Post by Low Light Mike on Sept 24, 2005 7:57:54 GMT -8
cut/paste from Globe & Mail newspaper....you might find this an interesting read. I would love to do this trip some day.
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Cruising to North America's edge
By GUY NICHOLSON
Saturday, September 17, 2005 Posted at 2:00 AM EDT
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
DUTCH HARBOR, ALASKA — It's an early Saturday morning when the lights of Dutch Harbor finally emerge from the predawn ocean mist. It's a magical moment for everyone aboard the Tustumena.
“A reminder: Those of you leaving staterooms should clear out all your belongings and take them with you,” purser Bob Provost announces over the public address system, savouring the role of bubble-popper. “Don't make me come in there with a fire hose.”
The 250-odd passengers and crew need little coaxing. They've been aboard the 91-metre Alaska state ferry for five days, and Dutch, as it's known to residents and regulars, is no ordinary destination. It's the terminus for the ferry's monthly run down the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian island chain, the farthest west you can go on North America's highway system, including Hawaii.
The Tustumena is a cargo ship or public transit for Alaskans and islanders, and the trip of a lifetime for tourists. They all vie with each other for staterooms, lounge booths, floor space and even tent sites as it wends its way along the coast from as far as Seward to Dutch, which is closer to Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula than to Juneau.
When the wind howls across the waters of the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska, the ferry's top deck may be the wildest campground in the hemisphere.
Six times each summer, the “Trusty Tusty” hauls a shipment of passengers and cargo out to the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutians' canneries, native villages, wildlife refuges and commercial ports, including Dutch. We board at Homer, on the tip of the Kenai Peninsula, which is the end of the road even for most Alaskans. But it's clear that our fellow passengers are the type who like something a little different, even by the oddball standards that pass for normal in this frontier state.
Dieter, for example, is a Swiss adventurer who loves kayaking the Arctic's wide-open spaces and exploring its rugged terrain and historical fur-trade routes. Walter is a former state ferry captain who grew up in a Russian-speaking village on the Kenai. Todd is a fisherman with a fondness for Dr. Pepper and weather trivia. Jane is a great-grandmother who spots more birds than anyone else on the boat. Catherine is a former cop from Fairbanks who wants to rediscover the sense of adventure that first brought her to Alaska from the Lower 48 states.
My travelling companion Christina and I set up on the starboard side of the deck beside Ruth and Robin, who are taking a week-long break from New York's rat race. It's a calm evening in Homer, but we lash our tent to the deck tightly.
Doug Stuart, the Tustumena's resident U.S. Fish & Wildlife expert, exudes a patronly air as he strolls the boat, passing out tips and duct tape to seal the edges of the tents to the deck.
He has been working this route as an auxiliary wildlife interpreter for five years, but he's effectively a member of the crew.
He has seen it all on the top deck: gale-force winds, lost tents, soaked campers. Our strap job passes muster, but he suggests that Ruth and Robin relocate or buckle down. We pass the rest of the tape around and hunker down for the night.
We climb in ready for a sound night's sleep, but have underestimated the resistance that a 15-knot-an-hour ferry meets chugging into a 25-knot headwind.
The tent holds its ground, but the flapping fly keeps us awake until 3 a.m. We finally nod off as the winds ease.
However, the lull comes as we enter a thick fog. The boat's massive horn sounds repeatedly for the next hour, warning smaller boats to the approach of a very large ferry filled with 260 insomniacs.
We reach our first port in the morning: Kodiak, a centuries-old outpost whose first European settlers were Russian fur traders and missionaries. The Russians have been gone for almost 140 years, but hunting and religion are still mainstays; the lobbies of the local sporting goods stores are plastered with photos of hunters astride the carcasses of massive Kodiak bears, and a Macedonian priest from the local seminary college gives us a tour of the Orthodox church on a hill above the dock.
A two-hour hike keeps us on our feet until midafternoon, when we return to the Tustumena fortified with rope and three more rolls of duct tape.
Determined to fuse ourselves to the deck, we literally harness the tent and fly to the railings, to the admiration of our fellow campers.
But as we leave Kodiak's sheltered waters, the winds pick up again. One of Doug's presentations is interrupted by an announcement: Even stronger breezes are expected tonight, and it's recommended that all the campers move under the open-air solarium if possible.
Our tent seems to be holding its own upstairs, but the wind is bending the dome heavily to aft. Even if it holds, we'll be risking another sleepless night. So while the looming storm howls, all our neighbours lend a hand to move us across the floor.
