Essencia

Downtown Ketchikan has two faces. One is busy with hustle and bustle as cruise ship passengers crowd pedestrian walkways, and the shops hawk expensive jewelry and cheap tee shirts. The other is quiet and empty, not quite deserted, but close. Many restaurants and shops time their closure to cruise ship departures, and if cruise passengers are back on board at four in the afternoon then tourist bars and restaurants are closed by five. Downtown vendors monitor the ebb and flow of tourists just as closely as the original inhabitants monitored the tides. Ancient fish traps harvested salmon from the sea with each cycle of the tides, and today tourist traps harvest dollars with each docking cycle of the cruise ships. By the end of August, taxi drivers and shop owners start talking about the end of the season, and they are not talking about fishing. The year's supply of dollars must be captured during tourist season. Some of Ketchikan's inhabitants leave when the bounty of tourists slows to a trickle, others wait in the rain and quiet of winter for their return.

From our berth at City Dock we watched the rhythm of cruise ships. Our view across Tongass Narrows would occult as cruise ships eclipsed the mountains and docked so close I felt a claustrophobia of city canyons. At these times the boardwalks that bound the harbor filled with tourists passing to and fro. Adjacent restrooms would be unlocked and lines would form. People on the walk above out boat would stop to determine which balcony or porthole on the behemoth docked behind us represented their cabin, and Essencia would shrink into the foreground of their photographs. In town we were sometimes mistaken for cruise ship passengers and sometimes for K-town residents, but as the tourists distilled back to the elegance of their ships, we remained to occupy the empty streets and closing eateries.

The movie theater in Ketchikan is larger than its sister in Sitka and shows two movies at a time. We had already seen Guardians of the Galaxy so we watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I enjoyed both movies; neither left a lasting impression. Restaurants in Ketchikan are largely unmemorable as well. The ride on the funicular from Creek Street to dining at Cape Fox Lodge was interesting, and Claudia enjoyed her blackened rockfish, but the brazed short ribs were ordinary (they do have nice bread). Annabel's prime rib was good (as was their king crab), but the service was inconsistent. We learned there wasn't any food in bars, and breakfasts were hard to find downtown, an artifact, I suspect, of the abundance of food on cruise-ships. There is, however, a great Mexican food venue at the southern edge of town, Garcia's Galley. Slightly beyond the shadow of tourism where a modest venue with excellent food are true to the cuisine.

Our time in Ketchikan was punctuated by a roundtrip flight to Anchorage. We quickly flew back over much of the route we had just sailed. It was interesting to see familiar landmarks from a new perspective. I watched as Clarence Strait, Frederick Sound and Chatham Strait passed under the wing. In minutes we were back in Sitka then we landed in Juneau. Mount Saint Elias and Yakutat passed beneath the wing on the way to Anchorage. We arrived late on August 20th to spend a week at our house to finish chores, prepare our house for winter's occupants, and send our youngest daughter off to China for a semester abroad. This proved to be more than could be accomplished in a week, especially after we lazed away the first day, but in the end we came close. We stashed, stored, and hid things in an attempt to make room for our son, his friend, and our daughter's boyfriend to live in the house.

Claudia and I compliment each other in many ways, and on the boat we have discovered respective roles that mesh. We also hold some traits in common with the effect that aspects of our lives are amplified. Sometimes this is good, or even very good, but sometimes it is not so good. We are known for infamous parties, our pursuit of fun always trumps housework or yard work, and perhaps worst of all we both collect stuff. Some might even consider us hoarders, but this is a little harsh. We do have a hard time throwing away potentially useful things. I am the kind of guy who pulls nails out of old lumber, straightens them out, and saves them. I have often caught Claudia salvaging things I had finally worked up the will to throw away. Together in the same house for over 20 years we have amassed a formidable collection. I have twice moved a box of rocks I collected as a child across the continent. No cars fit in our garage, and our closets contain vintage clothing that we bought new. I realized a long time ago that one of the greatest challenges to our going cruising was dealing with our accumulation of stuff. Our only avenue of escape was to keep the house and simply leave the stuff behind, as we would never have enough time to deal with it. Even this method, however, required an effort to accommodate winter occupants.

Keeping a house in Alaska presents a unique challenge, especially in winter. There are two strategies: 1) drain everything and let it freeze up, and 2) ensure that it remains heated. Our house has hot water baseboard heat. A natural gas boiler heats water that is pumped through pipes on each floor with passive heat exchangers in each room. Although the initial plumbing cost is high, it is an economical and comfortable form of heat. It is also very vulnerable to damage from freezing.

Our need to house stuff while away matched a reciprocal need for shelter of three young men: our son (my stepson), his friend, and our daughter's boyfriend. Their willingness to contribute to the cost of utilities provided a way for us to keep the house warm and occupied, and our willingness ask little else allowed them an opportunity to save money. Still, we had to reduce clutter and stash stuff, and we only had a week.

Every night in Anchorage I dreamed of being on a boat or of being adjacent to our anchored or docked boat. I would wake up each morning confused and concerned about the lie of the boat or the security of the dingy and would look out the window half asleep to check. The anxious-boat-dreams did not cease until I was again sleeping aboard Essencia. It is hard to believe that a single month of sailing had so transformed my psyche that I now felt like a guest in my previous home of 20-plus years, but now Essencia was my home.

