Sailing Education Adventures

Our plotted course from Saipan was to head more or less due north, just east of the Marianas until we reached latitude 40-45 degrees, then a right turn east to Vancouver with prevailing currents and westerly winds at our beck and call. The northerly route would be about 1,500 miles. To sail north east directly to Vancouver would have meant going the long route (the world curves as you know), got us squarely in one of the Pacific highs (no wind) and gone against the grain of currents. To our frustration, we hit the high anyway: windlessness prevailed. Insult to injury, to our left, on the horizon we saw lightning: so that was where the weather was, we cursed! We did notice bits of plastic, polystyrene, netting floating around us – the infamous garbage of the Pacific. By the time we reached latitude 40 we acknowledged we didn’t have the fuel to reach Vancouver and there was still no sign of consistent westerlies. Moreover, for some time we had been unable to receive a weather forecast (strongest signal in the tropics was from Brunei (!) but by the 40s it was supposed to be from Hawai’i: nada.) The owner, waiting anxiously for his boat in Vancouver, forwarded a forecast received from a ‘net’ in New Zealand that foretold of storms and typhoon Japan-way and moving toward us in a matter of days. We decided to head for Dutch Harbor, Unalaska, for diesel and maybe belated refuge.

When the storm hit we were at the western end of the Aleutian chain round about latitude 50! We were by then wearing ‘foulies’ in and outside the boat, the oven on to provide some heat and wearing sweaters in cold bunks. We registered 45-50 knot winds and 15-18’ seas at max. The storm tactic we chose was to ‘run before the seas’ which meant we motor-sailed for 25-30 hours northwest!! Dutch Harbor, to our east, was looking like a figment of our imaginings – because by now, the mainsail furling system didn’t work (we had been forced to bundle it round the boom in prep of the storm) nor did the generator (water shortage), still no forecast (some measure of the storm was our hailing a passing tanker and asking for a weather forecast to which it replied ‘Very bad’ – we kinda knew that!) and fuel was low (breakdown of the anchor hauling mechanism and the first stage auto pilot came later). Despite these minor calamities, the boat rode the storm well.

When the storm receded we found ourselves near an island that the chart showed had a coast guard station on it, possibly disused, and a peace monument on a snowy peak. We anchored and went ashore. No one to be seen: there were signs the station had recently been used and windows boarded up, but the several huge oblong tanks were empty. A little prizing of a door and we got inside – the kitchen had water and Gatorade – yes! There was a sign on a white board in an office reading ‘Get me out of here’; and in the mechanic’s garage were 3 off-road vehicles and a tank of diesel!!! We filled 15 20-litre jerry cans of the stuff, ferried them to the boat and filled the on-board tanks, then back to refill the cans. Time to play – replacing a flat battery with a good one from an off-roader that had a flat tyre, we started to travel the island. Alas, there were trenches dug across the dirt roads, exploration had to cease – we never did reach that ‘peace’ monument. It was later we learned that the Aleut population's village had been razed during WWII, the Aleuts evacuated to mainland Alaska and to this day never allowed back.

Here some editorializing: from Saipan to the Aleutians, we followed and became very aware of the Pacific war. Titian is the island 3 miles from Saipan where the Enola Gay took off with the atomic bomb. Guam, we all know, is a major US base south of Saipan. Saipan itself was heavily bombed to the extent that little indigenous vegetation thrived. Two cliff sites on Saipan are commemorated as places where Japanese military and families leapt to their deaths when told Americans were cannibals! The present population is composed of Chamorros, Koreans, Japanese, Filipinos, SE Asians and gringos from US, Australia and New Zealand: the hoped-for tourist industry collapsed 4-5 years ago and the sweat shops were closed a decade or so ago – the economy is tough. As for the Aleutian Islands, most of the inhabitants, the Aleuts, were cleared off the islands ‘for the own protection’ to mainland Alaska, housed in appalling conditions, some separated even from white spouses. They were allowed back after the war and received reparation from the US government for its treatment of them 40-50 years later.

So we left with replenished fuel, water and Gatorade and motored, now in the Bering Sea, for 6 days east to Dutch Harbor on Unalaska, a deep-fishing port where the boats catch, fillet and freeze the fish; on return to the harbor the catch is transferred to freezer containers and, if the market price if right, loaded on to ships for mainland US and western Pacific rim. If the market price is low, the fish remain frozen in the containers till the price is right! A population of 3,000-4,000 people is made up of mainly resident fishing families, along with an influx of migrant fisherman housed in cheap, faceless blocks for the season. It seems that some 10 years ago development came to Unalaska: a community and recreation center, library (with internet), a health center, hotel and a Safeway! I'm supposing this last put mom and pop out of business. The oldest Russian church in the northwest stands by the harbor; the house intended for the priest and never inhabited, is a splendid structure constructed a century or so ago in San Francisco and shipped in pieces to its present site! Like all the Aleutian islands, Unalaska is green, green, green but tree-less.

I left the boat for several reasons at Dutch Harbor to go on its way, fully dieseled and reprovisioned, to Vancouver which it reached August 17.

I marvel we found a deserted island with diesel on it; I wonder how we fared so well in a strong gale; and I fondly recall crew members Adrian (Spanish) and Elliot (New Zealand) diving off the moving boat with life-jackets and tethers into tropical waters, and then later into the Bering Sea!! Two sharks we saw, schools of porpoises and a coupla whales. Not a fish was caught but we did see ‘a bergie bit’ – well, of course, it’s a bit off an iceberg!