t was after 12 when I left the shelter of my bed. I slept for more than 12 hrs. I needed that. And I needed breakfast.. A real one. The decision what, was already made somewhere deep in the back of my head. Pancakes!
At around 2 pm I was ready to explore Afognak Island. But I needed to find a solution for the dinghy. I didn’t want to get wet. That was priority no. 1! Second was I didn’t wanna loose the dinghy because of a curious bear starts playing with it.
Yes there are bears on that island. And last but not least.. Why is there a shorebreak building up..? It was flat yesterday but now there’s a 2ft wave breaking on the black sand.

I digged out my bag of spare lines and got the longest one, around 250 ft of 3 mm amsteel.  Attached a block to a fender and the fender to my anchor. The plan was to drop anchor outside of the breaking waves, tie the dinghy to a endless loop which goes through the block at the fender and make sure the dinghy faces the bow towards the shore.
Then I dingh directly on the black sand, timing me just behind one of the bigger waves, jump of and let the boat drift back with the wave. Most important thing hereby was not to let loose of the endless loop.
The rest was easy. Pull on one side of the loop to pull the dinghy right to the fender and attach the loop to a rock or tree.
It worked! Not quite as smooth as planned but goal 1 and 2 were achieved. The dinghy was sitting around 50 ft away from the shore going gently up and down with every wave rolling by.

I found footprints of deer, something what looked like a dog or a wolf..? And hikingboots.. My neighbors were up and ashore before me. I don’t know if there are wolfes here but why not?
I walked along the hightide mark and found a little trail leading into the forest. The pine-trees were standing very close to each other and formed a dark green roof above me. At the bottom were only dead branches what let me see quite good. Where no trees were were fast growing bush, fern or grass and form a waist high barrier. I could feel my excitement. Will I cross path with one of the biggest bears on earth? The Kodiak bear can even get bigger than a polar bear. What will I do when..? I read that they are usually not aggressive and if I remain calm probably the bear will too. In no circumstances should I run and best is to make some noise so the bears are not surprised by me. All this was running in big letters inside my brain like the beginning of starwars..  Don’t run! Stay calm!  Make some noise.. I found myself whistling when I walked through the waist high bush.. And started laughing about myself.. Good noise!

At the lake was a little cabin. The whole island is a state Park and hiker can book the cabin for overnight stays. It was 10×10 ft, had a big oven, a little kitchen in one corner and two double storey bunks with a table between. Nobody was there and per guestbook the last resident was there on April 27th. I left a note and followed the shore to the west. Framed by steep slopes of the mountains to east and west and by pine-trees to north and south the scenery at this little lake looked awesome.
Back at the beach I saw something moving. Something hairy, dark hair. What was it, where was it? Is there anything? I stopped and scanned the area. There it is.. A little bigger than a cat with long dark fur. Looked like a fox but black. He ran away and I lost him within seconds.
An eagle was circling above me checking out what strange creature is passing his territory and a seal popped out his head as high as he could to better see me. Further outside a saw the blow of a couple whales. That’s why I sailed all the way to the cold waters of Alaska.. Happy about the days dose of exitement I walked back.
The dinghy was exactly there where I left it and the loop wad still wrapped around the rock. Good! Even when the tide was reaching the rock already it was easy to pull the dinghy to shore, jump in and pull myself back to the fender where I cleared the lines lifted anchor and drove back to ZERO.

Tomorrow I’ll leave and make a couple miles to the north. Maybe I pull in a little inlet on the other side, the north side of this Island. The little channel on the north has around 5 kn tidal current. Will be interesting to go in there..
Aloha
The whistling captain