Saturday, July 28, 2012

Whale watching: who's watching whom



There's a subject I have always been hesitant to express, but digitizing all my whale slides from the boating years has brought it up again and maybe it is time to let it out.

You see, I think I had an extra sensory connection with the killer whales in Prince William Sound.  Pretty outlandish, huh?  Probably, but I noticed in the photographs something I had never  picked up on before. 

During my years there, the federal government published rules about approaching whales. The guideline is no closer than 100 meters and 300 meters if a calf is present.  Now, given this affinity I am speaking about, what do you do when the whale comes to you?  A perfect example came one day as I was motoring along parallel to a pod of killer whales.  In the group I could see a couple of calves.

Surprisingly, one calf turned away from the pod and headed straight for the boat on the surface.  He actually swam under the  boat and I stopped and turned off the engines, fearing a calf unfamiliar with boats might be cut by the propellers.  The calf swam around and under the boat, once rolling on his side to look at me.  Then I looked up and saw two adult females charging at the boat also on the surface. (It has been written they have a nanny system where one female will watch another's calf) I just sat, a little nervous about what could happen.  The calf continued its exploration while the two females stayed close by, occasionally swimming under and around the boat and rolling to look up at me.  I could hear their chirping through the hull.  They danced around me for maybe 10 minutes, then with the calf's curiosity apparently satisfied, they swam away to rejoin the pod.  I wonder what would have been the charge if some marine mammal regulator had seen that.

That said, what I noticed in this collection of these photographs is how many pictures show a whale or whales coming toward the camera, rather than alongside or running away. 

If you look in front of the white spot you can see a calf's fin.
Over the years I had many experiences where whales approached the boat rather than the other way around and that made me begin to think they recognized me, or at least the sound my boat made in the water.

During the years when I had my own boat, a little 19-foot, well, sort of a cabin cruiser, that was what I wanted  most to do.  While others went fishing, I went to find the whales.  On calm days I could drift in the middle of a wide passage and read a book until I heard them breathe.  Once I spotted them I would cruise over, being careful not to point the boat right at them.  What I liked to do was figure out their speed and direction and than stand off a ways and cruise right along with them.  More often or not they would come over to the boat for a while, swimming along with me right next to the boat.  At times I could have reached over the side and touched them.  Their antics got me into trouble with the harbor folks or at least opened me up for ridicule.
The wavy finned male again.

My small boat had a 40-gallon fuel tank which limited my range.  I usually carried a couple of 5-gallon cans to supplement that.  I would go as far as I could on half that fuel, leaving half to get me back.  Half plus 5 gallons I always held in reserve in case something came up.

So, three weeks in a row I got to playing with whales on the way back to the harbor and stretched my fuel.  The first weekend I ran out about 300 yards from the harbor mouth and had to call the harbormaster to tow me in.  Once was OK.  But the same thing happened the very next weekend.  By then the harbormaster, who fortunately was a friend, too, wasn't angry.  In fact he asked if I was in any trouble and could he finish his lunch before he came out to get me.  Then came the third week and that time I reached the fuel dock pretty much running on fumes.  Like I said the tank was rated at 40 gallons.  That fill-up took 41.  There wasn't even anything left in the hoses.

Over four or five years I spent many happy hours with the whales and it was during that time I began to sense that connection.  I noticed if I showed up in an area, they would often come to the boat, swim by on their sides looking at me, spy hop with their heads out of the water and there was even one quasi erotic event that still has me shaking my head.  One day just cruising along with the pod a female came over and was swimming right along with the boat almost close enough to touch her.  Then as if on a whim she rolled onto her back and swam along next to me belly up.  She did this not once, but four or five times.  I laughed but I had this sneaking sense some kind of seduction was going on there.

When I went to driving larger charter boats I was afraid I would lose them as they would not recognize me on a different sounding boat.  I shouldn't have worried.  When we were around them I always made sure to step out onto the weather deck in hopes they would recognize me.  A couple of instances convinced me they might.  In one they came up on a 37-foot boat I was running and played in the bow wake the way porpoises do.  It was amazing.  They were jumping completely out of the water ahead of the boat as we moved along.  In another instance, I had been taking a party of BLM surveyors around the sound.  Up to the one point it had been a wet, messy week. Just about everything on the boat eventually got soaked.  When the sun came out one day, while the surveyors went to shore, the crew woman and I hauled out every bit of fabric we could to dry in the sun while we drifted waiting for them.  We had left only thin, V-shaped opening on the windshield between two sleeping bags.  I happened to look up when that opening went totally dark and then I heard a huge splash. I was afraid my crew had fallen overboard and I ran out on deck.  She was fine, and I saw the whale swimming away, probably laughing another of those bubbly whale laughs.  We figured the whale had breached right next to the boat and the resultant splash had thrown water all over our drying sleeping bags.  Thanks guys.

I graduated to larger tourist vessels and again feared I would lose them, but they still came to the boat.  How close?  Well, we had a low deck in the stern. One of the crew kids was hanging over the rail one day trying to spot the whales that were around the boat. All of a sudden one swam out from under the boat, came to the surface and exhaled all over him.  Whale breath is not  a pleasant odor.  He came running up into the wheelhouse and asked if he could use my shower.  I asked why and he told me that story. He asked again and I said no.  This was a young man you could kid with.  Looking disconcerted he asked why.  I told him, "well, that whale is an endangered species and in order to wash the breath off you, you are going to have to file an environmental impact statement."  The people in the wheelhouse just about died laughing.  I let him take a shower and borrow some of my clothes.

On that boat we tried something a little more sophisticated; I began using a hydrophone.  If conditions were right and the whales were staying in a small area, I could stop the engines and drop the microphone overboard and their calls and sounds played through the loudspeaker system on the boat. It was amazing to see a crowd of people oohing and ahhing over whales suddenly go absolutely silent as they realized they were hearing the whales as well as seeing them.  I still have cassette tapes from that hydrophone and hope someday to digitize them as well. AN UPDATE: I eventually did digitize the tapes. There's a link to it at the bottom or you can click on the whale item in the right-hand column and see more of my whale pictures along with the sounds.

I'm not sure if all this has convinced anyone of that connection with whales I felt.  I am not convinced myself, but I remember at times I could feel it, something going back and forth between us.  This all came up transferring these photographs and seeing in how many of them they are coming toward the boat, it makes me think maybe I was onto something.

