“That’s a bear”, Sarah said in a slightly higher octave than usual. She was pointing at a seal in the water 200 metres from our “bear free Island”. “It’s a seal”, I maintained but at her insistence I got out my binoculars.

Magnified, I saw the light brown fur and two rounded furry ears of a bear, swimming right towards our beach.

I panicked! We were at the shore with our kayaks nearly packed ready to launch but not quite. I threw dry bags into hatches and pulled on my dry suit, imagining the bear had smelt us and was coming for it’s breakfast. Sarah started shouting and the bear suddenly looked up, he obviously hasn’t known we were there before. He changed his course slightly and scrabbled out of the water just the other side of a small sandy bluff. Sarah and I were relieved he wasn’t making a beeline for us and were even more happy a minute later to see the bear on top of the sand dune taking a look at us and then running away. He was only a small one, similar in size to the 2 year old we saw shot in King Cove. So much for our bear free Island plan although the Island was only a couple of miles from the mainland. I was glad we’d made sure we had no food in the tent overnight.

After that exciting start, we had a calm sunny paddle towards Perryville for a few hours. A blue sky sparkled above and jagged headlands, pointy peaks and snowy volcanoes surrounded us on all sides as we snaked through Islands. The wind picked up for the last couple of hours and pushed us towards the native village.

We landed on a broad sandy beach in front of a widespread collection of houses. Gary kindly interrupted his fishing to take us to the post office which shut in 10 minutes. We were too late. At 13.01pm we met the lady who worked there on the dirt road on her 4×4 heading home. But being a small friendly town, she turned around and went back to the post office and returned with 2 packages. Our food arrived ( Thanks Scott) but our bear fence ordered on Monday from Anchorage hasn’t. We were going to get back on the water tomorrow morning to make the most of the westerly winds but we’ll now be waiting for the afternoon’s mail plane with crossed fingers.

Of course spending more time in a community is not a bad thing. We spent the afternoon having a chat and food with some of the locals. We’ve been put up in a room in the city office, we’re clean and about to sleep on a bed.