Sunday…Monday (Summer Solstice) … and finally Tuesday, June 22
Truth be told … Lovie and I have no fond memories of our first few hours in the Gulf of Alaska.
We left Pelican at 10:15 am Sunday morning, and an hour later also left the protection of Lisianski Inlet as we entered the open waters of the Gulf. That’s when all hell broke loose … this 100-ton vessel began to rise and fall in full sweeps, simultaneously rolling back and forth in 6 foot swells. Things started clanging below and anything not secure was soon on the floor or crashing mercifully against the interior walls of cabinets. To the powerful Gulf of Alaska we were nothing more than a small cork in a very, very huge tub of water.
Lovie immediately got seasick in the pilothouse and I was feeling a bit green around the gills myself, so we both headed down to the stateroom, the lowest point in the boat, and laid down ... as I began the countdown, contemplating how I was going to survive the 48 hours it was going to take to make the crossing. In the meantime, Roland was up in the pilothouse enjoying every minute of the cruise and taking stunning photos of Mount Fairweather, which we had seen just a few days earlier from its other side … in Glacier Bay.
Eventually the seas died down to a steady roll that both Lovie and I learned to tolerate … and even enjoy. By 9:45 am Monday we had travelled 186 nautical miles …. And with all land out of sight, we were surrounded by the solitude of the sea.
That morning I saw my first albatross … sleek 3-foot long birds that glide effortlessly on their 7-foot wingspan over the crest of the open seas with only a rare flutter of their wings. Extraordinary to watch, and I had hours to do so!
It’s hard to explain the sensation of being 30 miles offshore alone on a boat. I thought I’d be terrified, but the weather was magnificent with no wind to speak of, and I was amazed to find that my body soon acclimated to the up and down, back and forth rhythm of the sea.
Roland and I traded off at the wheel, but he captained the boat for the majority of the crossing. When I took the wheel at 1:00 in the morning on Tuesday, June 22, the day after summer solstice, you could still see light over the horizon.
In fact it was never totally dark that evening, and by 3:30 am, the morning sun began to appear. Remarkable. Around 2 am that evening I sawa blip on the radar about 15 miles out, and soon saw the lights of a huge cruise ship, like a floating city, coming toward us and eventually passing about 3 miles to our port side.
We made it to the entrance of Prince William Sound by 5:30 am Tuesday and anchored in Zaikof Bay off Montague Island at 8:20 am … a 46-hour, 364-mile crossing from Pelican to Montague Island … with very little wind or weather, we had made good time!
And from the looks of things it was worth the crossing.
The view of Montague was delightful, but after 2-days of seeing nothing but water, just about any landscape would be pleasing to the eyes. Even Lovie was happy to be out on deck in sight of land.
We celebrated our first morning in PWS with Bloody Mary’s and breakfast on the back deck and then, bleary eyed and relaxed, both went to bed for a few hours, woke up and made dinner, and then slept again for 11 hours straight … safe and sound in Prince William Sound!
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