China is a rapidly rising global economic power; everyone knows this. In my life it has gone from being portrayed as a global train wreck of overpopulation to the cusp of surpassing the US as the principle economic force on the planet. As a kid I was trained at school to hid under my desk in the event of a nuclear attack by the communists. Bomb shelters in back yards were a status symbol, and the threat of communism was sufficient to unite Republicans and Democrats behind slogans like 'better dead than red'. Russia was the focus of the cold war, but communist China was painted with the same fear-colored brush. I could never imagine going there.

Graduating with a degree in economics, including a semester abroad in Prague, our oldest son (my other stepson) acquired both economic savvy and a taste for foreign culture. Teaching english abroad offered him a tangible opportunity for foreign travel, and China made more economic sense than Prague. Before we knew it, Brian was on his way to China. After two years in China, a job in Switzerland and a master's degree in Madrid, he returned to China to pursue a career as an economist. Having an older brother in China may have influenced our daughter's interests in the region. A few years ago, I too briefly travelled to China professionally, something I had never imagined myself doing, but I was quite impressed with the people and culture. This too may have influenced our daughter's interests. Putting Sasha on a plane to China was among the many things we needed to do during our week in Anchorage.

Sasha had been studying Mandarin. A scholarship to study a semester in China was made possible through the soft diplomacy of the Chinese Government. From the perspective of the Chinese Government it is easier to make Mandarin the language of science and commerce than it is to teach a quarter of the earth's population English. Investing in Chinese language classes at academic institutions worldwide and providing scholarships for students to study in China is a cost effective strategy to spread Chinese language and culture. As a scholarship recipient, Sasha chose to spend a semester furthering her mastery of Mandarin in Kunming (a city in China known for its pleasant climate, unique rock formations, and an infamous terrorist knife attack on people waiting to board a train).

Sasha's plane left early August 26th, and our plane back to Ketchikan left early on August 27th. It is a long way to China from Anchorage, especially since one must make a connecting flight in Seattle and then fly almost directly back over Anchorage on a great circle path to China. Sasha texted us a little after 2PM to let us know she had boarded her very long flight from Seattle to Shanghai where she was to clear customs and transfer to yet another flight to Kunming. We anticipated hearing she had cleared through customs in the middle of the night. We awoke on the 27th with no news, we worried, but we set out early to catch our flight back to the boat.

Our flight retraced the path we had flown to Anchorage. It was cloudy, but we caught glimpses of mountains and glaciers before we landed in Juneau. Still no messages from Sasha. Our quick hop to Sitka yielded a sunny wait on the tarmac despite generally cloudy conditions, but it failed to produce any communication from Sasha, despite the fact that she should now be on the ground in Kunming. Claudia was beginning to feel ill from worry. I was stoic as we turned off our phones for the last leg. We landed in Ketchikan and immediately turned on our phones. Nothing. As I collected our single checked bag, Claudia disappeared. I found her enlisting the help of a very busy Alaska Airlines employee, trying search the manifest of the Delta Airlines flights Sasha had been on. This proved impossible, but it was confirmed the flights had been on time.

All day we worried. We called airlines, hotels, Brian (who also contacted the hotel and the university), and we had her cell phone and debit card traced. All we learned was she had in fact landed on time in Kunming, but it was now 5 hours later and from our perspective she had simply vanished. I recalled how I had worried my parents as a young man, and felt a newfound sympathy for their suffering. The day slowly passed, our bodies got heavy, we lost our appetites, and we began to consider contacting the police in Kunming. Our hopes were pinned to news through Brian from an employee at the University who said that scholarship students were picked up and although she didn't have a list of the students, she did have a list of students who did not show up, and Sasha name was not on that list. Evening came before we got word that Sasha had made contact with her boyfriend, that she had been picked up by the University, that she had been taken to a dormitory, that she had had to purchase a new sim card to call us, and before we went to bed we heard her voice on the phone.

The depth of worry we experienced left us exhausted and we did nothing of consequence on the 28th except chat and talk with Sasha. On the 29th, the rain beat down hard on the deck and we hid from the world all morning snuggled in the V berth. Communications reestablished with Sasha, we caught up on her dorm, her roommate, her class schedule, and what she ate for breakfast. Sasha's joy and enthusiasm were infectious, and they pushed aside lingering worries.

We began to prepare for our the continuation of our own adventure. We purchased a text roughly equivalent to a Canadian version of the Coast Pilot. I affixed an american flag to a flagpole to replace the yacht ensign we had been flying from the stern. While a yacht ensign is an acceptable marking for a documented vessel in the US, it would not be in Canada. I found our Canadian curtesy flag and a quarantine flag, and Claudia found the microchip containing Canadian charts to plug into our chart plotter. We listened to the weather and decided to head out on Saturday, August 30. Looking ahead, it would take us at least two days to get to Prince Rupert where we would clear customs and officially enter Canada. I was ready to be back on the water and a change of pace.