A few things and the intrepid fishermen

First the fishing.  When we arrived in Homer the first thing we tried to do was reserve a fishing trip, to say halibut fishing is popular there is an understatement.  There were NO half day trips left, and only one opening for 2 people on a 6-pack, or a boat that only has 6 fishermen.  So we drew straws and Karen won.  So at 0545 on a rainy morning I dropped them off at the dock.  Off they went!

Departing

Goodbye spit

The day did improve.

Halibut are big flat fish that hang out near the bottom, in their case, they fished between 110' and 160' deep.  Makes for a lot of reeling in and out.  The bad thing was it was not a good day for fishing, unfortunately it was almost noon by the time Jan caught her first fish and not much later Karen got hers.  They have changed the regulations on halibut so now each person gets to keep one fish below 29" and one fish above.  Previously you could keep 2 fish of any size, so you kept on fishing until you decided to keep 2 fish.  Doesn't sound like it, but it is a significant change.

Some mean looking halibut hooks

But the sun came out and it became a beautiful day and our fishermen were successful!

The catch

And of course the after shot:-)

Delicious!

Not as good as they hoped, but a good and productive day nonetheless.

Turned out Karen had a bit of a leak on her motorhome as well during our previous deluge, so Jan and I took a few minutes to go up and reseal her shower skylight.  Karen wanted to do it herself, but kneeling on the roof to take care of it is beyond her new knees at this time.  Meanwhile I had discovered a developing problem with our tow bar.  As we hookup and unhook the truck the tow bar used to have enough resistance to kind of stand up on it's own, for example, when I hooked one side onto the truck the other arm would normally stay fairly aligned with the other tab, but lately it has been drooping.  When we arrived in Homer I took a close look and found out the two bushings appeared to be wearing abnormally, and had created a bit of "slop" in the assembly.  I called the tow bar manufacturer to get a professional opinion, and they confirmed that all was not right, and I should probably have it fixed before towing again.  Oh man.  Now if you remember when we got our new truck, we participated in Blue Ox's fit program where they used our truck to fabricate a baseplate, installed it and the wiring, and gave us a NEW tow bar all for free!  And where is that NEW tow bar?  It's in our storage unit in Florida, that's where.  I asked Blue Ox, could they repair our bar?  They said sure but the turnaround would be 2-3 weeks!  That sure won't work.  So to their credit, a fantastic company, they suggested if I would pay the shipping, they would send us a brand new tow bar and then I could send our NEW one back to them when we get to Florida in December, and that's what we did.  It was here in Anchorage waiting for us when we arrived late yesterday.  So we are good to go again.  We will, when we get back to the states, send our damaged bar back to Blue Ox for warranty repair, so when all is done we will still have two like new tow bars, one more than you really need?

So now we are back in Anchorage just for the day to go to Costco, grocery shopping, lunch eating, and of course, wine buying:-)