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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Igitkin Bight, Igitkin Island, Aleutians June 11, 2012 21:55 51N59 175W53

The captain was ready early this morning – even made his own coffee. Guess who provides the muscle to every hair brained idea I dream up? Who would be moving the heaviest items off that mountain of trash to find the missing pieces of the kiln? Who would be cobbling together a cobbler’s bench so I could fashion my carriboots? Who would be foraging in the cold for antlers, then sawing them into pendant-size pieces for me? Who would be replacing the siding on my artist retreat buildings so the rats couldn’t get in, scare the clients, and start an electrical fire? Yep, the captain was in a hurry to get out of Adak this morning.

So we’re in new wild place with a perfect beach, and big sweeping tundra-clad mountains that look like they could push some serious wind through if it was not flat calm. A couple more calm days should see us to a more protected anchorage east of here before the next blow.

xoxomo

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Sweeper’s Cove, Adak Island, Aleutians June 10, 2012 23:30 51N51 176W39

The town of Adak is a surreal place. Wikipedia has the historic details if you’re interested. I’ll try a short version before adding my own impressions. This whole area was populated by the Unanga (AKA Aleuts) for about 6000 years up until the 1800s, when the most of the local hunting population followed Russian fur traders east, and most of those who remained behind starved (guess the fur trade didn’t leave much for subsistence living). During WWII Adak was the staging ground for an offensive against the Japanese who had landed/attacked Attu and Kiska (Islands the furthest west in the Aleutian chain). During the cold war Adak was a major naval air station responsible among other things for submarine reconnaissance. At it’s peak in the 1990s the population grew to 6,000 people, with all kinds of nifty new facilities for the military families living here, swimming pool, new schools, bowling alley, rec centers replete with pottery, auto, and woodworking shops, and yes even a McDonald’s. With the end of the cold war, and the Clinton era military base closures, most of Adak’s buildings and facilities were given to the Aleut Corporation, the entity that owns and runs most of Adak today. Between the 1990 census and the 2000 census, Adak’s population dropped 93%, down to about 300. When we asked in town they said “year-round” residents probably hovered around 80 – a very unofficial number. The result is a modern day ghost town, with everything frozen in 1990’s – a very apocalyptic feel. If you were ET dropped into Adak, you’d assume the Russians won the cold war. Besides the extremes in temperature, remoteness, and ambience, it’s the southernmost city in Alaska, (although city seems a little extreme to me), and it’s officially one of the extreme points in the U.S. as the westernmost municipality.

We rented a car* for two days to see the sights. It was fascinating to drive around these empty streets with mostly empty houses and buildings. What is it about ruins that tickles the imagination? Abandoned cabins or castles pull you into picturing the lives and times witnessed by those structures in a way that occupied buildings don’t. Even historic reconstructions or museums don’t light up the past as clearly in the imagination as ruins do. What does a tattered remain say that a living functioning space can’t?

In an 80s era zone with peach and beige houses capped by blue and red metal roofs, I expected to see moms walking down the vacant sidewalks with big shoulder pads permed curls, and purple teal and magenta coats (like the one I was wearing pulled from the bowels of Silver Lining’s storage – an 80s era ski parka that’s still keeping me warm). That officer housing section looked like a master plan lifted right out of an orange county architect’s office and plopped in the tundra. It almost appeared to be under construction with its lack of landscaping and its exposed plywood siding (where metal siding had been torn off by the wind). But broken windows, and rusty metal doors, cracked plastic wind screens and fire damaged units told a more recent tale. Perhaps a tale of rat infestations and electrical fires, or bored youth with too much time and space and rocks at hand, or fisherman with too much shore liberty and inhibitions drowned in alcohol.

One local took me on a tour of an old recreation center, to give me a flavor of what they’re up against from a cleanup standpoint. The old basketball court was piled high with mounds of deteriorating furniture. Walking around the edges, there were rolls of raffle tickets, piles of baseball helmets, table saws, rusty industrial washers, any and all manner of equipment you’d imagine in a facility like that, all piled into the one big space. With no one to fix the hinges on the doors, replace siding that was blown off, or add plywood to windows to save them from vandalism, everything in the room was suffering from water and rodent damage. Maybe when the items were moved there, everything had been categorized and organized, but all that remained was a toppling pile of junk deteriorating into trash. Parts of a kiln lay scattered, but who knew if all the parts were there, no one had the manual to put it back together. Locals looking for a new piece of furniture have picked through the piles over the years, toppling any past organization that existed, in an attempt to maintain or beautify their own little corner of this place. Even if any of the items had any value left, finding them and their pieces, putting them back together and paying to ship off island would have been an enormous task with little or no return. And this was one of many similar facilities.

