Kachemak City, Alaska
September 28, 2012 14:30
59N40 151W27

We hit the ground with all 8 feet running (not always in opposite directions). What a landfall it’s been. I’m sitting at my desk looking out our new living room window. If I had a telescope I could see Silver Lining tied up in Homer Harbor, and maybe Frank commuting on the “Blue Too” across Kachemak Bay to his oyster farm job. The kids are off in school, and I’m trying to pin down a thousand ideas for renovation tasks fluttering around in my disarrayed brain. Mostly I just want to stare out at this amazing view and stop thinking at all. All by myself up here, it almost feels like I’m on watch and everyone else is sleeping, only they’re not (well hopefully not). They’re all off having their own day, which they may share small moments of over dinner tonight.

“WHAT HAPPENED?!” you may well ask. Nothing really, and everything really. One thing just lead to another, mostly it just felt right, Homer feels right, the kids seem to think school feels right, finding a fully furnished house project on a perfect site, with a potential separate unit for my mom, made buying it feel just right, and trying oyster farming seems to suit Frank fine for now (the fox has entered the henhouse!). It’s seasonal work and the season is ending, but as the hardest, least-paying job in Homer, Frank says, “I can only go up from here.”

The lynchpin to this axel, or the keystone to this arch, or the wind in these sails – was school. Logan had expressed an interest in trying “real” school, so we figured wherever we landed we’d be making a 2 year commitment. Then Kennan got bit by the bug and wanted to try it too – so that means 4 years. As their former principal, teacher and coach, I don’t know if I should take this personally but they don’t just like “real” school – they love it. Logan is especially stimulated by honors English, and Kennan eats lunch fast so he can go hang out in his advanced Geometry class. Both of them love ceramics, and two evenings a week they and Frank are taking fencing through the community center – my three musketeers. However creative and interesting sword fights on deck and a kiln in the bilge may seem, there are many offerings ashore that would be challenging onboard. Hey whatever it takes, they’re not behind, and they’re motivated to learn, so I’m calling Silver Lining Academy a success, and I refuse to take their enthusiasm for their new school personally. We sailed through the rough seas of middle school and have landed high and dry on the rocky shores of high school, with some promising peaks to climb ahead. All the teachers and one counselor in particular have been completely amazing with the kids, giving me a renewed respect for what public schools can be, and tremendous hope for the 2 to 4 years ahead. This may just be the honeymoon period, but honeymoons precede millions of happy marriages on the planet.

Here’s the blow by blow since Kodiak. We landed in Homer August 7, which turned out to be registration week at Homer High (2nd highest ranked in AK). School started 2 weeks later  after a flurry of back to school shopping, scheduling required health checkups, acquiring the accoutrements of land life (car, cell, insurance etc.) and cleaning up the boat from over 2 months of rugged sailing in the Aleutians. We sailed a few times over to Kachemak Bay State Park to hike, explore, pick blueberries and fish, maybe in an attempt to convince ourselves we weren’t giving up the cruising life completely.

There are many places where wintering over onboard, would be possible if not totally comfortable, but Homer harbor is not such a place. It is out in the middle of Kachemak Bay accessed by a long spit. It’s subject to much harsher weather than the protected town tucked back against the hills. Living on the boat through the winter in Homer was not going to be an option.  So we were actively looking for a housesitting/rental option for the worst of the winter months, fully expecting to move back aboard in spring. At the same time we’ve been looking for years for property around here, a place for our nest egg, something safer than the banks. After lots of browsing and perusing, we met with Philip Alderfer a real estate friend of my brother, who gave us a list of possibilities. We fell in love with one new listing – a fully-furnished and equiped duplexable home, on 2 one-acre view-lots, in need of some care, but ready to move in. It was priced to sell but higher than what we’d planned on spending. We were able to do it with help from my mom, who has been wanting to put a toe in these frigid waters closer to Gart, Deb and their kids, without committing yet to a full time Homer life. It all fell together at an amazing speed, and after two weeks of escrow, we closed today. So a winter project for Frank is in place. We may still move back on the boat in the spring and try our hand at the vacation rental business, or we may try doing some charters on Silver Lining next summer. Frank is working on getting his U.S. captain’s license, since he did not have time in Tahiti to complete continued education courses required for his French Polynesian license that would have given him an internationally valid license. And I’m trying to decide if I should be attempting to get an Alaska architects license, it’s not exactly building boom time.

