A few posts may out of order because we lost cellular service before I could post.
East Anchor Cove, Unimak Island, the Aleutians, AK, US, 27-JUL-2020 — Jennifer is down with a Migraine today. Her CPAP has been giving her issues. We we think it might be mold. Not using it resulted in the migraine. If she is able to be up later, we’ll try to get that taken care of.
This morning we are in East Anchor Cove, which is a place fishing boats come to offload and to sleep.
The smaller fishing boats are worked by two people.
Last evening, a first boat worked by two men stopped by to ask us where we had come from. Cruising boats are pretty rare here. The opening sentence from the man driving, who was probably my age, was that Caro Babbo was an attractive boat.
He and the worker, who was dressed in orange waterproof work pants, spoke to us for a few minutes about our passage. We asked questions about going into False Pass, the nearest town. On the one hand, they said we could go to town, there is fuel and groceries, on the other hand, we wouldn’t be allowed in any of the stores. The worker explained that we coud get a list of items that they would deliver to the boat.
This left us uncertain whether we would be allowed off our boat, or off the dock.
A half hour later another boat came by manned by a man and a woman, husband and wife. We spoke for a few minutes about our passage, and False Pass. The man, Tony, said we’d like the place, it was small, and had a good dock. We could walk around and pick berries, but not to go too much towards the edge of town because of the bears.
Jennifer said that we were told and had read that there were no bears here. Tony replied, they say they don’t swim, but they somehow get around.
Ray Penson had seen a brown bear swimming in SE Alaska and had circled it in his boat.
This revelation also explained a foot print and some droppings we had seen a few hours earlier ashore.
I came away with the feeling that Tony hadn’t been to False Pass this year, which was probably true. Tony introduced his spouse and Jennifer introduced herself and me. Tony asked whether were headed to ”Southeast.” We said yes, but next year. We’d leave Caro Babbo in Homer and return in 2021.
Tony said that was great. He would be in Homer to have ”another engine” put in his boat. When would we be there? He was let done when Jennifer said September. He planned to be there in two weeks.
As he circled, the boats won’t stay still relative to each other, Jennifer asked what they were fishing? He replied, ”Sockeye, mostly.”
After a pause, he asked, ”would you like some fish?” Jennifer immediately replied, ”Yes.” Although I am quick to offer gifts, I am less quick to accept.
Tony spoke to his spouse and then returned to the fly bridge and called out that they had two small king salmon for us. One for us and one for our friends on the other sailboat.
His wife (I’m sorry I can’t remember her name) held out a long handled net with the two fish tied together by piece of polypropylene line. She was awkward and uneasy handling the net.
With some work, Tony arranged his boat close enough that I could grab the larger eye in the line with our boat hook and pull them aboard.
The line had eye splices in each end. One tight, a inch in diameter, the other three inches. The large eye had been pushed through the smaller eye. Eye-splices are done by hand, no machine can do them. This piece of line was probably twenty minutes of work.
A few minutes later, Tony was attempting to anchor near us, when he called calmly and politely to his spouse, you need to put it in reverse, you have it in forward. I came into Caro Babbo’s cockpit as this was happening. ”You have it in forward, you to move it the other way.” Their boat was approaching us, so it had his and my attention.
He ran from the foredeck and into the wheel house. Then came back to the foredeck to raise the anchor, then they moved off to anchor where the fishing boats more typically anchor: In a corner that was, as we now realized, more protected from any weather that might come. It will be very calm for the next few days, we believe.
I worry that he was embarrassed, and that was why he left. When I told Jennifer what had just happened, she said the wife had said quietly to her as she extended the fish-filled net, ”I don’t know what I am doing here. I don’t know what I am doing.” Tony did not lose his patience, nor raise his voice during the event, so he is a good man. A better man than me, most likely.
Jennifer and I had returned from a trip ashore and locked the Portland Pudgy, the Hilary Hoffmann, on to the deck before the fishermen stopped by.
The crescent shore lining the harbor is perhaps a mile and half long backed by a ten to fifteen foot berm caused by the winters storms, we think. There is local garbage on the beach, but nothing like beaches were like when I was a kid. A plastic container on a beach now is noteworthy. When I was a child and teenager, beaches could be full of trash.
We had mounted the three-horse Suzuki on the dinghy and stopped by Robusta. Thomas has having a great time fishing. As we had heard just dropping a line over the side will yield fish. By the time we returned with Anja, Thomas had enough fish to give us two rock fish and two small halibut, which we later learned were starry flounder.
