Jack and I were having a latish supper after an evening out at Sitka’s new Preforming Arts Center, when there was a knock on the deck. “I was on an Aurora in the Sea of Cortez years ago and I wondered if this was the same boat,” asked a polite young man. “If you mean Al and Barbara’s boat this is the one. Come on board.”Steve Plantz was four or five when his family was moored near the Reichelts in Mexico. His parents were year round cruisers living with their two sons – both homeschooled – on a 32 foot Westsail. That would have been 25 years ago!
Jack and I had just been saying that we needed to find Al and Barb to hear the story of their 14 year circumnavigation. Steve didn’t have much more recent news than us except that they are living on the hard somewhere near Port Hadlock. We’d heard they were always pleased to see Aurora so often away on weekends before disappearing altogether. There most be nothing sadder for cruisers than to sell their boat – their home – and then see it languish at the dock, unoccupied and unused.
Steve had just pulled into Sitka on the Island Spirit, a 30 passenger cruise ship that we were astounded to see tuck into a cove in an otherwise half empty Princess Louisa Inlet. He’s continued his nautical career, passing his 100 T Captain’s exam and serving as Mate on the Island Spirit. It continues to visit out of the way places where larger boats cannot go and smaller dare not. On this trip they take people right up Endicott Arm to Dawes Glacier, entering and leaving at high slack and watching the glacier calve through the turn of the tides.
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