The shift from summer to fall here moves even faster than the shift from spring to summer in the Aleutians. One day the leaves turned all golden, the next day a storm came and blew the most vibrant ones away before I even got a chance to photograph the onset of fall. Today we even saw snowflakes and the mountains across the way are getting a white dusting. Apparently winter is the long season here. Maybe we lost a few screws along the way, but we feel strangely prepared for this. We’re not afraid of cabin fever (especially since our “cabin” has views almost as expansive as Silver Lining’s), nor do we fear extreme conditions. My biggest fear right now, is having jumped into all this before getting a real job. Conventional wisdom would have one of us getting a real job before buying a house (oyster farming doesn’t quite qualify – it might if Frank could cash in on the oysters he’s eating over there;) But conventional wisdom does not seem to be serving the world well these days, so I guess we’ll continue to taunt the conventional wisdom devil a bit more. At least I’m not unemployed in Greenland.

As the westernmost end of the US Highway system, they call the tip of Homer Spit “Lands End” – for us it’s really “Lands Beginning.” It may seem like we’re doing a lot of things backwards, but for now it feels like we’re leaping forward into a next adventure. And so the Silver Lining Academy doors are closing, but new doors are opening on all sides, I just hope one of them includes a satisfying job for one or both of us – we may have to build the frame for that door from scratch. And four years of acclimating to colder weather should have us ready for a northwest passage attempt on Silver Lining, then we could visit the european side of our extended friends and family without tempting any pirates. Amzer zo.

In the meantime, Oysters on the half shell anyone? Come on up, the water’s fine.

xoxomo

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Phoenix Bay, Afognak July 31, 2012 20:31 58N524 1532W19

Our Kodiak time has been a world apart from the Aleutians. Our hikes have been limited, not just by the bear fear factor, but on closer inspection those rolling green grassy hills with shrubbery we saw from the boat when we arrived, turned out to be rolling green shrubbery with small groves of alder – a terrain exceedingly difficult to make way in without trails or a machete. The Aleutian tundra we’d been enjoying had begun to grow to a height and density that was increasingly difficult to traverse as a pedestrian, but Kodiak’s southeastern fjords were far more seasonally advanced. Putchki was shoulder height to the Aleutian Putchki’s waist height. The many white white blossoms scattered across the hillsides here were not White Anemone as I thought but giant Putchki flowers. On arrival, my entire sense of scale was way off from our boat perspective. Interestingly the rare lupine here looked dwarf compared to the fields of Aleutian lupine with their giant blossoms and leaves (at the nature center in Kodiak we learned that lupine roots are a bear delicacy, a likely cause of their reduced stature here).

As we worked our way north the landscape changed even more. First the groves of trees grew bigger, with more spruce added to the mix. Then the Alders disappeared altogether and the spruce dominated the hillsides. A short visit to the town of Kodiak shook our brains a bit more with lots of boats, cars, buildings and people. We escaped quickly, scuttling across to Afognak Island for some calm, but yesterday’s cove smelled like Home Depot, and the hillsides had been stripped of trees, a healthy logging operation. Today we’re on the very north end of Afognak in a cove with an old familiar feel of the Pacific Northwet. Dense forests, driftwood beaches lined with ochre kelp at low tide, and lots of rocks ready to trip up any unsuspecting boater (we’re always suspecting).

Our bear count is up to about 10, all at a nice safe distance, most on the beach, one mom and her two cubs up on a mountainside. The cubs were great fun to watch in the binoculars, romping and playing. We were perfectly happy not to be any closer. We’re seeing a lot more sea otters now, but not quite so many stellar sea lions. Today a huge pod of humpbacks had gathered in the bay as we sailed in. It’s not easy to count whales, but at a single moment I counted 10 puffs from blows. How many were diving while those ten were blowing? Eagles, puffins, kittiwakes, loons cormorants and fulmars are still abundant. We have not seen any albatross in awhile, but we did spot a parasitic jaeger, a new bird for us. Maybe they had them further west and we just didn’t notice in the black masses of birds there. The wildlife is wild and full of life, constant entertainment.

