Alaska 6/13/2013

Toni arrives

Danny and I worked pretty hard to get the fish scales, residue, and smell out of the boat before Toni arrived. We did pretty good, it helped that we put down plasic carpet runner over the interior floor before we started fishing and changed it twice, it really protected the flooring. We put nice smelling blue stuff in the toilet and holding tank too, Toni really likes the nice smelling blue stuff.

We finished up with 235 lbs. of Halibut fillets. It cost 55 cents/lb. to store it at Coastal cold storage, about $25 per 50 pound box to have it prepared for check-in on the airplane, then $20 for the first two boxes and $50 for the next three boxes for the airline. It cost about $450 total to ship it but Halibut sells here for $17/lb. X 235 lbs=$3,995 worth of fish, that's pretty good. OK, we spent quite a bit on fuel but two weeks fishing with your best buddy in Alaska..... priceless. We saw lots of wildlife and had a great time.

Toni arrived on the same plane Danny left on. Danny is my good friend but Toni is my life partner and it was great to be together again. The boat feels more like a home when she is aboard. We took a cab back to the marina then made a short walk through town while we caught up on what we both had been doing.

The next day was clear and warm so we decided to go to LaConte Glacier to see some icebergs, Toni had never done this. We cruised back as far as possible but we were still several miles from the glacier when we were stopped by ice flows. We dropped the dinghy and got some great photos with the boat in front of icebergs. Toni took over 500 photos so some of them have to be good, she was pretty excited to be that close to huge chunks of ice. We found some really clear bergy bits and collected them with the fish net to fill our large cooler for cocktail ice, over 50 pounds. For some reason this ice seems to last longer than normal ice, its over 500 years old. While we were gone our friends Casey and Mary Casebeer arrived in their C-Dory and we had a great visit with them trading stories and cruising information.

The next morning we visited with Casey and Mary again before they left to Laconte Glacier then started into town for supplies. On our way we ran into our friends Max and Susie Kamp and Steve and Maxine Vincent from Longview. They are here for a fishing trip on Max's boat. In the afternoon we met and had a good visit with them too, small world.

The rest of our day was taken up by looking in the different galleries in town, a visit to the visitor's center, and the local museum. A full day and it's wonderful to see people we know but it's time to travel North. Tomorrow morning we will start our way towards Juneau with unknown stops on the way. We will keep notes of our cruise and anchorages and update the blog when we arrive in Juneau.