65° SOUTH TO 68NORTH -- Part 2

Willy Ker

(In the last issue we followed Assent, a well-travelled yacht even by Contessa 32 standards, from the Falkland Islands down to 65° South and then north to Victoria, British Columbia. Now to visit 68° North...).

With Veronica aboard our plan was to sail up the Inside Passage and then, weather permitting, across Hecate Strait to the Queen Charlotte Islands and on to Ketchikan.

We sailed north in perfect weather and even Hecate Strait belied its bad reputation with gentle breezes. This must be one of the world's finest cruising areas and we feasted on Dungeness crab and jigged for rockfish and plaice but lost a 30 lb halibut because we were much too excited! All too soon, it seemed, we were alongside at the friendly little yacht club in Ketchikan, where we were welcomed with a barbecue that night.

Things have changed in Ketchikan since Veronica was there in '52 on her way to meet me up north; then it was all boardwalks, bars and bordellos. Now the board-walk is a tourist attraction and `Dollie's House' is open to the public but, as the guide book says rather primly, `only for sightseeing'. Last year 300,000 cruise ship passengers landed in Ketchikan.

Veronica now, unfortunately, had to fly home and I had arranged for Brian Newham and Jo Hardy to meet me for the leg to Dutch Harbor. Brian had been Base Commander at Halley, the BAS base in Antarctica, and we agreed the final details on the radio via RRS Bransfield while Assent was in Patagonia! Brian and Jo turned up on the ferry from Prince Rupert bang on time, and without more ado we pressed on north. I was very keen to revisit Haines, as I had done a triangulation survey up the Haines `cut-off' road in British Columbia when on attachment to the Canadian Army in 1952. The problem is that Haines is sixty miles up the Lynn Canal, a few miles short of the gold rush city of Skagway. Inevitably, the wind was blowing straight down off the glaciers and we had to plug all the way up this spectacular fjord under motor.

At a barbecue in Haines I met Tom Stimpfle from Fairbanks, who told me that his brother Jim was chairman of the Chamber of Commerce in Nome and might be able to get us visas for Russia. This was vital information, as I had heard from John Gore-Grimes that he was having great difficulty at his end. The wind, naturally, had gone around into the south and leaving Haines we had another hard plug to get out, accompanied by a procession of huge cruise ships that had been up to Skagway to `do' the `The Trail of '98' along with the shooting of `Soapy' Smith and `The Cremation of Sam McGee'.

At one of our anchorages I was out in the Avon after sounding the rather tricky entrance and hooked a halibut. This time I was determined not to lose him and rowed frantically for the shore -- with feet on terra firma he was soon landed and we thought we were unlikely to starve for a few days. At Yakutat we were given a big salmon when we went to the `cannery' for water and, of course, as these things go, Brian caught a really nice 5 lb `Silver', not long after. Embarras de richesse, without a doubt!

Cape Spencer to Kodiak is a good 500 miles and is a most spectacular passage. Looming above the clouds on the starboard hand is the great snow-clad peak of Mount Fairweather, named by Cook, and the huge glaciers of the St Elias range, sighted by Vitus Bering only thirty-seven years before, in 1741. We had mild excitement when we found ourselves being shadowed by a US Coast Guard cutter, shining immaculately white in the bright sunlight. Complete radio silence was rather unnerving, so I broke in on Channel 16 with a flippant remark about their smart turnout. This was not entirely wise, since the USCG have a reputation for being pretty heavy handed, but they must have decided they were only dealing with a mildly dotty limey and not a drug-runner, and after a few more pleasantries she steamed off.

In Kodiak we discovered that it was going to cost Brian and Jo something like $500 each to fly out of Dutch Harbor, so we agreed that they should leave me there, catch the ferry to Homer and get a lift south on the Alaskan Highway. We had a couple of days in hand to enjoy the wildlife; quite the most engaging are the sea-otters which paddle around on their backs with their kits cradled in their arms, quite unafraid. They have made a great comeback since the days of the Russian fur traders and near extermination.