Tomorrow’s predicted 20plus knots of SE wind should make short work of the passage across Cook Inlet to the Kenai peninsula. We have not really done Kodiak justice. The real action is apparently on the west side, but for now we’ve seen enough action, our brains are filled with some incredible images and memories. Everyone is now distracted by thoughts of an upcoming “real” school year and lots of “what’s next” questions. So we’re making lots of short hops, and we’re now 2-3 short hops away from Homer, our new hometown for awhile. Everywhere we go people ask where we’re from, that’s gotten harder and harder to answer. I guess we get to say we’re from Homer now – we’re Alaskans.

xoxomo

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Japanese Bay, Kodiak July 23, 2012 06:36 56N57 153W41

We arrived and slept. We’re anchored in Japanese Bay tucked behind a sand spit. The waters here are as calm as a Polynesian lagoon. And it’s greener here than New Zealand. The big verdant rolling hills behind us could have been used for filming the Ring Trilogy – except for the grizzlies. I think these bears would have given the Orks a run for their money, and the actors guild probably would have negotiated substantial extra risk wages. I can see why the location scouts might have written this place off, bears and the rampant putchki plants would make staging a battle scene challenging. Putchki is a local plant that is supposedly edible, but lots of folks have a serious reaction to skin contact with it. I can’t quite picture the actors rolling in putchki and using their plastic swords to fend off grizzlies. New Zealand provides a much more benign environment. Still I do think it’s actually greener here, and what amazing lighting – when it’s not raining (too much overtime the producers would say).

There’s shrubbery here, that’s new. As we moved east in the Aleutians, we saw more and bigger blueberry bushes, and by the time we reached Unalaska there were even a few stubby willow bushes, but no head-height shrubbery. Here there’s lots, all of it about the size of a standing grizzly, their own natural human blind. Still no trees not counting a small stand of five pines that look like they once surrounded a homestead. When we arrived we saw a deer on the beach, so the grizzly diet is not limited to salmon and berries. So far we’ve had only a couple bear sightings, they were all at the creek at the head of the bay, very far from our boat, so in the binoculars, they appeared as small brown logs that moved. No one seems eager to explore the shrubbery today, despite the promise of panoramic views up the hillsides. Frank and Logan who had no trouble swimming in shark infested waters, seem content to sit in the cockpit with the binoculars. How does one go about acclimating one’s fear response to new threats? My vote is to walk the perimeter of the sand spit. The grass is knee-high to a grizzly, so we should see one coming from a good distance. I don’t think we’d come across one walking in the hills on the side of the bay; it appears that they are focused on whatever is in that river, and I don’t think the blueberries are ripe just yet so nothing to tempt them away from the river there, although that may not actually be the case here. Despite our northward progress, the weather here is warmer than south of us and not just because we’re approaching August. We no longer have the winds coming directly off the arctic, and warm currents from the Pacific heat up the Gulf of Alaska (the body of water we now face), creating a fine radiant heat system for this region. Yes all things are relative, but whether from the season or the currents, it’s now 56 degrees in the cabin in the morning instead of 46 degrees – 10 degrees is a huge improvement, I no longer wear gloves inside. So maybe one could snag a few ripe bluebs’ on a sunny slope here, we would look if we could find any situated a good distance from all that shrubbery.

Gart and Deb say that bears don’t actually come hunting for humans, and that if one heard us coming it would normally run the other way unless we came between a sow and her cubs. We’re not their preferred diet. But people say sharks don’t much like humans either, that doesn’t stop them from doing a taste test now and then. I hated lamb and liver as a kid, over time, trying small amounts occasionally, I’ve actually grown to appreciate both, in small quantities. Who’s to say these bear’s buds have not evolved too? Go Bruins!

xoxomo

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Pacific Ocean/Gulf of Alaska July 22, 2012 01:18 56N05 153W31

We finally left the Bering Sea. We’ve taken a big leap ahead, skipping the Alaska Peninsula altogether, jumping straight from the Aleutians to Kodiak. There are a dizzying number of bays coves bights and inlets all along the Peninsula. We could have hopped from cove to cove for a good section of the coast, but recognizing that our preferred pace is to stay in a place and explore, we decided against lots of little stops, opting for more time in Kodiak. Also some nice light S/SW winds followed that last blow, so we jumped on the downwind train going east a few days ago. This morning (yesterday morning officially), pulling even with Kodiak Island, we turned north. It’s been a busy passage, we’re on the main freeway between ports in Vancouver/Seattle and Japan. Vive le AIS! But there are lots of fishing boats too now that we’re closer to some kind of civilization, and they don’t all have AIS. That and some patchy fog has kept us on high alert during watches.

