After Kalinen Bay, we cruised on to Sitka. Sitka is a fabulous town, located on the west side of Baranof Island. It is a beautiful town with amazing trails in the surrounding hills. We regrouped after our time in wet, windy weather and quiet anchorages, and spent 8 days in town. We had some rainy days, but we also had a couple of nice days, with one epic sunset.
We had plenty of time to pull together a shopping list, and we took care of the items we could get while we were in town. We invested in foul weather gear to combat the rainy summer we were having. We were getting tired
of our mediocre wet weather gear. The new gear is keeping us nice and dry, and you cannot miss us. We look like two little yellow jacketed twins heading into town. Another notable investment was a small smoker so we could smoke some of our catch.
We went to the raptor center to learn all about the eagles. They normally have groups of about 100-150, but for our visit, our group was about 10-12. The most important thing we learned was that the eagles should not pose a threat to our little kittens, aka cats. They say that they can carry about ½ of their body weight, or about 7-8 pounds. Our cats are now a whopping 12 and 14 pounds, so from the carry off perspective, we are in good shape. But that does not mean they could not hurt them…so we still need to be diligent.
Our trip back to the marina, at the other end of town, we passed by a salmon stream with tons of pink salmon swimming about. The locals we spoke with, however, said that the run was much smaller this year than in previous years. We saw a purse seiner fishing right off the mouth of the river that empties into the sound near the town. They caught so many fish that they could not get them out of the net without assistance. A tender assisted with sucking the fish directly out of the net! The fisherman catch the fish to help the hatchery with eggs, then the fish are sold to a cat food processer.
We visited an old friend we met when we were here in 2018, and got to meet and spend some time with some YouTube followers. Thank you!
Upon our departure, we fueled up, got propane refilled, got engine oil for necessary oil changes and some diesel to work on our diesel heater project. We had a good visit.