I only wanted to get some transmission oil here bur they told me about the salmon jam festival. An annual fund raising event with local and some foreign bands and artists. It’s kinda small compared to festivals in general but it’s nice. Read more about it here www.copperriverwild.org
After a while you get familiar with faces, people, caracteres.
Cordova is a tiny little town in the middle of rivers, mountains, forests and SALMON. The copper river is the veine of the city. In former years the copper mine was one of the biggest in the world. The only road, except a couple city roads, lead upstream copper river. Not long. Not safe. There is no road to another city, no connection on land. Fishing, you could imagine, is a big thing here. The harbor is quite big but almost empty. Everybody is out fishing.
The people are extremely friendly and easy. Life in Cordova, what I can imagine, depends on friends, neighbors, family.
The salmon jam is made possible by volunteers. I offered to volunteer as well, but because I arrived yesterday they had all hands they needed already. Great!
The festival gives local artists a stage and the people honor them a lot. burgers are made of salmon, girls are dancing in salmon dresses and men are drinking…
Beer. What do you think?
Ifvi was to catch these westerly breeze I have to leave tomorrow. I’m going to pass the orca inlet down to strawberry channel. The charts say.. Orca inlet requires local knowledge, extreme caution is advised due to shifting shoals. seasonal unlimited bays are used to mark the channel…
I talked to local sailors, fisherman and the harbors office.. I have to use the tide, that means leaving 3 hrs before hightide. The well respected local sailor Marc told me he would rather wait and have the tide lifting him up in case of doing a mistake than going through in one straight shot and sit aground for another 6 hrs if touching ground. It’s muddy, soft and dirty but the tide is pouring in over 9 ft of water at high tide. The fisherman I talked to said it wouldn’t be a problem, the lastest charts are marking the channel fairly well. But their draft is only 2-4 ft, most of them, ZEROs draft is 6.2″.. Quite a difference. I hope the wooden sticks are visible good.
From here I will sail straight to Yakutat, if the wind pushes me good and I’m having a fast passage, I may stop somewhere in between.. We’ll see..After the calm waters of the sound I’m excited to enter the open ocean again. My beloved pacific ocean!
Aloha..