With Anja on board, the three of us motored to shore. Anja took off her socks and shoes to get ashore. Jennifer and I wore XtraTufs and foulies, as well as PFDs with AIS locators. We didn’t bring a PFD for Anja and were surprised when we got ashore that she had not brought anything for herself.
The sand was the black volcanic sand that we had come to expect: powdery and difficult to get off one’s feet.
At the top of the berm, we looked out on what Jennifer called Tundra. Flat land with low bushes. It is half a mile across to a beach on the other side of the spit. We agreed we’d return the next day (today) and walk across.
To our left was a large pond that Anja called The Lake. We decided we’d walk along the beach and then climb the berm again to reach it.
Rather that walk to the left along the beach to the lake, we decided we’d walk to the right. What at first looked like a gray tarpaulin in the water, quickly became recognizable as the remains of a dead whale. One half of the jaw was down the beach, further up the beach away from the water was a vertebra, a forearm bone from a flipper and a piece of baleen.
A section of bowel was inflated and floated out of the carcass. Instead of having little odor as it seemed when we approached, we discovered that the intense odor of rot was very directional. Anja and I discovered this on our return from the rightmost end of the beach with Jennifer.
The beach ends on each side with a very tall hill made of rock covered in the topsoil and grass that covers everything here. Trees don’t begin until Kodiak — a few hundred miles from here. Bears, we were told were only on the mainland.’
As we walked, we found many fox tracks and droppings, and a large piece of scat Jennifer thought might be from a cow. Anja said no, it was not a cow. A horse? No, Anja said, not a horse.
We shrugged and kept walking.
At the next group of foot prints was a barefoot print that was broad and smudged. I thought that it could be mistaken for bear print, although it seemed little small.
Of course, as we learned from Tony, that’s exactly what it was. There are bears and one had been walking along this beach not long before us. But we knew none of this.
Anja told us, as we walked along, that she had worked with farm animals each summer when she was a teenager.
We walked too far to climb the berm and find the pond. Instead we saw some torn grass where someone had recently slid. The berm at one place smelled distinctly of sewage.
We had walked so far from the dinghy Anja had trouble finding at first when she looked down the beach. How could we have walked so far?
During our walk, we had continued our conversation about our former careers and how we ended up here. Anja and Thomas had left their careers, sold everything and gone sailing.
Thomas is a PL1 coder. Credit Suisse, where he worked, is losing the expertise to support these applications as their staff retires. Each year Thomas is courted to return. Anja would like to work their way back to Europe to be nearer to her parents and to take work occasionally.
Our two vessels arrived at the anchorage at the same time last night after leaving Dutch Harbor together, but our journeys were different.
Coming out of Dutch Harbor, after fueling up, we both headed out into the Pacific. Caro Babbo, lighter at 1/3 Robusta’s weight, quickly put distance between the two boats covering a mile more per hour.
The total distance to East Anchor Harbor is 134nm. Where we stayed north as the winds lessened, Robusta headed south. Eventually there were more than nine nm between us by the time Robusta came north again. We both started motoring. This time Robusta started further north. The wind prediction was 12kn over night. Perfect sailing with full sails up.
As the winds built, both boats returned to sailing. On Caro Babbo, we quickly achieved hull speed, and then the wind continued to build as the night darkened. Within a few minutes we went from no reefs to two reefs charging along at more than eight knots. And then there was too much wind for the amount of sail. Caro Babbo on a broad reach was having her bow pushed down and side ways. The sails were out of balance and there was just too much wind.
Jennifer headed Caro Babbo down wind on a run. We dropped the Genoa behind the main in the shelter from the wind and stored it in the bow locker. This took 1.5 miles, about 15 minutes.
We returned to our course with only the double-reefed main. We were making over five knots. Caro Babbo was upright and quiet. We decided we’d leave her like this until daylight.
In the following hours Robusta made up seven miles on us.
On open passages, Jennifer and I will both go below at the same time. One of us coming up every twenty minutes to visually confirm AIS and look around. In these tighter waters someone stays in the cockpit at all times. It was cold.
As the morning progressed, we raised the Genoa and shook out the reefs, turned north around a point towards East Anchor Harbor. Leaving was Michal and Ola on the sailboat Crystal. We called them and spoke about the anchorage. There had been more fishing boats than they had ever anchored with before.
As we came abreast of the entrance, we started the engine, dropped the Genoa and main and motored in.
Two 100- foot fishing boats, Oracle and Kaia, were anchored close together. I called Oracle for advice on where to anchor. South and inshore from Kaia was his advice. So, we did.
You know the story from here.
Sent from Iridium Mail & Web.
