Catching up in Kodiak

Heyyy everyone! Sorry I haven't been posting anything recently, we've been busy moving around a lot and I got back into cell phone range and got caught up calling people instead of blogging. Anyways, we are now in Kodiak on Kodiak Island. We spent the 15th in Geographic Harbor which was spectacularly beautiful even if it did rain all day...We saw lots of bears walking the beaches and feeding on salmon in the rivers. There were also lots of seals and eagles and other exciting things all nestled into lots of little waterfall filled coves amongst 3-7,000 ft peaks. We met a fisherman named Justin who was stationed there working for a lodge. He was spending 9-12 days living alone on a little fishing boat and the company would radio him at 7am every day telling him whether they were going to be flying in clients that day to go halibut fishing. If the weather was bad they didn't come and he had the day to himself. Needless to say he was pretty excited when we showed up around 9am and anchored next to him. That night the wind picked up and in what is becoming Nordwind fashion, our anchor started to drag. Around 3am we all woke up and after dragging in a few more gusts down off the mountains we pulled anchor and motored in circles around the bay until daylight when we could make it out of the narrow canals, since ya know our radar doesn't work and what not. We then set out across the Shelikof Strait between the Peninsula and Kodiak. It was a beautiful sunny and 40. That being sunny and blowing 40kts. There were steep 15+ foot seas and 30-40kts as we set out on a beam reach motor sailing across. It was another wet and wild ride but at least it was sunny which made for some fun driving. We made it across and into the islands off of Kodiak where we encountered a 6kt current in one strait propelling us along at 12-13kts over ground and there were sea otters everywhere just floating along on their backs alongside us! It was very cool. We pulled in to Kodiak around 5 o'clock local time and got a spot alongside the dock amongst all the fishing boats. Yesterday I spent the whole day walking around, I went all through town and then a couple miles out of town to Fort Abercrombie State Historical Park and hiked around there for a few hours. My legs are killing me. Franco and I were joking today about how the most hiking we've done is from our cabin to the doghouse, and then maybe the long trek from the doghouse to the bow...Anyways Abercrombie was very cool and very beautiful. It was a navy base in WWII as a part of the Aelutian campaign, which honestly I didn't even know existed. Apparently Dutch Harbor got bombed by the Japanese? I should probably learn a little more history. Now the park is all forest and lots and lots of rasberry bushes. Actually most of the island is lots of rasberry bushes and it's peak season right now...it's been a delicious few days. On to the more important matters at hand, there is an increasingly good chance that this may be the end of our trip. We have been looking at the weather for crossing the Gulf of Alaska and to say that it's bad would be an understatement. It's terrifying. 30-40kts with 50-60 predicted in some places and 20ft seas for the next week with maybe 1 day inbetween low pressure systems that are stacked up across the Pacific. This weather, on top of the increasing list of repairs necessary for Nordwind, is giving Alex more and more reason to look at leaving the boat here for the winter. There are facilities here for most of the repairs we need; all of which could be started on now instead of in 3 weeks. We also don't have a good anchor and chain that would allow us to weather out these storms in a random bay if we do continue on. Plus, Hans' plan for next summer is to cruise Alaska, and what better place to start from than Kodiak? We are hoping to get some more weather information tonight or tomorrow, and tomorrow morning we also confirm if there will definitely be a slip for the boat for the winter. So for now we are on hold. While it would be a bummer to miss the inland passage and Alaska panhandle down to Vancouver, I think we are all pretty exhausted at this point and floating around the idea of just stopping here is pretty appealing to all of us.