Pacific NW

Expeditions

Low clouds and drizzle surrounded us in the morning, obscuring the edges of the bay in a white haze. Justin and I opted to stay put for the time being and we had a relaxing morning at anchor. We talked of all the sailing that lies ahead of us and cooked up a big breakfast. Toward noon the skies lifted about 30 feet and we rowed to shore. After a futile attempt at bushwacking through wet alders up a river we filled our water jugs at a waterfall, and later poured them into the main tank. We had set out from Whittier with near-empty water tanks because I had temporarily misplaced the deck fill key so we couldn’t fill at the docks. This was no matter, though. I have come to grow distrustful of the town water. Once, I filled the tank at a town dock only to discover neon-green water coming out the faucet the next day. My Dad and I were at sea for two days without water! Anyways, no water tastes better than that which you see running straight from the snowfields of a tall mountaintop, cold and clear. We finally set out for the day at 1500 hours (unlimited daylight anyways, so who cares?) to visit several tidewater glaciers and spend the “night” in Serentine Cove. We passed by rafts of sea otters and many salmon, which leapt into the air all around the boat. Today the glaciers were not as actively calving, maybe due to the rain and cooler temperatures as of late. We still managed to see a few really big sections let go, however. It was Justin’s first experience with a tidewater glacier and it is good to start small. Toward midnight we settled into Serpentine Cove, built a fire, and baked an excellent batch of biscuits in the cast-iron dutch oven. A low sea mist hung over the water in the bay, and mingled with the smoke from the wood fire.

It was with great sadness that I said good-bye to Ryan today. We played a few last games of dominoes, and just hung out on the boat for a good part of the day. June has been a very relaxing month and our “pace of life” has slowed down to the point that breakfast at 1500 hrs is not uncommon. We were certainly not bored at all– many amazing things happened every day. First we had a week of hiking and watching the glaciers calving, then we had our storm-bound week in Thunder Bay, and then a week of intense sailing to Homer, and finally a few days of sunshine in Prince William Sound. Yes, June has been a good month. We had no schedules or places to be. With unlimited daylight 24 hours each day we were able to establish our own natural structure for eating, sleeping, travel, etc. Basically we did whatever we felt like doing, all the time. It has taken some getting used to, to get me to the point where the normal social patterns are completely shattered. We became naturally inclined to stay up until “twilight” at 2AM and get up around noon or so, but this wasn’t always the case. And with a boat and some wind out here, we can go virtually anywhere we want. The sense of freedom out here is incredible! Freedom of movement, freedom from schedules and appointments.

Big day today, very big. At last, we steamed from Thunder Bay. Whew! First thing off the bat we lashed Modulus to the deck and prepared for sea. With harnesses on we met with sloppy seas and 25 knots of wind from the East. The forecast was still a bit rough, but with a dying trend. I figured we could have just bailed out if a situation got too rough. By 5AM we were sailing out off the godforsaken capes with the wind behind us, making good time. We sailed past so much inaccessible country. This coast is backed by the Harding Icefield and its cliffs plunge directly into the sea, an ironbound coast. We saw a big bear on a huge lonely beach, and a few whales, and one navigational marker. It was nice to see something man made after our stormbound episode. I also established communication with the Coast Guard on Kodiak Island. We were so lucky as to meet up with two other sailboats who were also going the same way. Rounding Gore Point was one of the roughest parts of the day, and it was good to have the other boats around. Three major tides collide with each other off this cape, creating huge rips with a heavy SE groundswell. It was ugly, but we all made it around safely at slack tide. Hopefully that will be the worst weather and seas we encounter on the voyage. Once around Gore Point we had the wind and current and seas directly behind us. We screamed along at 10 knots, surfing down waves with the mainsail out. The wind steadily dropped but we were shot through Chugach Passage by the currents and the rollers. No part of this section of coast is hospitable to sailboats, and we were very fortunate to have all the elements with us. I began to wonder about how we’re going to ever get back! Once west of Gore Point the tides coming in and out of Cook Inlet have a huge effect on the currents, with few places to bail out and violent tide rips along the entire coast. We totally lucked out and made a solid 9 knots for the last few hours. After the rough seas around Gore Point, riding the calm, swift current into Cook Inlet was awesome. We blasted the music, cleaned up the cabin, and made a bee-line for Port Graham at slack tide. The country around the base of the Kenai Peninsula is spectacular. Giant sea arches everywhere, inaccessible sandy beaches and vertical cliffs to 3,000 feet set the mood. In Port Graham we rafted up with the two other sailboats, “Ursa Major” and “Creola”, that we had been talking with over the radio all day. We all rode on Ursa Major’s anchor, which was nice. Ryan and I are having difficulty with the spare anchor rode and it was nice not to have to anchor again before we get all fixed up in Homer. We found out that the Ursa Major had also been holed up for 7 days in an inlet not far from us. Good to know other people made the same decision as we did! Our fresh food had completely run out by today. But we had a meal of fish tacos and all kinds of vegetables, cheeses, and beers aboard the Ursa Major and Creola. It was a most excellent way to end the day. We’re around the ugly water now. Just a small hop to Homer tomorrow!

