With an Indifferent Forecast

It all sounds very romantic and devil-may-care. Leaving safe harbor with an indifferent forecast, striking out on a crossing, making tracks where others might dither.

That is, until you are actually in the process of pulling the anchor in that safe harbor, and it's raining sideways, and your three different forecasts are saying three very different things and you find yourself wondering just what you're up to.

That was us in Rodman's Reach just yesterday. As we slooowly steamed out of the anchorage I found myself on the edge of telling Alisa that we should just bag it and let the weather calm down before setting off. We were looking at making the 70 mile crossing to the Alaska Peninsula and it just wasn't feeling like the time to do it.

Luckily, cooler heads did not prevail. We carried on, and found ourselves riding the winds on top of a passing low, just as we had so many times in the Southern Hemisphere. Beautiful northeast winds to begin with, followed all too soon by north and then northwest, which was more or less in our face.

But after beating back and forth for half the night and then motoring the final stretch after the winds died, we found ourselves in stunning Agripina Bay, tucked beneath grand mountains and around the corner from an honest to goodness glacier. The sun was shining, and we weren't still sitting in the final anchorage in Kodiak, staring morosely at a forecast for a week of westerlies.

Once Galactic was tidied up from the overnighter we put out in our wonderful new dinghy to see what we might see. Quite quickly we saw our fifth bear of the trip. And then, while Alisa and Eric went looking for a large lake promised by the chart, Elias and I went up the Agripina River with the dinghy and finally found the glorious fishing that I have been wanting him to find here in Alaska. Four monster dolly varden - a close cousin to the Pacific salmon - came boiling out of the river on the end of our lines in about 10 minutes. Elias remains completely bonkers about fishing, and we have had some very slow outings on this trip so far, so his joy at finally finding the dream fishing of Alaskan legends was well earned.

And then we had a fire on the beach and cooked the dollies in the coals and there was no one else in this miraculous place but our family, with our floating home waiting patiently for us in the anchorage below the mountains.

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This post was sent via our high-frequency radio as we're far from internet range. Pictures to follow when we reach internet again. We can't respond to comments for now, though we do see them all!

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