We Might be Sailors
On Wednesday morning we woke to a note from our ship’s captain that had been slipped under our door and the odd sensation that our boat was no longer moving. The note informed us that we were anchored somewhere outside of Petersburg, Alaska due to fog and where waiting for both the fog and tide to cooperate before we could proceed on our route. Half awake, we looked outside to find that we were in fact not moving and were completely engulfed in a thick grey fog.
The note we woke up to with the view from our cabin window in the background.
Our itinerary listed three port calls for this day. The first two were Petersburg and Wrangell and were originally scheduled to happen between the hours of 1am and 5am. Pat and I had chalked the first two early morning stops up as a loss and were looking forward to the longer scheduled stop in Ketchikan later that afternoon. The loud speaker announcements informed us that the vessel was able to make it’s scheduled port call in Petersburg but the fog had prevented it from continuing on to Wrangell.
Pat sat on the deck enjoying some coffee and watched as the fog slowly dissipated. It was starting to clear up when we heard the engines of the M/V Columbia fire up. We were moving again! The load speaker can on again to inform us that we would be arriving in Wrangell in about an hour and they would only be at port for about 20 minutes for an expedited offload/load before continuing to Ketchikan. Pat and I decided to make the most of our short time in Wrangell, laced up our running shoes and headed to the lower deck once the dock was in sight.
After receiving a few very stern warnings from crew members that the boat would in fact leave us if we were not back to the vessel before the last car was loaded, we set out on a very quick but satisfying 0.4 mile run in Wrangell. Once back on the ship we ran some stairs and did some impromptu calisthenics to complete our “ferry fitness” plan for the day.
The morning fog had burned off by this time and we were treated to a beautifully sunny tour of Southeast Alaska. We sat out on the sun-soaked deck of the ferry reading and taking in the sights most of the afternoon. Our scheduled stop in Ketchikan had been abbreviated to make up for the fog delay earlier that morning, but we made the most of our 30 minutes at port by walking around the harbor and making a quick stop at Safeway to restock on supplies.
Once we returned to the ship, we decided to treat ourselves to a non-sandwich and non-microwaved dinner at the restaurant on-board and take in the beautiful sunset. While our day had not gone as originally envisioned, this had been one of the most fun days on our adventure thus far.
