Alaska Trip Day 59

Day 59

7/14/11

Sitka, AK

Miles Travelled:  33

A nice short day in comparison to yesterday, whew!  We all woke up at the normal time and had a leisurely morning.  It was a beautiful trip into Sitka from Shulze Cove once the fog lifted as we got closer to town.  Sitka is essentially on the Pacific Ocean, but given the number of protecting smaller islands around it, we only had to deal with about 30 minutes of ocean swell getting here.  Pretty neat to have an inside route that would allow that.  We decided to take the longer inside route for a couple of reasons:  1. we are taking things conservatively with the boys for this trip and this seemed like a more comfortable and conservative choice, 2. we had a set arrival date for Sitka, and we felt that doing the outside route, even though it is a shorter distance, would have potentially added the complication of weather days and missing our scheduled arrival date.  Regardless of how we got here, we are very glad to be here and are so excited to see Mom and Ralph tomorrow!

We arrived in Sitka around 2pm after slowing down en route to ensure the boys had a good nap.  We wanted to tie up at the commercial boat marina, ANB, because it was the closest option to the hotel Mom and Ralph were staying in.  We were very fortunate and actually found a spot on the one dock with transient moorage at ANB despite the marina being quite full since there was a trolling closure and the trolling fleet was in.  Mom and Ralph’s hotel is basically at the head of the dock so this will be very convenient!

We walked down to the harbormaster’s office to pay our moorage and it misted on us the whole time.  By the time we got back to the boat we were fairly wet, but it wasn’t unpleasant.  We kicked around the idea of going out to dinner but eventually decided to just cook what I had originally planned for dinner (Hoppin’ John) because it would just be easier…even though I still had to cook the pre-soaked dry beans and we had turned off the diesel stove earlier in the day so it would need to heat back up.  It did turn out to be a good choice, going out can just add so much complication, and it tasted good.