My guide told of a recent electrical fire in one of the warehouse building filled with cars, it was especially difficult to deal with since no one knew how to run the fire truck. When he asked for advice, someone told him to read the labels on the truck. Last thing you want during a fire is to have to read the manual first. The reality is 80 people just can’t put to use and maintain all the stuff that 6000 people could (with a healthy military backing budget). What probably seemed like a giant Christmas present at first must be feeling like a colossal burden now. Still, there is one bar, one restaurant, and a grocery store. The newest of the school structures now houses the post office, city council office, community room, and a school for 20 or so kids. Most of the inhabited buildings are more or less clustered together, but what a mammoth task to try to keep power, water, sewer, and trash services for the few functioning buildings in the mass. The military is still here doing cleanup, but their cleanup focus is not on the structures – it’s a superfund site, so they have even bigger cleanup issues to address (and a funding source to address them with). Meanwhile since WWII there are also still, scattered throughout these islands, live ammunitions and Rommel stakes (a.k.a. “anti personnel devices,” sharp stakes in the ground that could pierce through your boots if you stepped on them in the spongy tundra). So we’ll definitely be stepping lightly on our future hikes, and avoiding touching anything rusty.

There are attempts to attract tourists, and hunters and outdoor adventurers are eager to visit, but the airfare from Anchorage alone is a whopping $1200 RT, and don’t forget to add the cost of shipping your caribou home with you. The military housing is comfortable and available for $150/night and up, but it’s not a 4 star resort. The residents we spoke with love it here, I can see the attraction, raw beauty, living in the extremes, and a special sense of freedom that living close to civilization just can’t equal. If you’re interested, apparently a fourplex can be purchased for an affordable $20k, but if it needs a fresh coat of paint, you can expect to pay a premium to fly a few cans here.

Frank says it’s getting depressing to him. I still have a desire to explore the ruins, maybe go find the pieces of the kiln, rebuild the pottery studio, learn to throw a pot, create an artists retreat, inventory cleanup and redesign the town, volunteer in the school, hunt some caribou and make coats and boots from their hides, carve their horns into pendants…so much potential, so much work to be done! But the captain says it’s early to bed early to rise, off to the fuel dock with the sunrise.

xoxomo

*Our rent-a-car was an old rusty Bronco with the Adak Fire Department logo and working flashing lights! A few pics of the truck and the town are up on picasaweb.google.com/margoreveil but I did not get back to the internet to post the rest of my pictures of the houses and buildings. It’ll be a few weeks now before we get to Dutch Harbor.

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Back at Trapper’s Cove, Adak Island, Aleutians June 5, 2012 8:30 PM 51N47 176W49

Warning, the following account may only be comprehensible to fellow sailors, and even for them it’s a tedious account, as I’m just throwing it all down unedited. Apologies to everyone else.

My last message was a day late in sending. Just as I was finishing it up (3 nights ago now), Frank announced that we needed to move. The wind was picking up from the wrong direction, turning our protected spot into a potentially dangerous spot. The sky still had some light in it. It was past midnight. We ended up having a very unpleasant 10 hours, attempting to motor into 35-45 knot headwinds, with gusts above, as we tried to make it to a cove on the windward side of the bay only three miles away (where the lee shore would be). Expedition Bay is a little less than a mile wide, and even with no sail we were not able to point the boat into the wind and make much way. In some gusts we only made backward progress. This bay is known for its hurricane force winds, we’ve witnessed them twice now. It was a tense night. Frank steered mostly, tacking across, trying to angle forward more than backward. I sat at the navstation calling out if we got too close to one shore or the other as we zigzagged between the two shores less than a mile apart. We have GPS in the cockpit, but its small screen, the violent wind and blinding rain, made it difficult for him to see for himself, plus he was focusing on the faint outlines of land beyond, attempting to keep his bearings.

As dawn approached we backtracked deciding to try to go back down the channel to Fisherman’s Cove adjacent to Trapper’s Cove. The channel proved to be easy and the winds seemed quieter there, but as we rounded into Fisherman’s Cove the intensity of the winds grew. We attempted to anchor on the upwind side of the bay, but the anchor(s) (we have two in line right now) would not set, and we were having difficulty keeping the bow in place to give it half a chance at gaining purchase. Then as often happens with boat incident pits, our new windlass burnt out. Fisherman’s Cove is even narrower, making our zigzag attempt not to be blown backwards extra challenging. (but at least I was in the relative protection of the cockpit – Frank had the nasty blowing bow position). I was relieved when the barometer stopped dropping close to the time the GRIB had predicted (weather files we receive via the radio), the good thing about bad weather is that it too will pass.

