Saturday, June 16, 2018

Seward

I was impressed by how immaculate Starr was the first time I saw her swinging at anchor outside of Kaneohe Yacht Club.  Everything was perfect.  All of her finishes gleamed.  Her stainless steel was blemish free.  It looked like you could eat off of the engine room floor.  She was in "boat show" condition.  That's how the Stabberts keep her looking, and that takes a bit of effort.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, Don and Sharry don't have any full time help keeping Starr in Bristol condition; they do it themselves.

 

We hadn't done much to keep the boat looking good during our 2,800 mile voyage from Hawaii.  We were busy keeping her going in the right direction and enjoying the scenery.  Yesterday, with the tough open ocean passages behind us, we took some time to give the mighty Starr a bit of TLC.  We washed her Awlgrip finishes down with a special detergent, vacuumed her interior, and removed the storm windows. 

 

The weather gave up trying to impress us, and it returned to what we are told is more the norm here; overcast and drizzle.  This was the leading edge of the low we were racing with to get here, now catching up with us.  We don't care for the rain, but it did help us wash the salt off Starr.

 

The skipper of the sport fishing boat next to Starr is a regular a customer at the Stabbert's marina in Seattle, and he helped Don arrange for the slip we now occupy.  Mike came over early in the day to chat, and provided valuable information on local weather forecasting and conditions.  We got to talking about our vessels' respective characteristics.  His seventy foot Viking, "Forty Niner", normally cruises at twenty five knots and burns 125 gallons per hour.  Put the pedal down and she does close to forty four knots and burns 300 gph.  Her engines develop 5,000 HP.  That's a bit different than Starr's eight gallons per hour, eight knots, and 400 HP!

 

Later in the day another local contact, Warren Huss, stopped by to mark our charts for Prince William Sound.  Warren is a retired dentist who lives here in Seward and has been messing around the sound for the past forty years.  He knows all of its nooks and crannies, and we spent a couple of hours discussing dozens of favorite anchorages.  I took notes furiously as Don put waypoints on the navigation computer.  We should be well armed for our upcoming assault on the sound.

 

The Starr crew had dinner at a restaurant here in the marina with Sharry's sister Shelia, her husband Al, and son Kegan.  Kegan is a commercial fisherman out of Sitka who recently put into Seward with a mechanical problem on his forty foot sail powered fishing schooner.  He is a troller, pulling lures at 1-3 knots to catch salmon.  Kegan has no crew at present and fishes all by himself.  That is one tough kid.  We are looking forward to a tour of Kegan's boat sometime today.

 

Clay is departing this afternoon for Honolulu via Seattle where he will stop for a visit with his daughter, Grace, and her family.  It has been a pleasure, as it always is, to be shipmates with Clay. 




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