Looking at the charts for Kodiak has my head swimming with options of coves and bays too. On paper it’s a tattered and lacy bit of land. If we had a dartboard and a spare paper chart of the island, it could make the selection process easier. Right now we’re aiming for a promising looking all weather anchorage on the southwest side of the island, arrival sometime tomorrow. Maybe I’ll write again after a nice long rest. Even an easy passage can wear you out.

Bear country, here we come.

xoxomo

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Lost Harbor, Akun Island, Aleutians July 15, 2012 23:20 54N14 165W37

Dutch Harbor was an amazing place to provision. The main store in town is a giant cross between a ship chandler, a hardware store and a food and clothing warehouse store, with each section pared down to just the items required for a long voyage, in high latitudes, by an international crew. They had shackles big enough to lift our boat, 5 gallon containers of diesel engine oil, a wide selection of baking mixes that did not require fresh eggs, and the produce section had everything from taro root and banana leaves to cilantro and corn. The Asian aisle and the Mexican aisle fought each other for shelf space, while the freezer had pigs blood for sale next to squid. At one aisle Frank and I watched two scruffy, well-tattooed, muscled guys grab 10 of the largest containers of peanut butter I’d ever seen, then walk on to discuss the finer points of which brand of packaged breadcrumbs tasted best on both chicken and fish, “that stuff worked great last time, everyone liked it, and it was easy.” One said pointing to his preferred brand. The other replied,”Not easy having that boiling pot of oil if the seas are big.” They grabbed a couple armloads of packages anyway.

We too brought home armloads of stuff. There’s a feast or famine mindset that emerges in me after over 2 months without a store, as we run out of the things that made the crew happy, and turn to the things we’ve been avoiding, the mood onboard darkens and when I hit the aisles of a well supplied store with decent prices, even I’m amazed at the things I put in my own cart, we try to limit the cart to what we can carry, but sometimes we go overboard and the short walk home with too much of the heavy stuff becomes a very long slog.

There were more eagles than inhabitants in town, and the birds hung out at the fish packing plants, keeping an eagle eye on the loading and unloading process, ready to dive on any pollock that jumped the hopper. It was a busy season in a very busy international town. Fishing boats arrived and departed 2-3 per hour round the clock. Workers from countries across the world come for the backbreaking opportunity to make a relative fortune. The dorm room windows displayed flags from Mexico, the Phillipines, and Ethiopia. In the streets we heard Arabic, Vietnamese, Spanish. Two Samoans in shorts and flip flops in a beat up old 20 foot sport fisher pulled into the dock next to us; it looked like there last stop could have been Pago Pago, except for a few missing tons of fuel. Each packing company has a campus of dormitory buildings to house these seasonal, or temporary workers. The town of Unalaska across the bridge from Dutch Harbor has a small number of saltbox houses in the same hues as Atka’s houses. Another green-onion-domed, white Russian Orthodox church was the main architectural feature of the town. The one other cruising sailboat we met there were on their way over the top to conquer the northwest passage. They were a fun and eclectic group of gents. We joined them in the pub a few nights and picked their brains for the where/why/how of it – maybe we’ll follow in a few years, a pirate-free fast passage to Europe – as long as the ice breaks up.

There’s only so much dreaming, sight-seeing, local color watching, and provisioning a family can do, so after a week we sailed half a day north. Where we’ve spent the past couple days bouncing between Akutan and Akun islands, at first rushing to take in a cove with dunes and ruins and a two-mile beach, and another sweet town this one with boardwalks instead of streets. But now that we’ve done the place justice and are ready to move, we’re stuck waiting for another low to pass. Gales will be blowing and we’re in a pretty good spot for that now. We managed to pick up a cold or bug in Dutch, and neither of us is ready for a couple of all-nighters in a gale, so we’ll hang tight and maybe skip the lower portion of the Alaska Peninsula, and make way for Kodiak on the back of this next system. Since we made landfall in Adak, we’ve only gone 440 miles, as the crow flies, and we still have over 600 miles to go to Homer. Between finding places we don’t want to leave, then weather that keeps us there when we are ready to leave, the summer is rapidly blowing by, the miles are not – ‘course now I’m ready to go another 2 months before the next grocery run. But Logan has officially expressed an interest in trying out “real” school, and it probably wouldn’t hurt Kennan either (and it certainly won’t hurt me to have someone else responsible for stuffing their brains with knowledge – or maybe it’ll just change the nature of my educational nagging); and school starts before the end of August, a month away now. So we officially have a schedule to keep.

