Day 13 ~ Ketchikan, Alaska

I woke to the pitter patter of rain drops and the float planes flying overhead.  The heat had not been turned on so I knew that Dad wasn’t yet up, so I snuggled down in my comfortable bunk and started going through emails. By the time I realized Dad was up he was already on the phone. It was interesting to see how he runs his business versus how I run mine. He does most of his work on the phone and I do most of mine via email.

The dock master kept his word and we moved to our new dock shortly after we got up. Once we moved, I spied a hose on the dock and we decided to give the boat a much needed bath. For the past several days, water restrictions prevented us from washing the boat and forced us to make our own water for personal use.

As we finished, the mechanic that had been recommend arrived to work on our leak. Unfortunately, he arrived without the gasket that we needed, however, Dad checked his spare parts inventory and low and behold found the part that they needed. It didn’t take them very long, they had it installed and our guest had left. I had several things that I needed to do for the office so I spent most of the day on the computer.

As evening approached, I went below and found Dad sitting behind one of the engines scraping the crystallized salt off the engine block, he said he felt like a dentist working on a patient that was long overdue for a cleaning!  Dad suggested that he take me up to town for a lovely dinner to celebrate our crossing and our safe arrival to Alaska. I accepted his offer and added that I had a few loads of laundry that I wanted to get done before our guest arrived the next day. I gathered up the laundry, then I took a long shower and got myself all fluffed up. I even curled my hair for the first time since departing. As I was putting on my shoes I realized that it was raining, determined to not allow a few raindrops spoil our evening, I went below and fetched my yellow rain slicker and grabbed an umbrella. We loaded the laundry into Dad’s collapsible cart and headed up the dock while the rain drops got bigger and more frequent. We stopped by the Laundromat, put the clothes in the washing machine and walked 4 blocks in the driving rain to the diner only to find it closed. Then we did an about face, walked past the Laundromat towards what appeared to be town. Several blocks later, it was raining so hard that our socks were wet inside our shoes and the water running down my coat had saturated my knees. When we finally reached the locator sign that we could see in the distance we were sadly disappointed at our options. That is when Dad made an executive decision that we were going to eat at the Chinese restaurant across the street. As we entered the restaurant, it was evident that there were no patrons and the only server was talking on the phone, I was definitely questioning Dad’s decision and thinking the pizza joint might have been a better option. I have no idea what we ate and the only positive thing I could say is that it was hot.

After dinner we walked back to the Laundromat and moved the clothes to the dryers. We decided that waiting for the clothes was the best decision, so our big date night turned out to be me teaching Dad how to play Farkle on my phone in a Laundromat while the owner who was installing a new washer, drilled into the concrete. The walk back to the boat was just as wet, so when we got there I switched into my clean warm PJs and pulled my wet hair into a pony tail. Celebration Ketchikan style!