Captain’s Log: Ketchikan, Let the Good Times Roll!!

May 4-7,

Hi All,

Hooray…..we made Ketchikan and are done with the “no fun” BC Transit….happy dance all around!!! We made Ketchikan on 5/4 around 1:30pm ADT….we moved the clocks back an hour from PDT. All in, the “no fun” Transit was 617nm and we used 490 gals, 1.39 nmpg w/o GEN and Kabola or 1.26 nmpg all included….actually very good for Mystic, even though half the time we ran higher rpm’s (yep, acted like 9 kt Bob…after our dear friend Bob Klein:))))

We used the USA Arrival App and about 12nm from Ketchikan we got a sufficient cell signal (Verizon) and submitted our application….the page went pending, then processing, then approved…all in about 2 minutes. Ah…to be back in welcoming USA home again!!!!!

Kathy called the Harbormaster and he assigned us the City Floats….per our friends this is almost unheard of in normal times….it’s a first come, first serve small marina close to downtown and much desired….they even had room for Wild Blue!!!

I received this from a college/frat brother to help add some humor to our difficult Canadian Customs experience on 4/26: “Capt. John: April 27 is the anniversary of the day in 1813 that USA captured York, Ontario (now Toronto), ransacking the town and burning the Government House and Parliament Building. Your working over by the Canadians shows that payback is a bitch.
Excellent work carrying on the SNU (fraternity) tradition that the correct amount of alcohol is too much.”

Ah yes, life does go on with a bit of humor:)))

We really have not done much tourist stuff in Ketchikan. Our time has been spent with Kathy on the phone with Medicare….she knows all the music now while she patiently waited on the phone….she applied over 2 months ago but her application is still being reviewed. She found out they were waiting for her to call them again so they could tell her they now needed a copy of her passport. We tried 2 different business centers over 4 times with no joy sending a fax. I downloaded ifax and did it from my phone and after about 10 minutes with ifax trying over and over it went through. We shall see what’s next in this saga!!!

I did spend one day getting all the fishing gear together, buying some new gear and insuring that our prawn and crab traps met all the regulations. They should have as all but one were bought in Alaska but some of the escape regulations have changed so I needed to be sure we were still legal. We are now all set to start crabbing and prawning. It seems the salmon are 2-3 weeks late this year as the water is still too cold….too much snow/rain!!! But they had an excellent winter King salmon season and there should be some of those guys still around but they are deep and hard to catch. I remember in 2019 I did not catch our first salmon until late June!!!

We have enjoyed several dinners with the other Selene owners (4 now in Ketchikan) as Kathy gets a break from galley duties. It seems many restaurants and retail stores did survive and are open now. However, there is a recent Covid outbreak due to a high school sports event. In fact, in one restaurant we were in they took down their Mother’s Day advertisement as that is now cancelled!!!

The Plan: We will leave on Saturday, 5/8, early, get about 500 gals of fuel, then head towards the Behm channel (Misty Fiords NP) and anhcor in Manzanita for the night…~50nm….word has it a prime crab spot. Then it will be on to a lovely cove called Punchbowl. We will spend about 7-10 days doing the 150nm loop.

Hope all is well!!

John
Mystic Moon
Ketchikan Alaska