With another 500 miles to Dutch Harbor I would have to get cracking to meet up with John Gore-Grimes in time, and was moderately lucky with the weather. After twenty-four hours beating into a fresh south-westerly which increased to force 6 gusting 7, the wind backed and I was able to ease sheets as I rounded the Shumagins and squared away for Unalga Pass. Good old Assent had made it in five days.

When approaching Dutch Harbor, which is on the north coast of Unalaska Island, there are three main passes through the Aleutian chain from the south-east. Streams can run in excess of 8 knots, and all can be turbulent if not taken at the slack, with `rips and whirls', as the Pilot warns. The first ship passage south-west of the Alaska Peninsula is Unimak Pass, but this carries a good deal of traffic, since it is the fastest route to Japan and close to the great circle course from Seattle. I had no wish to be run down by a container ship, a problem which would not have worried Captain James Cook on the last of his great voyages of discovery in 1778. Like him, I was making for Unbalga Pass, fifty miles to the west. Only 1.3 miles wide, it is the narrowest of the three main passes, but is favoured by fishing vessels since it is clean, the current sets fair with the pass and in thick weather the steep cliffs of Unalga Island give a splendid radar echo.

The US Pilot is suitably encouraging with the remark that `under exceptional circumstances ... in the narrowest part ... treacherous seas ... often sweep a vessel without warning ... and men have been washed overboard'. If I did miss-time slack water, Beaver Inlet to the south offers good shelter, and half way through one can duck into English Bay, an excellent anchorage to which Cook's longboats had towed the Resolution to water and gather antiscorbutics -- wild celery, angelica and sorrel. As I came nearer to the pass it was comforting to see on the radar screen what appeared to be a fishing boat ahead of me, carefully timing his approach. Then suddenly the fog lifted, the new tide picked Assent up and hurried her along and a load came off my shoulders. All was now clear to Dutch Harbor and I was a day ahead of schedule to meet John Gore-Grimes and Tom Lawler.

Rounding Cape Kalekta into Unalaska Bay one is immediately struck by the sheer size of this fine natural harbour. Dutch Harbor is over to starboard where storage tanks, cranes and fish processing plants sprawl along the shore of Amaknak Island, dominated by Mount Ballyhoo. Ahead, in complete contrast, a rather charming Russian Orthodox church stands on a low shingle bank at the head of the bay, as if to protect the village of Unalaska from the brash commercialism of `Dutch'. There is more than mere symbolism in this, for it was the Church which tried to look after the interests of the native peoples, and particularly the Aleuts, when power was transferred from Russia in 1867, and the Orthodox Church is still very strong.

Using the onion spires of the church as a leading mark, sail straight in until you are nearly on the beach and then turn hard a-starboard through a narrow buoyed channel. The small boat harbour is right inside and very protected; it is also conveniently close to the bank, post office, supermarket and a couple of very decent little restaurants. If you want to live it up there is a new five star hotel owned by Unisea, a huge Japanese conglomerate who seem to own nearly everything else as well. Dutch Harbor claims to be the busiest fishing harbour in the USA and last year, we were told, had a turnover of around $4.5 billion.

As Assent entered I was hailed by Jim Dickson, owner of a good looking 39ft steel cutter, who took my lines and then whisked me away for a shower and a meal at his house in Unalaska, hospitality I found typical of Alaska. He was looking after his little daughter while his wife was at a dig near Kodiak as part of a degree course in archaeology. Next morning when I went to the airport I discovered that John Gore-Grimes and Tom Lawler had been delayed in Seattle and, being at a loose end, I was invited to join a party flying out in a Grumman Goose to a ranch at the other end of Unalaska Island. The opportunity was too good to miss.

The Goose is an old war-time amphibian, still going strong and ideally suited to the job. We took off from the airfield, staggered through a pass just below the cloud base and landed in Chernofski Harbor. The technique then was to wind down the wheels and charge the beach, scattering excited sheepdogs in all directions and, at the last minute, swivel around to point back out to sea. Milt and Cora Holmes invited us all into their house for coffee, a fascinating place full of the bric-…-brac of a lifetime in the north, ivory and bone artefacts from an ancient Aleut midden, beautiful fox furs, antique guns and a Civil War sword that had belonged to Milt's grandfather, only he was not sure on which side he had fought!

