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Fighting strong currents and fluky winds. I drag my new lure. It goes at all speeds and depths and eventually catches this beautiful salmon.
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Broiling it the next day for lunch under a cedar teepee fire. Delicious. The tide came up 6ft in two hours. I had to keep moving my fire and everything else.
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A string of container barges.
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Crossing a wide spot Looks like an easy wind. Everything on deck, no stays to the mast. Just relaxing and catching up on chores while the boat sails itself.
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Small powerboat with house like a towboat. Towing tiny dinghy.

Fri 08-03-01 9:36pm wp0803 N53* 03.585' W129* 35.479' Came 51 miles today, now 481mi from launch. 84 mi to Prince Rupert. Many gnats here. Horrible. Tied to kelp- you're not supposed to do this but I'm tired and covered with biting gnats, in a hurry to get covered and sleep. Kelp mostly anchor below lowtide line so you know you won't ground. They flatten the waves out. Got in my wet sleeping bag in wet goretex cover again, swatting gnats the whole time. Repellant helped a little, not much. Dark. Slept on wet deck in rain. Hot, clammy, claustrophobic. Wet goretex doesn't breathe well. Woke 3am I'd unzipped the bugscreen and climbed my upper body out in my sleep. Gnats driving me crazy. Kelp grow so their heads are below hightide line. Couldn't reach knot. Frantic. Jerked it up, grabbed oars, rowed still in sleeping bag til gnats weren't biting me any more. Out into the channel. Put on red flasher, slept and drifted til 7. Dead gnats all over deck. S.E. wind sailed and slept. Then big wind.
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Nina always tells me to take my glasses off for pictures. Sure. Why not?
Silly me, I've still got the mask on.
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Splash! My glasses disappear into the water. We're travelling fast.
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Sail propped on driftwood for a roof. Light s.e. wind, I could sail well, but I'm savoring comfort and sound of rain on sail overhead. Vasoline helps hands a bit but doesn't seem to last. Doesn't prevent or cure the white puffyness. Maybe too much water in skin for it to stick well. Hence Lanolin, one end is hydrophilic or somesuch. I look forward to seeing water bead up on everything I wear. Roof not steep enough, some drips, but good enough.
Some drops land on these pages, bead up. Writing with uniball micro deluxe waterproof pen. Stock bic is as good.
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Sun 08-05-01 wp0804 10:49am Enjoying a delicious meal of limpets cooked over an empty olive-oil can stove. Worked great, cooked on twigs, easier to light than a campfire. Smoke is 10" higher and burned more completely, so less smoke inhalation. Sitting under sail set up as roof over driftwood. Raining again of course, but not on me for once. After coming 61 miles yesterday to N53* 45.960' W130* 28.501 I decided to be comfortable at night. Much work carrying everything up, laying out logs, dragging empty canoe up onto the mountains of driftwood. 542 miles from John's, 30 miles to Prince Rupert. Yesterday stopped, drilled holes, added line to pull rudder back down. It had gotten loose, I kept having to reach back with the paddle's boathook handle to pull it down forward again. At the right point it was balanced. Hardly any force to turn it, but when I released the tiller it returned to center. To far forward it was overbalanced. Wanted to flip sideways like an arrow launched feathers first. Later it did this and broke off. Running and surfing down whitecaps at the time. Went to shore, got 12ft pole. lashed paddle to it, lashed this
sweep oar to rudder hinge. Back sailing downwind. With leeboard up I just skid at speed over the top of kelp patches, sweep oar steering means no projections to catch.

This hull is pretty clean, but it's wider than 9:1 and round-bilge. So it has wave drag but isn't the right shape to plane well. Any wind you can feel makes it go 5mph, which feels like hardly moving. A strong wind makes it go 7mph, which feels like waterskiing. 8.6mph is most I've measured, but I don't often feel safe messing with the gps when going that fast. I was really glad when they quit scrambling gps "selective availability". My skinny proa at home has gone over 17mph according to gps.

Some shellfish beaches have been closed for coliform bacteria popular with kayakers. If you crap on land it all runs down into the clams. Better to crap in the channel, where current will mix it with the ocean.

diagram: my stove.
4pm air 57* raining. I see a pattern.

