Spring in Cordova and Port Townsend

For twenty years it was a rite of spring. Mark would work from a long list, really a litany of sorts, a ritual. All of the various pieces of equipment, supplies, specialized bits and odds and ends that may be difficult to find in whatever Alaskan port from which he would soon begin the fishing season would be inventoried, packed, cataloged, then loaded into the truck for the long trip north via the Alaska Highway.

Into the truck would also go everything necessary for the drive itself—camping gear, arctic sleeping bag, clothing and boots, cook stove, provisions, spare parts, tools and so on, as the early departure date meant, in the Yukon and Alaska, that winter still was tenaciously forestalling the onset of spring.

So it was again this year. After a ten year absence while we had been off sailing, this year we would be returning to the fishing port of Cordova, Alaska to commission TAMARA. She’s a different sort of boat, but the process was little different from that undertaken with all the work boats over the years.

The drive was uneventful---too much so in fact, as before it had always been part of the adventure. Now the entire route is paved, there are more hotels and services, and numerous campgrounds to accommodate the hoards that swarm north each summer. But none of the campgrounds are cleared of snow and open for the season at the time that Mark made his migration.

Due to the large number of summer migrants now experienced, casual camping is frowned upon, but the “cruiser’s budget” rules out most of the expensive hotels. Too much civilization has now changed the route and unfortunately removed a great part of the adventure. But the route itself and the spectacular vistas, wildlife and history it provides remain alluring.

Pushing hard for Valdez in order to connect with the once a week sailing of the ferry adds in some element of a race, so that in itself adds to the fun-factor.

On arrival in Cordova all of the freight must be unloaded, carted down to the boat, and the real work begun. This season this would include significant engine maintenance, the installation of a new small diesel generator, and considerable electrical revisions. And then of course there was the routine bending on of the sails, replacement of running and standing rigging, scrubbing, cleaning, provisioning and stowing.

For the first time since we began this odyssey ten years ago we were apart for more than a few weeks. Nancy remained in Port Townsend to usher in the spring. Long neglected plants, shrubs and grass needed nursed back. And of course the house would need to be organized for our summer absence, and the transition to occupancy by a good friend of ours planned and facilitated. Both of us had our appointed tasks, and much work needed to be done.

Communications between us was awkward at best. In true cruiser budgetary mode, we opted to have only a cellular telephone and no hard wired “land line” phone installed after our return. So Mark took the cell phone for the long drive and to have in Cordova in order to order parts and conduct the business of maintenance. Nancy would have no phone at the house, but would instead rely on the use of a computer and the “Skype” telephone-via-internet service.

Even in the best of times telephone service to and from Cordova is plagued with the annoying satellite service time delay. Compounding that with the cellular-to-satellite-to internet link made the time lag maddening at times, and tension would sometimes arise as we would inevitably talk over top of each other. So we would resort to time honored radio protocol, using “over” to signify when one transmitted thought had been completed and the other speaker could begin. With time we managed to perfect the system.

Meanwhile back in Port Townsend: As the Alaska fisheries are gearing in Alaska, the harbors and marinas in Puget Sound are busy with boaters readying their vessels for the season. Several cruising friends had left their boats in the Puget Sound area for the winter and returned to their homes in Europe. With the arrival of spring they began to migrate back to the NW.

The first to return were Terry and Christine on sy TEKA NOVA, who we met in Hawaii last summer. They had hauled out in Port Angeles before returning to England and Cyprus. In early April they returned to finish repairs and maintenance. Once the boat was back in the water they left for a month in Alaska as crew on a friend’s motor yacht. Upon their return they will spend some time in Puget Sound before heading south to the Bay Area.



Sandra and Timo on sy ULTIMA had left their boat in Victoria, BC and spent the winter in Austria working at a ski resort to add money back into the cruising kitty. They returned mid-April for two weeks before taking off again to help a friend move his boat from San Salvador, Brazil to the Caribbean. They are unsure of their future cruising plans but we’re hoping that they make it to Alaska next summer. We met them in Ushuaia and Puerto Williams and spent much time with them on the SSB radio keeping track of each other as we both headed north to the Galapagos and Mexico.



Kim and Kirsten on sy SOL left their boat in Deer Harbor, Orcas Island and returned to Denmark for the winter. The first time we met them was upon our first arrival in Ushuaia, Christmas 2007, tied up four deep on the AFASyN dock. We met up with them again in the Falklands and Puerto Montt, Chile. When they returned to Puget Sound this spring they brought SOL to Port Townsend and briefly haul out for maintenance. Nancy had them and Alvah and Diana Simon, another cruising couple briefly in Port Townsend, over to the house for dinner on Nancy’s 61st birthday. The evening was full of cruising stories and acknowledgment of mutual cruising friends. Kim and Kirsten are now on their way to Alaska and we hope to meet up with them this summer.





Spring brings the start of many festivals and events in Port Townsend. April 1st was the start of Farmers Market uptown, a Saturday meeting place for products and music. The Rhododendron Festival is in May with the crowning of the Rhody Queen, its children’s parade, carnival and bed races. And for those wanting to get into the mountains, hikes in the lower elevations of the Olympic Mountains become available.







Part of the reasoning behind Mark’s early departure for Alaska was to participate in periodic formal training for major oil spill response. Twenty years ago, with the 63’ TRITON, Mark worked extensively in Prince William Sound during the response to the EXXON VALDEZ disaster. Out of that debacle grew an extensive emergency response system which includes, among other assets, a number of commercial fishing vessels and their crews. Periodic special training, drills and exercises are held to assure response readiness, competence and safety.

So it was with lament and terrible irony that the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico transpired nearly coincidentally in time with this spring’s training. Special equipment, well adapted boats, and trained crews in Prince William Sound were unfortunately well beyond reach of the disaster in the gulf. We could only commiserate with fishermen and residents there because we knew only too well their pain, frustration and feeling of hopelessness, having all been through it before. We had received the same hollow reassurances and promises, in nearly identical words. Twenty years later only some have been compensated, and even those inadequately.

More maddening, however, was that the lessons of the Exxon debacle seem not to have gone beyond Prince William Sound. Entirely new organizational structures evolved from that spill. Regional citizen oversight, highly organized response structures, pre-positioned equipment, specialized training, and even ship escort grew out of the 1989 disaster. The BP Gulf of Mexico disaster seems a throwback to 1989, with no oversight, poorly organized response, inadequate equipment---all of the aspects of the Exxon spill that motivated such changes in Prince William Sound.

We hope to have several posts to the blog during the summer as we cruise around Kodiak Island and Prince William Sound.