We crept slowly over 700 naughties (or nautical miles) this evening despite the wind and current continuing to create a backwards conveyer belt that we must paddle against to make progress. Today their friend claphotis joined the fun (rebounding waves). The swell rolling in bounced off the cliffs and rippled back out to sea colliding with the next incoming waves. The resulting confused chop was hard work to paddle through as the waves came from all directions and our bows crashed down into troughs, losing momentum.

This morning was set aside for kit maintenance. Sarah washed a huge amount of sand out of Krissy, her kayak, and tended to a few other repairs. She used super glue and Gaffa tape to try to seal her broken drysuit zip. I cooked pancakes and tortilla wraps on the fire and caught up with other jobs. I should mention that the fire was still burning from the night before as Sarah burns the biggest logs she can find to ward off curious or hungry bears, and tops it up during the night if she wakes up.

By the time we got on the water it was nearly 4pm. We paddled around part of the Ikatan peninsula on the SE tip of Unimak, a grand high rise cliff with colourful red stripes. The swell was breaking over shallow rocks and we had to paddle up to a mile out to sea to go around the many prominent headlands that were fringed with white. It felt like it took a ridiculous amount of time to travel 12 miles or so round to East Anchor Cove, although the last mile was happily in a side wind rather than a headwind! We landed at 10pm and our now ticked up on the tent. Roaring fire not too far away naturally!

We hope to reach King Cove in a few days. Sarah’s zip sticking wasn’t a total success and her spare dry suit is being sent to King cove from Anchorage ( Thanks Scott and Debbie). Thanks also to the kind lady in Unalaska who gave us some homemade salmonberry jam. It was yummy on pancakes!

Massive congratulations to my good friends Kay and Dan for the birth of little Ruby on Monday!