Spot 99

I didn't get a picture of the Danny J, so I borrowed this from an advertisement

June 29, 2006

The Sunshines power over clouds and rain finally showed some weakness. We road the lovely Danny J back across the bay under low overcast skies and into to the face of a cold wet wind. Annie, Martha and I hid in the cabin. Steve toughed it out on the foredeck with the other locals. Of course most of the locals were just wearing t-shirts and Steve had on at least five layers of fleece under his rain jacket. His bottom lip was blue when we got to Homer, but he was still smiling.

Earlier that morning, Steve took some bags down the steep ramp (tide’s out) to our dock and almost stumbled over a harbor seal that had climbed on to the weathered wood to take a nap. At first Steve and I thought it was sick. It totally ignored us no matter how close we got. Then Katy, a young lady wearing Tough Skins (the rubber boot brand of choice for Alaskans) who cleans cabins for Tammy when she is not running her commercial salmon fishing business and who carried the heavier bags down the ramp said, “Oh that is Spot 99. He’s just taking a nap.” This dock had been his favorite place to sleep since his girlfriend died of unknown causes a couple of weeks ago. Spot 99 and his friend came to the cove right after the Valdez oil spill, probably looking for food not seasoned by oil. They were lucky. Some of the Halibut Cove people cleaned the oil off both. They ate salmon from the nets around Halibut cove and sunned on the floating boat docks.

Carl came in his boat to take us over to the Danny J, and we said good-by to the seal, and good-by to Katy, and Carl’s son, and the whale, and the folks with their creatives renewed who were standing on the high deck next to the little cabin across the way, and good-by to Halibut Cove.