We were up at 4 and had blueberry pancakes. Lots of blueberries. The seas have calmed, probably the most calm paddling of the entire trip.
We pass numerous fishing boats with their nets out. I imagine they are quite satisfied with the weather as well.
It seems that the biggest physical challenge of the trip has been keeping my hands dry. Everyday they seem to be little worse. I keep waiting for them to have some type of cold wet injury, but after drying them out at night, they seem to be okay by morning. then by afternoon they look like this.
One of my favorite birds, the Common Loon finally gets close enough to take a photo.
And the afternoon is more of the same, calm and scenic. This is the first day that we saw brown bears walking along the shore. The salmon are returning to the streams and so are the bears. When we stop to get some water from a stream to have in case we need it, we are doing bear aware practices.
Do not think that it gets any better. The weather forecast was calling for 15mph winds and 3 foot seas. Guess that was wrong. We checked out one place that could have worked, but leaving at low tide in the morning would have been an obstacle course. With the conditions we were having we decided to go check out another spot on an island several miles away. From the distance it looked like it might have a sandy beach. We were not disappointed when we reached it and realized it would work just fine.. The shore line was just small pebbles. It was great for loading and unloading. The beach, however had lots of seaweed and underneath the seaweed was our friends the hopper bugs. Hoppers as we like to call them get into everything including our food. They even manage to get inside our boats with the hatch covers on. Anytime you move some seaweed the little creatures come out in full force. They hop into the frying pan and add some protein I hope. as it is hard to avoid not eating some of them. If the weather holds this might be the last wilderness type campsite of the trip. This if the first site that has noticeable trash. This has been our longest paddle day of the trip. If all goes as planned we should be in Skagway day after tomorrow.
Nautical miles paddled 33.4