The Word of the Day is Immensity

Definition from the Oxford English Dictionary: Immensity (noun) "the extremely large size, scale, or extent of something..."   Synonyms: hugeness, enormous, gigantic, immeasurable, vast.

In my prior life working and living in the Bay Area and Seattle, we, as a culture, and I as a member of that culture, willingly shrank space and time.   I thought nothing of driving 70mph (OK, maybe 85mph) which makes things relatively closer.   It takes little time to drive 30 or 40 miles.   In fact, I thought nothing of driving "over the "Hill" from Santa Cruz to San Jose which is about 26 miles.   I'd drive to San Franciso, about 90 miles away without much thought or planning.   We further collapse space in our news media by reporting on events from around the world as if they are happening in our neighborhood.   I mention that as Alaska is a potent mechanism for space and time readjustment.

Alaska is immense.   The open space goes on and on, the mountains are really tall, the water is really deep, the channels are really long and wide.   The cruise ships look like small bath toys on the horizon.   I can see from where we left this morning out of Thomas Bay all the way to the 7,000' tall mountains around Taku Harbor, approximately 85 miles away.   And it's going to take us about 13 hours of motoring to get there.  Boating like this is not fast.   It's the journey as well as the destination.   I don't miss driving 70, I rather lament the necessity of driving 70 in our culture.

I don't know if you can see it in the picture (left), but the white spot is the Carnival Spirit, a 963' cruise ship lying 6.5 miles away.   It is dwarfed by the 7,000' tall mountains around Tracy Arm.   Those mountains come all the way to the water's edge forming cliffs over 1,000' high.   We will visit this area on our way south.   I can hardly wait!

The fishing fleet was out in force this morning in Thomas Bay.   We had to dodge fishing boats as they were all over dragging nets.   I don't know what kind of fishing they were doing, but in the early morning, their nets were long and nearly invisible stretching from their boats to the shore.   Thank goodness, I didn't run over any of their nets; they would not have been happy with me!

When we left Anacortes in June, I stupidly elected to not bring our dehumidifier.   It is resting safely in my storage locker, while I battle fogged-up windows.   The humidity inside the boat is significant.  Opening the doors to dry out the boat in the rain is a losing strategy.

As we motored northeast in Stephens Passage, Karen spotted whales along the shore.   They were too far away for a meaningful picture, so you'll just have to imagine them.   we did motor right by a sea otter who seemed pretty much non-fazed by our passing so close.

This is the Sumdum glacier on Sumdum Mountain between Tracy Arm and Endicott Arm, just south of Juneau, AK.   It positively glows when the sun hits it.   Pale blue beauty.

Some of you had asked how I can possibly work on the boat.  It's actually quite easy and productive.   The challenge is mostly the real-time demands of the boat, must take precedent over my work, but thus far that has not been a problem.

Karen drives while I'm working.   The only challenging issues are potential conflicts with docking, anchoring, or maneuvers in restricted channels where she needs my help.   Just to be clear, when she is working, I drive and when I need her help, she jumps in and helps.

I have Starlink's high-speed mobile priority service, so I have good Internet everywhere I go (about 20MB/s upload and 225MB/s download).   Not blazingly fast, but a significant improvement over a few years ago where this was nigh but impossible.

Inside the boat, I have my own WIFI network setup, so I have good signal and connectivity from everywhere aboard.

Diner tonight is a Thai chicken curry dish over basmati rice and sauteed red & yellow peppers with green beans.   The wine is a 2017 Brian Carter Cellars Solesce, a Bordeaux style blend and one of my favorite WA wines.   Their tasting room is in downtown Woodinville and it's a wonderful destination stop.