Sarah and I both had a dip in the water today. Mine came after launching through dumpy surf. Rather than take 20 seconds to put my spray deck on and risk being pushed sideways onto the rocks by a wave, I stood in the wash from the surf and waited until after a wave broke, then pushed my kayak into the water and jumped on it, swinging my legs into the cockpit while paddling out. Ideally I would have made it beyond the break before the next wave broke but I didn’t and I ended up paddling out to Sarah with a cockpit full of water (but without a collision with any rocks!) The easiest way to empty my cockpit was for me to sit on Sarah’s back deck while she pulled my kayak over her front deck and emptied it. It turns out it was too heavy to do that so I first of all jumped in the water, and then climbed on her front deck to help. Thanks to my kokatat suit, I was warm and dry after my dip.

The swell was bigger today than any other day we’ve paddled and the wind picked up to 20 knots at times creating an exciting sea. Sarah had a different word for it after about 3 hours when we ended up in a big eddy behind Chagulak island. Even though we were over 3 miles away from the island, the tide was going south against the swell and wind. The pilot says that either one of these against the tide will create 10 foot rips and I would say that was pretty accurate. It was slow going with lots of braces into waves and an element of the tide against us. After 8 miles our average speed was depressingly low at 2.4 knots with 7 miles to go. I was hoping that once we got away from Chagulak that the flood tide would take us North and we’d speed up. It did and we did – with bells on! Within 15 minutes the tide was flying North at almost 5 knots. That’s the strongest tide we’ve seen in the Aleutians so far. We started paddling east and then SE but the gps track still showed that w e’d be
carried north past the island faster than we could paddle towards it. I expected that when we got close to land there would be an eddy or the current would decrease, and the ebb was also due to kick in, but it was an anxious few hours before the gps track did indeed curve round to the east and we made landfall. Meanwhile the stonking tide helped us and our average speed shot up to 3.1 knots over the day.

Once alongside land on the sheltered side of the island it was a different world. We paddled past lava flows, caves, stacks and nesting birds. We’d hoped to camp where a cabin was marked on the chart but the small beach backed by steep cliffs was unsuitable so we carried on into we found a tiny gravel beach. While the swell looked like nothing, the beach was a 50 degree angle and we both had a comically hard time landing and dragging or heavy boats up. Sarah half fell out of her boat and enjoyed her dip at the end of the day.

Let’s see what tomorrow brings! Looks like it will be a paddling day.