Adrift and bikeless (for now)

Sorry, no bike stuff for this post. The picture above shows my home for the past couple of days as I traveled from Juneau to Haines with a team of archaeologists surveying shipwreck sites in Lynn Canal.

I don’t dive. I write. In this case, I’ll be writing an article about the work these guys are doing—diving in 41-degree water to document the remains of old wrecks, as well as the environmental conditions and marine life around them.
We spent Friday afternoon anchored off Eldred Rock lighthouse, which was built a few years after the Clara Nevada either ran aground or exploded here in 1898. Nobody knows exactly what happened. A fireball was seen on a February night when the wind was blowing 80 mph and no help was coming. All that was found later was wreckage and bodies.

Tomorrow I’ll move to Sitka, where a bike awaits. If the weather holds, I hope to join the Sunday morning shop ride with the folks from Yellow Jersey Cycles. I need the exercise to work off tonight’s mountain of halibut, which I washed down with a Haines Eldred Rock Amber.

Why not end this post on a high note? Here’s the funniest warning label I found aboard the Curlew. It was on the hydraulic crane we used to lift an 18-foot skiff on and off the forward deck. I thought the warning looked like something you’d see on “The Simpsons.”Whir. Crunch. Thud.

DOH!