Christina, Ruth and Robin collapse the shelter while I struggle to untie the lashing, and five of us drag the tent to a more sheltered spot. But between the breeze and the spray, it proves impossible to tape ourselves to the deck. It appears we have no option but to pack up and head completely indoors, a discouraging prospect. Suddenly, I remember the rope — two lengths of 20 metres. It's not quite enough to circle the diesel stack, but it gets us to a protruding handle. The other end of the cord is tied to a seat base, and we're finally secure.
Exhausted and protected from the wind, we sleep easily as the ferry chugs across the open Pacific. Still, the rough seas extract their price: We wake up to rough water and our first cases of seasickness as we approach our next port.
We land at Chignik (the Aleut word for “windy”), which relies so heavily on its dockside fish cannery that our passengers' dogs are not allowed off the boat because of the risk of contamination. The secluded harbour has a far more remote feel and, until we're practically upon it, is little more than a speck overwhelmed by the barren mountains rising above it.
Virtually everyone in town — about 50 people — is out to meet us, but it's no social affair. As we file off the boat to stretch our legs, they file on to order cheeseburgers from the Tustumena's galley. Like many other Aleutian outports, Chignik is too small to support its own restaurant.
Back at sea, the sunny afternoon is largely uneventful, although most of the passengers line the upper decks to watch the crew practise with flares and canisters of orange smoke. It's nearly dusk when we pull into Sand Point.
After a heartfelt goodbye for Ruth and Robin, who are getting off to fly back to New York, we investigate our latest port of call, another fishing town. Compared with Chignik, Sand Point is a metropolis: hotel, B & B, swimming pool, tavern. But it's like a ghost town when several dozen ferry passengers wander ashore. We walk along the deserted streets and docks until a couple of shirtless teenagers roar by on an ATV, waving and laughing at our startled expressions.
Our fourth day begins with a stop at King Cove, but we sleep right through the 7 a.m. call. We get up just in time to enter the draw for a bus tour through Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, which surrounds Cold Bay. We both win seats, but the tour is uninspiring. The treeless wetlands are an important transit point for migratory birds, but the scenery is flat and no grizzlies are out.
Cold Bay itself proves more interesting. Built to house 20,000 U.S. troops in case of a Japanese invasion that never came, it's now about the same size as Chignik. But it's loaded with curiosities: The dock is 1.6 kilometres long, the oversized airport runway is a backup landing site for the space shuttle and enterprising residents have built a two-hole golf course.
By this point, days are beginning to blend into the nights. The passengers and meals are always the same, leaving weather, ports of call and quality of sleep as the prime distinguishing markers. Fitting, perhaps, for a ferry named for a glacier. “What day is it?” one passenger asks dopily. But when we finally reach Dutch and its twin town, Unalaska, we are forced to dust off our watches. It's now 8:30 a.m., and we're leaving at 2 p.m. sharp, Bob Provost warns, so be back on time or suffer the consequences.
With barely five hours to spend, nine of us jam into Sheila Taranto's diesel Mercedes van for the dime taxi tour, which actually costs about $24 each. I usually avoid guided tours, but this one proves to be worth every penny.
In many ways, Sheila's the prototype Alaskan: industrious, gritty and brash. Just ask her.
She arrived in Anchorage from Seattle as a divorced mother of two in 1974 and headed north to work on the oil fields at Barrow, where she raked in high wages, opened her own tour company and took tourists to see the wildlife.
“Lost one of my clients to a polar bear. They found his legs inside it,” she offers, to stunned silence.
“That must have been bad for business,” someone at the back of the van finally says.
In Unalaska, she runs her cab business, and the side tours for Tustumena passengers give her an opportunity to extol her community's virtues to a captive audience. Our promised two-hour tour runs closer to four as we blow past the Orthodox church, the seafarers' memorial, scenic vistas, two museums, a mountaintop bunker complex from the Second World War, restaurants, hotels, bars, municipal buildings and fish plants, all worthy of Sheila's praise.
Mindful of the purser's caution, we scarf down lunch and offer quick goodbyes to the passengers who are staying in Dutch or flying home. Four days in the ferry's cramped quarters has proved more than enough to establish a sense of community, even among this diverse crowd, and the quick turnaround is an abrupt loss. Hugs, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses are exchanged.
