Fishing is the leading occupation among islanders not serving in the Coast Guard.

Kodiak, Alaska

September 17, 2006

On a cold, rainy day the Sapphire Princess made its first port stop on this cruise. We had signed up for the "Kodiak Express" local tour ($45 each) and, despite the chilly rain, were looking forward to seeing this "outpost" of American's far northwestern frontier.

Leaving the ship, we were ushered to a temporarily rescheduled yellow Laidlaw school bus, one obviously intended for legless children since we had to scrunch sideways into narrow seats, legs taking up the aisle since there was no room whatsoever in the "normal" seat area.

Fortunately, it took us only 45 minutes to tour this community of 1,200. We drove by its crab and fish processing plant, the popular (only?) beach where the annual canoe race that determines "Miss Kodiak" starts, and stopped for a couple of minutes at the best lookout point where in the distance through the fog we could almost see the US Coast Guard base, actually the largest such facility in the entire USA.

Our wisecracking driver, who sounded like Rosy O'Donnell, also pointed out the other town highlights--- Walmart, Safeway, Bub's Bar (local favorite), the newspaper building, MacDonalds, City Hall, the radio station, and Orpheum movie theater.

"Rosie" said the island is really lovely, with high mountains covered with Sitka pines providing perfect camouflage for the Kodiak's world-famous brown bears. But, the prospect of winters with 20+ hours of darkness, year long gray skies, and constant winds howling in from the ocean seemed ultimately dismal, even to us Oregonians. As we jostled around with our chin on our knees, she volunteered that she and her husband, who is stationed at the nearby Coast Guard base, had lived in Kodiak for fifteen years and planned to retire there. (Out of courtesy, we kept the screaming question,"Why on earth would you want to do that," to ourselves.)

Considering the grim weather, someone asked "Rosie" about the island's suicide rate. She said there had been suicides on the island in each of the past five years and added that divorce was a major phenomenon in the area. Among all the Coast Guard couples she'd known since she and her husband had arrived in Kodiak, they were the only ones still married. With only three weeks of sunshine a year, all in May, we weren't surprised that domestic discontent ran uncontrolled!

We happily handed in our borrowed Princess umbrellas as we reboarded the ship and told the nearby Purser's staff member that we would appreciate him arranging the cruise schedule to make their further use unnecessary.