Fixing your boat in exotic places

The title say's it all. For much of the past week, that's just what we've been doing. Not all though - you know us. We have a hard time working too hard for very long.

We spent a night at Roche Harbor and anchored in the bay just outside the marina. The place was full of large motor yachts - Selenes. They were having a Rendevous and the place was crawling with owners, vendors, speakers and locals come to see all the pretty boats. Because of the crowds, we were unable to pursue a geocache that's located near the little store (a vendor's pavilion was sitting right on top of it). We were however, able to find one at the mausoleum a short, very pleasant walk up the hill. See the picture above. As you can see, it's a lovely location to spend eternity. Inside the arches is a cement table with cement chairs with names and dates etched into them. The writeup for the geocache says that the deceased ashes are mixed into the cement of the chairs. A nice place to spend eternity and, people can rest their weary bones for a bit on your ashes!

We left Roche Harbor and moved over to Reid Harbor on Stuart Island. Thats where the 'fixing boats in exotic places' comes in (though I don't know how exotic Reid Harbor is). We spend a night anchored and tried our hand at another geocache - a Did Not Find. We tromped all over that little island and found nary a trace of a geocache. We think its been removed. Then we moved over to a floating dock that doesn't have a connection to shore. We had the place to ourselves. The Sibs had the run of the dock and we were able to pull the dinghy up and apply the new registration numbers we'd brought back from home. I know, I know, we've been down here for 4 months, how come we didn't do this before? Well, the contact cement for hypalon needed 65-75 degree temps to cure properly. This was the first time we'd had the opportunity to get the boat out of the water and work on it when the temp was right. We also took the opportunity to replace the dinghy's name and home port (Yeil - Tlingit for Raven) with new, pretty red and black letters. Then we broke out the sander and proceded to sand and Cetol (a kind of varnish) everything that didn't move (good thing the Sibs are so fast!). Then, we tidied up the boat just in case Canadian Customs wanted to come down and inspect us.

We checked into Canada yesterday here at Sydney (no inspection) and spent the day wandering and shopping our way around the downtown area. Sydney is a nice little town with a, seemingly, aging population. Seems like every third person we see is in their 70's or 80's. Is this where older Canadians come to retire? Could be... In any case, it makes for a compact, easy to navigate downtown. We tried our hand at another geocache (a Find!) and just enjoyed walking around the town.

David and Christine and Sibs
SV Raven
Juneau, AK

Currently lying, Sidney Marina, Sydney BC