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.