There was one last incident.  Chilling.   Early on during the Exxon Valdez oil spill I was taking a crew of cleanup workers down to the ship.  This was before the oil had spread all over hell and gone; it was still close to the ship.  About five miles north of the ship we began to smell the oil.  Ahead of the boat  in the dim light of dusk, a killer whale suddenly rose out of the water, diving forward like porpoises do right across our course in front of us.  I had the boat on autopilot and went out to say something to the owner who was sitting on the bow.  I asked him if he saw that.  He said, "yeah, I hope he doesn't get into the oil."

A thought hit me and I said, "What makes you think he wasn't trying to tell us the same thing?"

Here's the gallery. See if you can pick out the ones where the whales are heading toward the boat

The singing whales of Alaska's Prince William Sound

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Sorry, Sea World trainers, no sympathy

Is it possible whales just want to have fun?

The original suit citation reads Jones et. al. v. the Secretary Commerce.  That suit effectively prevented Sea World from capturing killer whales in Alaska waters.  We won in the original court and again on Sea World's appeal.  The secretary of Commerce was named because the suit was based on Sea World's obligation to supply an adequate environmental impact statement with that agency which was expensive and had to be done before one whale was touched.

If memory serves Sea World originally was granted permission to handle 92 whales  in Prince William Sound and take up  to ten into captivity.  Though they said they were doing science, our read on it was it would allow them to examine that many whales in order to choose perfect specimens for their water parks.

The sound's resident  population of up to 90 whales in five distinct pods  generally swimming in a relatively small area, made for easy picking by the Sea World catchers.

 A group of  vessel operators pooled our money and initiated that suit.  My name is first only because the attorney thought it best to have an individual rather than a business as the first complainant.

Besides helping initiate the suit, I almost had a fist fight with the chief capture supervisor for Sea World.  At the time this arose, I was operating a fishing charter boat for a company out of Valdez.  The business I worked for also operated a marine supply store.  One day this fellow came into the store wanting to buy parts for a boat Sea World had left over the winter.  It seemed during that time someone or several someones had poured sugar into the fuel tanks of that boat.  Because we knew Sea World was operating there we had hung a sign in the store saying we reserved the right to refuse service to anyone. Anyone was Sea World.

When the alleged scientist was informed we wouldn’t be selling him any parts or supplies for his boat he asked who he could talk to, the clerk nodded at me.  He asked why and I told him we were totally opposed to his effort to capture whales in Prince William Sound and even if it meant loss of business we were not going to aid that effort in any way.  He looked at me and said, "Have you heard all our arguments?"   I said, "Yes, have you heard all of ours?"  He nodded and I said, "I guess we have nothing else to talk about, do we."  I saw the vein in his neck bulge and his fists close tightly and prepared myself.  I could see the change in his eyes, though, and he punched his own knees where he was sitting, stood up and stormed out of the place.

When the issue first came up I did some research into Sea World's handling of killer whales and  learned that captured whales usually acted docile and do their tricks for two or three years.  After that they tended to start pushing their trainers around and on occasion attacking them, and thus became useless for display purposes.  I also learned the whales which can live up to 100 years in the wild, seldom lived beyond 11 years in captivity.

Coming at you, boy.
Nothing in anything I read showed the least benefit for an animal that size being held in the relatively tiny pools at Sea World's displays.  That confinement was what bothered me most.  Having had some remarkable experiences with the whales in Prince William Sound, seeing them living free, swimming in clean Alaska waters it looked horrible to me to imagine a beautiful animal like that held in any kind of captivity.

The little guy doesn't often win any more, but for once we prevailed and saved at least our whales from that fate.

Since that time, it's my understanding that Sea World developed an effective breeding program among their captive whales.  I suppose that is better than taking them from the wild, but even if they have never experienced freedom, that confinement is no way to treat a whale. 

Now Sea World has another killer whale issue before the U.S. courts.  Apparently the Occupational Safety and Heath Agency (OSHA) thinks working conditions in Sea World's whale pools are unsafe.  A video was played in court showing what was presumed to be a killer whale attacking a trainer.  In the short accompanying story, it is stated that same whale attacked that same trainer twice before. Now OSHA wants Sea World to make it safer for the trainers.

The hell with that.  How about let's make it safer for the whales. The trainer was there by choice. The whale wasn't. The trainer has to know he is going into a confined space with the top predator in the ocean food chain.  What could possibly go wrong there?  I watched the video a couple of times and if it wasn't slowed down, it seemed more like the whale was just exercising some muscle.  I have seen a killer whale take down a thousand-pound sea lion and, believe me, it was a lot more violent and bloody than what shows in this video.

Maybe because it was probably bred and raised in captivity, the whale doesn't know how.  That's then fortunate for the trainer, but not the whale because it probably can't be released into the wild. 

So how are they going to make it safer for Sea World trainers?  I have some ideas they won't like.  Basically, stop confining whales in swimming pools.  These are animals that range over thousands of miles of ocean and it is a travesty to confine them the way Sea World does.  I suspect they might suggest those shark-repelling bang sticks  if they aren't using them already.  What a shame that would be.

We can only wait for the outcome of the trial.  In the meantime maybe just put a sign up by the pool, an ancient Oriental warning:

"If you walk into the tiger cage, expect to be eaten."

After seeing the movie "Blackfish," I felt I had to take a step back from some of this.  Here's the link.

__________

Link to the whale attack video.

Photo gallery: Prince William Sound whales

Here's the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decisions stopping the Prince William Sound whale capture.


Tuesday, July 24, 2012

XTRATUFs downgraded to moderately tufs


Boxes of XTRATUF on a shelf at Redden in 
Cordova, Alaska, where the store manager 
says she has had many complaints since 
manufacturers moved  plant to China
 in late 2011. 
Diane Jeantet/The Cordova Times
A couple of years ago when I went sailing in the North Pacific on the brigantine Kai Sei, I had to buy a pair of XTRATUF boots because both pairs I owned were at the East Pole and I didn't have time to race in there and get them.  I thought that might have been a frivolous purchase, but today I am so glad I did.

For those who don't know about them, they are the boot of choice for most Alaska fisherman, for one reason because they actually are extra tough.  Go to any port on the Alaska coast and you will see probably one out of every two people wearing the ubiquitous brown boots with the yellowish bulbous toe. They are so common in rainy Southeastern Alaska, they are called Ketchikan sneakers.
The two pairs I have at the cabin date back to the 80s.  Granted I didn't give them the workout most fishermen do, but how many articles of clothing from the 80s does anyone still have and use?

