Rousing Unangan drumming and singing brought a lump to my throat as we pushed off from Sand point this morning. We’re meeting a few people more than once as we travel along the chain including Sally from Atka who is in sand point to teach at the culture camp and who was passing through dutch harbour. Sally led the “tide is rising” song as others held a poster and waved us on our way. Three different people pressed gifts of smoked salmon into our grateful palms. Yum and yum and yum. We enjoyed some for lunch and dinner today. Thanks to everyone for another warm welcome, especially Michael Livingston for putting us up, showing us round and feeding us.

Easterly winds continue to make us work hard for every mile. Today it was a NE wind which was bang on the nose. We took 3 hours to cross to Korovin island in squally weather, cheered on only by frequent whale blows and the occasional tail. We had hoped to reach the next island, Karpa, but settled for as far east as we could get on Korovin. Partly because progress was slow and partly because the island looked particularly steep with no obvious places we could camp.

About a dozen otters interrupted their party to look at us from close quarters and many more popped their heads up at us along the impressive cliffy coast. We’re camped on a small steep beach in brilliant sunshine. The tshirts came out this afternoon in a hopeless quest to get rid of our paddlers tan ( Brown hands, white everything else!).

We have a 16 mile crossing to make from here in an ENE direction to get back onto the peninsula. Tomorrow’s forecast is NE 20 knots according to NOAA or ENE 8-11 knots according to Karel. Neither are great but if Karel is right we’ll probably go for it and accept is going to be a long slog.