Halibut Cove

Picture by Steve or maybe Martha

The Stormbird took us across the bay to Halibut Cove. The Danny J that usually makes the fairy run from Homer to Halibut Cove had a slow leak and was parked for repairs on the gravel next to the Saltry Restaurant in Halibut Cove. The Danny J is a beautiful boat. If the Danny J was Brad Pitt, the Stormbird would be Brodrick Crawford. I know; he is dead. Mara, the Danny J captain, told me that when the weather is too bad for the Danny J to make the run, The Stormbird can always make it.

The lady who owns the Danny J and the Saltry Resturant is the daughter of Clem and Diane Tillion, the patron and the grand dame of Halibut Cove. The daughter was the first female in Kachemak Bay to get her one ton Captain’s license. She captained the Danny J for many years. When she retired, she decided that the Danny J should always have a female crew. Mara is now the captain.

Clem, the patron, homesteaded Halibut Cove right after WWII. He got there by walking from the rail line that runs between Seward and Anchorage. He was looking for the perfect place to settle. When he found Halibut Cove, he knew he had found it.

Ismailof Island forms one side of Halibut Cove and the mainland of the Kenai Peninsula is across the cove. Little houses and some not so little are scattered along the edge of the cove and over the hills of Ismailof. Many of the houses along the cove are built on pilings; above the water at high tide and over the rocks and gravel at low tide. Close to the Saltry and to the Tillion’s mansion and Diane’s gallery, the buildings are connected by boardwalks.

If you look at the real estate records for Halibut Cove, you will find The Tillion name somewhere in the history of most. We stayed on the island in a cabin on a bluff overlooking the Cove. Our hosts, Tammy and Carl, had lived on the island most of their lives. Carl’s parents bought the land from Clem in the early fifties when Carl was three years old. Only eleven people live in Halibut Cove during the winter. Clem and Dianne, now in their eighties, are two of them. Tammy and Carl still have one child in school and live in Homer in the winter. Tammy says they will stay year around as soon as the last child graduates.

We took a hike in the jungle. It is really rain forest, but that name doesn’t give the feel of what we walked through. Think of old Tarzan movies with someone at the front of the line with a machete. Maybe not that bad. We were looking for the property of a friend, Susan, who is building a house on the island. She gave us four typed pages of instructions on how to get through the “jungle” to her place. And we made it. There is no road. In fact there are really no roads anywhere in Halibut Cove. There is at least one wide trail where bikes and four wheel mules can run. The rest are for walking or maybe for a four leg mule. The folks building Susan’s house bring the construction materials in the easy way, by sea at high tide and up an eighty foot cliff by pulling it up an incredibly steep ramp from the little dock in a big wooden wagon with fat rubber tires.

Halibut Cove is a wonderfully different world.