The reason for happiness about the purchase is that last year the company moved its manufacturing to China and most boots purchased since Christmas last year were made there.  Already only halfway through the fishing season, owners of the new boots are complaining and trying to return them because it turns out the Chinese versions are just not as tough.  This isn't just abut shipping jobs overseas,  it is also about ruining one of the few products at least Alaskans regard almost with reverence.

This is a betrayal of the worst order. There are a few things people should know not to mess with where Alaskans are involved.  If the quality of Carhartt work clothing deteriorates, I would expect open revolution.  XTRATUF boots fall into that same category.  Nobody wants a split rubber boot on the wet, slippery deck of a salmon seiner in Prince William Sound or in the icy freezing water on the deck of a crab boat in the Bering Sea, or when slogging along a muddy trail to the East Pole either.

Those boots I bought a couple of years ago and barely used are among the last manufactured in the USA.  So now I have three functional pairs and those should last the rest of my life.  Unless .....

Hey, I suddenly have a valuable commodity, I could sell one pair.

Can you see the Craigslist ad?   USA made XTRATUFS:  Like new. Size 11.  Only worn on one three-week voyage in the Pacific.  $540,000 OBO.


Monday, July 23, 2012

Earthmaker judges the world

Today my writer friend Patricia Monaghan got to do one of those love/hate things authors do. She hit the send button and released the manuscript for her latest book of poetry to the publisher. Love? Because it is the satisfaction of a major project brought to completion.  Hate? Because a big part of your life has ended.  For what seems forever the thoughts have been churning in your mind and now they are gone, sent to be manipulated by other hands. It leaves an empty feeling and you look around and ask, what do I do now?

I like her poetry because it is often based in the spirituality found in nature.  She has allowed me here to post one of the last poems in the book which will be titled "Sanctuary" from Irish publisher Salmon.

EARTHMAKER JUDGES THE WORLD

By Patricia Monaghan

Copyright © 2012, Patricia Monaghan

Near the top of a Wisconsin hill, a spring erupts
from the point where an underground lake

rests beneath a shale cap and a lower strata
of bedrock dolomite, dense with useful flint.

There sat Earthmaker, Wajaguzera, looking out
over his creation. He could see miles to the north,

to the braided river carved from glacial water,
and south to the region of lead and buffalo; east

to the sacred Four Lakes, which his people marked
with sculptures of migrating bear and deer and birds,

and west, to the great river that drains the continent.
He sat, he saw, he was pleased. At one hand sat

Hinųgaja, his first-born daughter, and on the other,
WihÄ…gaja, the second-born, and among them they judged

that all was good. So they misted the hills with blue smoke,
from which their old name, XeÅ¡ojera, “smokey mountains.”

We call them Blue Mounds now, and few who see their dark 
heights know these stories. And without such knowledge,

how do we honor earth, its specific endless beauty? Today,
Blue Mounds means a swimming pool, picnic tables, ski trails.

But Earthmaker’s blue tobacco smoke still wreathes the hills,
and his daughters sit beside him, and they see us, and they judge.

Patricia Monaghan's website.


Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Night visitors and missed opportunities

Today I saw something in the garden and went to get the camera.  It was when I picked it up that I realized what I should have done last night.

Around 1 a.m. I noticed a large dark shape at the end of the driveway.  At first I thought it must be a moose, but after watching for a while what took shape was a horse.  Since the road apples last winter I have learned that my neighbors have a couple of horses, one of which is an escape artist.  As I watched it nibble through the weeds, it hit me that I like living where occasionally someone's livestock escapes. In my teen years there were several times we chased neighbors' horses through the neighborhood and the occasional cow as well.  I love hearing another neighbor's alpacas baaing once in a while.

But how often do we think of the bright thing to say once the conversation is over, or think camera long after the subject has disappeared?  For me, anyway, the answer is very often.

Last night I let the horse work his way up the driveway keeping a careful gauge on the distance between it and my little garden. Finally it came too close for comfort and we had a little confrontation in front of the house.  A few shouts and a couple of handfuls of gravel finally sent him on his way with no apparent damage to animal or vegetable.

Today in daylight I went out to take a closer look to see if maybe he came back later, but everything was in order.  And, that  brought the discovery of first peas.  Later this year than last year.  The first picture last year was posted July 6.  This is the 17th but they have been there a while.  Some even look mature so they may not be as late as they seem.  Anyway all are safe and there is a picture for proof.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

'You can't always get what you want ....'


"But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need..."

Been rocking out to the Stones all day today; it seemed like the right thing to do.  Fifty years ago today, the Rolling Stones took the stage for the first time in a little pub called The Marquee Club in London, thus beginning the most epic career in the history of rock and roll.

From: Clashmusic.com
All day long as the songs played, memories of the times came to mind, helping me relive my misspent youth with the Stones often there providing the music.  At the time I liked them better than the Beatles, I think just because of the harder edge to their music, music that had lyrics that sometimes made you think, sometimes made you laugh and almost always made you want to dance or led you into other pursuits suitable to the age of the world and the age of the person.

Getting caught by a policeman while parked and making out with Heather Smith in my 1964 Corvair Spyder while a radio station played every song on the Aftermath album.

Getting an unexpected Saturday night off when we ran out of parts on the assembly line at the Chevrolet engine plant and racing home to shower and dress and head for the nearest bar with a rock and roll band.  Buffalo had a lot of those at the time. We had dressed in three-piece suits and went to one of the better ones where we met two girls and danced with them until the band quit then offered to take them home.  Home turned out to be Toronto which didn't stop us for a minute.  I abandoned my car on a side street and we drove the Queen Elizabeth Way in Bill Toth's new Chevelle, the song of the moment: "Hey you, get off of my cloud."  I remember that experience every time I hear that opening line: "I live alone in an apartment on the 99th floor of my block..."  We spent the rest of the weekend in Toronto and when I finally returned to my regular life I learned the police were looking for me.  A resident on the street where I left my car had seen me run from it and jump into my friend's. She called the police thinking it might be stolen.  The police ended up calling my parents who of course immediately imagined the worst possible scenario.

Friday night college parties that didn't really begin until I went to the stereo and played those first notes of "Satisfaction."  Years later when some poll had decided that was the greatest rock and roll song of all time, I heard an interview with Keith Richards who described how the famous guitar riff came to be.  He said he always kept a tape recorder at his bedside.  And one night he woke up with that riff in his head and played it, falling back asleep almost immediately.  When he woke up in the morning he had on the tape 15 seconds of Satisfaction and 45 minutes of himself snoring.

Then there were the parties at drive-ins where we rocked and danced until the movie started with Stones music to get us going.