It's another half-week back to Homer, so we hustle back to the Tustumena to shower and nap. The ferry leaves port for the return voyage at 1:59 p.m., a full minute early.
===============
---------------
Cruising to North America's edge
By GUY NICHOLSON
Saturday, September 17, 2005 Posted at 2:00 AM EDT
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
DUTCH HARBOR, ALASKA — It's an early Saturday morning when the lights of Dutch Harbor finally emerge from the predawn ocean mist. It's a magical moment for everyone aboard the Tustumena.
“A reminder: Those of you leaving staterooms should clear out all your belongings and take them with you,” purser Bob Provost announces over the public address system, savouring the role of bubble-popper. “Don't make me come in there with a fire hose.”
The 250-odd passengers and crew need little coaxing. They've been aboard the 91-metre Alaska state ferry for five days, and Dutch, as it's known to residents and regulars, is no ordinary destination. It's the terminus for the ferry's monthly run down the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian island chain, the farthest west you can go on North America's highway system, including Hawaii.
The Tustumena is a cargo ship or public transit for Alaskans and islanders, and the trip of a lifetime for tourists. They all vie with each other for staterooms, lounge booths, floor space and even tent sites as it wends its way along the coast from as far as Seward to Dutch, which is closer to Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula than to Juneau.
When the wind howls across the waters of the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska, the ferry's top deck may be the wildest campground in the hemisphere.
Six times each summer, the “Trusty Tusty” hauls a shipment of passengers and cargo out to the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutians' canneries, native villages, wildlife refuges and commercial ports, including Dutch. We board at Homer, on the tip of the Kenai Peninsula, which is the end of the road even for most Alaskans. But it's clear that our fellow passengers are the type who like something a little different, even by the oddball standards that pass for normal in this frontier state.
Dieter, for example, is a Swiss adventurer who loves kayaking the Arctic's wide-open spaces and exploring its rugged terrain and historical fur-trade routes. Walter is a former state ferry captain who grew up in a Russian-speaking village on the Kenai. Todd is a fisherman with a fondness for Dr. Pepper and weather trivia. Jane is a great-grandmother who spots more birds than anyone else on the boat. Catherine is a former cop from Fairbanks who wants to rediscover the sense of adventure that first brought her to Alaska from the Lower 48 states.
My travelling companion Christina and I set up on the starboard side of the deck beside Ruth and Robin, who are taking a week-long break from New York's rat race. It's a calm evening in Homer, but we lash our tent to the deck tightly.
Doug Stuart, the Tustumena's resident U.S. Fish & Wildlife expert, exudes a patronly air as he strolls the boat, passing out tips and duct tape to seal the edges of the tents to the deck.
He has been working this route as an auxiliary wildlife interpreter for five years, but he's effectively a member of the crew.
He has seen it all on the top deck: gale-force winds, lost tents, soaked campers. Our strap job passes muster, but he suggests that Ruth and Robin relocate or buckle down. We pass the rest of the tape around and hunker down for the night.
We climb in ready for a sound night's sleep, but have underestimated the resistance that a 15-knot-an-hour ferry meets chugging into a 25-knot headwind.
The tent holds its ground, but the flapping fly keeps us awake until 3 a.m. We finally nod off as the winds ease.
However, the lull comes as we enter a thick fog. The boat's massive horn sounds repeatedly for the next hour, warning smaller boats to the approach of a very large ferry filled with 260 insomniacs.
We reach our first port in the morning: Kodiak, a centuries-old outpost whose first European settlers were Russian fur traders and missionaries. The Russians have been gone for almost 140 years, but hunting and religion are still mainstays; the lobbies of the local sporting goods stores are plastered with photos of hunters astride the carcasses of massive Kodiak bears, and a Macedonian priest from the local seminary college gives us a tour of the Orthodox church on a hill above the dock.
A two-hour hike keeps us on our feet until midafternoon, when we return to the Tustumena fortified with rope and three more rolls of duct tape.
Determined to fuse ourselves to the deck, we literally harness the tent and fly to the railings, to the admiration of our fellow campers.
But as we leave Kodiak's sheltered waters, the winds pick up again. One of Doug's presentations is interrupted by an announcement: Even stronger breezes are expected tonight, and it's recommended that all the campers move under the open-air solarium if possible.
Our tent seems to be holding its own upstairs, but the wind is bending the dome heavily to aft. Even if it holds, we'll be risking another sleepless night. So while the looming storm howls, all our neighbours lend a hand to move us across the floor.
