The first time I saw Starr swinging at anchor outside of Kaneohe Yacht Club I was impressed by how immaculate she was. Everything was perfect. All of her finishes gleamed. Her stainless steel was blemish free. It looked like you could eat off of the engine room floor. She was in “boat show” condition. That’s how the Stabberts keep her looking, and that takes a bit of effort. As I mentioned in an earlier post,...
0800 position 60-07N 149-36W. Seward Small Boat Harbor Starr powered the length of Marmot Bay and at 9AM made the turn at Marmot Island leaving Kodiak and Afognak Islands behind. It was a cloudless windless day for our 100 mile crossing of the Gulf of Alaska outside Cook Inlet. We passed a number of logs and mats of floating debris mixed with kelp, more than we’ve seen elsewhere on the voyage. The birds were out in...
June 14, 930AM position 58-11N 151-46W. Marmot Island abeam to port, 1 mile distant.Lori emailed and asked me to include info on Starr’s position and daily run when I blog. I keep forgetting to provide that information, but if you want to know where we are at any time, just click on http://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Starr. This is a case sensitive link. We are a power boat that goes eight knots in almost all conditions. Starr will do...
I took a four hour nap after getting off watch at 4AM, and came up to the wheelhouse in the morning to find Starr landlocked in a maze of channels between the Alaskan peninsula and some offshore islands.We had intended to head up the coast well offshore, but we met a fisherman in Dutch Harbor who was kind enough to come down to the boat and mark up our charts showing us the favored routes...
A few thoughts about Dutch Harbor.There isn’t much to do here in town. The Wi-Fi is glacial. The cell phone service is spotty at best. The winter month are dark, dark, dark. Kids need to use a flashlight to find their way home after school.The air service is hit and miss. During the 4 days we have been here the Alaska Airline flights have been canceled for days at a time due to fog and...
We tried all day yesterday to get Kyle and Sharry out on a plane, but the fog was so bad that all five flights into and out of Dutch Harbor got cancelled. We all spent the day in a holding pattern with multiple trips to the airport. Team Starr made the best of it though. Don cooked a great pot roast for dinner and we had movie night in Starr’s salon watching one of my...
The crew enjoyed a full uninterrupted night’s sleep for the first time in eleven days. After we got up, Clay cooked breakfast making us southern style cheesy grits, eggs, bacon, and toast.The pier we are tied to is as far from anything as you can get in Dutch Harbor, well beyond walking distance, so organizing ground transportation was our first priority. “Bong”, the Philippino fuel attendant who had helped us load diesel the night before,...
As we approached Unalaska Island yesterday the sea life around the boat increased significantly. We saw some kind of whale cutting the surface about a hundred yards away, but couldn’t tell what kind it was. A quick glance at our Alaska marine mammal reference indicated that there are more than a dozen Whale species that frequent these waters this time a year, and it could have been any of them. Some small dolphin jumped in...
V Starr is underway on her adventure to Alaska! We cast off from the Waikiki Yacht Club this morning at 810AM, and as I write this we are moseying north along the Waianae coast about a mile offshore. Starr’s cruising speed is a bit less than eight knots. We can go faster, up to about thirteen knots, but at the higher speeds we burn a lot of fuel and would run out half way across...