I left with a warm invitation to return in Assent with my crew, and on the way back the clouds lifted and we had a magnificent view of the snow covered peak of Makushin Volcano. John and Tom turned up next day in fine form; we had quite a bit of shopping to do and Tim Voss, a Master Mariner working for Unisea, took us under his wing and ran us around town in his pick-up. John persuaded us all to join him that night at the Grand Aleutian for an excellent dinner, when Tim told us about his famous grandfather, Captain Voss, who sailed around the world singlehanded in 1905 in Tilikum, an old 38ft Nootka war canoe rigged as a three-masted schooner.

We were very keen to get across to Siberia if we could -- the problem was getting visas. On the recommendation of Tom Stimpfle, whom I had met in Haines, I phoned his brother Jim in Nome. He told me that if we could get up to Nome he could fix visas for us in a week. Jim Stimpfle is one of those super-enthusiastic people for whom the impossible just takes a little longer, but not much.

Nome is about 700 miles north of Unalaska Island. We wanted to stop off at the Pribilofs and St Mathew Island on the way, but decided that the sixty mile sail around to Chernofski would be a useful shake-down and good value anyway. We eventually got away at 1630 on 13 July and motored in a flat calm around Cape Cheerful. The evening was drizzly and very mild, not at all what John expected of the Bering Sea. We were having to buck a 1.4 knot tide, but at 0245 a breeze filled in from the south and we were soon cracking along close-hauled and were off Chernofski Harbor by noon.

This is a superb natural harbour with a narrow entrance and perfect shelter inside, reminding me very much of the Falklands, without a tree in sight. We were told the during the war it had been quite an important military base but there is little sign of it now, apart from a big heap of coal which Milt mines for the house. We had caught a small halibut on the way into the harbour and we took this and a bottle of Bushmills up to the house as an offering. We had a very enjoyable evening -- Milt is a real old-timer with a fund of stories and told us something of the ranch. With two hip replacements he had had to cut back on the sheep from something like 5000 to just over 500, but there were still two or three thousand cattle out there somewhere on the 152,000 acres which Milt leases!

Our course for the Pribilofs took us close to Bogoslof Island, an active little volcano which put on a good show for us with a great plume of steam. There is also quite a big colony of sealions which haul out on the black sandy beach, and we caused a bit of a stir amongst the `beach-masters' when we rounded up close offshore. We had thought of landing, but the beach was a lee shore and the soundings did not seem too reliable, so we contented ourselves with a closer look and then bore away for St Paul Island, 200 miles away to the north-west. With a fresh breeze from the east to north-east we were `barrelling along', as John noted in the log, but as so often was the case in this area, the visibility was down to half a mile much of the time.

We were picking up the weather forecast on 4125 kHz twice a day from Kodiak and somehow it was a great comfort to hear the redoubtable Peggy Dyson. There is a slightly homespun atmosphere, with fishing boat skippers coming back for a repeat when reception is not too good -- I've done it myself -- and the occasional message to a wife when a vessel is behind schedule getting home. The region she covers is absolutely huge, with fourteen forecast areas, which if they were in Europe would stretch from the Aegean to the Blaskets and up to the Lofotens. Hardly surprising that the weather in your particular `neck of the woods' does not always match up. I think I will always remember her oft repeated `rain and faag'.

On the evening of 16 July visibility improved enough to sight St George Island away to starboard and we reduced the jib to make sure we arrived at St Paul Harbor in daylight. We knew there had been some new harbour works and our chart would be wildly out-of-date. Until quite recently, supply ships anchored off and stores were taken ashore in bidarkas, the Aleut skin boats, but now with two new protecting moles barges can safely lie alongside to unload and the port is being developed as the centre of a new King Crab fishery.

It really is a fantastic place -- something like a million Northern Fur seals, the largest herd in the world, come here to breed and the restless noise and smell near the `rookeries' is unbelievable. The island attracts groups of `birders' who come laden with tripods and telescopic lenses, and the thousands of nesting sea birds (red-legged kittiwakes, crested auklets and the uncommon red-faced cormorants etc) make a walk along the cliff-edge a must, even if you are not a dedicated `twitcher'. There is a large Aleut community on the island and their Russian Orthodox church has a particularly fine interior.

