Our Peeps

The reason we're here in North America, of course, is to see our families.  But in addition to catching up with our Alaskan friends, our visit to the Lower 48 has given us the chance to see some very good friends from different corners of our lives.  

There's a funny geographic pattern at work there - Alisa and I don't have any close friends left in Cleveland, where we both grew up.  But Boston, where my sister and parents have settled, gives us access to a rich little community - being there allowed us to see my best friend from high school and his family, two of Alisa's good friends from grad school in Alaska, and their kids, good friends from Tasmania who are also doing the dual American/Australian approach to citizenship, and finally, good friends from our first crossing of the Pacific.

A special treat, because we hadn't been expecting it, was the chance to see our friends Dave and Julia from Macy (above), whom we hadn't seen since the early days of 2009.  Since we've seen them last they've completed their circumnavigation and settled back into life ashore in Rhode Island.  When I was looking back through old emails to try to find a non-sailmail address for them, I was reminded of how close we were to these guys - we met them in Marquesas, shared an über-memorable pair of anchorages in Makemo, in the fabled Tuamotu Archipelago, crossed paths in Tonga, and then had them aboard for a few days in Iluka, our spiritual home in Australia.

And then, nothing.  They left New Zealand, sailed through Indonesia and the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea and the Mediterranean and the Atlantic and the Caribbean and the Gulf Stream, and were home.  We slowly fell out of contact, as you do.

And that's the joy and the regret of the sailing life in a nutshell - we've formed very close friendships with a small group of people from all over the world during our years afloat - people, for instance, from Rhode Island and Holland and England and New South Wales and Tasmania.  These are all people we never would have met if we'd stayed home in Alaska, we've known them, in general, for quite short periods of time, and then the friendships come to an end as we, or they, move on.  So it was a great treat to cross paths with some of those friends on this trip, to be sitting at a barbecue in my sister's back yard, chatting with Macy.

Macy waving good-bye in Makemo.

Always, A List

That's not the list of things you have to order?  my dad said.

Uh, yep, that's it, I answered.  Always a lot to do to keep the boat going.

~~

Moaning about how much trouble it is to buy things for your yacht has never been a sure-fire way to inspire sympathy.  But I will say that one of my least-favorite boat chores is sourcing parts online.  I would much rather dive into the water in my snorkeling gear to unplug a clogged head discharge hose...

 However, everything boat-related in New Zealand is about twice the price in the U.S., so this trip back to North America is a prime chance to stock up the barky before our upcoming trip to the tropics.  Now I just have to psych myself up for some mindless hours of searching for parts on the laptop...

Boy, Meet Alaska

So many things were the same when we returned to Alaska.  Kodiak is still very much the town that we left almost six years ago, and the land itself looks just like it always did.  We slotted effortlessy into old friendships, chatting easily with people we hadn't seen in years.

But one thing about Alaska has changed in a big way for us - for the first time, we were experiencing the place with kids.  

Elias and I settled on fishing as our main father-son activity in Kodiak.  When we first planned our trip we had thought we would be visiting in June, when the sockeye salmon are running, the halibut are inshore and the king salmon might even be on the bite.

Then we changed our visit to May.  And it was a very cold May, to boot, and none of those things were going on - none of our friends with sport fishing boats had even been on the water yet during this year.

So we concentrated on trying to find Dolly Varden - little salmonids that haunt the rivers and lakes and nearshore coastal waters of much of Alaska.

I'm not much into fishing myself - I fish enough to eat fresh fish, and that's it.  So it took us a few tries to find any Dollies.  But then, on our last full day in Kodiak, on the storied Buskin River, we did - check out Elias' expression, below, when we finally caught a fish.

We caught six Dollies, and they made a nice feed for the family.  They're wild fish, not, as far as I know, the product of any stocking program.  I just love the fact that Kodiak is a place where you can walk down to the banks of the local river and catch a wild salmonid with your kid.

Fishing was a great excuse for getting outside with Elias, a way to interest him in a few hours spent together on the river, or casting from a beach at high tide.

But having a six-year-old along changes every outdoor event in Alaska - even simple things, like hanging around a fire on a beautiful day at a friends' place.  Suddenly there's this whole other world - outdoor Alaska - that I know well, and love, and Elias knows not at all, and loves, and I have plenty to show him, and explain, and he's interested in everything I know.

It's a pretty sweet deal.

Eric's big breakthrough on the trip was getting used to dogs.