Pacific NW

Expeditions

Justin and I spent 5 eventful days in Cordova, as we prepared ourselves and “Silent Partner” to cross the Gulf. “Silent Partner” became somewhat of a social center and we were met by many wonderful people who came down to admire the boat. On our first morning Dolores stopped by and offered to drive us out to the Copper River Delta. It is a courtesy she extends to all world-wide cruisers. I was pleased to see that another 27′ O’Day was in the harbor next to us. In the afternoon we took the long bumpy drive out to the delta in Dolores’s truck, along with the couple from the other O’Day. It was an awesome trip. The river delta is immense, a huge sweeping expanse of country. We drove as far as the “Million Dollar Bridge”, an old railroad bridge that now goes to nowhere. We all ran across the bridge as icebergs swirled in the swift currents below us. Dolores said “After all, you have to tell people that you ran across the Million Dollar Bridge”. Near that point in the river 2 massive glaciers flowed right up to the riverbanks and cracked off icebergs into the river. We returned to the harbor late that evening and hung out with Danny on his Hans Christian. He “squared us away”, as he would say, with rum from his wet locker. After several hours the three of us became entirely squared away. By the time Deidre came home Danny told her we were just a couple of dead soldiers. “A couple of drunken soldiers is more like it” she said, and we all laughed. It was a most excellent evening. Justin took the longest pee off the dock that has ever happened. Danny and I even walked out to check on him in case he had fallen into the water, but there he was, still peeing. It must’ve been a full five minutes and I have no idea how he did it. The following day was spent sleeping in and in a state of recovery. Dolores lent us two mountainbikes and also gave us many cans of salmon, that she had caught herself and canned at the cannery down the street. Justin and I grabbed our fishing poles and rode out to the local fishing hole. Immediately into the ride Justin’s bike chain broke. We walked the rest of the way and had a discouraging time fishing. After several attempts we gave it up and began walking the bikes home, at a low point in the evening. We discovered “Hippy Cove” on our way back. 25 or so people are squatting on the land and are living in a collection of treehouses, campers, and shacks in the woods. We took a tour of the treehouses. One had fishing nets tied to trees in the woods all around the house. “Sure, just jump off” our new friend said. It was a fishing net, anyways, and looked strong. I took a leap of faith from the platform and landed in the nets below. I believe only one rope gave out while we were jumping around on them. On our way back to the boat we were stopped in our tracks. There, in the water, were jumping thousands of salmon. It was quite literally one of those places where you “can walk on their backs”. After 15 minutes Justin had caught two large salmon. We threw them in my backpack and headed home, triumphantly. Justin was so excited about his fish that he towed me on the broken bike all the way home, about 3 miles. My feet didn’t even touch the ground once and we were cheering and laughing as I leapt from the bike and onto the boat with the salmon in my backpack. It was midnight by the time we filleted the fish and 3AM by the time we were relaxing after a gourmet meal of fresh fish and salad. We put the remainder of fish on ice that the cannery gave to us. Prior to catching those salmon, we had had a discouraging time with the re-supply in town. That meal seemed to be a turning point though. The next day we repaired the chain, did the laundry, and did an initial food-shopping trip. We got creative with the labelling system on the boat. We play lots of games like that out here for some reason. Therefore, if you want to find garlic aboard “Silent Partner”, you need look no further than the sack labelled “Galactica”.