Nope not the Alaska Brewery IPA beer called Icy Bay, but our first time to anchor in ice. We knew part of the risk of cruising Kodiak in the winter would be icy bays, but the beautiful sunny and blue bird sky of a crisp Alaskan winter is priceless. So this afternoon as we pulled into our intended anchorage, we pushed through a quarter inch of ice. But unlike the pack ice of the far north Alaska, there were no polar bears to be seen, and the brown bears are hopefully hibernating. We circled a couple times to break the ice for to make an open spot to deploy our crab trap, with hopes of it being full in the morning. To hear ice shatter when dropping the anchor is a unique sound we heard for the first time today.
Pardon me but do you know how much a polar bear weighs? Well, probably enough to break the ice? Bahahahahahaha
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Today the wind was non-existent and we used our motor to travel between Kodiak and Sitkalidak Island to Japanese Bay, passing Old Harbor, a Kodiak Village. We both have a longing to visit the south end of Kodiak so we decided to travel quickly to the south end then work our way slowly back to town along the east side. We were told that diesel is available at the cannery at the south end of Kodiak, if we need it. And because we are attempting this voyage without using our watermaker, we wonder if they might also have water available for us at this cannery as well; again, that is if we need it. Because our watermaker is “pickled”, we are attempting the experiment of conserving water and attempting this trip without using the watermaker. Life without a watermaker is probably not uncommon to most sailors anyways.
There is not a lot of sailing for us around Kodiak Island because the channels between Islands and long fjords result in frequent directions changes by us and the wind. That is if there is wind, unlike today, or if the wind is blowing in the right direction. And a 30+ knot wind or more in Alaska is not much fun in any month, let lone mid January. When sailing the coast of Hawaii you get comfortable with sailing in a small craft advisory weather (greater than 25 knots) because the winds are predominantly north east at 25 knots or more. Yet a 75 degree temperature also makes a difference. We have not seen 75 degrees in Alaska in the one and two thirds years we have been here, haha.
The big difference to us is how shallow the area is around the Aleutian Chain and Kodiak Island. For example our depth finder stops reading depth around 500 feet. In Hawaii our depth finder hardly reads bottom unless you were coming into the marina or really close to land. In Alaska our depth finder is always reading 100 to 200 feet. Today we passed an area where Wade slowed the boat because he noticed it kept getting shallower and shallower to 40 feet but then dropped off again. What does this all mean? Sailing 25 to 30 knots of wind is a little bit more intense in Alaska because of how shallow the water is around us. The shallow water makes the Gulf of Alaska “hump up” and the swell and waves are closer together and bigger.
As we write this we can hear the ice crunching against the side of the boat as we or the ice just drift about while at anchor, which seems to get louder and louder. We had concerns of if we could get frozen in during the night, but a couple of crab fishing boats also joined us in this anchorage later this evening. We hope they are well experienced with ice or at least quite friendly if we should all become froze in. And while this all might sound a bit frigid, it was warm like a house in our cockpit and inside the boat thanks to our diesel furnace.
Cheers,
Wade and Sara
Japanese Bay Anchorage Unsure of Bottom (No VHF Weather) 56$deg; 57.269N, 153° 41.307W
SSB did not work due to COM port failure; Iridium Go is working amazingly for text and getting weather via Sailmail