This could go on.  I bet fully half the songs in their book raise some sort of memory and listening to most of them today brought a lot of those memories back. 

Also, listening today I realized what's missing in a lot of rock music today: Lyrics. Something to say.  Often it was about love, of course, but there were others too, and some mysterious and difficult to decipher.  I still haven't totally figured out this one:

Sympathy For The Devil lyrics
Songwriters: Jagger, Mick; Richards, Keith;

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul and fate

I was 'round when Jesus Christ
Had his moments of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

I stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the Czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain

I rode a tank
Held a General's rank
When the Blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
What's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah

I watched the glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the Gods they made

I shouted out
"Who killed the Kennedys?"
Well after all
It was you and me

Let me please introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
And I laid traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reached Bombay

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
But what's confusing you
Is just the nature of my game, ooh yeah

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails just call me Lucifer
I'm in need of some restraint

So if you meet me, have some courtesy
Have some sympathy and some taste
Use all your well learned politics
Or I'll lay your soul to waste, mmm yeah

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, mmm yeah
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, get down
Woo hoo, ah yeah, get on down, oh yeah

Tell me, baby, what's my name?
Tell me, honey, baby guess my name
Tell me, baby, what's my name?
I'll tell ya one time you're to blame

What's my name?
Tell me, baby, what's my name?
Tell me, sweetie, what's my name?


© ABKCO MUSIC INC

There are too many to pick a single favorite, but that one certainly is on the list.  In addition to the hard rock edge they could sing beautifully as well. Take  "Angie," " Ruby Tuesday," and this one which I only started listening to more closely in the past couple of years:

I love the line from that song: "I have my freedom, but I don't have much time."


 I guess 50 years of good rock and roll is a lot to thank someone for, but it has been appreciated over and over again.  Mick Jagger will be 69 July 28.  That makes him less than a year younger than I am.  I am glad to have gone along for the ride.

As he approaches 70 and is still rocking, I have to wonder if  he still thinks, "what a drag it is getting old." I doubt it.

Monday, July 9, 2012

Singin' them songs about them storms at sea




This story originally was accepted and paid for by Cruising World magazine.  I watched issue after issue for two years and then one day it came back in the mail.  The accompanying letter said the new editors had chosen not to use it because they were moving in a different direction. But, I was allowed to keep the $500 they had paid for it. I never learned what that new course was because I never looked at the magazine again.

Copyright©Tim Jones. 2012

Evening conversation took a serious, personal turn.

"Just what is your goal in life?" Woody asked.

