A good day starts slow and ends with an adventure.. So today.
I started slow. Turned around a couple times before I got up. Lifted anchor not before 10 am and slowly steamed north. I wanted to go around Afognak Island and anchor on its north side. There is a narrow channel separating Afognak Island and Shuyak Island. Shuyak is the most northern island of the Kodiak chain.
The channel has strong tidal currents and I wanted to have the current going with me and slowly decreasing in strength. That means I needed to pass it between 5:30 pm and 8:30pm. The peak current would be around 5 kn at 5:30pm.
That’s why I wasn’t in a hurry to leave in the morning.
After rounding cape Tonki on the east side of Afognak I could set sails and stop the engine. It was only 10 kn of wind but with the genua, staysail and main in 1 St reef I was sailing straight towards the channel with 5-6 kn. It was foggy and raining. I couldn’t see more than 1/2 mile and I was getting excited. The entrance is the narrowest part and only a quarter mile wide, but with some rocks and shallows on either side the navigatable channel was only 100 m with strong currents. I could see the big cliffs when I approached it but not the little rocks, not yet.
Luckily it cleared up a little as more as I came closer that was good but I felt getting faster as well. We were slowly accelerating.. 6, 6.2, 6.5, 7, 7,5, 8, 9..
9 kn and the genua was barely standing. Almost no waves at the bow and the boat was so calm.
I took down the staysail a while ago as it was covering the genua and the main a quarter mile before the channel. I didn’t want to deal with that when I’m in the little stretch of boiling water. The wind came almost dead downwind and I had the engine running in neutral, in case I needed it. I could see the currents, the rips. The water was stirred up like a whirlpool. Little whitecaps marked the most active parts. I had a closer look on the sonarcharts before so I understood why the water was so wild. We entered whirlpool 1 and ZERO just went through like there was nothing special. Wow!
My adrenaline level slowly ebbed. Easy! Let’s get to the next one. Easy as well. Now the bottom was more even and the channel widens. We were through.
We sailed under genua to the second inlet on the left, jibed and sailed all the way into the little cove at the end. The wind was slowly decreasing and I furled in the genua just 100 m before we dropped the anchor at 40 ft depth.
Noone around here. My own little bay. Surrounded by dark green pine-trees this bay was almost circular in shape with a little entrance to the north and around 1/4 mile wide. A little black sand beach separated by a tall rock into two parts to the west. Breathtaking.

The fishfinder was beeping and I took the little rod and let down the lead followed by 3 little hooks every foot touched the ground, lifted it up and down again a couple times and.. STRIKE! got one.
I reeled in a little flounder, or halibut. Big enough to fit my pan. Dinner was safe.
So except the rain, I still don’t like it, it was a very good day.
Aloha

The excited captain