ah ah ah achooo xoxombo

P.S. I did get two new photo albums up in Dutch Harbor. I tried to include more pics of the guys, but the flowers and scenery are prettier:

Unalaska https://plus.google.com/photos/103820103700153271920/albums/5762112139230129297

Igitkin and Atka https://plus.google.com/photos/103820103700153271920/albums/5762108109782486449

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Naginak Cove, Unalaska Island, Aleutians July 4, 2012 21:41 53N52 166W33

Just got connected, and the radio is not working well these days. I wrote this on the morning of the fourth:

Happy fourth of July! Our national bird watches over us, just knowing he’s there makes me feel patriotic, although I think he’s expecting us to serve up some fresh salmon guts, I hate to disappoint him today of all days, but we suck at salmon fishing. We have not yet found the trick for catching in Alaska, a couple of cod and some rockfish are all we’ve managed to pull from these waters (and some big ugly many legged spiny seastars – Logan says they’re sunstars). We continue to hope for salmon, crab or halibut. Just one halibut could feed us for a month. For now we have to suffer with reindeer (tough life, I can tell I’m not earning any sympathy on this point).

We spent nearly a week in Naginak Cove, I could have stayed a month, maybe even a year. It was protected from all sides, had a thousand possible directions to hike up, a sky that changed the snowy peak view daily, and more sun than we’ve had anywhere else. I think the peaks were so high, they carved a little hole in the sky to mainline the sunshine, while it was rainy all around we enjoyed calm sunny weather. We had just enough cloudy weather to let our muscles recuperate from the strain of crashing down the mountain above on boogie boards (yes I joined them for a session, more as documentarian than participant, although I did try a few runs). A few new flowers popped up each day, my latest favorite, first spotted day before yesterday are the Lady’s Slippers, now there’s a flower that deck’s herself out well before hitting the slopes. I think she has a sense of the dramatic too, waiting to make a late arrival splash.

Yesterday we beat our way out of our bay then had a great fast downwind run around to Dutch Harbor. The change in scenery along the coast kept us entertained all day. First the old sharp granite mountains with their deep wide valleys and bumpy glacial moraine terrain below, then big broad volcanic mountains with long steep smooth sides and a few cinder-cones mixed in. The snow on top is melting at a fast pace so the lower slopes are gushing water; millions of tiny creeks merge with thousands of streams which feed hundreds of rivers that end in dramatic falls, all carving the slopes in a net of snaky white lines accented with a bright vertical flourish at the most impressive valleys. From the thickness of some of the glacier edges visible on top, the flow will not stop before next winter, even with global weirdness, it would take a few years worth of summers to melt it all – a sobering thought.

Dutch Harbor is a huge fishing port, the harbor master put us out on “the spit” far from town. When the wind dies down we may get to move into the small boat harbor, but for now yesterday’s 25 knots of W/SW winds seem to be holding and we’re safe at dock so we’re staying put for now. There’s a British boat on the dock with us, our first sailboat sighting since Hawaii, so we’ll go find out what they’re doing so far from home.

Nope mom, no internet at all yet and we probably won’t find anything open in town with the fourth holiday, so we won’t be calling a cab or renting a car to do a town run today. The weather is supposed to improve this weekend; we may just wait it out and move the boat closer to the resources then. With some fairly intense days of play behind us, we’ve got plenty of school catching up to do. We need to finish this school year so we can start a new one. We’re about 3 weeks behind.

xoxomo

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Naginak Cove, Unalaska Island, Aleutians June 28, 2012 21:41 53N37 166W51

Having trouble getting signal past these mountains so this was written yesterday:

After a few days of rain and overcast skies in Atka, a weather window of west southwest wind opened up to move us eastward. With 25 knots, we were glad it was at our backs. At one point Frank ever bold when I’m below, had all sails up and we were powering downwind at 14 knots…I made him reduce sail before sunset. Still we made rapid progress past the recently active Cleveland Volcano, figuring it was not the best time or place to lollygag. It was foggy when we passed 7 miles to the north, so we didn’t “get” to see any spewing hot lava, no VW sized chunks fell nearby.

