Juneau harbors

Bill and Chelsea's former sailboat

Bill and Chelsea's new cabin

The other day our friends Bill and Chelsea took us down to Auk Harbor to show us the sailboat that was their home for two years. It sounds like Chelsea bought the sailboat as a live-aboard on a bit of a whim while on a trip to Juneau a few years ago. They lived on it in Auk Harbor for two years and even though they had heard horror stories of things that can go wrong on boats, it treated them well (most likely because they are very handy and were able to fix everything that went wrong themselves, and the boat was well-insulated). Now they have sold the sailboat and live in an adorable cabin on a piece of property they bought out the road from Juneau.

Their cabin is pretty tiny (even smaller than the one Natasha and I shared in Fairbanks two summers ago) and it does not have running water. This would not be out of the ordinary for Fairbanks but Bill said not many people live like this in Juneau! It's a great piece of property with a little salmon stream and lots of blueberries (and as a result, the frequent black bear).

When we walked around the harbor at Auk Bay, I was shocked at the number of yachts (first I was surprised at the number of harbors in Juneau). Given that Kodiak has the largest fishing fleet in the nation, I didn't think Juneau would have so many more harbors than Kodiak. What I hadn't really considered was that Juneau lies in very protected waters, making it easy for people to have pleasure boats, and it is much closer to the rest of North America than Kodiak is. It made me glad that Kodiak is in the middle of the North Pacific.