We set sail that evening on a broad reach for the uninhabited island of St Mathew, 200 miles away. The forecast next morning was for an easterly gale and fog, not exactly `jolly boating weather' but it made for a fast passage. The sky cleared as we approached St Mathew, the stars sparkled, and in the dawn Cape Upright reared 1000 feet out of the shallow morning fog while humpback whales spouted around us -- an exhilarating scene. We found a lee, of a sort, in a shallow bay behind Cape Upright and anchored in 11 feet. With a 2 foot swell running and the tide falling this was not too comfortable, and while John and Tom were ashore I moved Assent out into deeper water and naturally got plenty of stick from the oarsmen on their return. John had climbed a 1500 foot mountain and, while resting near the top, had got some splendid video footage of an Arctic fox which came up and sniffed his boot. I had been told that walrus haul out here to die and, when I went ashore, hoped to find some tusks, but had to be content with a couple of orange plastic floats. One need never buy a fender again, since regrettably there must be thousands littering the beaches amongst the drift wood all up the coast.

After this blow through we wanted to get on to Nome, 300 miles north-east past St Lawrence Island. Fortunately the current sets north at up to 2 knots off the Yukon Delta, which would give us a helping hand, but the wind was on the nose and we had rather a tedious beat with a lumpy sea. The wind went back into the south-south-west as we came up to Nome on 23 July, which was bad news since the roadstead would be exposed to the swells and the new mole gives little protection. Sledge Island twenty miles west of Nome offers some shelter, so we altered course to anchor there until conditions improved. If the worst came to the worst we could sail the 120 miles north to Clarence Bay and the village of Teller, where we could probably hitch a lift along the 70 mile dirt road back to Nome.

The anchorage behind Sledge Island proved to be better than expected and we had a quiet night. In the morning the wind had eased a bit and we overheard the skipper of a tug, the Arctic Bear, talking on VHF to the harbourmaster in Nome; he was concerned about docking his barge at the end of the mole in these conditions. When we broke in, he helpfully suggested that we come and lie astern of the barge, as soon as he had made fast. It turned out to be quite a picnic, for having got a line to the barge I had to hold Assent back with the engine full astern until John could get a kedge out on the quarter with the Avon. Once we were secure, the skipper of the Arctic Bear ran us into town in his pick-up to show us the inner harbour and then joined us for a beer in the Bering Bar. Ed had done a trip down to the BAS base at Rothera in a supply ship, so we had a good crack about Antarctica and ice pilotage in general.

Nome's inner harbour is in the mouth of the Snake River and is very shallow with 8 feet best, and although the tidal range is notionally only 1.6 foot the level can drop by as much as 4 feet with strong offshore winds. The entrance is over a sand bar and is dredged between training walls. Next morning there was still a 2 foot swell in the entrance and when we came in at high water we had only 6 inches under the keel (on another occasion we actually bumped). It would be easy to get trapped inside if you weren't careful.

As soon as we could we made contact with Jim Stimpfle, who was as good as his word. Getting a visa for Russia is not difficult so long as you have an invitation. We did not. Rather like a conjurer producing an ace from his sleeve, Jim had one ready. We were invited to visit Provideniya -- all we had to do was fill in our names and the dates. There was another form to fill in, photocopies of our passports to be made, plus three passport photos each. Jim would send them by express mail, together with $40 each, to the Russian Consulate in San Francisco and they should be back in just over a week. Magic!

John Bockstoce OCC had given us an introduction to Bonnie Hahn and her son Pat. Bonnie had been a regular crew member in Belvedere and was aboard her when she completed the Northwest Passage in 1988, and Pat had helped him build an umiak and was with him when they very nearly completed the Passage in the umiak in 1980. Pat and Sue live only a minute from the harbour and made us very welcome. By a happy chance they had a Russian staying with them. Andrei's wife was head teacher at a junior school in Provideniya and would look after us, and we offered to take over a load of groceries, soap, blank video tapes and so forth, which are almost impossible to buy over there. Sue had also arranged to fly over with her three children on a visit the following week and would join us there. Jim Stimpfle gave me letters of introduction to the Port Director and the Colonel commanding the Border Guards -- it looked as though things were falling into place. All we needed now were our visas.

