This must be a real vacation for Sara because she has not had to cook in two days (well maybe breakfast), but no seriously! Wade gets the triple C award (which is better than a three star Michelin rating). As normally a C would be an average grade, but here the three C’s stands for Caught/Capture, Cleaned, and Cooked! Yesterday he was determined to catch Black Rockfish for dinner (no yellow-eye), so after the winds calmed to 25 knots he lowered the dinghy and he and Sara went off fishing. The winds were too strong near our special top-secret fishing location but a spot within a mile thereof looked promising. It seemed that as soon as the lures would reach the seafloor the fish were on the hook. We caught four little lingcod (like real Lingcod not the Pacific Cod that we priorly thought were Lingcod) and we kept catching nice size Rockfish. Wade was so sad because we caught more than enough fish in no time at all, but both of us were having so much fun, so we released all of the fish we caught. We caught them in fairly shallow waters so we did not need to use the deep release lure. Not too much longer we had jumbo Rockfish on the hook and couldn’t say no and then caught two more big ones. The winds started wrapping to where we were fishing so we made a slow slog back to the boat. At the boat Wade not only cleaned the fish, but cooked up some yummy breaded and pan fried Rockfish.
Wade had thawed a Caribou round roast (we captured in Atka) and using the pressure cooker he cooked a roast with potatoes, carrots, and cabbage. Once the roast was out of the pot he made an excellent pepper gravy. Needless to say Marj and Sara both would eat at this restaurant again. 🙂
Backing up our story to this morning, after breakfast we set off for our next anchorage, destination unknown. As the day progressed an island called Mitrofania appeared reachable before dark and would afford protection from a westerly swell. The winds are forecasted to be light and were not really too relevant to our anchorage decision, but also were from the west, which is good for this anchorage. Actually the island is shaped like an upside down horseshoe with the opening pointing south. Look at a satellite view of the coordinates below and we’re sure you will agree. The mountains of this island are steep, tall, and are one continuous ridge uninterrupted by any low places or valleys. It looks to be near impossible to experience a williwaw here and we will store this information away for future use as it can sometimes be difficult to find an anchorage along this stretch of coast that will not williwaw in an ugly northwest wind. Our chartplotter Navionics charts are two years old and have absolutely no depths for this anchorage, but Sara has newer Navionics charts downloaded to an iPhone app that showed depths. For the first time ever we used Sara’s iPhone to navigate into the anchorage. We were just thinking to stop here for the night, but this island looks so unique that we may have to go to shore for an hour tomorrow morning before continuing onward towards Kodiak.
Other than our anchorage for the evening, it was a pretty uneventful day (besides the amazingly yummy dinner). We motor-sailed along at an average speed of about 6.3 knots in light west winds. Sara worked at crocheting a bag out of bags, which sounds sort of odd, but true. She cut old plastic Walmart bags into strips for crocheting. Sara listened to an audio book and Wade and Marj each read their individual books as we watched the jagged, steep, snow covered mountains on the coastline pass by. The clouds and scenery of our sunset looked like a painting that upon completing it someone took a thick brush and lightly smeared the paint so the sun looked hazy with streaked wispy clouds across the sky.
Cheers,
Sara and Wade
Anchored Sosbee Bay 55° 49.302’N, 158° 52.259W
No VHF Weather Signal, Poor SSB Signal for Weather Radiofax, Returned to using repaired Iridium Go
To find where Wade, Sara, and SV Just Drifting, type or copy/paste these coordinates 55.8217,-158.87098333 into Google Maps!
