The winds calmed down today and we made a short hop to Aiktak island where 2 biologists are studying the birds. It was just a 3 mile crossing but the current was due to be shooting south at 6 knots this morning so we waited until an hour before slack. It was a great day for wildlife as usual. Two snorting, sparing sea lions gave us a display on the beach as we left and an otter swimming by on his back didn’t see us until we were close enough to see individual hairs on his face. Dozens of seals lay basking on offshore rocks, some with little babies. There was very little current in the pass until the last half mile when it started pushing us North at a couple of knots. We ferry glided to a small offshore rock draped with sea lions.

Hundreds of puffins swarmed over us as we neared land. It was a taste of things to come as this island where introduced foxes have been irradiated is home to thousands of nesting birds.

” There’s a person”, Sarah called. Amanda was waving to us from a small hill. We pulled up onto the beach and followed her up a narrow path through the grass to a tiny wooden cabin. The sign above the door read “Puffin Palace”. Stacie was inside cooking up deer stew and homemade bread. She later told us she hunted the deer last year.

After lunch we followed them as they went “grubbing” which was checking inside burrows for nesting petrels, eggs and chicks. We got to see the two different types that nest here – leeches and fork tailed, and a couple of little chicks. Amanda collected the egg membrane from an oyster catcher chick that had just hatched for DNA testing.

Right now I’m in the puffin palace while Stacie magics up some salmon sushi. I’m not sure yet whether we’ll move on to Unimak island tomorrow. That’s our last big crossing and one that will have us digging out our bear spray as from there onwards we’ll have some new neighbours to try not to attract!

It’s great when you wake up and it’s raining and you know you can go back to sleep again! In fact I didn’t get out of the tent until after midday, except for a quick dash to the loo in between showers! We’ve been given a few interesting books about the history and culture of the Aleutian Islands and I read some of “Aleuts: Survivors of the Bering Land Bridge”. This afternoon I took binoculars and cameras for an explore and managed to creep up really close to an otter who was feeding in the kelp. He’d dive down beneath the water with a flick of his tail and pop back up again a few seconds later clutching an urchin in his little paw. Floating on his back he’d use his tummy as a table and crunch at his spiky meal. I know we shouldn’t project our emotions onto animals but I couldn’t help feeling he looked happy! I discovered a white tundra swan with a black wedge for a nose floating about on a small pond looking quite lonely ( there I go again! ). And I watched 3 sea lions pros tate on
the beach, every whisker visible through the binoculars. Their rodent-like faces look so small and out of place besides their gigantic bodies rising mountainlike behind them, they remind me of a body builder who has taken too many steroids.

The forecast was for strong NE winds today but it didn’t seem that strong this afternoon and part of me felt we should have paddled. On the positive side, we’ve recharged our batteries and enjoyed just being in a wild corner of the world. I love our days off on a small island somewhere.

It’s great when you wake up and it’s raining and you know you can go back to sleep again! In fact I didn’t get out of the tent until after midday, except for a quick dash to the loo in between showers! We’ve been given a few interesting books about the history and culture of the Aleutian Islands and I read some of “Aleuts: Survivors of the Bering Land Bridge”. This afternoon I took binoculars and cameras for an explore and managed to creep up really close to an otter who was feeding in the kelp. He’d dive down beneath the water with a flick of his tail and pop back up again a few seconds later clutching an urchin in his little paw. Floating on his back he’d use his tummy as a table and crunch at his spiky meal. I know we shouldn’t project our emotions onto animals but I couldn’t help feeling he looked happy! I discovered a white tundra swan with a black wedge for a nose floating about on a small pond looking quite lonely ( there I go again! ). And I watched 3 sea lions pros tate on
the beach, every whisker visible through the binoculars. Their rodent-like faces look so small and out of place besides their gigantic bodies rising mountainlike behind them, they remind me of a body builder who has taken too many steroids.

The forecast was for strong NE winds today but it didn’t seem that strong this afternoon and part of me felt we should have paddled. On the positive side, we’ve recharged our batteries and enjoyed just being in a wild corner of the world. I love our days off on a small island somewhere.

Wow, today is day 50 of our Aleutians journey. To celebrate our half century, we endured a short battle into a nasty, gusty headwind, progressing just 6 miles before deciding our time would be better spent resting up on a beach waiting for less tiring weather. As we pulled up onto a rare brown sand beach, our total mileage notched up above 600 nautical miles which means we are approaching half way to Homer. That puts Sarah on target to win the sweepstakes on how long it will take us- she said 100 days, I reckoned 83. But with luck we’ll have less days off due to weather now we’ve nearly completed the Aleutian Islands part. We’ve had 21 days off so far, often while waiting for good weather for a crossing. But just 3 more crossings now lie between us and the Alaskan peninsula so maybe we’ll speed up a bit?

We chose the east end of our beach to set up camp as the other side was occupied with the great brown hulks of 11 sea lions, sprawled out on the sand. They were oblivious to us as we made a fire and cooked our sweet potatoes and onions in the coals. Occasionally one would sit up and growl at the others or have a scratch of his nose with a long flipper but mostly they would just lie and snooze. Later we crept up above them in the grass and watched them and took photos. I looked through binoculars and could see every whisker and every raw red scar on their blubbery bodies. I think they were all big males so perhaps they are too young, too old or too ugly to have a harem of women on a rock somewhere?

We’d hoped to reach Aiktak island less than 15 miles from here as 2 biologists are working there and have invited us to call in and stay at their “puffin palace”. Today’s wind was creating 2 foot white caps in a bay just a mile wide so we soon decided that crossing a 3 mile wide pass in strong currents with a fetch of several hundred miles probably wasn’t a great idea. Once we abandoned that objective it was an easy choice to stop at the next possible campsite. It’s likely we’ll have a day off tomorrow in more strong winds and hopefully get to Aiktak on Thursday. Hopefully we’ll manage to nail our biggest remaining crossing to Unimak island on Friday – if the forecast stays similar.

For now I’m looking forward to reading, eating and exploring tomorrow.