I awoke shortly before the alarm, and it was raining lightly. Had my normal breakfast, and there was a stripe of orange clouds to the east. The ceiling looked really low over Cook Inlet to the west. By 8:20, there was wonderful light outside around us, and the rain had stopped. :) We left at 8:35 in the Jeep.

Gary Lyon called to let us know he was running a bit late. (You may read more about Gary Lyon on September 7, 2009.)

We got to the Homer marina around 8:55. I put on sun screen, then photographed the interesting clouds and mountains on the south side of Kachemak Bay. A bald eagle was perched on a piling out in the bay. We went over to Gary's slip around 9:15 and boarded the F/V Sea Lion around 9:25. We stowed our gear and got underway at 9:35.

While still in the marina, we went by the Time Bandit, a commercial crabbing vessel made famous in the documentary TV series Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel. We exited the marina at 9:43 and headed to Gull Island. Earlier in the season, Gull Island is covered with nesting pelagic birds, but it was eerily quiet when we arrived. There was just a lone immature bald eagle atop the island.

We motored over to photograph a very cooperative sea otter. I had been wanting to get good sea otter images for a long time. I hired a water taxi on my last trip to Homer, and while I was able to get some decent images, it was nothing compared to what I was getting today! :)
After the sea otter tired of our attention and swam away, we focussed our attention on a tufted puffin in the area that had a beak full of fish. J had been waning to photograph puffins, and she was thrilled to have this opportunity. I was also quite happy to have such a great subject.

We left the puffin and went to check on Gary's crab pot. On the way over, J offered to buy the crabs if he caught any, and Gary said it wasn't good to talk about what to do with seafood before it was caught. J is prone to seasickness, and she started going downhill as we were bobbing around as Gary was pulling up his crab pot. J is also sensitive to exhaust fumes, so the small engine on the back deck that was powering the crab winch did even more to push J over the edge. Gary pulled up two legal Tanner crabs (Chionoecetes bairdi). The genus name Chionoecetes means snow (chio) inhabitant (ioketes), and any species in the genus can be called a snow crab even though "snow crab" is the common name for Chionoecetes opilio. We dropped the crab pot back where we had picked it up, then headed out around Land's End to the western side of the Spit to look for rafts of sea otters and also common eiders. Gary offered us the crabs, no charge, if we were interested, and we gratefully said "Yes."

The water was choppier on that side of the Spit, and J wasn't doing so well. We stopped to photograph a small group of sea otters, and I was the only one trying to take pictures. J was leaning over the rail and eventually tossed her cookies. She felt much better afterwards, but we decided to head back. The sea wasn't too good for photography and some dark clouds were approaching from the southeast.

On the way back we talked about travel in South Africa, a place Gary would like to visit and a place I absolutely love to visit. (I've been there eight times for five to eight weeks each time.) We stopped just outside the marina entrance in some calm water so Gary could clean the crabs. An interesting juvenile blacklegged kittiwake came in to get some of the crab parts Gary was tossing overboard.

We returned to Gary's slip around 12:30 and gave him some money for the gas he burned.

J was feeling much better, so we drove down to Land's End to see if any sea otters were out and there weren't. On the way back along the Spit, we stopped at some RV parks to check rates because we were planning to move the RV so that we could plug in. The cloudy weather hadn't been very good for generating solar-electric power, and it was predicted to continue. It's much nicer to have unlimited electricity than having to run the generator frequently.

We returned to the RV around 1:15 and prepped the RV to move. J left at 1:27 in the Jeep to go run some errands and I left at 1:35 in the RV after everything was ready to go.

I went to the city dump station to dump the RV black and gray tanks and fill up the fresh water tank. I had to wait for a while for someone else to finish filling up their fresh water tank.

It started raining at 2:35 as I was driving out the Spit.

I got to the Castaway Park around 2:45 and paid the very reasonable $20 to park overnight with electricity. The Heritage RV Park across the street was charging $53 a night for full hookups (20/30/50-amp electricity, septic, and water), telephone with voicemail, satellite TV, and access to their laundromat and miniature golf course. J had found the lighthouse-style electricity posts there attractive, but all we needed was the electricity. J returned from her errands just in time to put the slide out. It was nice to put that out again after having kept it in while boondocking the last four nights. I downloaded the images I took today while ordering a Marmot PreCip jacket from Altrec.com. Then I did some online banking and did a quick edit of the images I took today. I worked up a blog entry. I called my mother and left a voicemail.

We had dinner around 6:15 of the fresh Tanner crabs with melted butter, broccoli slaw, and rice. The crab was the best we had ever had! My mother called back while we were eating, and we talked with her on speakerphone. We finished dinner, and I did the dishes.

I worked up another blog entry and had some Aalborg Akvavit.