Today we arrived in the islands of the 4 mountains, probably the best known Aleutian islands to kayakers. The peaks were socked in with mist today but when the skies open up they are picture perfect volcanos. One of then is still active and lets off steam regularly. I really hope we get to see them in their full glory. For now we are happy to be here. It was another spicy crossing despite a smaller swell and less wind. It’s about 15 miles from Yunaska but by the time the tide took us south then north and we ended up coming ashore north of the closest point, it was nearly 20 miles and 7 hours from point to point.

The tide was more predictable today and we allowed ourselves to be taken a few miles south, hoping the flood would kick in strongly and take us back North. In fact we had an hours more ebb than we expected which helped us out and things went mostly as expected, except it was still rough in places. A few times the wind picked up against the tide and the waves really kicked up and a few broke on or near us. Sarah says she found that hard to deal with but she coped great. A few laysan albatrosses flew really close, almost close enough to touch and the usual fat puffins, petrels, fulmars, guillemots ( murres) and auklets also kept us company. Honking sea lions gave us a musical exit from Yunaska, and their cousins welconed us to Herbert with a similar Orchestra.

The winds are due to turn north westerly tomorrow and pick up so we chose a campsite that should be sheltered. It’s marked on the chart as having a cabin here but there’s no sign of a cabin or any idea of why someone would put a cabin here! There is a small rocky beach which is sheltered from the prevailing winds but we’ve had to get very creative to fit the tent onto a tiny patch of bobbly grass in amongst the rocks.

We’ll have a day off tomorrow as it’s due to blow 30 knots. We’re both looking forward to a lie in. It looks to calm down after that and we may move East on Friday or Saturday. There’s no obvious water here but we manged to fill up on Yunaska today before we left so have enough for 2 or 3 days. We’re only a bit over 50 miles from the next village of Nikolski but it could still take us a while to get there if we have to wait for good weather for a 20+mile crossing.