Blog Reader, Blog Reader, Blog Reader, this is Tammy on the Domino. We are still slipped in Ketchikan and we are dealing with groceries, Walmart, marine hardware, laundry, errands, phone calls and boat projects. I would like to say yuck and if I was at home I would have said YUCK and Double Yuck but it is nice to be on shore for a couple of days even if we have to run errands and do laundry.
We had dinner at Stone deck Pizza with Ran, Sam, Kevin, Sandy and Dale, the remaining Flotilla folks. The pizza shop is in a gas station and don’t let that stop you because they make great Pizza! On the way back from the pizza shop we walked by the Promech Air Yard and looked at their all the sea planes docked for the night. I like the otters.
I, the admiral, decided on the lovely 2 mile walk back to the marina that I was not ready to leave Ketchikan. So Andrew agreed that we would stay another day. So the next the morning we got up and rode the free bus to the Heritage Center and looked through the totem pole museum. We then walked back into town on creek street which is a lovely walk through the trees and along the river bed. The salmon are not running yet but they will be soon and I would imagine there will be a fair amount of fishing going on along this river bed over the next month. We walked down to the cruise ship terminal and watched them launch a Princess Cruise ship. Man are the ropes huge on those ships! I feel like I am working with shoes strings when I look at their ropes. I was sitting on a park bench watching the ships and struck up a conversation with a man and it turned out that he was on his sister boat the “Daybreak” a beautiful 60’ Nordhaven. My lord those boats are beautiful. They are like the Ritz Carlton of boating! Jerome and Karen gave us a tour of their lovely boat. It is certainly hard not to aspire to those heights!
When we got back to the boat we did what we have been putting off for weeks. We pulled all the chain out of the boat and measured the markings. You see I have essentially been guessing how much chain to drop at anchor and that is just not going to work in Alaska when I have to drop 100 feet of chain! As it turns out we have 600 feet chain and Andrew was quite please by that because that amount of chain will make anchoring in some of the deeper coves much easier.
We made our way to the movie theatre and watched the Pixar movie “Inside out”. You have to love Pixar and the fact that you can really feel like a kid during their movies.
We are pulling off the dock in the morning and heading out to Lake Bay. Tomorrow will be another day of firsts. It will be our first day without the support of the flotilla. It will be the next checkmark on the path north as we navigate our boat through Alaska. It will be the first time that we are selecting the cover that we drop anchor and most importantly it will be the first day for which we will make all the decisions regarding path, current, tide and hazards without Sam laying out all the details that we need to know about the day. We both think that we are ready and we are certainly excited about what lies ahead.
This is the Domino bushed from a long day of errands. We sign off and head to bed and will dream of the coming days and hope that we are up to the challenge. We are standing by on channel 68 and signing off for the night.
- Lessons learned: Errands never end when you are at the dock. Makes me want to leave the dock as soon as possible!
