A salmon.

Cabin at Bailey Bay Hot springs. Good bear protection on three sides.

Dungeness crabs.

Sails up.

Hannah, enjoying Eliah's new hat.

The water is milky from glacial river runoff.

Sometimes all you can do is grit your teeth and bear it.

Sunset on the rocks south of Ketchikan

We found this guy at 350 ft. in our shrimp pot.

Hot springs!

Bailey Bay - Waterfall draining Lake Shelokum. There is a US Forest Service canoe stashed in the woods on the lake not far above the waterfall which was very handy getting to some hot springs just a little further up the lake.

No, we did not run the drop.

ICE NINE from aloft.

The dodger is a great asset to games of peekaboo.

The mighty dingy - our intrepid follower. Sometimes we try evasive maneuvers but we just can't seem to lose our faithful admirer. On occasion we scrub the diesel exhaust off her.

Take note it is "dingy" not "dinghy"

The wildlife is not particularly interesting. If you've seen a postcard of Alaska its not worth going. Here is a salmon and a mother and baby grizzly.

Walker Cove, built fiord tough!

Boardwalk at Bell Island Hot Springs.

Gilbert is triumphantly reeling in our first salmon.

Seals sunbathing on a rock near Bell Island.

Gilbert is carrying out a rig check aloft in the bosun's chair.

Buck, a friend from Ward Cove, stands by his truck and his boat.

Finishing touches painting the hull. And then: we're floating!

Happy Farmer, soon to be Ice Nine, is being lifted by the Travelift on its way to the water.

Back in Ketchikan

We arrived in Ketchikan at three PM on a cloudy Thursday afternoon. The cloud covering was light for Ketchikan which gets over 200 inches of rain each year, the sun broke through in places. We rented a small white Ford and packed it so full of gear that if Eliah had remembered to bring the dry suit we wouldn’t have fit. We drove onto the ferry that brought us across the quarter-mile-wide channel onto the mainland – of course, if Palin hadn’t been such a slacker and spent so much time gazing out over Russia - if she had got to build her bridge - we could have just driven across.
Clambering up the shaky aluminum ladder onto the boat we began a thorough inspection. Despite Eliah’s fears the tarp had stayed securely fastened over the boom and prevented a repeat of last year’s flood. Later, at the Laundromat, Eliah was thus required to pay to wash all the cushion covers, in exchange for his lack of faith in the water-jug ballasts that he and Gilbert secured almost a year ago.
Though the boat weathered the Alaskan winter well, a thin layering of mold covered all surfaces of the cabin, exuding a distinctly dank aroma. For the next two days, we spent hours on end kneeling and scrubbing away with various cleaning solutions at the persistent fungi. We bought a little fan and the constant breeze further helped to discourage growth.
On Saturday, a miraculously sunny day that allowed a full view of the mountain tops (Gilbert disagrees, though), we were able to repaint the hull of the boat with Pettit Antifouling Paint. Afterwards, we all jumped off the Travelift pier into the salty, cold waters of the boatyard to cool down and clean off. Both yesterday and today we have continued to prepare the boat to be launched; in fact, we should be launching in an hour or two. This evening we will spend the night in the Marina, getting fuel and water, and tomorrow we are hot spring bound.