According to regulations we hit our daily fishing limit on Black Rockfish. Sara was on fire, each time her lure sank to the bottom she felt a tug then another tug, and pulled up two big Black Rockfish. The average age for Black Rockfish is 15 to 75 years old and they only grow up to a maximum size of 24 inches, so when she pulled in a 20 inch male that weighed 4.25 lbs we were thrilled but also thought “How old is this poor fish?” Wade was trying to catch Yellow-Eye Rockfish with a different type of lure, but he finally gave up that pursuit to join Sara catching Black Rockfish. Processing the fish (filet and vacuum pack) took twice as long as catching them, but catching them was so much fun. Could it be inappropriate to say that our fishing time of catching limits passed too quickly? For this would then appear complaining the fish bit too fast? Regardless, we enjoyed this time and called it “catching” instead of “fishing”.
During the last few days motoring, the boat seemed slower through the water than what we thought typical, even for motoring into wind. In addition, we have not cleaned nor seen our boat bottom in near two years, that being when we left Hawaii. A third thing we considered was that there could not be much left of our propeller zinc. On the positive side of things, the water had warmed to 53 degrees, about as warm as we think it gets in Alaska, well we thought this might be a positive depending how you look at it. Certainly not a good swimming temp, however. Additional positives were that our anchorage was solely occupied by us, there were no sea lions in the area, nor jellyfish, nor seals. You can see where this is going, right? Perhaps we don’t need to further say that Wade had been a few days without a bath? Yes, today would be that day, the day we finally checked out the boat bottom and would clean 2 years of ocean critter stuff from the bottom of the boat. So we dug out scuba gear that had been stashed in various fairly inaccessible places around the boat, because who wants to keep scuba gear at hand in Alaska, and Wade had not needed nor used his 7mm wet suit in over 15 years, which caused an additional complication of apparently some minor shrinkage in his wet suit. At least that is Wade’s story. Yet with patience, effort and Sara’s help, Wade pried himself into his wet suit in approximately 10 minutes time, only to then realize he forgot to locate his mask in the depths of a boat locker. Enough detail here regarding preparation, the propeller zinc was about the size of a pea but is now replaced. The SSB ground plate was covered in mollusks big enough to eat, but amazingly the rest of the boat bottom only had a light slime on it, not hardly enough fuzz to worry about, but Wade was already in the water so he scraped that off for good measure or to perhaps more thoroughly enjoy his swim. The propeller was also amazingly without a barnacle. Our bottom paint is over 6 years old, way overdue for new paint, but in Alaska it appears that any marginal bottom paint will prevent growth, at least it seems so to us. In the end, Wade smells nice and it is comforting to know that all is well and good with the ocean side of the boat. And while Wade was in the water Sara was busy cleaning the inside of the boat and also making it smell nice of vegetable curry. Furthermore, Wade is happy to proclaim a 7mm wet suit keeps him toasty warm during Alaska summertime. We conclude that the sailboat appearing to go a little slower might be due to currents or motoring into the wind, yet likely it is weight gain from the gear of additional hobbies we continue to stow away on board, or is that just “shrinkage”?
After we were all done we headed to Sand Point. Hopefully this little town will have some 4th of July celebrations. Upon arrival we heard gun fire from shore, so we haven’t lowered the dingy, lol.
Cheers,
Wade and Sara
P.S. Sand Point has AT&T cell and data reception! Wahoo, we are connected to the internet! We uploaded a photo for each post.
Sand Point 35 feet Sand Anchorage 55° 19.843’N, 160° 33.203W Good VHF Weather Signal, Unsure of SSB Signal, 5/5 Iridium Go connection
To find where are Wade, Sara, and SV Just Drifting, copy and paste these coordinates 55.3307167,-160.55338333 into Google Maps!
