Wednesday September 9th
Yakatut
We arrived in Yakatut at 6:00 a.m., an hour later than
scheduled but this apparently was by design. The captain has the ability to
choose to arrive later or earlier if conditions warrant and it seems that he
deemed 5:00 a.m. just too uncivil and pushed it out an hour. This also pushed
out our departure by an hour but the purser assures me that we will arrive
Whittier on time. It’s o.k. I assure her, we are on vacation.
Yakatut is tiny without even a single stop light to boast
about. However, John, Stan and Niels brave the rain and go for a walk up to the
general store to inspect the guns and get a latte. Starbucks it is not but Stan
thinks it is the best latte he has had since, well, home, though I am not sure
I have seen him drink a latte on this trip.
The whole day is spent out in open water. Most of the route
from Bellingham is through islands with opportunities to see things even when
the weather is bad. Today, nothing. There is water to the horizon in every
direction for pretty much the entire day and the weather is poor with rain
falling from start to finish. Swells are six feet with the forecast for nine
foot swells tonight but the ship’s stabilizers are doing a great job, as is the
anti-nausea medication I took this morning.
The passenger ranks seem to be thinning but the car deck is
almost full. One passenger who has been on board since Bellingham is Steve, a
jack of all trades type of guy who was most recently a helicopter pilot in Los
Angeles, and is moving to a place outside of Homer, Alaska. People have stories
and some they are willing to share and some they are not. I am so intrigued by
somebody going from high density living – there is 1.2 million people living in
his ten square miles in L.A. to basically off the grid. I ask him if I could
talk to him about his move for the blog and he agrees but on the condition I
not publish his last name, age or picture.
He was comfortable having his picture taken but he didn’t want it on the
internet.
Steve is larger than life. He is not tall but he is a bit of
a big guy with long, white hair and a long white beard punctuated by dark
eyebrows. He looks an awful lot like Santa Claus and I laughed when I heard
somebody from his entourage, which he had collected on the ship, call him just
that. If he had tattoos, I would have pegged him as a biker but I didn’t see
any.
About the only thing he revealed was that he was retiring
and that he had sold virtually all of his possessions in L.A. with the
exception of his two Harleys and some books. He owns property near Homer but
was in the process of building a house and was trying to decide if he would put
in a TV. Since he had no plans for
internet or a phone, a TV is a sacrifice for him but he thinks he would need it
if friends come around. Other than that, he successfully avoided talking much
at all about his personal life other than talk about some of the work he had
done in the past and explained to me how to do business. I would have thought
it was all talk except he knew enough about the restaurant industry that I
believed he had actually done it at some point in his life.
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| I only took two pictures today and this was one; it is the Yakatut Harbour. |
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| This is the other. These are waves. |
A little later, a group of people are sitting around after
dinner and talk is aided with the wine that has flowed freely. (This boat crew, new since Juneau, are a
little more relaxed about adhering to the two drink limit.) I get the sense
that there is a story and maybe Steve
has a history he wants to leave behind and would just as soon not have any of
it follow him. Or, he just wants to live closer to the North Pole. Or North Pole, Alaska, where he could easily
get a job if he wanted it.
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