MAY 29, 2022 – SITKA

Today was chore day for the most part, cleaning the boat, laundry, reprovisioning shopping for me, and engine room cleanup for John. He accidentally dumped a pail of oil on his engine room floor and it made a huge mess. Note to consumers: Dawn dish soap does not cut heavy oil. I’ve always been told Joy Dish Soap is the only thing that cuts diesel but we didn’t have any onboard. We’ve rented a car while we are in port and it’s quite the relic – a full sized Suburban, complete with high idle so when you use the gear shifter (automatic on the tree by the way) it surges into gear. Speaking of which – today an elderly couple accidentally hit the gas instead of the brakes of their mini-van in the harbor parking lot and plummeted off the bank into the harbor! They were immediately rescued (we were told) and were fine, we noticed the hub-bub after the incident when they were pulling the van out of the water. There is no barrier in this parking lot to prevent driving off the bank so am careful with our surging Suburban! We depart Sitka June 1 and taking on guests June 5^th, and won’t have another provisioning stop until Juneau, so we are loaded down with groceries. This afternoon John and I wandered downtown to browse the shops but the town is pretty much buttoned up for the day, seems the shops post regular hours but modify them on the fly – tried to go to Sitka Rose Gallery again, hours posted said they are open every day, but nobody there once again.  The highlight of our day was at 4:30 going to see Top Gun: Maverick at the Coliseum Theater in Sitka! What a great movie! Was on the edge of my seat most of the time. Tom Cruise has never been my favorite actor but that guy made a helluva movie. And he just doesn’t age, wonder what his secret is? We had planned to go for dinner after the movie but the first two restaurants we tried were also buttoned up, so we ended up at Mean Queen for pizza. Following that we had to stop at the iconic Pioneer Bar, mainly to buy a souvenir hat but we also had a quick beer. Clearly the locals frequent this bar, it was full of young fisherman and fisherwomen in their XtraTuf boots. A great day once again in sunny Sitka – it was over 70 degrees again today, we haven’t had rain in a week!!

Don't have any pictures from today but here are some pictures from our cruise around the harbor a couple nights ago.