Trapper’s Cove, Adak Island, Aleutians May 26, 2012 12:42 PM 51N47 176W49
I think this will stand as one of the more memorable landfalls yet. Early yesterday, a thin faded line of snow tipped peaks split the horizon, separating the textured shades of sky blue-grays and sea green-grays. We watched those mountains rise out of the ocean all day, their surface roughness deepening as we approached. At about 15 miles out, rolling mounds of tan-yellow hills appeared below the peaks. Throughout the day the wind eased and swung around from our bow to our stern; a gradual daylong shift from slamming into the wind to flowing with it. The wind gave us a last gentle shove toward Adak Strait before petering out altogether. A dense black flotilla of seabirds parted to let us through, some diving, some rising in dark clouds around us, a few puffins bobbed in and out between the crowd. A rising tide pulled us through the channel at a fast 9 knots- to port the smooth conical red and white sides of the Kanaga volcano rose to it’s chimney where billowing clouds of steam blended with the ropey gray sky, to starboard the grassy mounds broke into shear cliffs at the channel’s edge, stellar sea lions basking below on the rocks under the gray. A lone fishing boat circled a mile away. The curtains of high fog and clouds rose and fell to expose then hide views of Adak Island’s more jagged peaks to the east. We tore along the strait with no wind, the calm seas at the beginning of the channel rose into cresting breaking waves of tidal rips toward the end. Looking at the water, we appeared to be standing still, but the GPS showed 7-9 knots. A few meters into the Bearing Sea, the rips calmed, we turned to starboard, stowed the sails, and motored down “The Race” into a new “Bay of Islands”. A waterfall visible beyond “The Race” and “Hell’s Gate” was unlike any I’ve seen, it was not the vertical foliage-framed falls of the tropics which carve a deep V in the mountains, but instead an arcing white flow of water racing over the top of round bulging rock hills, in a field of yellowed grass. It’s now hidden from view, but we plan to explore it once the predicted weather system passes.
At the entrance to our little cove of refuge, we had the quintessential Alaskan greeting committee: bald eagles stood sentinel on either side of the entrance, a caribou grazing by the shore startled at our two masted approach to his treeless world, a red headed ptarmigan in full brown and white breeding plumage flew low toward us for a closer look before arcing toward the shore, and a small group of eider ducks took wing over long strands of kelp snaking on the surface at the water’s edge. We dropped anchor here in Trapper’s Cove at 7:45, a full two hours before sunset, three hours to nightfall with the long dusk here. Frank seared some Ahi, opened a bottle of red, well fed we then fell into bed. Islands of those now huge rolling yellow mounds surround us and can protect us from any wind on the compass rose. Last night there was none, not a breath, not a sound, not a movement – total silence allowing us a long, deep, and dreamless sleep. This morning when I unglued my eyelids, I could see puffs of Frank’s breath, evidence that he had not frozen during the night.
Hello Alaska!
xoxomo