“Freedom is something that dies unless it’s used.” ―Hunter S. Thompson
Our ship, Celebrity Summit, is sailing out of Cape Liberty. The cruise port is located in Bayonne, NJ and is part of the New York Harbor with views of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the Statue of Liberty and all of lower Manhattan. We’ve cruised in and out of New York Harbor on The Pearl seven times, but this time Stan can actually relax and take in the view. No matter how many times we come through this harbor it’s still exciting and feels surreal. There are so many things to see and so much to take in.
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July 7 – Day One: The Adventure Begins
Bermuda Adventure
“Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think.” —Robert Henri
We’re going on a cruise, but not on The Pearl. This time we’re cruising out of NYC to Bermuda on Celebrity’s Summit, with 2,156 of our closest friends. 😂 Well…you know that’s not exactly true, but maybe a few will be friends by the end of the cruise. We’re going to be one of the masses on this trip.
Lake Pihlajavesi
The Saimaa Ringed Seal are among the most endangered in the world, with a current population below 400 animals. They have been isolated from other Ring Seal species for nearly 10,000 years when the the land rose in the last ice age, and are one of the few living freshwater seals. Sightings are rare, but…
Wrangell
Saying goodby to the small hamlet of Myers Chuck, we have another beautiful day as we enter Ernest Sound. It is only May and the temperatures are in the 70’s with bright sun. We stop for several hours in search of a Halibut. We catch several nice size Rockfish. The largest is a Yelloweye weighing […]
Imatra
Imatrankoski, the rapids on the Vuoksi River, have been a tourist attraction since the late 1700s and are one of 27 “National Landscapes of Finland” selected for their great symbolic value and cultural or historical significance. Since 1929 the rapids have been blocked by the Imatra Hydroelectric Plant, but the dam is regularly opened in…
Punkaharju Ridge
The Punkaharju Ridge near Savonlinna is a centuries-old travel route formed about 10,000 years ago when the continental glacier receded in eastern Finland. The natural beauty of the area has attracted tourists for two centuries and today the region is protected as a nature reserve and has been designated one of 27 “National Landscapes of…
Savonlinna
The Swedish began building Olavinlinna castle in 1475 to strengthen their eastern border with Russia, and the town of Savonlinna grew up around the fortification. Today the city of 33,000 hosts the Savonlinna Opera Festival at Olavinlinna, annually drawing about 60,0000 visitors. Savonlinna also is the home port of Finland’s largest fleet of historic steamships,…
Trying for a Three-peat
With a forecast for 4 foot seas on the outside waters, we departed Sitka on Friday, June 21 to fish near Cape Edgecumbe. Marcia had heard that it was the current “hot” area. The several dozen boats, about half of which were guide fishing boats, certainly confirmed that a lot of locals thought it was the place to be. Sadly, the salmon did not think it so “hot” and had gone elsewhere.
After a night in the cove outside the entrance to De Groff Bay, the next morning we tried Dog Point for the early bite, but nobody bit. We were “oh for four” with our Sitka fishing efforts so we decided to head back to Chatham Strait which had proved productive a week earlier.
We retraced the previous steps we took to Sitka, this time substituting Ell Cove for Takatz Bay, before we reached the fishing area in Chatham Strait on Monday, June 24. After about an hour of trolling, Marcia had a hit on her line and reeled in a 32-inch, 15-pound chinook salmon.
The Alaska annual non-resident limit for chinook salmon is three fish if caught before July 1 but only one if caught after. Marcia figured she had six more days to get that last fish and was determined to try.
After anchoring the night in Gut Bay, we went back out into Chatham early the next morning. The weather pattern had changed and a blocking ridge in the Gulf of Alaska brought an end to the rain that we had seen earlier. Unfortunately, better weather often means higher winds on inside waters. The winds can either be afternoon sea breezes driven by warm land and cool waters or the prevailing northerlies of building high pressure. In any event, the forecast for Chatham Strait was now 15 knot winds and 3-foot seas. Where we were fishing it was a steady 15-20 knots with short choppy seas because the flood current was opposing the wind. After about 2 hours of fishing with no action, we called it.
We tried again the next day but the winds and seas were the same or a little bit worse so we decided to head into Fredrick Sound looking for quieter conditions and perhaps a halibut. While we found light winds and calmer seas, after fishing two locations we had no halibut to show for the effort.
With Marcia’s chinook salmon clock running out, we headed back into Chatham on Friday, June 28 and anchored the night in Security Bay on Kuiu Island. A half-hour after we dropped the anchor, the 5-10 NW winds in the anchorage clocked around to 10-15 SE winds and stayed there the entire night.
The next morning, we headed out hoping for the best but by the time we reached Kingsmill Point on Kuiu Island the 15-20 S winds convinced us that it wasn’t safe for us to fish. Even if we were lucky enough to hook a fish we couldn’t safely land it as it requires standing on the swim step to net the fish.
With two king salmon in the freezer, we changed our plans and headed up Chatham aiming for Juneau. After stops in Ell Cove and Funter Bay we arrived in Juneau on July 1.
Last year we had an extended stay in Juneau necessitated by waiting for a furnace part to be repaired. We ended up having a wonderful time. We’ve decided to repeat that this year voluntarily. Our guests, Debbie & John Wick, arrive on Sunday July 7. We plan on departing Tuesday, July 9. We’ll do a week in Glacier Bay, do some more fishing in Chatham and Fredrick Sound, visit the Pack Creek Bear Observatory and end their visit at Petersburg on Saturday, July 27.
June Updates
Allan H. Treman State Marine Park
“In every conceivable manner, the family is a link to our past and a bridge to our future.” – Alex Haley
Wow hard to believe June is over and July is here. Summer has finally arrived in upstate New York…warmer temperatures and more sunshine, so the summer is in full swing. Hopefully this trend will stick around for awhile.