Nome, of course, is famous for two things -- gold and the end of the Iditarod Trail, the 1000 mile dog team race from Anchorage which is run every year in March. Ever since the turn of century they have been mining `placer' gold around Nome, with everything from homemade sluice boxes on the beach to gigantic dredgers, many of which lie rusting wherever they stopped work when the price slumped. There are still quite a few part-timers (and old-timers) working the beach. One we met in the Bering Bar was Richard Wilkinson, whose family both John and Tom know well in Dublin -- it's a small world! Richard had just had a good `strike' and was celebrating; he had been diving down 15 foot off the beach with a home-made suction dredge and sluice box mounted on a sort of pedalo. Highly dicey, one would have thought, but he had got 15 oz in a week (at $350 an oz) and the celebration was still going strong when the bar closed at 0500.

With a week to wait we decided to improve the shining hour by sailing as far north as we could. As part of his research into the history of whaling John Bockstoce had spent ten seasons with a crew from Point Hope, hunting bow head whales in umiaks, and recommended a visit to the settlement there. It was unlikely that we would reach the pack ice, although the edge probably lay only 200 miles or so farther north at that time.

At Jim Stimpfle's suggestion we decided to call in at Port Clarence on the way and join his family for a barbecue. Jim's in-laws live in Teller, but most of the families were in their summer camp on a sand spit the other side of Grantley Harbor, where they set gill nets out from the shore and catch salmon as they run up to spawn. Quite a few are put into big deep-freezes, the rest split and dried on racks in the age-old way. We sailed around in perfect weather, anchoring close under the spit only a stones throw from Jim's tent. Jim's wife Bernadette had put together a great feed of grilled salmon, fresh from the sea, and we sat around talking into the night as the sun dipped below the northern horizon.

When we weighed just after 0600 next morning it was quite calm, but the wind filled in from the south-west as we crossed Port Clarence, a big almost land-locked bay and the last good anchorage going north. Port Clarence and Grantley Harbor are historic places. HMS Plover wintered here in 1850, having previously wintered in Providence Bay (Provideniya), and it was a busy place towards the end of the century when whalers frequently came in here to refit and water, or limped back in when damaged in the ice farther north. We had a good reaching breeze as we rounded Cape Prince of Wales and were bowling along at 7 knots -- about the limit for Assent -- and as we passed through the Bering Strait we picked up Little Diomede on radar, twelve miles on the port beam. The Arctic Circle was crossed just after midnight on 30 July, but it could have been the 31st -- we were not too sure since we were on the `Sunday-Monday line'. The log reads: `vis poor, rather cold, dead run, lumpy sea'.

We were running dead before, as we came up to Point Hope, but we had seen nothing, even on radar, although the GPS told us it was only seven miles ahead. Small wonder that Cook did not sight it on his way north to Icy Cape and it was not until 1821 that the Russians put it on the chart. When we did eventually see the long low spit with its cluster of buildings it looked pretty bleak and the seas were breaking all along the shore. There was absolutely no question of landing under these conditions and we reluctantly hove-to, put in a couple of reefs and set the No 4, ready for an energetic beat south. We had reached 68°21'.8N, and had to be content with that.

It was Murphy's Law that, within ten hours, the wind had dropped away to nothing, but the seas of course would take a lot longer. Soon after we had reset the roller jib the wind piped up again and the toggle at the bow fitting failed. This was the second time -- after the previous failure I really thought that I had replaced it with a strong enough fitting, but having learned our lesson we keep the inner stay set up all the time now. The jib was soon tamed and lashed down and we were back to the No 4.

The wind, fortunately, fell away to nothing as we approached the Diomedes but both islands were hidden in fog. I had picked up Big Diomede on radar at nine miles and a little later it appeared out of the mist on the starboard bow. At the same time our radar detector bleeped -- had we been observed? We were less than half a mile from the Russian border!