When the sun rose the water was still smoking, and we were still struggling to stay more or less stationary in the bay, but by 9:30 a.m. the winds began to calm. While Frank prepared the anchor for a manual drop, I navigated into the shallow narrow channel of Trapper’s Cove, the winds were down to about 20 knots and with the bow thrusters it was much easier than it used to be to keep the boat pointed upwind (unfortunately they were no match for the 50knot winds, and some of our zigs were done jibing as we were not able to turn into the wind at all), still I was cringing as the depth sounder went down to 10 feet “Below the Keel,” Frank always says when I get nervous about depth, “and besides, what’s the good of having a steel boat if you don’t get to bump into things once in awhile,” he always adds. Yes…well..still and all, I was relieved when we made it in and dropped anchor…right on top of a giant kelp ball…yes we started dragging. But the winds were quickly easing to a dainty 5-10 knots, and by now I had this bow-into-the-wind-with-the-help-of-bow-thrusters thing down. So I did my job, bow into the wind, while Frank did his pulling the anchor(s) back up by tying a line to the chain, running it back to the winch in the cockpit, and cranking away. It was very slow and strenuous going. When the 6’ wad of kelp neared the surface, it took him many whacks with the machete to disengage it from the anchor. We then moved to the exact position we’d anchored before (I’d marked it with an MOB on the GPS when we first arrived – a habit I think I’ll make permanent.) Finally it stuck, and we cleaned up and crashed, sleeping soundly in the now flat calm bay for the rest of the day. We even went to bed early that night and slept another 12 hours. I woke up thinking about an odd moment coming in that pass, intensely focused furtively looking between the surrounding landmarks, and the electronic chart, when a glance up to the right revealed a brilliant full arced rainbow right over the point where we found the remnants of the WWII radio shack. Sunshine, rainbows, tundra and terror, sometimes heaven and hell aren’t so far apart.

Yesterday was then a day of trying to repair the windlass. It started out great with a Logan-made breakfast-in-bed, and a magnificent sunrise – yes with actual sunshine – over a mirror calm glassy finish, water you could groom a bride in. But it deteriorated as Frank’s attempts to connect the old windlass which we’d had repaired in Honolulu were confounded by one ghost in the machine after another. When he replaced the burnt out new windlass motor with our backup old repaired windlass motor, it fried the windlass switch on the first attempt to run it. Then other attempts registered upwards of 450 Amps on our DC meter (without its breaker/switch it cranked way up there). Not good. After hours of wracking his brain, assembling and disassembling the windlass, finding that it turned easily, was it the relays???, trying not to assume that the problem between the two motors was related, even though it seemed likely – turns out they were not related. He finally figured out that the positive coils on the old repaired motor seemed to be grounded. When they replaced the brushes on the old motor they did a sloppy job wrapping the wires, and one insulator was missing from the ground post, so there were a couple of places where contact occurred. Frank took the motor apart and used a plastic wine cork to replace the insulator, wrapped all the wires more carefully and this morning plugged it all in, with a temporary replacement switch. It now seems to be working fine, a nice reasonable 45 amps of load, smooth and fast up and down (the new one ran lot slower from the start, so we suspect it had issues to begin with). So our fingers are crossed. We no longer have a backup motor…and still have no idea what happened to the new motor. After weeks of battling with one vendor after another to fix/replace faulty products while we were in Hawaii, I have a new battle to add to our list when we arrive in Homer.

Lessons learned? I’m not sure. Never take on a voyage like this without Frank onboard (I already knew that). Thirty knots on the GRIB, can mean 50+ knots around these massive volcanic accelerators (we already knew that). If a low is coming, you can run, but you may not always be able to hide (knew that). Oh, a new one I thought of, spray RainX on our reading glasses, so you can just tap the water off, and still see the GPS, someone has probably already discovered that, but I felt a momentary stroke of genius (of course it was after the fact…but…for the next time we hope never comes). The genius award really goes to Frank though for getting us back up and functional. Even though he may not be arriving in Homer with Popeye arms from the weeks ahead being filled with manual anchor lifts – we don’t have enough canned spinach for that anyway. The last lesson? Damn it’s great to be alive! I already knew that too, but sometimes it takes a good blow to bring the point home.

