Ketchikan: A Sour and Sweet Day

Thursday, June 26th, 2025

Let’s start with the sour. It’s been raining non-stop for the lasts 3 days. While the rest of the country is under a heat wave, including the PNW, locals tell us this is “hands down” the wettest summer they have seen in Alaska. OK, enough of the “I’m tired of the rain and I want to go home.” The really big project of the day was our—wait for it—Bow Thruster. And what a project it was. Nothing is easy on a boat and this was definitely not easy. As most of you have been reading I have a “limpy” Bow Thruster. “Hello, my name is Greg and I have a limpy Bow Thruster.”

Tom, who we were lucky enough to get introduced to on our first cruise to Alaska when our bow thruster quit working, was fortunately willing and able to help us out once again! He showed up right on time this morning, tools in hand, at 8:00 a.m. After watching YouTube videos and talking to SidePower tech support (which by the way is great) the prognosis was a faulty Thermal Switch. For those who don’t know what a thermal switch is (I didn’t before I had this boat) it is intended to prevent a Bow Thruster, which takes a ton of power from overheating and doing damage to a boat. Unfortunately, over time, thermal switches fail, especially when they are leaned on. My fault. I blame it on the seven foot waves. Anyway, back to the story. Tom and I had to determine, first, that it wasn’t a low voltage issue. It wasn’t. We then need to use a jumper cable to by pass the current thermal switch to see if we could keep the thruster working. Sounds straight forward however, the thermal switch was/is buried deep inside the Bow Thruster motor. We literally had to disassemble the entire Thruster motor to get at the thermal switch. This means, taking the cap off, removing the motor from the boat and then pulling the whole motor apart. And then we found it—at least we THOUGHT we found it. I play a game with my grand daughter where we call people when we are fighting pirates and assorted bad guys seeking help. “Ring, ring, ring,” we play. Well this time its for real, “Ring, ring, ring, this is Greg I’m calling for assistance and guidance on my Bow thruster.” Fortunately Peter was available. We spent about 30 minutes on the phone with him running through the diagnostics, confirming that it was the thermal switch. The good news is that I had already ordered the replacement switch from Fisheries (the main marine shop in the Pacific Northwest located in Seattle), and it was waiting for us at Frontier Shipping here in Ketchikan when we arrived yesterday. The Thermal switch in hand Tom begin to reassemble the thruster. I pretty much just held the light and 🙏.

Everything reassembled ( which by he way took about 4.5 HOURS) and bolted back in Tom said, “Give it a go.” And I did and it FAILED. Oh S&*t. Marlene is setting in the pilot house looking pretty sad. Hell, I was pretty sad. But Tom is a true pro. He dove back into the bowels of the boat checking everything a second time making sure all is tight. “OK, Greg, try it again.” And yea, thank God, it worked, and WORKS. It was a matter of reseating all the connections. So now I’ll declare this “sweet.” But it didn’t end there. The good Lord works in mysterious ways.

The fishing trawler in the stall beside us came in. I noticed him giving one of his fishing buddies several, very large King Salmons. After his friend left I mentioned that it looked like he had a great day fishing.

“I did,” he replied. “Would you like a few fillets?”

”That would be fantastic. What can I give you in return.”

”Nothing,”

”Wait,” I said, “how about some of my critically acclaimed BlackBerry jam?”

He had already noticed where our boat was from. “Is it Guemes Island BlackBerry Jam.”

”Absolutely,” I smiled.

Here is the result, roughly five pounds of fresh—as in caught today—KING salmon. Score. Definitely SWEET. And that is the end of our blog for today. A truly amazing, mixed up day in Ketchikan. Did I mention it’s still raining. 😃