We were thinking we might stop at Nikolski another even smaller high latitude hamlet two days east of Atka, but on the charts it looked like an uninviting west wind anchorage, so we continued on to Unalaska, the island with the biggest city in the Aleutians, Dutch Harbor. We’re on the opposite side of the island from Dutch Harbor now, completely tucked into the end of a long finger of a big bay, surrounded by very steep mountains. We might as well be on one of the uninhabited islands for all the human activity we have not seen. When we sailed in, cloud cover hid everything but the lower 100 feet of coastline; but the next morning we were welcomed by another of those glassy flat calms after the blow. A double edged serrated blade surrounded us with sharp peaks and blue sky above and sharp peaks and blue sea in the reflection below – nearly 360 degrees around. Three days later, we’ve hiked up one side to find the source of a big waterfall, meandered up the river valley to see its source at the end, and today we split up, the boys heading for the icy north face of the valley to go boogie boarding “Aleutian style” and me to go up the wildflower studded southern face to photograph every little blossom I could find. I think my photographer’s pace was driving them nuts, no one wanted to join me.

The golden and white Aleutians are mostly emerald and white now, with the white receding rapidly from the shore and lower hills. But where a receding tide takes most sea life with it, the receding snow leaves a colorful swathe of plant life in its place. Everything that can bloom is blooming. Even the massive, lumpy, hilltop moss-mounds have tiny, hearty-looking, bell shaped flowers in delicate white pink and yellow colors. They look remarkably similar to the blueberry blossoms, which in turn look a lot like mini pink blueberries, without the berry swell. These other bells may not be moss at all, but blueberry relatives hiding their leaves in the thick layers of moss. Evenly spaced across the lower slopes are an abundance of purple, pink, and magenta orchid-like flowers. They are distributed 3-5 feet apart, as if some gardener decided that a polka dot slope was what the plain green surface needed. Some areas have thick clumps of a larger light yellow flower, big and showy next to the smaller orchids, although the orchids give this flower a run for its money on the vibrancy scale. Chocolate lilies are sprinkled throughout, competing for attention by the shear audaciousness of their color, “Who said we couldn’t wear dark brown in spring.”

Without a flower guide in hand I’m a complete cretin when it comes to flower identification. Frank agreed with me that the little violet color and shaped flowers that smell like violets were probably violets (he might also agree that I’m a flower cretin). Lupine is easy, because I got in trouble in horse camp as a kid for letting my horse eat it. Chocolate lilies and violets are easy, with names that match their colors (or colors that match their names). For the rest I might as well be Antoine Bouganville, confronting these plant forms for the first time, except I’m sure I’ve seen some before and just forgotten their labels. Now there is the real reason I switched paths from Ornamental Horticulture to Architecture in college. I may be good with forms and languages, but memorizing Latin names was/is anathema to me. Maybe if the names were more obvious I could have done better – I mean truly, what about the flower Lupine is at all wolflike???

The boys had a blast, and came back beat. I enjoyed setting my own pace wandering from flower to flower, rock to rock, peak to peak soaking in the landscape from every perspective. I too came back beat. It turns out that the ridge I worked my way up was between two river valleys. The highpoint was well below all the larger peaks on the other sides of the two valleys, but it still felt like the top of a world. I was perched there next to some eagle fluff and what looked to be a small pile of bleached vole bones; from that regal spot, I could see the little dots of my men zipping around in a long white patch of snow on a ridge across the valley north of me. If I had an eagle’s sight, I could have seen who was crashing into whom, instead, the dots just crossed and merged and stopped and moved slowly back up their slope, and I was content to be 2 miles away, not watching the blow by blow, but knowing that as long as the three dots moved all was good with the world. Not to anthropomorphize, but I’m sure I was having a psychic moment of connection with the eagle mom on the mound below mine, watching her progeny soar across the bay with his dad, she nibbling on a vole, me with my nuts, raisins and M&Ms, the world at our talons. A magical moment. Amazingly, there were no injuries all day, unless you count sunburned noses – no mom to badger them about sunscreen. And on my side, I did not fall into one of the many holes the snowmelt rivulets are carving into this landscape, despite Frank’s dire warnings when I took off on my own.