For the past 5 days Ryan and I have been riding out a major wind and rainstorm in Thunder Bay. The williwaws came the first night. Incredible blasts of shrieking wind swept off the mountains. At times the entire surface of the water became a white foam. Modulus flipped over several times and we veered wildly at anchor. I cannot believe how the trusty Forfjord held us fast! That first night, we felt like we were in an amusement park ride swinging to the rode. Many times swirling gusts lifted the foaming waters up into the air, forming water spouts. Everything loose in the cockpit was getting sucked out, and I cleared the decks and prepared an emergency anchor. I tried to inform the Coast Guard of our position, but we’re too far out there for radio reception. That first night was hellish. All night long I monitored the GPS for anchor drag, tested the rode, and must’ve made a trip out on deck every 10 minutes to monitor the situation. We spun around so much that night that we covered a distance of 3 miles in 3 hours at anchor! Directly outside the harbor behind the ridge is the wild Gulf of Alaska, and we feel very exposed to the elements. As the rain picked up, hundreds of waterfalls formed all around the bay. They pour from the mountains in torrents and get blown sideways in the wind. Huge breakers are crashing on the far shore as the greybeards and combers sweep by the mouth of the bay. Somehow amidst all the chaos a few bears roam the shore and we see the occasional whale arch its back in the anchorage. After that first major round of wind things got a little better. We were still flogged by the occasional williwaw, but nothing compared to that first night. It is still raining as it has been doing for the last 5 days. We are filling our time as best we can. On day 2 or 3 I became very lethargic, possibly due to fatigue and the gloomy state of the weather. The highlight of my day yesterday came when Ryan and I were flipping beer caps out of the hatch. They had to pass through a narrow slot and then curve so they wouldn’t hit the dodger in order to make it to the water. I did it on the second try. There was a moment of zen-like silence as the cap disappeared from our world. We sawed up several pieces of frivilous teak trim from inside the boat and made a fine set of dominoes. Ryan has taught me how to play, and I really enjoy the game. Yesterday we divided a chocolate bar into ten pieces and gambled all day for it with dominoes, poker, and cribbage. On our 3rd or 4th day in Thunder Bay we made an attempted escape from the bay and its williwaws. We discovered as we weighed the anchor that the williwaws had twisted and stretched the rode so much that it separated all the strands. Each strand was curled like a tightly-coiled spring. At the entrance to the bay we were hit by blasting winds that halted all forward progress, huge groundswell, and more of those crazy waterspouts. Williwaws or not, I became very thankful in that moment for the protection Thunder Bay has given us from the storm. With some difficulty I rigged up our spare anchor rode and we settled back into the anchorage for another few days. Ryan and I went a bit crazy that week in Thunder Bay. I will always remember fondly our countless and spirited games of dominoes, all the hours of staring out the hatch into the rain, placing value on our remaining food and then gambling it away. Each day of that week the weather radio extended the “small craft advisory” another day. It was East winds 30-40 knots, seas 18 feet every day, day after day. Ryan and I cut up a magazine about Homer and created a “mural to Homer” above our new domino table. When lit by candle light it made for quite the shrine. Our battery, food, and wood supply slowly dwindled as we passed this unforseen delay of a week in Thunder Bay. One day the rain stopped for 2 hours. We jumped at an opportunity to leave the cabin of the boat and rowed to shore. We hiked up the banks of a raging river that was flooding with all the recent rain run-off. Its shores were laced with bear tracks. Dead ravens and possibly other birds littered the forest floor everywhere. We don’t know what had attacked them, but their feathers and skeletons were all over the place! It was very strange. I also noticed hundreds of dead birds on the other side of the bay too. And then there were bugs. They are finally here. Enough has been written and imagined about the Alaskan mosquito. All legends are probably true. They were there, and they swarmed.

