Harmon and Randall's Voyage…

Leg 2

Blog 4

July 4, 2024

The town of Sand Point https://www.sandpointak.com with approximately 950 inhabitants, is more of a marine industrial town than a tourist destination. It is really quite missable unless you are a Cod or Salmon fisherman trolling the teaming waters nearby and want to sell your catch to the Trident Seafood company https://www.tridentseafoods.com. Trident also operates the fuel dock, a convenience store and the major (only?) fish processing facility in town along with several dormitories for the plant workers.

Most sailors (and crab fisherman) would prefer to stop at the much bigger Dutch Harbor, a little further down the Aleutian Peninsula. Especially as Sand Point (according to Randall) has stopped offering seasonal haul-out services to sailboats (I guess we are not the most desirable crowd).

Randall woke me up from a deep sleep this morning at 0515 to let me know we were approaching the harbor. I said goodby to by dream and jumped on deck to help with our approach.

Here is what Sand Harbor looks like at 0530…actually kind of pretty at that hour.

The approach into a new harbor can be treacherous, but as this morning was calm and there was no other traffic, Randall slowly but surely pulls into the dock with no problem or fanfare (or welcome wagon!)

Where is everybody? I can only assume they are sleeping as it is now 0545!

This display was on a commercial fishing boat and caught me by surprise. You can’t say that these guys do not have a certain sense of humor about a rather difficult and perilous profession.

It did not take us long to find the purpose of our visit. Randall’s friend Adam had pulled into the processing plant a couple of hours ago (yes, they operate 24 hours a day during the season) and is seen here off-loading his catch of 29,000 pounds of Cod (current bulk price is $0.40 per pound). At an average size of eight pounds, this means that Adam caught 3,600 fish in about a week (about 500 per day). PS….he does this single handed (no wifey or assistant on board!!). He says that he works a full day fishing, then goes to bed at night and gets up the next morning to do the same (all the while he is out at sea!) In the picture above, you can see how low the boat is in the water with all of those fish in the hold.

Randall contemplating the low tide at the processing plant in the early morning.

Employees of the Trident fish processing facility come off-shift at 0600 and return to their dormitory adjacent to the plant.

I took a little walk around town. I loved the “boardwalk”.

Even in a far removed industrial town, natural beauty can be found all over.

I really appreciated the random optimism that someone had taken the time to think of, and then to create and then to hang.

Not sure if this was the same person who posted the sign in the previous picture, but Nancy Reagan would have been proud of this one.

This car was parked outside of the local car rental shop. There were three others cars “available”, and I have to say, this was the good one.

I enjoy searching for beauty in industrial ruin and this long-abandoned fishing tender caught my eye. You can see Mother Nature gradually taking her back.

Above is Adam talking to Randall. It took Adam several hours to off-load his Cod and you can see how calm and rested he looks even though he has likely not slept that night. Randall not looking too bad either (he also did not sleep). In the white plastic bag by Randall’s foot contains several pounds of freshly caught, cleaned and prepped Halibut as-well-as a cooked and cleaned Tanner crab.(https://wdfw.wa.gov/species-habitats/species/chionoecetes-bairdi). Thank you Adam!! How in the world did you have time to catch, clean and prep the fish, AND catch, clean and cook the crab while fishing all day???!!!

Well, in the end, it was a pleasant several hours that we spent in the town of Sand Point. We fueled up, and are now on our way to Dutch Harbor. So clear and calm at present that we can see the distant mountain range.