The Journey Pauses!

Bob - a typical Alaskan

After the excitement of anchor watches, ice watches and worrying about whether our anchor windlass will survive another bout of heavy pulling - or whether our engine will start allowing water to pour in rather than just trickle in, it feels really restful to be tied to the dock here.

We're here waiting to fix Traversay that we can finish our trip towards Victoria.

The people we've met here have made up for the gloom and wind outside by their cheery helpfulness. This is a town made up of two components - the fishing community and the Peter Pan Cannery which (mostly) seems to buy their catches. We were met at the dock by a S African couple - Alec and Cherry - whose boat "Rainbow Gypsy" had met with greater troubles than ours in an attempt to reach Vancouver from Japan.

Beautiful King Cove

"Rainbow Gypsy" lost her mast

Following their advice re: laundry and other amenities here, I left Larry here to order parts yesterday and I traversed over to the Cannery ... losing my way because the Office door faces the water (not the road). Luckily, I ran into Dave and Larry - told them I wondered if I could speak to a mechanic and was introduced to Bob who offered to come over and have a look at the engine after work (1930 last night). My attempt to get laundry done was foiled because of not going through to the Office first, so then I was taken home to Harriet. Harriet and HER Larry run a 'B and B' and they let me do my loads of laundry on their machines, and also watch a re-run of 'Gunsmoke' while I was waiting. Meanwhile, Dave let me use his laundry soap as I hadn't realized I'd need any.

This morning I got to interact with some of the fishermen who collect at the Harbor Office - when they gave me the forecast (55knots of wind) we all agreed it's not weather for any of us to be 'out there'. We did have some lovely weather while getting here from the Bering Sea and were able to take this photo of Eickelberg Peak.

Eickelberg Peak