We had the slowest morning imaginable today. We played dominoes, drank tea, and chopped up a huge pile of potatoes, onions and garlic. Our domino games have gotten extremely heated as I am a much better player now. Ryan is still really good at computing fast which dominoes I might have though, and still holds the upper hand. By 1430 we ate breakfast, a huge pile of hashbrowns with lots of spice and our last egg cracked into the middle of it. We were so full afterwards that we had to play a few more rounds before we set off for the day. Now we are anchored in a small nook behind a few islets in Surprise Cove. We rowed around for a bit before the bugs came out, and found the best wildflowers of the trip so far. In the marshy shores of the back lagoon we found many patches of purple iris, monkeyflower, daisies, some kind of red inside-out flower that looks like a cross between a lily flower and an orchid, and many brown Kamchatka lillies. The Kamchatka lily smells like used, wet toilet paper. Somehow despite our “food shortage” Ryan managed to make the most excellent dinner by frying linguini spaghetti and adding various sauces and spices to it. It was as good as anything you could buy at the co-op!

It was blazing hot all day today! My feet burned standing in the cockpit even. Ryan cooked up some grits for breakfast and then we were off. A minus two tide revealed many uncharted rocks as we left the bay. Many giant anvil thunderheads developed all around the horizon, skyrocketing above even the tallest peaks in the distance. I haven’t seen a sky like that for quite awhile. Summer is really here in Alaska! We dropped the hook in Long Bay after our scorching boat ride. We truly are running very low on food now. Ryan and I ate hard-tack and water for lunch, then went for a great hike. A maintained trail (no bushwacking!!) led to Shrode Lake. Shrode Lake is the one I hiked to last month from another inlet. Last I saw it, it was frozen solid with 10 feet of snow on the ground and tons of bear tracks. Today there was no snow, warmish water and bear tracks in the mud. We waded out into a salmon river and stood in the cool water with the hot sun on our backs. It was excellent. The air smelled like Washington’s alpine areas, a sort of baking pine-needle smell. Tonight I beat Ryan in dominoes for the fourth day in a row! But we added up all of our games and he’s still way ahead in the long run. For awhile I had misplaced my swiss-army type knife that had the only can opener on the boat. Note to self and others: never open a can with tinsnips. There was great excitement when I found the knife and we tore into the can of baked beans we’d been wanting to eat. Ahh, the simple pleasures!

We had one of the laziest mornings of the voyage today. There was plenty of warm sunshine when we woke up, some time around 1030. Last night before going to sleep I realized that it is perfectly light out at 0130. By 0300 it looks the same but is getting lighter. Our sleeping patterns have changed dramatically. We usually fall asleep between 2 or 3 in the morning and get up around 10 or later. We experience the “eternal sunset” every night but miss out on the sunrise. Right as the sun dips below the mountains, the bugs come out in swarms. Ryan and I are in constant “attack mode” against the mosquitos in the cabin. We are getting really good at lunging at them, and their squished bodies can be found on the bulkheads in great numbers. In lieu of the “terror alert” level warning system that doesn’t exist in our world, I have established a bug alert system. Right now as I write we are at “severe bug, code red”, and I will now pause a minute to stuff cheesecloth and rags around the dorade vents. Actually though, they are not that bad, in that they only affect us for a few hours each day. The sea breezes and sailing the boat eliminate them altogether. But when you step on land…that’s a different story. I can’t imagine being in a kayak right now. Lots of tent time I guess. Anyways, we enjoyed a bug-free morning with the last cup of coffee on the boat. We’re running low on all food supplies, but headed into town in a few days. I filled our watertanks at a gushing waterfall on our way out of the bay. The waterfalls out here make a great kitchen faucet. Maintenance-free, good water pressure, and can’t beat the taste of fresh snow-melted water. Just minutes old from the top of the mountain. All around Jackpot Bay we saw patches of white underwater that looked just like submerged rocks. At first I was nervous, because there were uncharted rocks all around the bay. I carefully approached one of the “shoals” and we found it to be a mass of jellyfish! The Moon jellyfish were drifting in huge, dense globs all over the bay! Tens of thousads of jellyfish were in each ball, which measured roughly 30 by 50 feet long and who knows how deep. I had encountered this phenomenon in Puget Sound before. They are a bit scary because they look like a shoal, and are so thick that the boat actually slows down and the tiller vibrates as you sail through them. And today, in Jackpot Bay they lay all about in the water in greater numbers than I have ever imagined. We trolled for salmon all the way to our next anchorage, Masked Bay. No luck, and we were so hungry too. I baked up some bannock bread for dinner and we played our customary heated evening game of dominoes. The cheesecloth seems to have worked for now. The mosquitos are playing a symphony under the dodger.