We’re taking full advantage of this bear-free, tree-free country to romp and play. We may soon be boat bound, unless we can find some bear mace between here and Homer. And we won’t likely be splitting up when we reach Unimak Island, separated only by a narrow channel from the grizzly infested Alaska peninsula. From that point on, we’ll be walking everywhere together – noisily. For now our supplies are still plentiful (we got a Snicker fix in Atka), and the only thing steering us toward Dutch Harbor sooner rather than later is a need for engine oil and brownie mix. After Dutch Harbor there is very little left of the Aleutians; maybe just a few more days here. This may well have been the fastest month on our voyage, maybe even the fastest month in my life. Hey Gart and Deb, when does Homer High start their school year?

xoxomo

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Atka Village, Atka Island, Aleutians June 21, 2012 23:48 52N11 174W11

Is it really the first day of summer? If anyone had told me that a few days ago, I would have believed them – not with the low passing over today. Three days ago, we were lying in the tundra on a south facing slope soaking in the warm sunshine and another luscious view, and watching the grass grow. Gart says it’s a favorite summer pastime in Homer to sit in the yard with a beer and watch the grass grow. With all these daylight hours, it is not a passive activity. I think if we had taken a nap on our tundra rest, we could have missed some key moments. Watching the grass grow in the Aleutians is a spectacular spectator sport, lacking only a pair of enthusiastic commentators:

“A bold move by the blade of grass on the right clump next to the eagle’s nest, it slices, it pierces, right through the weakened defenses of last year’s has-beens, the tip leaping to waste-height – wouldn’t surprise me Bob, if they aren’t disqualified for fertilizer abuse. But the shore team takes the gold, and drowns it with bushels full of this year’s more fashionable kelly green. Over in the brook gully, photosynthesis is on phast phorward, the darker earth warming this year’s crop of wildflowers, I believe they have a plan to steel the show with something other than green – I see hints of small yellow, white, and pink blossoms testing the ground for giant spears of blue lupine on the right ready to burst.”

“Nope, can’t beat those brawny Aleutian Genus Lupinus, Joe. Now there’s a family that takes its spring seriously.”

It is amazing what a little sunshine can do to accelerate the shift from gold to green. When we first arrived, you had to pull back dead grass to see hints of sprouts below, then a week or so ago it looked like someone had airbrushed green across the the water lines (coast, rivers and streams), there where the darker sands and rocks seemed to heat the earth more and extra moisture fed the roots faster. Then the tops of all the islets went dark green; those fox-free rocks a safe distance from the main islands where seabirds can nest (and fertilize) freely. Then the tops of the taller tufts where the eagle’s perch took a turn at going green. Now all slopes with even a hint of southerly exposure, are casting a new green gold shade. The dimpled gold landscape is now mottled green, with only full northerly facing slopes remaining green-free. I expect that when the fog and rain of this low lift, and we can see land again, it may well be transformed into an emerald world.

Night before last, we arrived at the only village on Atka, an arrival timed to put us in a protected spot for the low that’s now blowing overhead (and across our bow). As we pulled around the point hiding the old town from the sea, my heart skipped a beat. I fell instantly in love with this scene. It is the archetype of a high latitude village: tiny clapboard houses in a variety of light and dark, but always muted colors, the green dome of the white Russian Orthodox church peaking over the back of the cluster of 20 homes, all nestled in a protected valley facing the cove, across from a collection of small islands framing a snowy-peak view of the larger Nazan Bay. Half the homes are tumbling down, but the other half look to be under reconstruction. Kennan’s comment on peaking out, “ So this is where all those midwest tornadoes dump their houses.” They do look like shacks that landed somewhat randomly on the landscape. Still, of the many are-we-there-yets of the past 3 years, here we are definitely there. We have arrived at a somewhere I will remember forever, even if it’s not a somewhere I would want to live in forever.

We read that that snowy-peak view isn’t always so snowy. Korovin volcano, one of the higher of the snowy peaks, last erupted in 2006. My dad just wrote to say that Cleveland, a volcano between us and Dutch Harbor, erupted yesterday shooting ash and debris 23,000 feet into the atmosphere. We had planned to sail close past, the “Islands of Four Mountains” where Cleveland is located, they are small circles on the charts with incredibly high mountains, should be quite a sight. But besides the unappealing notion of VW sized blobs of lava and ice raining down on us (a steel hull can only help us so much), ash from these volcanoes can choke an engine in short order. This is a land of fire and ice. Can’t say that and not finish off with a little Robert Frost:

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

xoxomo

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Martin Harbor, Atka Island, Aleutians June 17, 2012 23:10 52N12 174W17

They’re reindeer not caribou, according to the Aleut who cruised by this morning on a father’s day hunting and fishing outing. He cruised back this afternoon to drop off a haunch, Happy Father’s Day! All I had to offer was coffee cake, still warm though (so was the haunch). He instructed us to hang it for a day, skin it, and wait a week to eat it. Or was that skin it, then hang it? And the week of waiting should that be in the fridge? Or is the outdoor temp of 45-55 good enough if the sun doesn’t come out? For now it’s hanging with its fur (maybe enough for one bootie – if I could find some instructions for tanning it…). Obviously we’ve lots to learn here. It’s a strange contrast to the regimes of bananas we’re used to hanging from our radar arch. The adjacent hills are covered with eagles, Frank’s now worried they’ll take a liking to our new piece of carcass. The kids have offered to defend it with their wrist rockets, but I think that may be against the law. Hopefully our national birds will all be too busy with the rest of the bones in the next bay over.

