What a month it’s been kayaking 350 miles along the Aleutian chain. I feel really lucky to be spending some time on these remote, windswept, treeless islands. One book I read described them as the jewels of a necklace across the Bering sea. I imagine some people just see barren, wet godforsaken islands but to me, and many others, they are wild, empowering, spiritual, oases (is that the plural of oasis?).  The seas team with kelp, fish, marine mammals and shell fish.  The ubiquitous brown hills that greet us when we arrive at every island look like at first glance like a sea of dead grass but new green shoots are springing up everywhere.  Small pink flowrers, buttercups and large purple lupins give a sprinkling of colour, and in many places mosses and small bushes are so dense and springy that it feels like you are walking on a trampoline. Ragged lava flows look like they poured down the mountain last week and pretty pebbles keep finding their way into our kayaks as souvenirs. Eagles soar above us every day, seals and sea lions pop up behind us or heckle us from the rocks. The occasional otter peeps at us more nervously from a safer distance. I’ve grown to recognize the low grumble of the ptargmigan and the high pitched wail of the fox. We’ve developed a taste for beach greens and seaweeds and we’ve made good use of the dead grass and ever present driftwood to make fires to cook on.

The paddling has been challenging at times. Our longest crossing was 37 nautical miles across a pass which has a reputation for rough water and strong currents although there isn’t any reliable information about how strong or in what direction the currents go. When we can only power ourselves at 3 miles an hour, that’s pretty daunting. We waited 3 days for a good weather window and went for it. We were lucky that the wind wasn’t strong and we mostly avoided any tidal rips. The tide that we were expecting to take us north and south (away from land to the east) was totally unpredictable and had a mind of it’s own, but it only reached a maximum of about 2 knots and was giving us a slight helpful push more often than it was against us. In the end the 47 miles from campsite to campsite took us 16 hours. We landed in the dark in very little swell and shivering and tired, set up camp.

Every crossing has been different. Twice we found ourselves on a northward conveyor belt which nearly succeeded in sweeping us past our intended destination. The first time it happened, it took us by surprise as we’d only experienced a maximum of about 2.5 knots of currents in other passes up until then. Suddenly a 5knot current whooshed us northwards in an unrelenting fashion. The tides here seem to start and finish like a tap being turned on and off – there is very little easing into maximum flow and easing out of it. It’s just ‘bam’ – you’re in it! Then suddenly, within 10 to 30 minutes it reverses direction in a similar bull-in-a-chinashop fashion. It can also flood, or ebb for 8 or 10 hours on certain days which makes it hard or impossible to plan a passage where you have a similar amount of time being pulled north by the flood and pulled back south by the ebb.

Our last crossing to Umnak island was the most stressful for me. The tide tables suggested the tide was ebbing (usually going south) from 9.30am-3.30pm, at unknown strength. We got on the water at 7am to try to be pulled north by the flood for a couple of hours, in case the ebb was strong. We could afford to be pulled south more than 5 miles and still reach land. Everything seemed to be going slowly, but on target for the first 5 hours. The current was already going south, but no more than 2 knots and we were able to maintain a nearly east-bound course. Suddenly, the tap turned on and the tide started shooting south at 4 or 5 knots. We adjusted our course to try to make sure we’d reach land but the current kept swinging round so that after a couple of hours it was almost directly against us and faster than we could paddle. For 2 hours we got further away from land. We resigned ourselves to effectively treading water, minimizing the damage until the flood was due to start around 3.30pm. But by 4.30pm we were still  6 miles from land and going SSW. Finally, the current eased just a little and we were edging eastwards, but any relief was shortlived as the current swung around and started heading NW at over 3 knots. We were still going away from land, but in a different direction.

I did a quick calculation about what time it was in Britain and felt relieved that my mum was probably asleep and not following the tracker! In fact the tracker wasn’t working, which may have spared a few people wondering why we were taking such a weird course (it’s fixed now). By 5.30, the tide finally finished it’s circular swing and was heading north which was more helpful. But instead of flying towards Umnak island at 5 or 6 knots as I was hoping, the headwind that had been like an irritating fly that won’t go away, but doesn’t bite, developed into a 20 knot blast that stirred up the sea into unhelpful crests that our bows constantly crashed down into. Our 3 knots crept down to 2, then plummeted to 1.5 knots and we limped the last 4 miles to the headland we were targeting. In the squally conditions we couldn’t make out any features of the land until we were half a mile away. It was 10.30pm after over 15 hours on the water, and Sarah said jokingly (but perhaps not such a joke) that she’d cry if we couldn’t camp there. For the first time that day we were lucky and there was a beach right there. We landed and I fell over getting out of my kayak. Our planned for destination, the community of Nikolski was still 15 miles away but we were happy to be on land and safe.

After a lie in we battled more headwinds the following afternoon to pull into Nikolski at about 6pm. Half of the 16 residents met us on the beach and we are being put up at the luxurious ‘lodge’ where the guests are more usually hunters come to shoot reindeer. It’s the end of our 2nd day here, resting, relaxing, eating, resupplying, catching up with the internet and chatting with locals. It’s been North-easterlies since we’ve been here and Thursday, Friday and Saturday are due to be the same (of varying strength), so I’m not sure when we’ll leave.

Ahead of us lies about 900 more miles along the rest of the Aleutian chain and the Alaskan peninsula. Sarah remarked today that while it’s been a month so far, time has also gone really quickly. I look forward to enjoying and exploring more of this wild area over the upcoming weeks.