Pacific NW

Expeditions

Night-watch again, and I was alone at the helm as Neptune slept soundly below. The seas were only rippled, and it was warm enough that I scarcely needed gloves. Earlier in the day I had even pulled a brief stint at the helm in my underwear only. Imagine that! Who would have thought the Gulf could be this warm in April! We are steering a course of 250 degrees magnetic. Tonight the stars were out however and it was much easier and more pleasing to steer by them. I caught a glow in the corner of my eye and turned my head back. My heart jumped at seeing a brilliant light behind the boat and I thought a ship was upon us. A second later I realized it was the massive crest of the moon, rising from the sea. It was enormous and bright orange, such a sight that I woke Neptune immediately. The massive glowing orb seemed to squat on the horizon and it was shaped like a watermelon, due to some properties of refraction. Though we were quite some distance offshore, we could see all the towering mountains in the eerie moonglow. Everything is so big out here, to the point that even the moon rise shocks me! It is not a small world after all. Whoever wrote that song hasn’t been out here among these sweeping expanses, nor crossed an ocean. What a foolish illusion that telephones, computers, and airplanes create! Tonight, as we floated upon the freezing abyss of the Gulf, beneath the heavens, and beside the mountain range to end all mountain ranges, I entertained these thoughts: Once you get out and truly travel through the land and experience it for what it is, you will discover the immensity of the world. Nothing can ever change this fact, and I take great comfort in that. The weather and seas remained favorable all through the night. I was even able to warm a pot of tomato soup on the cooking stove! We enjoyed a hot meal. Neptune pulled two heroic stints at the helm and I was able to catch up on my sleep. We are making wonderful progress. In the afternoon a gray whale approached the boat. We received a crackling radio signal too. “Silent Partner, this is Nellie Juan” came a thin staticky voice. What a comfort! They were unable to receive my reply, most likely because our antenna is lower and still under their horizon. Later on we heard them once more hailing us, but we are still to low to transmit a good signal. At 1300 hours we rounded the base of Kayak Island, a point of major significance for us. Here we altered our course to 280 degrees M and are on our approach angle for entering Prince William Sound! 17 mile long Kayak Island juts out into the sea and is a spectacle to behold. At its end is a three-mile long verticle slab of white rock 1,600 feet tall that culminates to a knife-edge ridge. Offshore stands another massive pinnacle sea stack, perhaps 500 feet tall and completely verticle. The whole scene can be best described as “biblical” It looked like the edge of the Earth. It was when we were rounding this cape that Neptune and I saw one of the weirdest and most amazing things ever. I saw what appeared to be a massive dead-head (semi-submerged log sticking straight up and down) in the water. But on closer inspection, I found it to be an elephant seal 20 feet long! Not only that, but he was in the process of eating a shark! “Neptune, on deck, camera, now!” I shouted. We drifted right up to the sea monster only 5 feet away now. He looked at us with an eye the size of an orange. The shark was still alive and flopping limply in its jaws. Neptune and I stood directly next to the seal in stupefication as he slowly swallowed the shark whole. Elephant seals are huge! After he swallowed the shark, he simply slipped beneath the waves under the boat and vanished, very slowly. All day long albatrosses wheeled about the boat, skimming over the waves. In the evening the sea became a vast sheet of smooth glass, and the horizon became indistinguishable from the water. It looked as if we were suspended in a vast steely-blue vaccuum. Save for the tops of a few hazy peaks away off on the horizon, no land was in sight as the sun set. A sweet smell drifted across the sea as we made our final approach to Prince William Sound through Cape Hinchinbrook.