Christina, Ruth and Robin collapse the shelter while I struggle to untie the lashing, and five of us drag the tent to a more sheltered spot. But between the breeze and the spray, it proves impossible to tape ourselves to the deck. It appears we have no option but to pack up and head completely indoors, a discouraging prospect. Suddenly, I remember the rope — two lengths of 20 metres. It's not quite enough to circle the diesel stack, but it gets us to a protruding handle. The other end of the cord is tied to a seat base, and we're finally secure.
Exhausted and protected from the wind, we sleep easily as the ferry chugs across the open Pacific. Still, the rough seas extract their price: We wake up to rough water and our first cases of seasickness as we approach our next port.
We land at Chignik (the Aleut word for “windy”), which relies so heavily on its dockside fish cannery that our passengers' dogs are not allowed off the boat because of the risk of contamination. The secluded harbour has a far more remote feel and, until we're practically upon it, is little more than a speck overwhelmed by the barren mountains rising above it.
Virtually everyone in town — about 50 people — is out to meet us, but it's no social affair. As we file off the boat to stretch our legs, they file on to order cheeseburgers from the Tustumena's galley. Like many other Aleutian outports, Chignik is too small to support its own restaurant.
Back at sea, the sunny afternoon is largely uneventful, although most of the passengers line the upper decks to watch the crew practise with flares and canisters of orange smoke. It's nearly dusk when we pull into Sand Point.
After a heartfelt goodbye for Ruth and Robin, who are getting off to fly back to New York, we investigate our latest port of call, another fishing town. Compared with Chignik, Sand Point is a metropolis: hotel, B & B, swimming pool, tavern. But it's like a ghost town when several dozen ferry passengers wander ashore. We walk along the deserted streets and docks until a couple of shirtless teenagers roar by on an ATV, waving and laughing at our startled expressions.
Our fourth day begins with a stop at King Cove, but we sleep right through the 7 a.m. call. We get up just in time to enter the draw for a bus tour through Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, which surrounds Cold Bay. We both win seats, but the tour is uninspiring. The treeless wetlands are an important transit point for migratory birds, but the scenery is flat and no grizzlies are out.
Cold Bay itself proves more interesting. Built to house 20,000 U.S. troops in case of a Japanese invasion that never came, it's now about the same size as Chignik. But it's loaded with curiosities: The dock is 1.6 kilometres long, the oversized airport runway is a backup landing site for the space shuttle and enterprising residents have built a two-hole golf course.
By this point, days are beginning to blend into the nights. The passengers and meals are always the same, leaving weather, ports of call and quality of sleep as the prime distinguishing markers. Fitting, perhaps, for a ferry named for a glacier. “What day is it?” one passenger asks dopily. But when we finally reach Dutch and its twin town, Unalaska, we are forced to dust off our watches. It's now 8:30 a.m., and we're leaving at 2 p.m. sharp, Bob Provost warns, so be back on time or suffer the consequences.
With barely five hours to spend, nine of us jam into Sheila Taranto's diesel Mercedes van for the dime taxi tour, which actually costs about $24 each. I usually avoid guided tours, but this one proves to be worth every penny.
In many ways, Sheila's the prototype Alaskan: industrious, gritty and brash. Just ask her.
She arrived in Anchorage from Seattle as a divorced mother of two in 1974 and headed north to work on the oil fields at Barrow, where she raked in high wages, opened her own tour company and took tourists to see the wildlife.
“Lost one of my clients to a polar bear. They found his legs inside it,” she offers, to stunned silence.
“That must have been bad for business,” someone at the back of the van finally says.
In Unalaska, she runs her cab business, and the side tours for Tustumena passengers give her an opportunity to extol her community's virtues to a captive audience. Our promised two-hour tour runs closer to four as we blow past the Orthodox church, the seafarers' memorial, scenic vistas, two museums, a mountaintop bunker complex from the Second World War, restaurants, hotels, bars, municipal buildings and fish plants, all worthy of Sheila's praise.
Mindful of the purser's caution, we scarf down lunch and offer quick goodbyes to the passengers who are staying in Dutch or flying home. Four days in the ferry's cramped quarters has proved more than enough to establish a sense of community, even among this diverse crowd, and the quick turnaround is an abrupt loss. Hugs, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses are exchanged.
It's another half-week back to Homer, so we hustle back to the Tustumena to shower and nap. The ferry leaves port for the return voyage at 1:59 p.m., a full minute early.
===============
