Clarence Strait was glassy smooth as Thankful powered across yesterday towards Ketchikan. We stopped at the Bronaugh Islands on the western side of the strait to try one last time to fill Vicki's request for a halibut. No luck.
We arrived in to Bar Harbor in Ketchikan at 3PM where we found our assigned slip and got Thankful secured. Matt and I gathered up the ship's laundry and did a couple of loads in the laundromat nearby. We were in the bar having pizza and beer when Vicki's plane landed, and we made it back to the boat just before she did.
My berth aboard Thankful is the salon table that Matt cleverly modified so it can be lowered and transformed into a bed. It sits in the aft port corner of the salon, and is surrounded on three sides, port, starboard, and aft, by large windows.
Years of around the clock watch standing at sea has taught me to sleep easily at any hour of the day or night. Light doesn't interrupt my ability to sleep, so I have not continued Lori's practice of lowering the shades on the windows when I go to sleep at night aboard Thankful. I wake in the morning when my body tells me it is time to get up and not when it gets light.
Last night at 430AM I awoke to see someone's shoes through the aft window as they climbed the stairs from the poop deck to the flying bridge. My first thought was to wonder why Matt would be going up there at this ungodly hour. My next thought was that it couldn't be Matt because I hadn't heard one of the exterior doors into Thankful's cabin, which are quite loud, open.
I lept up, stripped off the socks I sleep in, and went out the aft door onto the poop deck wearing only my underwear. Damn, it was cold out there. I climbed up the ladder to the bridge deck. Nothing. I climbed back down to the poop deck and out of the corner of my eye saw someone silently running down the dock.
Wow. How is it I didn't surprise this guy when I climbed up onto the bridge deck? How is it I didn't hear a sound as he left the boat?
I made a survey of Thankful's interior to confirm that nothing was out of place there and then a full survey of the deck. That's when I saw two thin guys, both with faces covered by hoodies, walk quickly together down the dock. The spotter must have seen me sit up in bed and alerted the one aboard Thankful. These guys were good.
I have been pleasantly surprised, until this morning, about the apparent lack of property crime here in Alaska. Rods, reels, and other fishing gear is left out on most boats here and doesn't get stolen. Matt and Vicki routinely leave Thankful unlocked when ashore. In Hawaii an unattended fishing rod would disappear in a few hours. Perhaps it is because Ketchikan is practically a city. In any case, I'm ready to head back out into the wilderness.
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