Dawn seems to come later and later. Sunrise today was 8:42 am. We laid in bed and watched a little rays enter through the skylights as we slowly started to wake up. To our surprise, outside we heard a whiney outboard go by us. Sara made a joke to Wade and said, “There’s a local coming to hunt cow.” Maybe an hour later we heard the same whinny outboard leave. Sara made another joke, “Wade there goes your cow, and all the other cows are probably spooked up the hillside.” Five minutes later we heard the same whinny outboard go by us. Sara said, “They must have forgotten something?” We heard the outboard leave and then we heard another faint outboard that seemed further away. Sara thought, “There seems to be a lot of traffic outside.” She popped her head out into the cockpit and busted out laughing. There were several inflatable boats with outboards zipping back and forth from a cruise ship and shore! The beautiful Le Boreal, a French Polar Expedition Cruise Ship, was anchored behind us. Not just behind us, but sadly on one of our Dungeness crab traps. We are so used to having these remote anchorages to ourselves we were shocked to see a cruise ship. Over VHF Wade called Le Boreal to ask if they saw our crab traps. They said they moved them, so we lowered the dinghy to find them. We discovered they accidentally anchored on top of one and the second they moved to the other side of the bay. The captain kindly invited us onboard. He was very kind and offered if he could make an “arrangement”. Wade said, “No problem”, so the captain brought 4 bottles of French wine, 2 loaves of freshly baked french bread and bright red Polar Expedition coats. We would have rather have had our crab trap, but at least we have a couple of souvenirs and a story. Maybe we’ll be passengers on the Le Boreal across the northwest passage next year 😉 just kidding.
Shortly after we left Le Boreal we made our way to shore and walked around the village of cows. Which sadly were spooked from all the visitors and were a couple miles away on a hillside. Walking through fallen down houses that had been torn down by the weather was bizarre. Almost like a ghost town.
We pulled up anchor and made our way to Foxhole Inlet to catch a few more rockfish. We’ve got our deep release ready because our freezers are pretty full and we are after one specific fish, the Yelloweye Rockfish. As we tucked into Foxhole Inlet we saw MV Milo. We saw MV Milo in Dutch Harbor about a month ago, where they stopped to provision their boat and were off. We did learn they are from Homer Alaska and they spent the summer surfing the Bearing Sea, and for the last month they’ve been surfing the Shumagin Islands.
The wind is between a small craft advisory (25 knots) and a gale (35 knots) and we had a lovely sail from Unga Island to Popof Island going about 8.5 to 9 knots. As we rounded the southeast corner of Popof Island we lost all of our northwest wind, but still maintained a comfortable motor speed of 6 knots. The wind speed had been, steadily increasing all day yet the waters were calm as we motored along the lee of the east side of Popof Island. We did get a few williwaws, but nothing more than 30 knots. We are very tucked into shore at our anchorage but the wind seems to have us spinning circles. Normally at an anchorage the boats point the same direction (into the wind), but MV Milo and us are spinning circles in all different directions, meaning we are each experiencing different winds even though we are only 500 feet apart. The wind in our anchorage cannot make up it’s mind.
Cheers,
Sara and Wade
Anchored Foxhole Inlet 55° 20.317’N, 160° 20.546W
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 55.3386167,-160.34243333 into Google Maps!