As I’ve posted before blogging is a little difficult when you stay in one place…one day blends into the next and it just doesn’t seem like we’re doing anything blog worthy. We’ve enjoyed the company of family and friends this season and we’ve had a great time showing all of them the sights. We’ve had our grandson, Graham, onboard twice in June. Once on his own and another time while his whole family was here. Even our little Cora got to spend three nights on the boat with us…she did great. We all had a lot of fun.
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ENVOY AROUND CORFU
Leaving Parga on Greece’s mainland coast we cruise further up to Mourtos – one of Di’s favorite shopping areas and also one of mine as they have an excellent hardware store and more importantly a great bakery with delicious chocolate cakes.
Parga harbour viewed from castle
Parga harbour viewed from castle
At many of these small boat harbors it’s quite difficult to find a place to leave your tender as nowhere provides a designated area and you have to find a spot among the local small fishing boats. There is no real concern about theft, just finding a vacant spot.
The first night at Mourtos there’s a lot of lightning in the distance and this is always a bit disconcerting because if a thunderstorm arrives it can often bring nasty squalls and wind shifts. Our only few bad nights aboard Envoy have been during thunderstorms, but fortunately this one stays well away.
Another night we return to Envoy from ashore to find a yacht anchored much too close to us – at times only four metres away. We put out fenders but don’t actually touch during the night.
We cruise over to Petriti on the island of Corfu stopping on the way to anchor off the Levkimmi Canal and take the dinghy up about a mile to the sleepy village of Levkimmi for lunch. We’d done this before with Frank and Marie but not with Chris.
Chris and Laurie moor the RHIB at Levkimmi canal
Our Naiad hydraulic stabilisers aren’t operational at this point, but it’s been so calm that so far we’ve only deployed our other paravane system – the “Birds” once. During this time we tried deploying just one “Bird”, something we’ve never done before. Using one certainly reduces roll but induces a lean to the side it’s deployed so we didn’t like it – if we wanted to cruise along on a lean we’d have bought a sailing yacht!
We spend a couple of nights anchored off Petriti and have a great evening ashore at a restaurant overlooking Envoy’s anchorage to celebrate our 48th wedding anniversary.
By now we’ve run all of Envoy’s equipment except for the watermaker (which we plan to use a bit later when Envoy’s new owners join us for a couple of weeks) and everything is working well except for the Naiads and the B&G Network wind.
Our new air horn installed late last year wasn’t working properly and we found that its air supply tubes had kinked and blocked the air supply. It was an easy matter to replace the tubes with new slightly shorter ones to prevent it kinking again and then it worked fine.
Leaving Petriti we cruise north stopping to anchor off Gouvia town, then Kalami, Ormos Ay Stefanos and Avalaki.
View from the Durell’s White House in Kalami
During this time Chris and I spend some time trying to find the cause of a very small fresh water leak inside the main head’s storage cabinet. It turned out to be a leaking anti-syphon valve for the toilet. I didn’t even know this valve was there and it was a bit tricky to remove – but we did so and it’s now cleaned up and working properly again ready to be re-installed.
Chris working on our leaking anti-syphon valve and close-up of the valve
There’s a few super yachts around including this Australian-owned one with a helo on its foredeck
Chris and Laurie with busker in traditional costume
We spend four nights in Corfu’s Gouvia marina to sort out a couple of technical issues left over from last year. While there we catch up with Bruce and Gavin from catamaran Midi and have a great night out at a Corfu restaurant, which is a bit different as you just write down what you want to eat and mostly they have it available.
Last year we left our BandG Network Wind instrument with a technician – Dimitris – to fix. Several months ago we’d sent him an eye watering 600 Euros for parts and he says it fixed and ready to install.
So up the mast he goes and fits the sensor. “Is it working?” he shouts down. “No” I reply – dammit!
So next day he arranges for two technicians from the B&G local agents to take a look. These guys seemed to have a methodical approach and were able to fix it within an hour, so all was well. I could have bought a new unit for less than 600 Euros, but the one we have is part of a network and also has a useful built-in battery voltage monitor which new ones don’t have.
On Friday 21 June two technicians arrive from Athens to investigate why our Naiad hydraulic stabilisers are making loud banging noises when in use. Dimitris is an electrician and Konstantinos a mechanic – both very nice, competent and hard-working guys.
Laurie with Dimitris and Konstantinos
After checking the system over we start it in the marina and the loud knocking noises soon start.
A couple of years ago we had a modification done by the same company to lock the fins in the central position when de-energised. This was to avoid the need to manually lock the fins in their central position when anchored in rolly conditions so they don’t bang from side to side. Dimitris has a theory that the valves fitted to achieve this central locking were the wrong ones and they are causing over-heating the hydraulic fluid leading to the knocking noises. So they remove the centring valve on the port side and the knocking noises disappear. In fact they seem to disappear on both sides. We do an hour long sea trial and they work perfectly. They also re-route the Naiad’s oil cooler hoses as they were very close to the Lugger’s lagged exhaust. This wasn’t a danger but was affecting the cooling. Next day they remove the centring valve on the starboard side and we do a sea trial about 90 minutes long with the system working well. Since then we have cruised for several hours, including one nine hour cruise with quite a swell running and all is working well. The plan going forward is for these guys to obtain the correct valves from USA and fit them when we come back to Greece from Italy in September. So that was excellent news too as it’s a great deal easier switching on the hydraulic stabilisers than deploying the “Birds”. I still can’t fully understand why the system worked fine for several months after the centring valves were installed. Dimitris tried to explain to me it was something to do with the valve’s internal springs but full meaning was lost in language and my lack of technical understanding.
Next Post – our visit to Albania.
