Alaska 2024

May 2 - 11

 We left to start our trip to Alaska on May 2 with a weekend stop in Roche Harbor for the Grady White Club Ling Cod fishing derby! We started off in Port Madison for our first night on the way to Roche - a beautiful night at Port Madison SYC. As you can see from the pictures - we have a new Nellie!  We decided to get a Hewescraft Ocean Pro 22 for this trip to Alaska. We love the Grady but wanted a boat we can go ashore in and haul the family coming to visit in Alaska in an enclosed cockpit area.  We have 4 granddaughters now ages 6, 5, 2 and 6 months and they are all coming during our trip to Alaska for a visit so the new Nellie will work out perfect!

We had a great day fishing for Lings! Unfortunately Michelle's fish was 1/2 inch too long .  The Derby is for Ling Cod between 26-36 inches using the US rules since some of the fisherman were staying in the US for the competition.  We have a favorite spot over in Canada where the limits are different - you can keep Ling's larger than 36 inches so that is how Michelle's fish was DQ'd but still a great fish! It weighed 17 pounds and was 36 1/2 inches long!  Our boat submitted 4 fish (Jeff, Tamara, Steve and Michelle) and we took 4th, 5th and 6th with the others.

A fun weekend in Roche then off to Nanaimo to clear customs which was very easy using Nexus.  

The next morning we crossed the Straits of Georgia in nice water and decided to head up the outside of Texada - looking South was cloudy and looking North was beautiful - a bit lumpy with all kinds of weather systems moving thru but we had a good trip. We took a few days to get to Port McNeill - taking some time to explore in the new fishing boat and doing some crabbing and shrimping along the way.

We finished up this first part of our journey at Port McNeill where we are leaving the boat for a few weeks to fly home for the Billy Joel concert  in Seattle on May 24. We got the added bonus of seeing the family on Mothers Day and spending some time at home before we head back up after the concert to continue our journey to Alaska.