In a curious navigational maneuver Jupiter is sailing southeast from Southeast Alaska. She is exploring a rhumbline course to the international border with Canada. Along this route lies Thorne Bay on Prince of Wales Island to starboard. The small community offers a transient dock for moorage, diesel fuel, and all the history and mystery of a remote Alaskan port.
Aphthong
The ancient history of Thorne Bay references a 5,000 year old spruce-root basket found along the Thorne River, confirming paleo-eskimo human occupation.
The modern history of Thorne Bay began with a typo. The bay is named for Frank Manley Thorn, superintendent of the U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey from 1885 through 1889. Frank’s surname was misspelled on published maps, forever assuring the sophistication inherent in a silent ‘e’.
Terrestrialization
The next important Thorne Bay event did not occur until 1960 when Ketchikan Pulp Company built a floating logging camp here that would soon become the country’s largest timber enterprise. The business began to sink slowly and the stranded settlement incorporated as a City in 1982.
Thorne Bay is a beautiful place. Although logging on Prince of Wales continues, trees regrow, views remain, protected waters encourage fine fishing, and shoreside locations attract summer sportsmen who build lodges and docks. The excellent general store, municipal services, and a new coffee shop support locals and attract visitors. The Mayor of Thorne Bay, fittingly named Timber, operates a busy floatplane service, and small sportfishing boats are legion.
Consolidated Resources: the town center where City Hall, the bank and the clinic are accessed by three separate doors into the same building.
Steps away are the library, with space set aside for a Memory Garden, and a new coffee shop. All buildings appear moveable in the event of a better plan.
Bunkering
Jupiter finds the fuel dock past The Port at the edge of town. The sloped, low-riding platform balancing fuel pumps inches above sea level provides two tiny cleats and a short bend of cordage as dock hardware.
The diesel hose, after disentanglement from some bizarre knot-tying experiment, just reaches Jupiter’s fuel fill ports, and the pump establishes a Eurobeat encouraging a canty dance routine by one crewmember. There being no service attendant, patrons must photograph the fuel dispenser display and carry this proof of purchase to the The Port’s Post Office and General Store to make payment. The refueling process takes two hours, nearly exhausting the high tide required to keep Jupiter off the seabed.
Xylotechny
With Jupiter secure on the transient float, the Crew, looking like the outlanders they are, climb the gangway from dock to roadside where traffic is slowed by curiosity and kindness. A pickup carrying a big chainsaw and lumber stops to ask what we are not finding, directing us along a gravel road, left at the red house and down the wooden staircase to the general store.
Thorne Bay resembles one large community woodshop where habitants have been finding and felling, hacking, hauling and hewing wood for decades.
The few folks we pass appear to be intent on some form of carpentry: splitting, routing, carving, sawing, ripping, chiseling, filing, drilling, sanding and finishing. Wood, and all manner of woodworking, is everything in Thorne Bay.
In a nod to its industrial logging past decorating with repurposed iron block-pulleys is the fashion.
Saffron Poached Halibut
with Lemon Risotto
Handsome halibut from the Petersburg fleet is poached in saffron infused olive oil with citrus.
Crumble and sprinkle saffron threads into a small amount of warm water and set aside. Pat dry and then season some skinless halibut fillets.
Chop a sweet onion and sauté in olive oil until soft in a large skillet. Thinly slice an orange and a lemon, and add to the skillet along with slivered garlic. Salt to taste, and stir until fragrant and melty. Nestle in the fillets, spooning onion and citrus over them. Pour over the saffron water, half a cup of good olive oil, and add a handful of cherry tomatoes. Bring to a gentle simmer then place in the oven at 325° for about 30 minutes or until the fish is flaky-tender and awash in saffron sauce.
While the fish is cooking sauté arborio rice and lemon zest in a little olive oil, then gradually stir in chicken broth with lemon juice to create a creamy risotto. Halfway through cooking stir in pieces of young kale or chard, and finish with grated parmesan.
Place halibut atop a bed of risotto and ladle over the saffron-citrus sauce.
Enjoyed reading your latest post, as usual. Armchair yachting at its best.
I particularly liked your recipe for saffron poached halibut and was able to print it up. A question, however: can you tell me how much chicken broth you use? I’m guessing a two to one ratio of liquid to rice – would that be right?
Thanks again for your erudite posts. Keep ‘em coming’.
Best,
Tom
Port Townsend, WA
Hi Tom – thanks for the kind words! For a risotto the ratio is more like 4 to 1, liquid to arborio rice. Here the liquid could be a veg stock, or chicken (as I did) or a combination of stock and water, and of course, the lemon juice. It is good to have the liquid at a slow simmer before stirring it into the rice (absorbs better) and to add it gradually until you feel the rice is done just the way you like it! Have fun, and enjoy.