At times on long passages, the personalities of even the best of friends can chafe. The question chafed. Still, it demanded some sort of answer, an answer that wasn't coming easily.  Woody Cole's question came out of his own background as an Anchorage businessman and was aimed at a life apparently lived without even the nominal securities of job and home.
"I guess someday I'd like to write something worthwhile."
The crew before setting off from Bellingham, Washington
"What's worthwhile?"
More thought: How do you put an answer on that one?
"I guess I'd like to write something that lasts a generation beyond me."
Woody turned to Jim Lethcoe for help.  Jim's PhD in comparative literature and years of sailing experience  in Alaska's Prince William Sound should have provided Woody with an answer, but that answer gave him little satisfaction.
"He wants to write something that lasts a generation beyond him," Jim said in a tone indicating that was enough. It wasn't. The question came right back at him.
"What about you? What are your goals?"
Jim's answer was instantaneous.  "Right now all I want to do is get across the gulf."
The gulf was the Gulf of Alaska and we were approaching it at the exact wrong time of year, late September, the autumnal equinox, the time of storms in a gulf notorious for its storms even in the best of seasons.
We were delivering Jim's new Arctic Tern III, a Nordic 40, from Bellingham, Wash., to Valdez in Alaska's Prince William Sound and as we'd progressed north, the storms had started, hitting us at almost clockwork intervals every three days.  At times, sitting out one or another of those storms in British Columbia and Southeastern Alaska, Jim had considered foregoing the gulf until spring and spending winter on the boat somewhere in Southeastern. No matter what, the approach would be cautious, conservative.
We were prepared to wait in Elfin Cove, the last harbor in Southeastern Alaska’s Inside Passage before the gulf, as long as necessary for the right weather to make the approximately 348-mile passage to Hinchinbrook Entrance into Prince William Sound.  We estimated the crossing would take 48 to 50 hours at an average of six knots or better with a one-knot following current.
On the 16th day of our trip north, the weather turned clear, the winds calm, and we motored through Icy Strait toward Elfin Cove. Weather reports and forecasts we were hearing on the VHF radio sounded excellent.  A weakening low was expected to dissipate near Kodiak on the western side of the gulf, and behind it we could expect a ridge of high pressure.  Winds were forecast to be 20 from the southeast with a northwesterly swell to 10 feet, perfect for a broad reach all the way to Hinchinbrook.  As we listened and projected, the three-day weather window we were hoping for appeared before us.  We pulled into Elfin Cove just long enough to top off the fuel and water tanks.  Time had come to reach for Jim's goal.
After no more than an hour at the Cove, we turned westward into Cross Sound heading for Cape Spencer.  Pushed by a fresh southeasterly, we sailed past the cape and out into the gulf under full main and the 130 genoa. Clear skies gave us a spectacular view of the white and blue Fairweather Mountain Range and a golden Alaska sunset lighted the peaks in pinks and purples as we headed west.
"That's something you don't see very often," Jim said as he made a fix on Mount Fairweather.
  Those mountains usually are camouflaged in flat gray.  Captain James Cook happened to pass it on one of the few good days and misnamed the mountain, the cape  and the grounds that all bear the same name. In fact, the fishermen who work the waters here say the only time  you should be there is in fair weather, which is, by reputation, seldom.
By the time we cleared Cape Spencer, long, gentle ocean swells were lifting and dropping the Nordic as we turned onto a course of 270 magnetic. The trip north had been the first any of us had worked with Loran C, the hot new electronic positioning system of the day, some time before GPS, and while we'd been learning how to operate the receiver along the way, we hadn’t had a chance to navigate far enough from land, which warped the Loran signals, making them unreliable.  In addition, many of the Inside Passage charts had yet to be overlaid with Loran lines.  The gulf crossing would be the first true test.
I went below to program the set, put in waypoints and begin a series of fixes that would take us across the gulf.  Unfortunately the navigation table and the Loran receiver were inside the aft cabin on the Arctic Tern III.  Some condensation had formed under Jim's mattress and he'd lifted it and opened a bulkhead into the engine room to let engine heat dry the mattress while we were motoring into Elfin Cove.  In the confining cabin; with the residual engine fumes and the first of the rolling ocean, I felt the tinge of queasiness, the beginning of an offshore passage always seems to bring.  I opened a port light for air and made a quick fix.  Then I grabbed two pieces of bread and raced for the cockpit to breathe fresh air, only to see Woody and our fourth crew member Mike Anderson, already bent over the rail and Jim smiling worriedly at me, probably wondering what kind of land lubbers he had brought along.
The combination of bread and air worked for me and within an hour or so I had my sea stomach, enough so I could make regular Loran fixes and program waypoints along the course Jim had laid for south of the Fairweather Grounds.  The grounds form a relatively shallow area as far as 70 to 100 miles offshore and Jim wanted to stay south of them as far from land as practical.  The gulf's bottom rises sharply to a shallow shelf after a fetch the length of the Pacific and under certain storm conditions, waves will break as far as 50 miles offshore.  To avoid finding ourselves in surf, Jim set a course well south of the mainland and the grounds.
In the twilight of that first evening, Jim and Woody made regular dead reckoning  fixes with a hand-bearing compass.  Their positions confirmed mine with the Loran and we began to appreciate and trust the machine.  It was all we had during the night except for the dead reckoning vagaries of time, speed, course and distance estimations.
With the southeast wind pushing us at a steady six knots on a broad reach we headed into the night.  Cape Spencer light disappeared off the stern and we were on our own.  In the evening we separated into watches on a schedule that would give each of us one eight-hour, off-watch  period during the crossing and the chance to change watch partners.
Mike and I shared the first evening's 8-to-midnight which passed uneventfully  on the following swell.  We kept up the deck log at half-hourly intervals and made Loran fixes, alternating hourly at the helm,  At midnight Jim and Woody took over.
Mike and I returned to the helm at 4 a.m.  As the watch progressed into the morning, the sun tried to rise behind us into the gray of a stratus sky and the swell began building ever so slightly.  The deck log showed a slight but steady drop in barometric pressure, but we had expected that -- the weakening low around Kodiak.
Land had disappeared into the distant haze to the north and our attention turned to the sea on the dawn of the first full day in the gulf. The breeze freshened and the helm took more concentration, but still there was time to look around.  The ocean holds so much life but so little  of it shows on the surface.  We were constantly scanning the water for a view of that life and on one scan, looking forward to the next wave, I saw something in the water.  I didn't have time to stare as  an adjustment of the boat drew my attention quickly to the helm, but my mind drew a picture of a shark's fin.  I told Mike I had seen something and he turned in that direction.  As the boat passed the approximate location we saw a block of wood floating.  We guessed that's what I'd seen but that didn't match my mental picture at all.  Then, just as the stern cleared the piece of wood, a shark rose in the water and bumped it.  Farther along in that same watch we saw a Minke whale rise to breathe halfway up the wave in front of us. 
By midmorning the fathometer was confirming our Loran and DR positions near the Fairweather Grounds. We were due south of Yakutat and listened for the weather station that broadcast on VHF from there, but 80 miles offshore and well out of range of a normal VHF, all we heard was static.  Yakutat, about a third of the way along the coast between Cape Spencer and Cape Hinchinbrook was our refuge, a place to run in foul weather if we had to, one of the few along this coast.  We heard no weather forecast and our own observations still confirmed the weather window we'd seen from Elfin Cove. We sailed on.  Had we heard the Yakutat weather station, we probably would have run for cover. Instead of dissipating, that low near Kodiak had deepened and begun moving northeast toward us.  The weather service was broadcasting storm warnings with winds to 50 knots and seas to 28 feet.
Without the benefit of that knowledge we committed and held our course for Hinchinbrook Entrance in gradually building seas and increasing winds.  The barometer began dropping faster as the day progressed. Our weakening low was deepening.  As the seas and wind built,  and the barometer continued its drop through the afternoon, concern began to grow.  By nightfall we knew we were in for some unexpected heavy weather.  We took a reef in the main sail.  Then, we changed the head sail, lowering the jenny and hauling up a working jib.
Dusk closed around us, the waves grew into larger and larger proportions.  Judging the size of seas is inexact at best and depends a great deal on who is doing the judging and what size of vessel he's on.  By our best estimation, they went from big to large to immense and then they disappeared in the darkness to be felt and heard but never seen.  Later in the night we took a second reef in the main. But, even then it soon became evident this was not to be a night of easy sailing from the cockpit.
Long before midnight we were back on the foredeck, taking in the main to sail only on the working jib. Even that sail was too much and after a screaming run with the knot meter showing 9.6, a knot and a half past hull speed, we were back on the pitching, wet foredeck taking in the blade and running up a storm jib.  We sailed through the rest of the night with little more than a handkerchief for a head sail.
Sailing may be a misnomer. More, we were driven in a barely controllable direction by the waves. What had been a building swell by this time had turned nasty.  Cresting, bubbling white water passed into view next to the boat and then back into the darkness.  The snarling apexes of waves ran past at eye level.  Waves we could only imagine lifted the boat to heights we could only feel viscerally and passed underneath, dropping us into canyons the depth of which was only a fear.  Wind howled down those canyons from the northeast, stampeding short, chopping waves before it and occasionally driving spray from the surface into our faces, cold and cutting.
Controlling the boat in those waves from astern took full concentration and strength leaving little for the chop in the trough.  With feet spread, the man at the helm steered the boat for the big waves by feel, how the boat rose on the wave determined how he directed it to take them.  The chop was steered by sound.  As the icy tongues of wind-driven waves licked toward the boat they'd make a noise, a "snick" in the right ear just before they smacked the hull on the beam or slightly on the quarter, sending spray over the helmsman and the cockpit.  Standing at the wheel, we learned quickly when to duck by the sound just before those snicky waves crashed against the hull, but ducking  wasn't always possible as the boat signaled the need for an adjustment to address the next of the larger waves.  Twice during the night the snicky waves pooped us, filling the cockpit with cold, north Pacific water.  We discovered the scuppers were not nearly sufficient to clear a full cockpit and at times we had to bail.
Hour-long turns at the helm were cut to half hours and went by in minutes. All the steering was by feel and sound and the only light was the red one illuminating the binnacle which only served to highlight the constant swing of the compass in a 60-degree arc between 210 and 270.  We couldn't  hold our original course of 270 as we fought only to keep the boat within that arc.  To complicate matters, the shifty northeasterly wind made control of the jib touchy at best and several times over the course of the night, it jibed, slamming across the deck changing tack with a noise that sounded like it would take the forestay and the mast and part of the deck with it.
During the worst of the storm, a leaf fluttered onto the foredeck.  A leaf? Land? Impossible.  We couldn't have run that far off course, particularly to the north where the land lay.  Still, something had landed and it was fluttering aft until it dropped into the cockpit.  It wasn't a leaf at all, but a songbird, maybe a sparrow blown off its flyway by the storm.  We had no time to try to identify it, there was too much else to do.  Our own scurrying in the cockpit soon chased the little bird scuttling forward until it found refuge huddled between a winch and the mast. But the refuge was short-lived.  The storm jib slammed across the deck sending the frightened bird off again into the darkness of the storm to find another haven if there were one.
The little songbird wasn't the only bird with us that night.  At times when we could look over the side, we'd see the little storm petrels riding the wind, facing astern, gliding and drifting backward in the lee of the boat, holding their own as if this were the common condition, now and then dipping a beak into the water picking up some morsel only they could see.
Four hours of that watch seemed to take four days, but when it was over it seemed more like four minutes.  Midnight came and we were relieved.  We went below in darkness and I ate two more pieces of bread, all I'd been eating for the past 24 hours.  I stumbled into the forepeak exhausted but there is no sleep in a base drum.  Between the exaggerated rising and falling of the bow and the violent slams of the jib, I passed four hours, at best dozing at worst imagining what this could turn into considering what was going on over my head.  After growing up around the water in my youth, a couple of years sailing on Lake Erie, then pleasure boating in Alaska, and most recently a licensed boat captain for the previous two years, for the first time in my life I didn't want to be on the boat. Those hours barely dozing in the forepeak let my imagination run wild amid the sounds of the storm and gave time to think; I realized fear had crept into my mind.
The fear wasn't one of  total panic but it felt very real.  I tried to force it into the background until my mind settled on a story I had read once about a Dutch sailor named Willy de Roos who at the time had just completed a single-handed journey across the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans.  During the course of an interview, a reporter asked him if he had ever been afraid and he'd answered, "of course."  Then he went on to describe a fear that had heightened his sensitivity, a fear that brought with it an alertness, tuning everything into sharp focus, an awareness of everything in the immediate environment at once.  He had described a fear that could save your life.  Such was my fear only maybe a step beyond; I didn't have the perspective of hindsight like de Roos, I still had to go through this.