Little Diomede is pretty impressive. It rises straight out of the sea to 1300 feet and the tiny settlement clings to the rock rather like seabirds' nests. We anchored rather insecurely in 30 feet some 500 feet from the cliff, and I stood anchor watch while the others went ashore. Back in Teller Jim Stimpfle's father-in-law James Omiak had told us to look up his relations, so John went up to met Pat and Evelyn Omiak, a splendid old couple. They used to have relatives on Big Diomede, but they were all resettled by the Soviet authorities somewhere in Chukotka a while ago. When I went ashore I was shown around by three very enthusiastic young teenagers who showed me the umiaks which they still use for whaling. The village quota is one `strike', but they did not manage to land one last season. One of the boys, Vince Mogg, was a great-grandson of William Mogg, a famous whaler, and was delighted when I recognised the name. As far as we could discover we were the first sailing yacht to visit Little Diomede.

We had an easy run back to Nome with bright warm sun and excellent visibility, and with the wind in the north and very little swell had no problems this time getting in. We were alongside by 1945 on 4 August. Our visas arrived back next day, but priority number one was to repair the forestay. Fortunately Jakaranda Flower, a big centre-board ketch, had just come in and Alec found an old jumbo-sized toggle amongst his spares which he generously let me have. Armed with this I enlisted Ramon Gandia's help. As a bush-pilot Ramon's exploits and his pecadillos were apparently legendary, but he is also a keen sailor and his was the first yacht into Provideniya when it opened up. He ran me around town looking for parts and we made up a really strong fitting in his workshop. What a wonderful man!

In the morning, Andrei came down with several cases of stuff which we had offered to take across; somehow we managed to squeeze them all down into the quarter berth and we were ready to leave. We bumped on the way out, but whether it was entirely due to the fact that we were down by the stern I would not like to say. It is only about 250 miles across to the Chukchi Peninsula, but the winds were all over the place and very light, so we had to motor a good deal and paced ourselves to arrive in daylight and during working hours.

After Sir John Franklin's expedition had disappeared into the Arctic a number of expeditions were mounted by the British Admiralty. One of the ships sent to the Bering Sea was HMS Plover (Commander TEL Moore), which left England in January 1848. The intention was that she should pass through the Bering Strait in July, but she was dreadfully slow and by mid October had only reached the Chukchi Peninsula. Moore realised that he would have to find a suitable place to winter very quickly, or risk being caught in the ice offshore. Almost immediately they spotted a cleft in the hills and, sailing in, found the perfect place. Moore called the outer harbour Providence Bay and the inner bay, where he wintered, Emma Harbour. Plover Bay is an anchorage behind a spit on the starboard hand coming in to Provideniya. It is nice that these names are still remembered and, as we discovered, there is a board in Provideniya Museum with a rather quaint translation in English which tells the story.

The approach to Provideniya is not very thrilling. Rather drab barren hills with the odd streak of grey snow flank the entrance, while the town itself can be identified by the pall of black smoke belching out of the power station chimney -- no clean air act here! While in Nome we had sent a message to the Port Director to warn him that we were coming, and when I called up on Channel 16 I was answered by an operator who spoke some English. He sounded welcoming, which was a good start.

Andrei had shown us on the chart the best place to lie and, sure enough, there was Viktor Mukhortov, the Port Director, in a smart suit and gabardine rain coat, enthusiastically waving us in to the dock. It was a warm and friendly welcome, but he had alerted the Border Guards and soon they were down, all green topped `cheese-cutters' and deadpan faces and a couple of grey-faced men with briefcases. With Viktor hovering in the background, formalities were soon completed and we even managed to elicit a few wan smiles. Habits die hard, but we had played this game in Murmansk when I was aboard Wild Goose and found that a few cheerful smiles worked wonders.

