very much. We went by bus up to the top of Mt. Constitution after lunch. The views over the San Juan Islands from here were fantastic and we could see Mt. Baker on the mainland which still has snow on the top. There are fires in the Colorado area and smoke from these was visible on the horizon.