Archive for the ‘kayaking’ Category

I love camping in wild places but once we get within 20-30 miles of a community, I start to dream of showers, fried eggs, ice cream and thermals that don’t smell of wee!

We launched this morning to a light favorable wind and a current. Suddenly the idea of reaching the fishing port of King Cove, 30 miles away, seemed like a realistic possibility. We had salami, cheese and dried fruit and nuts on one of my favourite lunch spots so far. Egg island must be named for the dozens of gulls that were nesting on the grassy slope of it’s one compact hill. Barely a mile long, we ate on a gravel spit with a view of the craggy peninsula in all directions, the chatter of gulls and puffins filing our ears. The rocks were dappled white and sure enough one Gull managed to spatter us both with one shot.

The wind disappeared after lunch, the sun came out and we over heated. The current was still giving us a helpful nudge and reaching King cove seemed achievable by about 9pm. We took another snack break on Thin Point, the launch pad for a 10 mile crossing to King cove and all those things we’ve been dreaming of all day. We were surprised by a 15-20 knot wind firing out of the bay to the North. I know different areas have different weather systems but we’d just crossed one 6 mile bay without a breath of wind. We decided to have a go for King cove anyway but we were trying to head slightly into the wind and progress was slow enough that we wouldn’t get there until midnight. Plan B was a 5 mile paddle East to little Fox island. We could sail at this angle and flew along at over 4 knots.

We’re camped up in our smelly thermals hoping that tomorrow we can paddle the final 8-12 miles to King cove (Depending on our route). There are no bears on the island so Sarah’s just enjoyed a hot chocolate in the tent! Camping is still great, the luxuries can wait!

I love camping in wild places but once we get within 20-30 miles of a community, I start to dream of showers, fried eggs, ice cream and thermals that don’t smell of wee!

We launched this morning to a light favorable wind and a current. Suddenly the idea of reaching the fishing port of King Cove, 30 miles away, seemed like a realistic possibility. We had salami, cheese and dried fruit and nuts on one of my favourite lunch spots so far. Egg island must be named for the dozens of gulls that were nesting on the grassy slope of it’s one compact hill. Barely a mile long, we ate on a gravel spit with a view of the craggy peninsula in all directions, the chatter of gulls and puffins filing our ears. The rocks were dappled white and sure enough one Gull managed to spatter us both with one shot.

The wind disappeared after lunch, the sun came out and we over heated. The current was still giving us a helpful nudge and reaching King cove seemed achievable by about 9pm. We took another snack break on Thin Point, the launch pad for a 10 mile crossing to King cove and all those things we’ve been dreaming of all day. We were surprised by a 15-20 knot wind firing out of the bay to the North. I know different areas have different weather systems but we’d just crossed one 6 mile bay without a breath of wind. We decided to have a go for King cove anyway but we were trying to head slightly into the wind and progress was slow enough that we wouldn’t get there until midnight. Plan B was a 5 mile paddle East to little Fox island. We could sail at this angle and flew along at over 4 knots.

We’re camped up in our smelly thermals hoping that tomorrow we can paddle the final 8-12 miles to King cove (Depending on our route). There are no bears on the island so Sarah’s just enjoyed a hot chocolate in the tent! Camping is still great, the luxuries can wait!

What a milestone on day 60! We reached mainland Alaska. And for the first time in 4 days we weren’t battling a headwind and adverse current. We needed to head north today so the persistent easterly was a nice sidewind. We put the sails up and felt the land fly by, relative to our 2.2 knot trudge of recent days. We continued until we needed to go East again and quit while we were ahead after 18 miles. We’re camped in a gorgeous sandy Cove at Kenmore Head with a panorama of steep grassy hills above. The bank immediately behind the tent is covered in purple lupins. Opposite us across a bay, the base of a snowy mountain is visible below the grey clouds. There are no bear prints on the beach which is a good sign although we’ve witnessed a fox fight and a fox running along the beach with an unlucky ground squirrel in its mouth.

Sarah has now completed her crossing of the Pacific ocean from mainland Russia to mainland USA. It’s taken her 4 years and 4 different boats! She’s understandably delighted and I’m happy to have been there at the start kayaking from Russia to Japan and now at the end. Not that we are finished kayaking, we still have quite a few hundred miles before we reach the first road in Homer. But we celebrated this milestone with popcorn and marshmallows!

Excitedly this morning we saw 2 orca whales. They were a couple of hundred metres away and they passed us pretty quickly but we got a few sights of a tall imposing Black fin and a flash of white. Sarah recons that fin would be higher than our sails. We also saw the blow of a different sort of whale as we approached shore ON THE PENINSULA!

Part of me is sad to have left the Aleutian chain. It’s proved to be a beautiful, unpredictable, temperamental, raw wilderness full to the brim with marine life and sprinkled with pockets of interesting people. Thanks for a great 2 months. Let’s see what the peninsula brings.

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!