Prince William Sound

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Mary and the kids drove me down to Homer so I could take the boat to Prince William Sound.  The boat's cabin was a mess so Emily helped me by cleaning it up.  Emily was appalled to see food splattered on the ceiling above the stove.  She asked me how we could get food on the ceiling so I had to explain about the seas and how rough they were.  Emily wasn't sure I was telling the truth.  She thought I was just messy.  While all this was going on I needed to take the boat fifteen miles across the bay to pick something up, though as I write this I can't imagine what that was.  The place was a small cannery still inside Kachemak Bay.  Inside the wide bay the seas could get rough, but the weather was perfect so I decided to take a few of the older kids for a ride.  I think Emily, Clay, and Rebecca went on that ride, but I'm not sure of my crew.

It was a nice easy ride with calm seas, but my kids were alarmed at the three foot swells we encountered.  I think it might have been the first time any of them had been on a real boat.  I tried to explain to them what I normally went through, but I don't believe they could fathom what I was explaining.  A few hours later we were back in Homer having given the kids a new experience.

After our goodbyes, Mary and the kids watched me pull out of Homer for the solo trip to Prince William Sound.  The Super Cub fly's Whittier is about 120 miles from Homer, a flight that would take an hour and ten minutes.  Unfortunately I didn't have a Piper Super Cub, I had a slow fishing boat.  Whittier is north by north-east of Homer, but I had to begin my journey cruising five hours south-west just to reach the Kennedy Entrance to the Gulf of Alaska and from there I had to turn south-east.  Thirteen hours after leaving Homer I was finally able to turn in my first northerly direction, but even then I had set a course far east of Whittier to clear all the land still in my way.

Fifteen hours after leaving Homer I had barely begun my trip north when I was too tired to stay awake.  The seas were too rough to just drift so I found a semi-protected cove to drop anchor and get some sleep.  Six hours later I was cruising north-east again.  Twenty hours later I was again too exhausted to stay awake.  The seas had dropped to ten foot swells, which was as good as it got in the Gulf of Alaska.  Because I was making a direct line to the Cape Clear entrance to Prince Williams Sound, I was thirty miles from land.  This was far enough out to sea that I could simply set my sea anchor and go to sleep.

A sea anchor is basically a sail that is set below water.  Any place where the bottom is too deep to put an actual anchor on the bottom, then a sea anchor is the only option.  My sea anchor consisted of two five gallon buckets tied to a thirty foot length of line.  Crude but affective.  Three hours after falling asleep I woke after falling out of my bunk.  That dossal sea had turned nasty.

I've had seasoned commercial fishermen tell me that they had never been to sea alone, and that they never would.  For the short repositioning trip I took between Kodiak and Homer I was called foolish by others.  I can't argue their point.  It was more dangerous to go to sea alone, especially in the Gulf of Alaska.  Had I a choice I would have taken a crew, but necessity didn't allow such a luxury.  Despite the difficulty and danger, I enjoyed being at sea alone.  I loved the absolute solitude of it, but I also loved the challenge.  And it was a challenge.  On this occasion I woke to one such challenge.

It was not uncommon for the seas in the Gulf of Alaska to turn mean, but it can be inconvenient.  At the moment the inconvenience manifested in my sea anchor.  I desperately needed to use the power of my engine to put my bow into the sea and climb those nasty waves rather than allow them to batter me from the side.  When I was startled awake I immediately attempted to do just that.  In my sleep deprived state it took several minutes to realize I was failing because of the sea anchor.  The sea anchor slowed the boat as it was meant to do, but it was also making life very fragile.  I had to cut it loose or risk capsizing and death.

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