Homer, time to slow down!

Position  N 59 d 36.352
          W 151 d 25.608
          21 August 2015

We have arrived in Homer, the halibut fishing capital of the world.  We do not have access to WiFi yet so we are still relying on the good graces of my sisters to post this blog.  The marina is big, busy, and full but very nice.  The girl in the office spent her junior year of high school in Japan so we chatted a bit as she gave us some of the lay of the land but the closest WiFi is a pretty long walk away so we opted for the shorter walk to a fish restaurant instead.

It was a bit sad leaving Geographic Harbor as it was so beautiful, but we want to keep experiencing new places.  We also met up again with Quicksilver, the English yacht that we last saw in Dutch Harbor who left Kushiro with us and have shared a couple of the anchorages with us along the way.  Nice to catch up and we found they were socially flawed as a cruising couple never having seen Captain Ron so we had a movie night for them and they are of the vintage sailing to really appreciate the subtleties of the the movie.

We are here for a couple of weeks to slow down and wait for Steve and Laura to come visit.  We paid for a month as it is the same rate for a month or ten days.  That is quite common for marinas so we expected it.  We did pull into the wrong berth when we came in but the guy who belonged to the berth was right behind us and he kindly waited while the guy next door untied and left so we could shift over.  They even took our lines for us as we re-docked.  Luckily the wind was down as we had to do some major maneuvering to get out and back in in such a tight spot.  Not bad with little sleep on our overnighter. 
There are many sea otters here in the marina and unlike the ones we have seen so far, these ones are not shy and a delight to watch.

Anyway it is a couple of days of cleaning and rearranging to get the boat a little more livable for us to receive guests.  Mark would also like to begin attacking the brightwork to at least scrap off the old varnish.  It really shows the neglect it has had for the last three years.  Time to go back to bare wood and bring it back.  We will look to see if we can get the varnish we want in Anchorage.  If not maybe we can order it and get it when we go back to drop off Laura and Steve after their trip.  We do not want to be varnishing when they are here.  It will be time to play while they are here.  Cruising is great but sometimes you just need to stop and slow down.  Dutch Harbor's forced stop was not quite it as we were expecting to leave any day and therefore could not relax.