Summer Madness (Kool & The Gang, 1974)

This picture was provided by astute blog reader, Carolyn, who shares a similar sense of humor with me.  The movie is 1964 "Dr. Strangelove or How I learned to stop Worrying and Love the Bomb".   While it starred Peter Sellers, the actor in this picture is Slim Pickens.  After yesterday's unofficial non-declaration of war with Iran, I thought this quite fitting.   I hope it isn't prophetic.

And it was a terrifyingly great movie.   Gave me nightmares, really...

Now on to boating and adventuring...

We had a leisurely 0845 (8:45am) departure this morning from Thomas Basin Marina in Ketchikan.  This marina is immediately south of the cruise ship docks, as you can see in this picture.   We had to scoot almost under the bow to get out of the harbor mouth as they were blocking about half of it.

Orca in Tongass Narrows, that's the channel that runs through Ketchikan.

We saw this pod of five Orca or so as we were heading north.

Yesterday, we met Marc whose son runs Wildview Alaska Tours out of Ketchikan.   This morning, as we passed his home, he sent us some photos of us from his deck.   Thanks, Marc!   So, we returned the favor!  See you on our return journey in late July.

The lighthouse at Guard Islands, just north of Ketchikan.   The channel behind the lighthouse, runs straight out to the North Pacific Ocean.

No swell today, nice and flat.   I'll take it!

Other than dodging logs and trees, this has been a post card kind of day.  Perfect weather, no wind, no waves, clear blue sky, and about 65 degrees, so it's nice and warm up in the enclosed flybridge.  We even had to open some of the panels to get some cool air in.

With the weather so perfect, we elected to bypass one of my favorite stops, Meyers Chuck, in favor of continuing further.   We want to have some goof-off time once we are closer to Sitka.   We will catch Meyers Chuck on the way back south.

Our new destination for tonight is Exchange Cove, on the northeast corner of Prince of Wales Island in Kashevarof Passage.   We haven't been there, and we are up for the adventure!

Four more hours to go.

And we found whales.   Humpback whales, maybe 6 of them bubble-net feeding right beside our boat.  Maybe 100 yards to starboard.   We've never seen this before, so a very special day, indeed!

We pull into Exchange Cove dodging kelp and floating seaweed rafts as we make our way to as far back as we can get.  This bay has an extensive drying mud flat and we need to be wary.  We are the only boat here, how lovely!

To celebrate our day, Karen is making Asiago Tortellini in a Pomodoro Alfredo sauce with spicy Italian sausage.   

To accompany that, I pulled out a Long Cellars 2022 KYFFO.  KYFFO is an acronym for Keep Your F*** Fingers Off, which is what Jason Long's Mom used to tell him when he was a kid, or so the story goes.   This is great wine.

In spite of all of this, I'm down to 169 now.   5-ish more pounds to go and I'm at my target.   That's about 35lbs down from my former too-fat self.   Now to just keep it off!

This was today's Lio comic.   I picked it up from the Washinton Post.   Since they submit comics weeks in advance, how did they know?

An appropriate bookend to the cover picture, don't you think?