Once cleared we contacted Irina, Andrei's wife, and all went up to her cosy and pretty flat in one of those huge impersonal blocks that seem to be the hallmark of Soviet architecture. It is hard to describe the total dereliction of a place like Provideniya -- buildings go up but are patently never maintained, roads are built but the pot-holes never filled. On our way up to the flat we climbed up a flight of concrete steps -- two had collapsed and the gap had been filled with an old wooden pallet.

My abiding impression is of a very friendly and decent people struggling to keep their heads above water. It is a clich' that there is `nothing in the shops'; meat (mostly from Chukchi reindeer herds) is rationed, but bread is good and plentiful and there is a brewery producing quite an acceptable home-brew. We did not see very much else and were glad that we had brought over with us a lot of fruit and fresh vegetables, as well as frozen chickens and eggs for our hosts. Irina and her friend Luba, who acted as our interpreter, put on a tremendous spread that evening with caviar and smoked salmon and it was a splendid party, with Sue Hahn and some neighbours who drifted in and out.

That night I had a very congenial supper with Viktor, talking sailing and sharing a bottle of Vodka with him. Viktor is a yachting buff with an extensive library, and was over the moon when I discovered a Russian translation of an old edition of Heavy Weather Sailing with a mention of my son Alan's success in the 1979 Fastnet in `'CCEHT'. Meanwhile John and Tom had visited the town bar to get a bit of local colour and had a whale of an evening, finishing up by standing the crowded bar drinks all round. Their US dollars obviously went an awful long way and John got back wearing a policeman's hat. It was time we left!

Before we were allowed to leave, Luba was determined to show us the sights -- the town bakery, the leather factory which tans Reindeer hides, and the brewery. The high spot of the day was undoubtedly our tour of Irina's infant school. In contrast to everything else we had seen it was spotlessly clean, colourful and imaginative. It combines the function of a school and a crèche, since most of the mums work, and every child had a neat bed in a dormitory. Most of the kids were away with their parents for the summer holidays, but the ones we saw were absolutely full of beans.

We had to clear out with the Border Guards and the same old lot came trooping down, but this time there were quite a few smiles and when we said goodbye to all our new-found friends there was a lot of laughter and not a little sadness. We could only hope that the future will be kind to them -- they deserve it.

Our return trip to Dutch Harbour was not without excitement. On the second day out, Friday 13 August, the forecast for our area was: `gale -- NE increasing 25 knots, becoming NW 35 to 40 knots'. At 1500 I recorded `puffy clouds and blue sky, jolly sailing weather', but by midnight John noted, `big quartering seas, gusts knocking us around a bit' and at 0600, me again, `pretty dirty morning, rain, running under two reefs'. We had already rolled up the jib and the Aries was coping well with the steering, but just after 1600 we were hit by a couple of rogue waves and I suppose I should have taken the main off her then. An hour later I was on watch, but at the chart table, when we were hit by a big one, started to pitch-pole and then broached and rolled to 90°. Assent bobbed up immediately but everything was very chaotic and wet.

It took about forty minutes to strike the main and lash it down, after which we set the trys'l and had a much more sensible ride with only the occasional wave breaking into the cockpit. The wind eased gradually, and by 1300 on the 15th we had the main up again with two reefs and the jib half unrolled. We were back at our berth in Dutch Harbor at 2040 on 16 August having logged 700 miles in five days (allowing for crossing the date-line). Two days later, after a splendid farewell party at the Grand Aleutian, John and Tom left by air for home at 0930 in the morning, but I regret to say I did not see them off as I was still out cold in my bunk on board!

I had arranged to leave Assent with a friend in British Columbia. He lives north of Vancouver in Gorge Harbour on Cortes Island, a very protected anchorage where she would be safe for the winter. With no more deadlines to make there was no point in hurrying. As I discovered, the fall is a wonderful time to cruise and I dawdled through the Shumagins, where Bering had landed, and across to Sitka. The last cruise ship had left for warmer climes and the flashy sport fishing boats -- `pukers' I've heard them called -- had long since motored back down the inner passages to the `Lower 48'. It was incredibly peaceful, and after the first frost the autumn colours were superb. One early morning, in a remote anchorage, six young wolves came down to the beach and quietly inspected Assent before trotting back into the forest. A true Indian summer and two whole months of heaven.

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