April 2007 Cruise News

We told you last month that March was long and hard.  We learned that Sitka officially had 40 inches of snow in March.  Very unusual for us.  Fortunately, April didn't follow suit, just lots of rain. 

Old goat holds a young goat.  Sitka has a farm/petting zoo.  There were chickens, rabbits, goats, pigs, and a small horse available for petting.  Unfortunately, two dogs got in under the fence and killed most of the chickens and rabbits.  The pigs, goats and horse were not hurt. One of the nanny goats couldn't feed her two new kids so one of the girls who works at the farm brought the two kids home to her boat to feed.  So, one day there were two eight-day old baby goats running around on the docks.  This kid is white.

And this kid with our neighbor Lucy is chocolate.

Chuck's long list of winter "things to do" is finally coming to an end.  He built this cabinet for me to hold my VHF radio, cruising guides, and camera.  He needs to stain it so that it matches the existing teak in the pilothouse but it turned out quite well.  He really took advantage of the wood shop up at the middle school on Wednesday nights.

Chuck fiberglassing a shelf between snowstorms.  He glassed it into the hull in the engineroom.

This is our new pilothouse table that Chuck made.  It still needs some work, sanding and to be varnished but it turned out really nice.  Now we can eat up there if we choose and we can use the laptop computer with ease.

The table is made of maple and purple heart.  It should look gorgeous when it gets several coats of varnish on it. 

On April 20th, we left the dock and went to Hoonah Sound to rape and pillage.  We had 3 days of wonderful sunshine.  We set crab and shrimp pots and did well with the shrimp but didn't catch crab one.  A little too early to catch crab in the shallower waters.  We weren't prepared to set the traps as deep as we should have.  Chuck has taken care of that situation for future deep crabbing. 

A beautiful, still morning in Hoonah Sound

We will be leaving in a few weeks for our summer cruise down the west side (outside) of Baranof and Prince of Whales Islands.  We haven't been to this part of the world so we will take our time investigating all the interesting inlets and anchorages.  Then we will head back up on the inside past Kechikan and maybe meet up with our fellow Krogens at the next Krog-In in August. 

So given that, if you want to email us after May 10th or so, please send us an email at ChuckandChris@llnlretirees.org.

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Have a wonderful summer.  We will.

Chris and Chuck