Day 19 ~ Ketchikan, Alaska to St. John Harbor, Zarembo Island, Alaska

I woke to the sound of the raindrops falling on the boat. However, the sound was overpowered by the float planes that were frequently taking off one right after the other. It sounded like the attack on Pearl Harbor!

It was Father’s Day and there were a few things that I wanted to sneak out and pick up before everyone else on board awakened. Wearing my yellow rain slicker and armed with Dad’s handy dandy cart, I quietly trekked off towards the grocery store. When Dad and Gene got up they thought that I was still in bed. Dad turned on the heat, thinking that it would roust me out of bed and when it didn’t he began to worry a bit. He determined I wasn’t in my cabin, the engine room or on the dock. Then he noticed the cart was gone came to the conclusion that I probably hadn’t fallen overboard!  Maybe I should have left a note.

The cranberry juice, tonic and liquor killed the cart on my shopping excursion. Fortunately, I was already planning on stopping at the marine store to get Dad an Alaska state flag for the boat and they had a new and improved cart on sale. I moved everything to the new cart along with a fishing hootchie that I got for Gene in celebration of the day and I was off to the boat. When I got back to the top of the ramp it was almost straight down because of the tide so the guys came out to help.

We departed with our new flag waving proudly and said goodbye to our friends anticipating that we would see them again in Juneau. As we charged up Clarence Strait under overcast skies, both the tide and the wind were pushing us. Our technology held for most of the day so I was able to get Facebook updated to keep those following us current with our activities. Dad was at the helm for the first several hours and then Gene took over. The great conditions allowed us to continue past our first destination to St. John Harbor on the top of Zarembo Island. At one point, Dad spotted a pod of Orca whales so he slowed the boat. I tried but didn’t get any footage of the baby orca that was jumping out of the water like a dolphin and splashing over onto his back. He was having way too much fun and you could almost hear him saying, “Whahoo”! 

Remember the whole thing about the Garmin and the time zone?  For the past 4 days every time Dad has seen a dotted line on the screen he made comments about the time and the time zones. We were just checking one of our way points and he looked at a clock that hadn’t been reset and he was off an hour. He couldn’t believe that we had crossed another time zone and the screen agreed with him because it hadn’t automatically updated. We couldn’t take it any longer and we busted out laughing – then decided to tell him the truth, while we were all having a good laugh a huge humpback whale breached in front of us.

We went to St. John Harbor on the recommendation of Marjory and found it to be quite lovely. After dinner, I gave Dad his Father’s Day card which included a personal note to him. He went down into his stateroom and brought up a letter that I had written to him for Father’s Day when I was in my mid 20’s. I had no idea that he had been carrying it around with him for almost 30 years. He told me that he was going to put the new card with the letter. It was a Father’s Day I’ll never forget! I bet Dad doesn’t either.