Justine’s Blog

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.

We came close to a collision today- and not with a boat! As we at started out across Akun strait, our attention moved from studying the small breaking waves to a sudden loud roar. The small plane that flies from Dutch Harbour to Akun was hurtling towards us not that far above the water. Whoosh and he was past leaving Sarah and I amazed and amused. It was a bold hello from the pilot and one that had me bursting into spontaneous giggles regularly for the rest of the day!

What a day it was. We enjoyed most of it in the community of Akutan, chatting to some of the 80 people who live in the village, visiting a small museum in the library, eating ice cream and driving through the massive Trident fish processing plant which employs hundreds of seasonal workers. The small cluster of bright houses linked by a wooden boardwalk had a happy, friendly feel to it. The locals again showed us great kindness with gifts of halibut chowder, canned salmon and seagull egg pie ( a delicious rich egg custard). Yesterday we relaxed in a steam bath (a wood fired sauna) and were offered a bed by nurse Wendy. It was Wendy’s quad bike “ambulance” that took us around the fish plant.

It’s always sad to leave these communities and I felt guilty leaving after just 26 hours but it’s due to get windier tomorrow from the NE and we wanted to cross some passes while we had good visibility and only a light headwind. It turned into a beautiful evening and we just kept going making the most of calm seas, sunkissed islands, and a helpful push from the tide at times. We launched at 4pm and landed on a steep boulder beach on Tigalda island at just before midnight, watched by a fox, a seal and an otter as the last pink glow lit up the sky.

Tomorrow? We’ll see how windy it is and it won’t be an early start!

Jagged cliffs 100 metres away were disconcertingly hidden from view. The world was grey. It was hard to see where the sea ended and the fog began. As we discussed whether to make a 12 mile crossing to Akutan island, the low hum of fishing boats carried clearly through the murk. Sarah wasn’t keen and we turned and headed East along Unalaska island. Plan B involved island hopping; shorter crossings but stronger tides and more chance of rough water. The 3 mile Unalga pass was predicted to be flooding at 5.6 knots. We approached half an hour before slack and tentatively nudged out into the ruffled water. Land soon faded to grey behind us and we hoped no boats had waited for slack to travel through the pass. A few white caps livened things up a bit but the crossing went well. We spotted the pinnacles off a headland when we were almost upon it.

“Pfffff”, the unmistakable exhalation of a whale was really close. And again. “11o’clock, 100 metres away”, I called to Sarah. The small humpback rose to the surface through the mist six more times before diving deeper with a glorious flick of his tail. It amused me that our best whale sighting so far was in a near white out.

We decided to make the most of the east going ebb tide and cross to Akutan island. This worked great and we reached 6 knots in the strongest current. A mile from Akutan, the faint outline of a high mountain emerged in monochrome. Within seconds it took on colour as we burst out of the low band of fog that had trapped us all day. How great to see the vibrant green of the hillsides and the deep blue of the sea and sky. We enjoyed a few hours of sunshine and pretty views until we landed on a steep pebble beach after a varied and enjoyable day of 26 miles. The downside of not having much wind is there are thousands of flies swarming around dead seaweed, but they haven’t bothered us much beyond committing suicide in our drinks and food.

Being the summer solstice we enjoyed a tipple of homemade mead kindly given to us by Josh and Missy in Unalaska. Yum! Tomorrow we hope to make it to the community of Akutan which is about 15 miles away.