Thursday 23 Jun 22 - Pavlof Harbor to Hoonah Harbor

Sun Jun 26 2022

Thursday morning I fetched the crab traps with the dinghy and found nothing but old bait. Not even a star fish. I’m getting a bit suspicious that wherever I see those big yellow jelly fish things there aren’t going to be any crabs. A commercial crabber had set a few traps in the bay in various depths and the shallow ones were easily visible from the surface. No crabs. Can’t win ‘em all, so after stowing the traps and hoisting the dinghy to the sundeck roof, we weighed anchor and got underway for Hoonah. Time for a new adventure!

It’s key to arrive in a marina before the wind comes up and hopefully the tidal flow will be mellow enough that slipping the boat won’t be too big a challenge. Also vessels leaving are generally supposed to be gone by noon, so arriving by 1300 increases our odds of getting a slip before our rivals arrive and fill the place up. Our early morning departure worked just right, as we traversed the 36 miles up the Chatham Strait, hanging a left into the Icy Straight then another left around Point Sophia before proceeding down past Cannery Point and into the entrance to the breakwater. We hailed the Harbormaster on the VHF and he asked us to stand by for a few minutes while he finished his lunch and consulted his slip assignment chart. A few minutes later we had our slip assignment and as Isabel prepared the warps and fenders I maneuvered us slowly into the marina basin and down the proper fairway. We passed MV Mae Marie just up the float from where we would end up, and soon we were nicely tucked in to stall FMF just at the base of the ramp. We plugged in our 30 amp cable and shifted into “almost dirt house mode”.

Sunset has proven to be a very comfortable mobile home, a rather large tiny house with a big saloon, a very comfortable and capacious master cabin, a galley that Isabel is quite pleased with, two full heads and a sizable forward guest cabin with a nice V-berth. There is a plethora of storage in various lockers and we have pretty much everything we own aboard. For as long as we’re on her, Sunset is our home, and wherever she is moored or anchored, that’s where we live. For now, we live in Alaska.

We became full time live-aboard boat people in June 2014, and except for several months in the Summer of 2015 and 2016 while I worked for Near Earth Autonomy in Pittsburgh, we’ve been on the boat. We did put her away for hurricane season in the Summer of 2016, 2017 and 2018 in Marina San Carlos on the Mexico mainland a few hours South of the Arizona border. Our plan was always to prep her for storage by mid-June, then return to her in late September. That worked out well, and provided the opportunity for us to travel or work as passage crew moving a friend’s Superyacht. We liked that life and lived well within our budget.

When we left our professional careers in 2014 we moved our residency from Arizona to Florida, primarily because of a highly reputable mail forwarding service called St. Brendan’s Isle. That family run business is located in Green Cove Springs about an hour drive from Jacksonville. St. Brendan’s Isle has thousands of clients - traveling nurses and other skilled workers of all sorts, retirees who live and travel in motor homes, boat cruising sorts like ourselves, all gypsies who either go where the work is or where the fun and nice weather are. We visited the facility in 2014 and after meeting the management and a few employees we proceed to the local Department of Motor Vehicles office where we were issued drivers licenses and registered to vote, making us official Florida residents. That move offered a couple of bonuses. Florida doesn’t have income tax, and until we brought the boat to the state we wouldn’t be liable for property taxes on her. Florida also makes it easy to purchase a vehicle somewhere else and sort out the title and license plate without bringing the vehicle back to Florida first. Finally we realized that with the Affordable Care Act, we had excellent and competitive choices for health insurance. Notice I didn’t say cheap, as health insurance and the cost of health care in America is one of the most ridiculous parts of American society. Nevertheless, because of Florida’s large population we were able to get “competitive” rates, and being without decent health insurance in this country is a great way to go broke. Isabel’s parents stopped visiting us in the US when they got to the age that they couldn’t purchase affordable traveler’s health insurance, as an illness or trauma where they ended up in an American hospital might have consumed their life savings.

We’ve been happy with our arrangement with the State of Florida, and it also keeps the Internal Revenue Service happy as a US Citizen has to have an address to file federal income taxes. The IRS is happy with the mailbox address we have, and so are other US government agencies such as the Customs and Border Protection folks. However, the financial services industry (FINRA) has even stricter standards and demand a physical domicile address. After reviewing our own situation, we were allowed to file a next of kin home address to satisfy their own standards. All that said, we’ve become less and less excited about the thought of eventually becoming Florida residents, and after racking our brains we haven’t identified any other state in the US where we’d like to call home either seasonally or when we’re done exploring the world by boat. We love the climate in Hawaii, but the locals still view folks like us as uninvited trespassers.

We’ve only been in Alaska for about a month, but in that time we’ve seen such amazing natural beauty that we’ve been left breathless more than once. We’ve been feeding ourselves with halibut and crabs and soon we’ll start catching salmon. Virtually everyone we’ve met has been incredibly friendly, and the towns we’ve visited (with the exception of Hoonah) have had lovely public libraries and community gyms. We haven’t visited the Juneau area yet but Auke Bay also sounds like an interesting place, as the University of Alaska has a campus there. I grew up on a university campus and the thought of eventually living near one is stimulating. University towns always seem to be thoughtful places were diversity of opinion is valued and encouraged. Maybe Auke Bay is like that.

Ultimately until we figure out what’s going to happen with our sailboat JollyDogs, Sunset is our home and we expect to Winter her in Alaska. Until we visit Juneau we won’t make a firm decision, but it’s looking like we’ll be slipping her in Wrangell by September, where we’ll have her shrink wrapped and a caretaker inspecting her weekly when we’re away. We do expect to do some travel to the UK to see friends and family later this year, and we’ve made it a goal to explore Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam. Another season in Alaska for 2023 is looking really good. In the meantime we’ll follow the progress of the Seawind 1370 production, monitor the global economy and regional political stability and ultimately make a firm purchase decision for a new sailboat.

Don’t be too surprised if we tell Florida goodbye and become legal residents in Alaska somewhere along the way. There’s enough room to spread out here.