I didn't want to be there; I didn't want to take the helm; I wanted someone else to do it and I wanted to stay below as if it were any safer there.  I recall at one point just wanting to put on my survival suit and wait for the inevitable.  The situation had grown bad enough that we did take our survival suits out of the locker.  Oddly the fear wasn't of death.  Death never entered into it and yet the choices were only two: Either we lived or we died.  There was no middle ground, no rescue; nobody even knew we were out there for sure and if by chance somebody did hear a Mayday, the response time would have been far too long. This wasn't fun and I didn't want to be there.  But there was no time to dwell on that.  This had to be done.
I pulled on dry socks, dry clothes, my rain gear and boots and lurched up to the cockpit with Woody, in abject terror.  I took the helm for the first half hour.  There was a boat to steer, a course to maintain and the only thing between us alive and us dead was our own abilities and  a Nordic 40 that was performing beyond all expectations.  The boat took the beating much better than we did.
Nothing had changed in four hours: the waves felt as big, the wind just as strong as they had at midnight.  About five minutes into the watch a snicky wave pooped us, filling the cockpit and my boots and soaking my last pair of dry socks.  No stopping, we just went at it, wet socks or not, steering for the next wave and the next through the half hour.
Woody's half hour passed quickly as I lost myself in thought and then I took another.  We pressed on across the waves in the dark.  By the time of Woody's second turn, the sky began lightening and we could  see the waves we'd only  felt through the night.  They were monstrous, steep cliffs rising behind us, walls overtaking us, raising the boat to dizzying heights and dropping us into deep canyons. If someone could have measured accurately and told me they were 50 feet, I would have believed it.  In fact I do recall at times in the trough looking up and seeing the crest of the next following wave above the mast.  Later Jim told me that mast was 53 feet tall.  With all the movement, it's difficult to say whether that was an accurate measure, however.  Thirty feet was not an issue.
Sitting in the cockpit I learned quickly not to watch, if only to protect Woody at the helm.  To see the wall rising behind the boat would only bring some profound exclamation like, "Gees." That would only scare the man at the helm more.  He was looking forward.  He couldn't see it coming, only feel it and the exclamation would cause him to look around and maybe throw the wheel off at the same time.  Better not to look or talk.
After half an hour we changed positions again and I took the helm to look forward and see what I'd chosen not to look at while hunched down in the cockpit.  The first wave took the boat skyward and it rose to the top of the world.  It was the top of the mountain, the view forever across unending wave tops.  Pools of green water floated in the troughs and on the backs of the waves closest to us.  Snarling white wave tops crawled ahead of us toward a horizon extended by the heights the waves were taking the boat. A glimpse into the trough from the top of the wave generated a feeling close to vertigo, we were so high above it. Then, as the watch progressed, the fear gave way to concentration and then concentration gave way to a newer, quite different sensation.
Motion flowed into a single entity.  The feel of the sea, the way it moved the boat, the way the boat responded, the way the boat moved me and the way my, muscles adjusted unconsciously,  the way I directed the boat, all became a single, fluid motion: one force, sea, boat, helmsman, even the vanguard of storm petrels, a universe with its parts indistinguishable.  Everything turned serene, a dream world.  I was aware of every element in my surroundings at once yet nothing existed except this flow of a single energy generated by the sea, the  wind, the boat and me. I had no concept of time or space or anything but the flow as if we were sustained by a single heart and nervous system that melded water, fiberglass and flesh into a living, breathing soul. Fear disappeared, replaced by that serenity and maybe even joy at the feeling the power I was drawing from the storm. I could have gone on forever, but the reverie broke when Woody told me my time was up.  I had gone to such a depth that he had to call me three times before I responded.  This time I didn't want to relinquish, but the spell had been broken.
In retrospect, I'm not sure what I felt was all that good for us.  I'm not sure I wasn't lulled into a false sense of security that could have been dangerous.  Yet, in that half hour there were no steering errors, no jibes, a steady course no matter what the wave or wind.
The change at the helm brought a return to stark reality, yet at this point I think we had progressed past the original fear and given how far we had come, were beginning to realize we could do this.  Woody and I actually conversed as he steered.  We talked about the possibilities of pitchpoling the boat, going down the front of a wave, driving the bow under and flipping it end over end.  We decided it couldn't happen given the relative speeds of the boat and the waves.  Five minutes later we found ourselves on the wrong side of a wave, careening down the face into the trough.  Woody threw me a glance of realization, then corrected to carry the wave, steering slightly off it to the quarter and bringing us down into the trough perfectly.  But, the adjustment was so violent, Mike, who was trying to sleep below, flew out of the settee berth. He said he woke up in midair just before he crashed into the table leg, taking out the table is he went.  In the cockpit we redecided you could pitchpole the boat.
Woody guided the boat through the rest of his watch and after half an hour I took my last term at the helm.  I tried to regain the serenity of the pervious turn but it would not come.  In time I began anticipating breaks in the storm.  Now and then the wind would drop, at least opening some room for optimism, but each real or imagined lull would end with another gust slammed against the boat driving any hope deep inside.  As I searched for any break in the storm I began to realize the immensity of the power before us.  This was bad, but what was to keep it from being worse?  What kept the waves from growing twice this high, or the wind from blowing ten times more fiercely? The power was infinite. The serenity never returned.
At 8 a.m. Jim and Mike came up to take their first look at the waves in daylight.  Woody and I went below and I made a Loran fix, ate two more pieces of bread and crawled forward to rest.  But, in the turmoil of the forepeak a mental wrestling match kept me awake.  "Take a picture," one part of my mind was saying.  "I don't want to go out there again." another part responded.  "Go."  "Don't go."  "You'll never forgive yourself."  "So what?"  At last I realized I wasn’t going to sleep unless I made at least a tacit attempt.  So, with the wrong lens and not much thought, I stumbled up the companionway and snapped three out-of-focus, poorly lighted pictures and with the argument resolved, went back to try to sleep.
In the cockpit with the advantage of visibility and perhaps a little confidence, Jim's mind was going to work on the possibilities.  In the heavy seas coming from the southeast we could not make the course change for Hinchinbrook Entrance. The northerly course would put those waves right on the beam.  As with all of Jim's decisions, he let us know about it by starting a discussion.  He wanted to extend on the current course to the southwestern end of Montague Island, a 45-mile-long barrier protecting Prince William Sound from the open gulf.  The course would keep us correct with the waves but extend the trip by 200 miles, leaving us exposed in the gulf longer.  The alternative was to make for Middleton Island, one little three-mile-long rock out in the middle of the gulf almost due south of Hinchinbrook.
Jim asked around what people wanted to do and I said Middleton Island. I had had enough.  I wanted to hide if we could and wait it out.  After more discussion, Jim talked through it several times and as usual came back to his original decision.  We headed for the south end of Montague Island where we'd be safer over the long haul, even though getting there would leave us exposed longer.
The decision held until we hit what must have been the center of the storm.  The barometer had dropped more than an inch in the previous 18 hours, sometimes as much as a millibar an hour, until it bottomed.  The wind died, the barometer didn't move, but the waves were the largest we'd seen in the storm.  Unable to sail, Jim fired up the engine and we took down the storm jib.  Our only guess was we were in the absolute center of the low pressure system and we motored through it for about two hours.  Throughout, the waves generated by the low pressure grew even larger.  As we emerged from the center, the wind picked up again and the barometer showed a small rise in pressure. Jim started to worry aloud about what was pushing these larger waves.  He came into the forepeak and asked, "What do you know about Middleton Island?"
All I knew was what I'd heard or read.  You could anchor behind it on its west side in a southeasterly and you'd probably be all right.  He asked me to figure a course for Middleton and stay awake to make Loran fixes along the way.  We'd try to make it before dark.  I made a Loran fix and then a DR fix and gave him a course which rode well with the direction the waves were pushing us.  For the rest of the day, through my eight-hour off-watch, I made the fixes and noted our progress, keeping a wary eye on that barometer which by then had begun reporting a steady rise in pressure.
By late afternoon we were seeing a lot more birds: puffins, kittiwakes, gulls, fulmars, shearwaters and more of the storm petrels  who had been our companions along the way.  On the chart I noted the progress toward the island, all the time wondering just how accurate this Loran C was.  This was the first time we'd actually tried to find something with it.  An old fisherman in Southeastern Alaska had told us one day on the way up, "Loran A used to tell you what country you were in.  Loran C not only tells you the street and house number, it tells you what corner of the bathroom to use.  If you go to your Loran coordinates and you look over the side and your (fishing) gear's not there, it sank."
Now we were depending on it.  Slowly we made way toward the island until at my last fix it looked like we should be able to see land, or at least the radio towers on the island.  I went up to the cockpit and stood for a minute.  I pointed to the northwest and told Jim Middleton Island should be about half a mile right there. At the top of the next wave, the island appeared right at the end of my finger.  Hooray for Loran.  Jim said later they'd been watching what they'd thought were low clouds on the horizon until the Loran confirmed it was land.
Rocks litter the water to the east and south of the island so we carefully worked our way around the breakers to anchor on the lee side in six fathoms.  We put out two 35-pound Bruce anchors on 100 fathoms of line each, all the while almost in the shadow of the hulk of a wrecked freighter on the beach directly in front of the boat.
We took compass bearings from the radio towers and noted Loran coordinates to check for drag and then collapsed in the cabin.  Jim heated a can of beans but nobody ate besides him.  There was no dinner conversation about goals either.  We were still 120 miles from home.
I tried the Coast Guard in Valdez on the VHF radio and through a network of repeaters received an answer.  The guardsman said the North Gulf Coast weather forecast called for gale warnings, 35-knot winds from the southeast changing to 25 southwest with seas to 20 feet.  When he'd finished, I thanked him and then couldn't help telling him I'd never been so glad to hear gale warnings.  He responded, "Yeah, you've been through the worst of it." I think that set us all a little more at ease.
Wind still howled over the island and through the rigging but the land broke the waves and the boat rocked very little while all hands fell asleep for the first time in two days.  No mention was made of an anchor watch, but none was needed. Three or four times during the night I headed up to take a look and on each trip, I either met Jim when I was going down and he was coming up or going down when I was going up. The boat never moved an inch.
Morning came early, brought on by an uncomfortable rolling that threatened to pitch me out of the bunk.  Jim was up.  The wind and waves were coming from the southwest just as the forecast  had predicted.  What had been a haven the night before was now a dangerous lee shore that made the wrecked freighter look all the more ominous.
"Maybe we ought to move."  Jim was starting another discussion.  Fifteen minutes later we were hauling anchors and heading out from Middleton Island.
But, our world had changed for the better.  The southwesterly gave us a broad reach on a port tack directly toward Hinchinbrook Entrance and instead of 30- and 40-foot waves, we were looking at 10s and 15s as swells more than steep waves.  The ride that day was the best sailing of the trip and we screamed northward through the gulf averaging better than seven knots.
Jim again asked me to stay below and keep up with Loran positions preparing for the landfall.  In the idle time between half-hourly fixes I began to feel a little guilty at the light duty, what with everyone else working on deck.  I began to regret taking the time early to learn how to use that primitive Loran set and now I was chained to it.
I asked if anybody could eat and heard a round of affirmative answers.  Then I set out to make a breakfast, the first prepared food, if you could call it that, since the night we passed Cape Spencer.
We were still in pretty rough seas and the heel of the boat wasn't going to make things any easier.  With both feet braced and elbows jammed against bulkheads, I laid out eight pieces of bread where they couldn't slide too much.  One by one I managed to get some butter on most of them and then some jelly.  I also managed to get butter and jelly on the countertop, the bulkheads, the cabin sole and myself.  The process took the entire time between fixes.  I started passing this excuse for breakfast through the hatch and all eight slices disappeared before I thought to save one for myself.
After fixing another position, I made another set of bread and butter and jelly and then in two more half-hour sessions I had enough ham and cheese sandwiches to keep us going for the rest of the day.  We were on our way, fueled by food and a fresh wind filling the main and Jenny again, heading for Hinchinbrook Entrance and the shelter of Prince William Sound.
We passed through Hinchinbrook well ahead of our estimates and skipped our planned anchorage.  The next good one was 41 miles but well out of our way and a quick check on the chart showed Valdez, our destination, lay only 51 miles away. We decided to run into darkness, deal with oil tanker traffic if there was any, and make Valdez that night.
About three hours out, the wind died, the water went glassy and we motored the rest of the way.  A friend overheard our call to the Valdez Traffic Center inquiring about tanker traffic from the pipeline terminal and a skiff came out to meet us as we approached the harbor.  Jim's wife, Nancy, their daughter Athena, and probably more friends than the skiff should hold safely, brought us a bottle of champagne to celebrate the passage.  But the storm had driven celebration out of us.  We had endured, not conquered and I don't think any of us felt anything more than relief.  Numbly we stood on deck watching the skiff and answering hails, passing the bottle around without enthusiasm.  Everything around the boat seemed alien, the people, the lights, the noise, land for crying out loud, and we stared at it all without celebration.  We'd made it across the Gulf of Alaska and that was enough.  We had reached, after all, the only goal that existed.

