JUNE 24, 2022 – ST. JOHN’S HARBOR TO WRANGELL

I awoke early this morning, 5AM, and decided it was time for coffee. The sun was already streaming into our blackout curtains, which aren’t so “blackout” but you could tell it was sunny. It was 52 degrees when I got up. By 6:30AM it was 60 degrees outside and I sat out there soaking in the peaceful scenery. Calm waters except for the tide running, the eagles chortling, and glorious sunshine. I was hoping for an early morning visit by our whale friend but he hasn’t shown up yet. Today we travel to Wrangell for reprovisioning and to pickup my brother and sister-in-law (Scott and Lisa). We had friends from our yacht club arriving today but Covid had other plans for them and they had to cancel. It is a double drag for them and for us, because they were supposed to traveling with us this summer on their boat, but had to back out due to many factors, it just wasn’t in the cards this year. When that didn’t pan out, we then invited them to join us on our boat for a week, which was supposed to happen starting today. We love you guys, and are SO bummed it didn’t work out. After their visit was cancelled, I called my brother and said “if you can drop everything and get on a plane, you can come” and so they did, and they are thrilled! They were not otherwise going to be able to come due to conflicting schedules.

We arrived at Wrangell Harbor around noon, after a beautiful smooth cruise with sunny skies, and decided to go provision to get that out of the way. Scott and Lisa were on an excursion and wouldn’t be back until sometime early afternoon. Just as we were leaving they called and said they were back and we made a plan to meet in town for lunch. Wrangell doesn’t have much to choose from and no place served beer AND food, so we bought burgers from a burger shack and took them next door to the tavern where we could all have a cold beer as it was quite warm already. After provisioning and other errands we made our way back to the boat to settle in for the afternoon and hang out. Birthday dinner was at the Stikine Inn and they have a small dock in front so we were able to take the whaler over to dinner as it was kind of a long walk from the harbor! Not many places you can do that. We had a really nice evening and Scott and Lisa treated us to dinner. A pretty low key birthday, no cake or candles, we just toasted with our wine glasses and that was it. Another year around the sun for me, hard to believe I am 61 years old. How did that happen?!