One: I can give up on any notions of self improvement. What I am at this point is what I've got to work with.
Two: There could be few finer gifts on the big day than an unexpectedly fast sail along a rugged coast in diamond-sharp sunshine, getting us to our lonely anchorage with plenty of time for a leisurely birthday dinner. With the family, that best company of all.
We had two days in Kujulik Bay, using it merely as a convenient anchorage as on the outbound leg we found it to be one of the few bays that was useless for beach seining baby cod.
Two days because a big blow was forecast and Kujulik was a known and trusted anchorage. And blow it did. A shroud-vibrating, water-smoking kind of blow, for a few hours there.
Later when things had calmed down we got the ship's people ashore on an early season blueberry mission. It is heartwarming to observe the simple joy that searching for berries gives the boys. We came away with enough for two rounds of baked goods. And noted the suspicious autumnal cast to some of the maritime tundra plants.
Today...we had a ripper, honest forty knots kind of sail down the coast. Triple-reefed main and nothing else for much of the day. Waves steep due to the opposing current. Stack on the diesel cabin heater came adrift because of a mishap with the sheet when the jib was being furled. Always so easily avoided in retrospect, a mishap like that. It's already back in place, though, a few inches shorter than it used to be.
And, just like that we are back in Port Wrangell, a marvelous stone bowl of an anchorage, carved right out of the living mountainside.
Four sets for us tomorrow, plus some baited camera work. And Elias has been making noise about fishing for dollies afterwards.
~~
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!
----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com
Happy birthday!
ReplyDelete