Middleton Island
AN UPDATE: Some time ago I wrote about the ocean storm we experienced aboard the Arctic Tern III several years ago.  That was the maiden voyage for that vessel. Recently I came across another blog that detailed more recent voyages on that very same sailboat. A couple of years ago this fellow blogged a trip on her down the West Coast to Cabo. His account of that voyage is on Captain Howard's Blog here. I left a comment on his blog pointing to my own post about the maiden voyage and, twice now he has added a comment to mine.
The first:
Thanks for that comment Tim, particularly the website/blog_ ’60* North’. Readers; On the left hand side there is a posting on the ‘HMS Bounty’ with an interesting human interest note about one of the crew lost in the Bounty disaster… Claudene Christian.
Err… that would be the blog/website ‘Alaska with Attitude’. My step dad grew up in Alaska so I have provided him with the Link…thanks again for the post, Tim.
Then today came a second one, an update.
I just reread your experience on Arctic Tern III — somewhere between South Africa and the Caribbean at present I think.
That one put a chill through me; the boat is still adventuring and I want to be there.  So it goes.
Comments from a posting August 16, 2022
  • Sharon Wright
    This is absolutely a great story & great writing. Dave says the "new direction" was to not frighten new sailors. He subscribed for years. "It isn't just sun and sandy beaches, people," Dave Wright who noted the toned down articles.
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  • Louis Tex Edwards
    Great story, and great writing. Thanks for sharing Tim. And I am not disappointed that our positioning trips didn't have that kind of weather.

