I needed a break. A break from civilization, especially ?civilization? in form of uniforms. As soon as I woke up in Whittier next morning, I untied my lines and set sails east! The decision to explore the north east of Prince William Sound was made long before but know I really needed this. There would be plenty little bays to sneak in and hide and explore. Shut of the phone, the VHF and the part which stores bad memories in my brain.

As long as I go ashore on an Island there wouldn’t be any bears, mostly?. But that wasn’t what I was looking for. I choose a bay with a river mouth where I hopefully find a lot of salmon trying to swim upstream. And  with the salmon there comes the whole food chain like bears and eagles etc.. I found my little river mouth bay and went ashore. I couldn’t see any bigger animal but that means nothing. I was prepared. I recently discovered my passion for archery and took my recurve bow, the bear attack deterrent, which Peter gave me, and of course a knife. But probably I wouldn’t use any of these because I  would most likely been frozen to a statue from the encounter of a huge bear.

I did some target practicing on an old dead tree and was surprised that I did hit the only 6 inch wide tree with 5 from 6 arrows! And that from about 15 meter distance. SO I could defend myself! Theoretically, if there wouldn’t be the statue thing!

I did a little hike through the pine forest. Sometimes I had to fight through thick grown bush and sometimes I was walking on soft grass. The ground was so soft that with every step I was bouncing like being in a trampoline. The river i thought to find was more a million little creeks flooding the area with cold clear water.  I didn’t find any salmon, bears nor eagles but it was nice anyway.

Next morning I pulled up anchor and set course towards Columbia Glacier. The excitement I felt when I saw my first Iceberg was incredible. I first thought it was a fancy white motor yacht but when I came closer I saw it, it was ice. One followed another and shortly after seeing my first ice I was surrounded by ice. I carefully navigated around them and couldn’t decide in which direction I should look first, it was awesome.

I made it almost in front of the glacier, where the white cliffs of thousands of thousands year old ice meet the saltwater. Around 1/2 mile of the edge I couldn’t, or wanted, go any closer, It was too much ice around me and the danger of damaging ZERO was too big. But I was there, closer than I expected to go anyway. I docked ZERO to one of the icebergs and got my little axe to harvest some fresh, or old, ice.

The sun did what she could to heat up the air and there weren’t any clouds to disturb her doing so, but I could feel the cold of the glacier. I started without a shirt entering the Columbia Bay and had to put more clothes on as closer as I came. I ended up with jacket, scarf, beanie and of course pants and boots. The water temperature decreases from 18 degree Celsius to just under 9! Brrrr! We had almost no wind so I decided to go for a dinghy ride and set ZERO adrift. I put out a couple fender in case ZERO drifted on a bigger exemplar. I drove around and couldn’t believe how blessed I am to be here. I was absolutely stoked. The excitement level inside me had reached a new high. I was happy!

The Columbia Glacier marks the most northern point of my journey. 61 degree 8 minutes North. From now on I’m sailing south again. South until the butter melts, one day. On my way out of the ice field I served myself a rum. Thanks to John from Oahu, I met when I helped docking HYDROPTERE, the french racing trimaran, I had a bottle Jerry Sailor Rum on the boat. The glacier ice cracked loudly when I poured the rum over it. SALUT!

To get some transmission oil I had to stop in Cordova, and for any reason I lost my dolphin striker. Maybe it came of when I touched one of the white icy giants. Don’t know.

SO here I am anchoring in front of the harbor in Cordova. Cordova is a little “town” which can only be reached either by boat or plane. There is no road going to Cordova. That’s great. I love stuff like this.

The weather forecast predicts some wind coming on the weekend. Hopefully I can catch a good breeze and make some miles towards Yakutat. I have a special package getting delivered to Yakutat soon.

My quartermaster is coming back and I’m looking very much forward to see Rebecca again.  So give me some wind!!

I know how much all of you want to see pictures. I shot a million pics and uploaded a few here..

enjoy, share and comment!

(Tip: double click on the first pic and then click on “i” ,on the left bottom corner, to see the descriptions before you hit the fullscreen button, so you have the best view of the pics..)

Aloha