After getting the boat all shined up and pretty by going to Wrangell for annual maintenance, now it's time to work on getting her dirty again.
On Thursday's I usually walk my son's dog Bella at around noon, so I scheduled departure on this trip for after taking care of that.
I fired up the engines at 11:45 AM and pulled out of my slip at 12:30 PM. It was sunny and warm, with a light NW breeze to help push me out of the slip.
At 12:45 PM I started getting texts from some of my buddies informing me that there was a city-wide power outage. According to the paper this morning it wasn't just our city that was affected. Apparently, the power pole that caught on fire was part of SEAPA (Southeast Alaska Power Authority) that somehow connects and shares power throughout SE Alaska. Because of that Wrangell and Petersburg also lost power. I'm glad that I missed that drama.
Here's the track from my Garmin InReach that shows this trip out to Shoal Cove in Carroll Inlet and return.
Cruise ship season has begun. We are in the early stages and there are not ships in port every day yet, just one or two every few days now. This is the Carnival Spirit tied up downtown, with Deer Mountain towering in the background.
Here is the Alaska state ferry Tazlina also moored downtown, directly in front of the cruise ship. All Alaskan ferries are named after glaciers. This vessel was built right here in Ketchikan in the Vigor shipyard.
Here they are together, which gives a better comparison of their relative sizes.
The run out to Shoal Cove USFS dock is about 24 miles. It was largely uneventful. I dropped my 2 crab pots in different locations along the way, and then baited & prepped the 2 shrimp pots and dropped them as well before heading into the dock.
As I've mentioned before the Shoal Cove USFS dock is not actually in Shoal Cove proper. It is a couple miles north of Shoal Cove. Even though it was a nice sunny day, it was actually a little blowy in Carroll Inlet when I headed into the dock. On Friday morning it had calmed down quite a bit so most of these photos were taken then.
I even took a selfie in the sunshine on the dock.
Right next to the USFS dock there is a log sort yard. Lisa and I came here once when they were actively logging in the area. Log trucks would come lumbering down the road with bales of logs on the back. They would dump them in the water right here, and then the small but powerful "log bronc" tugs would push them around and form them into log rafts. It was noisy but it was interesting to watch the process.
Right next to that is the old US Coast Guard dock. Back before GPS technology they used Loran for navigation at sea, and the USCG manned a Loran station just up the road from here. They didn't want to rely on there being room at the USFS dock, so they built their own dock to load and unload USCG personnel & equipment. The Loran station has been closed, having been deemed obsolete with the development of GPS technology, but the old dock still remains.
The Forest Service has a "camp" just up a side road at the top of the ramp. It consists of 3 buildings. Two of those are residential in function and the third appears to be a garage, and most likely holds a generator as well.
Carroll Inlet is quite beautiful when the weather is nice.
My dog Nova and my cat Luna seem to get along better on the boat than they do at home, perhaps because of the tight quarters. Luna is the first cat I've had, and I must admit that I don't understand cats. When I put her in her carrier to bring her to the boat she meows like crazy and complains the whole time we are in transit. Yet when we are on board, many times she climbs into the carrier on her own and even hangs out there sometimes for hours at a time.
While we were here, I took Nova up on the logging road a few times for off-leash walks, which she thoroughly enjoyed. Most of the time she would be a couple hundred yards in front of me, but she would stop every now and then and look back to make sure I was still coming. Having her out in front of me like that really reduced my chances of seeing deer on the road. But one time she was distracted by something on the side of the road, and I did catch a glimpse of a deer way up ahead.
In the evenings during the winter, I typically watch a movie, but now that the daylight hours are much longer, I decided to have a fire. My daughter Jennifer recently got me this new fire pit and I had not had an opportunity to try it out yet.
We pulled out just before noon on Friday and headed for the crab pots first. The first pot had only 1 small Tanner crab and a small red starfish in it. We don't keep Tanner crabs, so back in the water he went.
The second crab pot was in a different location, and it came up with 7 crabs in it, 4 of which were legal males.
Next, I headed to the shrimp pots, but they were both empty, if you don't count the gazillion sea lice that came aboard with them.
After pulling the pots we headed for home in sunny, warm & calm conditions.
I got into the slip at about 3:45 PM and had logged about 47 miles for this trip.
My next trip has to be to the fuel dock, because I am definitely low on fuel. Time to pay the piper for all these fun trips.
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