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The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

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The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

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Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

“The rivers of Alaska are strewn with the bones of men who made but one mistake” - Fred McGarry, a Nushagak Trapper

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center

One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes

Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”

You can have your own opinion but you can’t have your own science.—commenter arguing on a story about polar bears and global warming

He looks at three ex wives as a good start—TV police drama

Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

“You’re either into the wall or into the show”—Marco Andretti on giving it all to qualify last at the 2011 Indy 500

Makeup is not for the faint of heart—the makeup guerrilla

“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti

“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places

As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

Each day do something that won’t compute – anon

I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration

Life should be a little nuts or else it’s just a bunch of Thursdays strung together—Kevin Costner as Beau Burroughs in “Rumor has it”

You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

Being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are—Michelle Obama

Sports malaprops

Naked pair fed LSD gummy worm to dog

Owners of a Noah's Ark replica file a lawsuit over rain damage

In Southcentral Alaska earthquake, damage originated in the ground, engineers say

A headline that could only be written in Alaska: At state cross country, Glacier Bears and Grizzlies sweep, Lynx repeat, Wolverines make history — and a black bear crosses the trail

Man kills self before shooting wife and daughter

Alabama governor candidate caught in lesbian sperm donation scandal

Sister hits moose on way to visit sister who hit moose.

Man caught driving stolen car filled with radioactive uranium, rattlesnake, whiskey

Man loses his testicles after attempting to smoke weed through a SCUBA tank

Church Mutual Insurance won't cover Church's flood damage because it's 'an act of God'

Homicide victims rarely talk to police

Meerkat Expert Attacked Monkey Handler Over Love Affair with Llama Keeper

GOP congressman opposes gun control because gay marriage leads to bestiality

Owner of killer bear chokes to death on sex toy

Support for legalizing pot hits all-time high

Give me all your money or my penguin will explode

How zombie worms have sex in whale bones

Crocodile steals zoo worker's lawn mower

Woman shot by oven while trying to cook waffles

Nude beach blowjob jet ski fight leads to wife's death

Woman stabs husband with squirrel for not buying beer Christmas Eve

GOPer files complaint against Democrat for telling the truth about Big Lie social posts

Man shot dead on Syracuse Street for 2nd time in 2 days

Alaska woman punches bear in face, saves dog

Johnny Rotten suffers flea bite on his penis after rescuing squirrel