The sore on my butt seems to have gone away. I put lots of vaseline on it, have been wearing knit wool pants that are actually $2 Jantzen maroon cardigan sweater from Sointula thrift store. I wear that bottom layer always, under wetsuit also. Polypro turtleneck. fleece jacket with hood, fleece cap, army poncho belted at waist with bicycle innertube strip. Geat, much better than goretex jacket which gets soggy wet. I'm sure the membrane is fine, and the jacket is nice, especially with poncho over it. Everything needs a coat of lanolin. Silicone on nylon? I'm barefoot except to land.
Hands are fine in salt water, get puffy white leprosy in the rain. I can actually squeeze water out of my skin.
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Sailed all night, now in Prince Rupert. Passed in dark by hundreds of salmon boats going out to hunt and gather. Avoided lots of collisions. Came 38.8 miles.
salvation army 985 3rd ave. W 624-5382 m-f 10-5
java dot cup 516 3rd ave. w. 622-2822 $1.8/.5hr

Prince Rupert Yacht and rowing club. 566 mi from start, N54* 19.157' W130* 19.084' wp0805

Clark color CD 1st roll $4.95 addl $2.95
 
develop 3 1/2" single print 24 2.75 36 3.80
    2print   4.20   5.70
easyfinder index print        $1
Clarkcolor p.o.box 96300 Washington DC 20077 usa

topo map
fix rudder
thrift store
lookat marine gear
lanolin + white soap
zipper
send postcards
goto museum
dry stuff out

Hard to describe the feeling of sailing, experience of of outrigger canoe in a gale. I need to remember that's what I should do, and when I'm doing that, I'm not doing anything else.
When I'm on a trip, I'm doing the thing for itself. In town all those intermediate steps. Busywork, red tape.
Here on land I fall down from waves in my ears.
Kent Elasomer Kent Ohio makes rubber tubing
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A type of restaurant not found in the US.
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Japanese fishing boat from Prince Rupert's sister city in Japan. A retired gent went out fishing, never came back. a couple of months later his boat was found near here. Now restored as a monument to the man, the sea, and shared humanity. His family donated the shrine.
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4pm Thurs 08-09-01 Nice little bay, sand and shell beach. Looking north to Alaska water 64* air 64*F. Clear blue sky and sunny. Caught a nice king(?) salmon so stopped early for a feast. First the giblets and heart, liver, large seminal vesicles cheeks and some other organ. testes? cooked oilcan stick stove. North end of Dundas Island. Yesterday came 20.2mi, put in 2pm, sailed and rowed til 11pm, not to land yet, put down leeboard and rudder and flasher, drifted and slept poorly. Woke hung up in kelp by island. Woke again by rock. N54* 28.732' W130* 44.279' Rowed away to kelp, slept more. Today AM rowed weakly til wind at noon, sailed and slept. Fish jumping. Put gear out. Caught big salmon near end of island. Sailed around into this great little bay at N54* 37.538' W130* 46.651' 10.3miles today. Big island with rivers hence fishermen and salmon. 595mi from launch. 18ft tides now 23 is high for month. Will camp on beach Ate as much salmon as I could hold. Much left for tomorrow.
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Slept in teepee with fire in empty olive-oil can.

8:15am Sat 8-11-01 Big paw prints on beach like dog. Wolf? more tracks. Bear, otter, moose?Were these prints here last night when I got here? Last night had a nice tailwind, looking for a place to stop. Rocky shore, no easy place to land. A nice bay with beaches, but there were boats in it. Next point. Waves. A couple of miles, much intricate rocky shoreline. Waves on rocks. Put on the rest of my warm gear, might end up sailing all night. Saw a nice beach all the way to the water in a little bay.
Landed in cruise ship wake added to surf. Carried up bags, dragged canoe up on sticks. Pulled logs together and piled clothes on top to make a bed, started fire in oilcan stove. It's great, easy to start, carry it around, burns completely, no mess, no mark on the land.
wp0810 N54* 55.377' W130* 58.114' air 60* water 61*F came 21.9mi yesterday 615 mi from John's. Yesterday went to town of Tongass, hoping to check in with u.s. customs. Almost there in channel met the town's only resident. In a cute plywood skiff he'd built. He said no phone, customs in Ketchikan. He's the only resident of Misty Fiords. He eats shellfish not the necks, heard they concentrate PSP.
Me: "PSP warnings all in BC"
He: "Yeah, I don't know why they do that. They set the threshold so low almost no shellfish qualifies. Guess a few people are really sensitive."
Elsewhere I'd heard maybe it's a conservation thing. Very nice here. Really an escape.
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If you crap on the beach, it looks like this after it rains, even if you bury it.
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If your fire is too big and doesn't burn completely, this sort of mess interferes with the wilderness illusion for others.
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Better to have a small fire in a can. No marks at all on the beach.
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