If you are ever tempted to visit this delightful stretch of real estate - land glimpses in cold, driving mist - go and lie down for a bit and review your life's experiences. Then strike down the evil temptation with a stout quarterstaff and do something really interesting and useful - cut your toenails perhaps, or look at Saturn through a telescope or count the number of times Shakespeare used the word 'varlet'. Anything but a visit to Amchitka Pass with a 20 knot northerly. That is, of course, unless you are into other quirky activities like scraping your fingernails down brick walls or marathon running. Then you'll love the place.
We've made what look to be a couple of good decisions - parking and reassessing, getting going again with tri and half heady, and setting off to the NW. We are now tracking across the front of the barn door in driving, cold, misty rain with big rolling swells and sometimes breaking tops, kevvo driving, slightly off balance because the tri isn't really big enough for the heady we're flying, so kevvo coping quite well with lee helm - but not slamming, except very occasionally, on the port tack so on the so far undamaged (and precautionarily (!) braced) shroud. The wind has freed just enough to give us the faintest hope that we might lay Garelof in about 12 hours time - tide with us for a bit and we'll see what happens when it turns. It will be dark in an hour or so and the usual woolly black and dismold, clank and dammy prospect of masochistic processes of warm bunk, desperate struggle into cold, wet, sticky (don't you hate polars when your hands and feet are clammy?) party gear, 2 hours on or close to deck, huddled away from the blast, constant temptation to look at watch - how much longer...and blessed relief, struggle back out of now wetter and stickier party gear and begin the business of warming the bunk all over again...What a treat for a marathon runner looking for an alternative vice.
Just been reminded how fragile this electronic setup I'm using really is - it is quite easy to get in front of the Software on board nav package, at least on this computer, when zooming the chart and when that happens, it closes itself down, loses all its waypoint data and generally misbehaves. I then have to close easymail and airmail, remove the usb connector to the rest of the vitally important black boxes, insert the Cmap dongle and restart SoB. Remove dongle and reinsert usb connector and hope that it will all come back up again. Then have to reset everything and sit on hands while it decides whether it wants to work properly. Very very stressful, when the whole shebang depends on such a complex single point of failure and a rigid process for getting it all going again. Another great alternative vice.
Enough!