I’m forever humbled by the generosity of Pacific Islanders, although I don’t think the Aleuts qualify as Pacific Islanders, since only half of each island here faces the Pacific. Still they’re easily as generous as the Polynesian’s we met. Guess I better start baking, I need to build a supply of something to say thanks for these generous gifts – and guess who ate all the Snickers. In fact all our snackables are going fast, the already rapid teenage snack consumption rate is on the rise. It may be a double growth spurt, but I think it’s more likely the cold, we’re burning more calories just sleeping, we’ll eat anything and everything to keep warm. We’ve still had no luck catching salmon or halibut, but Frank and Logan each caught a cod today (Logan’s was bigger, the nerve, on father’s day even). Even if we don’t get better at fishing these waters, with the generosity of the locals, we’ll be able to avoid starvation – and keep one foot warm.

xoxomo

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Kovurof Bay, Atka Island, Aleutians June 13, 2012 22:10 52N04 174W55

We’re still on the Bearing Sea side of the Andreanof islands. According to the pilot charts (weather charts with historic data), winds out of the NW should predominate here now, but instead we’ve been getting mostly South-East to North-East winds, with the lows still coming up from Japan in the south bringing with them some version of a southerly swell. So for now we’re happier with the options for anchorages on this side. We made our way east against light winds 50 more miles yesterday and snuggled into what we hope will be a protected spot. The mountains are huge everywhere, but some coves with low saddles between mountains and connecting the two oceans just look like they’ll send the wind howling through. It is picking up as predicted, but here they’re evenly high all around, with no huge mountains, and no deep saddles through to the Pacific side. There’s also a nice sandy bottom so the anchors are dug in deep.

Frank did all the sailing work yesterday, I managed to pull a back muscle (or a group of back muscles) the day before, and spent most of yesterday (and today) trying to find a horizontal or vertical position that did not make me cringe, not easy when even breathing seems to make me cringe. Teach me to try and toss a line up 20’ (low tide at the fuel dock) first thing in the morning, teach Frank to let me try (he’s the one who had to do 12 hours of solo-sailing). Getting old is hard business, especially in this chilly place, where muscles just don’t warm up very fast. But what yesterday lacked in wind (and crew), it made up for in sun, so he stayed warm. And Logan took my place as photographer at sunset (11:00 p.m.), there is a sun, it does set north of west, and he caught it dipping into the Bearing Sea through a little slot entrance of our well surrounded cove. After another glassy calm night, the wind is up to 30 knots now. It’s still sunny so the increasing proliferation of buds we’ve been spotting on our hikes should be exploding into blossoms by the time this system passes and we get our dinghy in the water to go ashore – maybe in three days?

With the sun out, these tundra hills look like a lionesses crouched on the savanna, smooth golden hide, pulled taught over ridges, backbones, and haunches. A golden paw with deep dark crevices rests on the point across the bay, dipping a set of dark claws into the water. If only she knew herds of caribou roamed her back, she’d leap up and the hunt would be on. We have not yet caught the legendary halibut or salmon, and we were given some bou meat in Adak, so we know it’s good, lean and tasty. Even Frank who has never held a gun, is wondering if we should have bought a shotgun and a hunting license instead of 3 fishing licenses. There are 4-5 herds of 15-20 animals taunting us from the surrounding hills (or maybe it’s one herd of 100 animals). Frank pointed out that all a caribou knows is eating grass and migrating thousands of miles. What do they do on an island when half their skill set is obsolete? Eat twice the grass. These island caribou are healthy specimens.

We spotted a coyote-sized fox trotting along the shore checking the tide pools for tidbits. He and the caribou are all looking very disheveled with their mottled spring coats, a little chilly still to unzip them all the way, so big light patches hang across their backs. No one on board is shedding any layers yet, even with the sun out.

xoxomo

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