Today we explored Tiger and Chenega tidewater glaciers. Chenega glacier was exceptional. After distinguishing itself from the immense Harding Icefield, the glacier proper consists of 143 square miles of blue ice, flowing rapidly down the mountains to the sea. There was so much calving activity that there was a great, thick field of pack-ice in front of the glacier for several miles. The charts even indicated “floating ice” as a permanent fixture. We were immediately rewarded with a monolithic ice collapsation event that shook the earth and sea. It was a calm and wind-free afternoon, so we pushed our way into the ice pack and cut the engine. In this way we can escape the swirling currents that occur at the glacier faces by lodging the boat in the more stationary ice flow. One particular slab flipped out in such a way as it sent forth a great billowing cloud of ice-dust and giant rolling waves that broke completely over an island that was at the very least 35 feet tall. A similar but smaller event happened nearer the boat. All the ice around us began to churn as the 15 foot waves swept under the boat. Huge icebergs all around us were set into motion, rolling over and exploding with huge cracks, hisses, and bangs. There were perhaps 200 seals that seemed unperturbed by all the activity, and peacefully bobbed up and down on their icebergs in those huge waves. All the new ice disgorged at the glacier face is a vibrant emeral blue. In some places the ice is so blue that it appears almost black. We sat in the ice pack for most of the day, enjoying a spectacular show. Slabs and pillars broke free all day long, constantly, with a deafening roar. The sound of the ice is so large that it is indescribable. Sometimes we could hear the whole glacier groan and boom as it pushes its way to the sea. It generated earthquakes that were readily felt in the boat. Awesome. We spied a NOLS kayaking group on our way to Jackpot Bay. We’re anchored up in a place called “7 Fathom Hole” because all the chart shows is a blue uncharted spot with a 7 written in the middle of it. We took a hike on shore and gained a small ridge with a great view of the sunset. The bugs came out just as the sun dipped below the horizon so we ran down the mountain pretending we were dirt bikes, jumping off ledges and ramps into the soft mosses of the tundra.

Today we got out and did a little hiking on the land. I wore my new spiked logging boots, which was a mistake because they were very slippery on the rocks. We ascended a river drainage and bushwacked our way up a ridge. It was an excellent hike, and we made plenty of noise in order to scare away the bears in the area. At several points we clawed our way up and across steep ledges and pushed through dense briars. Sometimes the only vegetation to hold onto is the prickly stems of the salmonberry bush. If you grab them lightly at the base and work your hand up, you can break off many of the thorns that would otherwise stick into your palms. The view from the summit of the ridge was awesome. It looked down into Tiger Glacier. We spotted 9 kayakers paddling toward the glacier. They looked like indistinguishable specks of flotsam amongst the huge icebergs. Ryan and I lazed about for quite some time watching the ice, clouds and enjoying the sun and breezes. We have really slowed down out here. It is interesting how we are always thinking we need to be doing things and activities all the time. Today I woke up and realizd that I have no demands pressing on me, no engagements, expectations, or places to be. It is an incredible sense of freedom! We are enjoying our lazy schedule without guilt. Our breakfast routine would put Europeans to shame. The days and dinner still manage to fly by, though. I made a temporary fix to our tiller that will hopefully last until I can build a new one. I sawed off the cracked-off end, drilled out new holes and bound it all with hose clamps for good measure. It is a lot shorter than it used to be, but still better than the spare tiller.

Several pods of dolphins accompanied us as we sailed for Icy Bay. Mostly an uneventful day. It was a nice boat ride in paradise and we threaded our way through the icebergs to our anchorage. Tiger Bight, in Icy Bay, is a wonderful place. Looks like good hiking and the glaciers are active. Today we got up late, played a lot of dominoes, and just enjoyed all the sunshine.