The weather looks very calm for the next couple days, so we’ll be making our way around to the Town on the other side of Adak, hopefully they’ll have some diesel, it’s amazing how much diesel you burn through going mostly full tilt for 10 hours. And hopefully they’ll have some internet so I can post some pictures, and prove to you that it really is worth it (I pull them up myself when doubt threatens).

Meanwhile Frank has gone fishing, I hope he comes back.

Hello Alaska!

xoxomo

P.S. He did come back, with a fish for each of us! Pelagic rockfish, I think he was hoping for some halibut, too many fat seals around to compete with, guess we’ll have to send our hooks a lot deeper, below seal range.

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Unalga Bight, Expedition Harbor, Adak Island, Aleutians June 3, 2012 00:19 AM 51N46.8 176W48

Since we moved aboard, we feel spoiled by our view wherever we go. The view to sea from the coast is often benign, a simple flat horizontal line where ocean and sky meet, sometimes accented with boats and clouds. The view from sea to land is where the action is: docks jutting out in the water, interesting architecture dotting the coast, trees bending over lagoons, sandy beaches mixed with rocky coasts, and behind it all peaks and mountains dancing up and down. And if all that is too overwhelming we too can turn to the calmer side and watch the sun slip into the sea. While those living on land flock to the coasts to relax and bask in the calm view, as soon as we set foot on land we have a strong instinct to head for higher ground, maybe because we spend so much time with a sea level view.

The pull of a hill or a peak or a summit on us is incredibly strong, and we are once again in territory with an abundance of options for going vertical. Our first weak attempts, brought us to the top of a few yellow mounds and knolls, but two days ago we moved around to a bay closer to the waterfall, and with land legs now stabilized we worked our way up and around to the top of the falls. They’re fed by a big lake or lakes even, which dramatically accent a plateau. The water features are scattered right up to the cliffs where the falls begin. The view was spectacular with the small bodies of somewhat terraced ponds, pools ,and lakes up high, set against the backdrop of coves, isles, and inlets of the bay of islands far below. There were patches of snow as we climbed, and behind and around us we could see hints of the snowy peaks with patches of rock going higher. No trees blocked the view, so the vistas were wide and expansive, limited only by the moisture content in the air. We had a few minutes of sunshine, but mostly it was all shades of yellow gray and white, patchy as a caribou’s hide. When I looked close to the ground I could see new blades of green grass piercing the mulch, and a rare flower bud, spring is springing just barely. It should be green here in a month before it all gets buried in snow again.

We’re in the habit of surprising the local caribou population on each walk. They’re a little skittish, but we’ve gotten quite close. According to Gart, they are not indigenous here, so it’s open season year round on this island, and he says ‘bou is tasty. We’re low on red meet, and are very tempted, but we were not able to come up with any good techniques for hunting them. One option would be to shoot them with the flare gun, but Kennan pointed out that we’d need to know the flammability of caribou fur before we wasted a flare trying to catch one on fire. Frank suggested strangling one with a guitar string, but I won’t let him take the guitar apart. Logan is ready to chase one down and stab it with his dive knife; he discovered he can move pretty fast down the steep hills with a beachcombed plastic snow shovel; the problem is they tend to run uphill when they see us. Logan and Kennan thought they could use their wrist rockets – the mom in me figured their only chance with wrist rockets would be to shoot it’s eyes out, then he’d be easier to chase down – if they didn’t shoot their own eyes out first! My own suggestion of tying a clump of fresh grass and carrots to a tuna hook on a rope, then waiting patiently behind a rock was scoffed at – they’re worried we’d freeze to death if we held still that long. Anyway, we blew our wad on Alaska fishing licenses, not hunting licenses, so the ‘bou burgers will have to wait, maybe we can buy some packaged ‘bou in town. I bet it would taste great roasted with blueb’s, but we won’t be picking those till we get to bear country.

The weather vacillates between very windy and quite calm; the temperature drops to about 37 degrees when the wind comes from the Bearing Sea, and rises to 40-45 degrees when the wind comes from the Pacific. This sure ain’t Tahiti anymore, but it’s a drop dead gorgeous landscape (so we wear many layers and keep moving).

Timewise we’re living like Parisians, dinner at 10 p.m., chat till 2-3 in the morning, then sleep in till 10-11 a.m. This long light really throws your clock off.

xoxomo

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