Alaska has so much to offer, but today we had to more work for it. We normally are not the type of sailors to just motor into the wind, but today we did! 15 to 23 knots of wind on the nose all day. We suppose having 15 to 20 knots in your face is not all that bad, but it’s what the wind does to the water. We had between 3 to 8 foot waves, so the bow would go up and then it would go down. And it seemed that every time our destination required a course change the wind changed as well to match being on our nose. Not only was this bouncy, but it was slow as well. On an upside we saw whales all day and harbor seals greeted us in our anchorage. And yesterday we omitted the mention of seeing elk on Raspberry Island!
As we were leaving Onion Bay we reached out to our set-net salmon fisher friends to meet up with them as we wait out for weather. A neat thing we learned about in Onion Bay is all of the cannery’s are on hold because there has not yet been enough “escapement” by fish to allow commercial fishing. This is a “neat” thing for someone visiting fishing friends (that being us), but not so good for commercial fisherman (that being our friends). So all the fisher folk are on standby to catch fish commercially. We have heard the salmon run is slow and we hope things change soon. Our friends Kipp and Leigh from Kodiak City have their set-net site in the Larsons Bay area on the more southern end of Kodiak Island. Seeing them is our reason for slogging into winds and waves today and we will wait out a change in weather in their company. They were so kind to have someone guide us into the anchorage of Chiefs Cove, which by charts seems impossible in which to enter and anchor. But we are now safely anchored and tomorrow we are joining them for a barbecue at their cabin, along with many other idle set-netters.
Cheers,
Wade and Sara
Chief Cove Anchorage Mud 10 feet 57° 42.562’N, 153° 54.812W Good VHF Weather Signal, Unsure of SSB Signal, 5/5 Iridium Go connection
To find where are Wade, Sara, and SV Just Drifting, copy and paste these coordinates 57.709,-153.914 into Google Maps!
