Thursday 17 July 2008

'and, y'know, it's heading north...'

There's a cruise ship alongside the outer wall in the murk - small one called Sea Odyssey/sea with about 200 pax at a guess. They are all over town in the mud and rain - easy to spot because they are all cringing a bit at the conditions and are mostly inappropriately dressed - some in wet looking sneakers and some women even in raised heel slip-on shoes tippying through the puddles - you'd think that the ship would have warned them. Reminds me of Port Stanley - perhaps a shade bigger than Nome but very similar and a huge cruise box anchored in the outer sound and ferried about 2500 people ashore in big lighters. They milled around town, avoiding anything remotely wet or dirty, bought postcards and got lightered back aboard 6 hours later. Woe betide if you missed your lighter. Like this ship in Nome, the more organised went off in buses to look at the local sights, so there have been yellow school buses everywhere as well. The shape of the future for here and points north.

We were sitting in the Caff this morning and couldn't help listening to one of the visitors talking with hushed amazement about this little sailing boat 'and y'know, it's heading north...' Didn't want to spoil the illusion by breaking in with a 'maybe'! The Nugget just hit the streets and Anna's article has the centre fold.

My next project is to come back here with the Nikon and a couple of weeks to spare and borrow the mighty bike again from Pat and tour the local backyards and the bush taking arty farties of abandoned equipment for a coffee table book. There's at least one Beech 18 out there, plus endless snowmobiles, four wheeler bikes, various tracked and rather untracked crawlers, lots of machinery of dubious purpose and dredges everywhere - there isn't much of the local countryside that hasn't been mined at some time. Then there are trucks, old cars, some wonderful junkyards, one of which has a bent aircraft propeller. And - wonder of wonders, I think I saw and heard a DC6 flying in through the murk a day or so ago. Not, after all, abandoned.

Pics - Pat Hahn demonstrating why I like to be around him - he's got even less hair than I have - plus cruise box and crab boat.