Libertaire covers the 580 miles between Sitka and Kodiak in 4 days and drops anchor in front of the fishing port of the town on the eponymous island on May 1st. We stay there for a little over a week, as the weather conditions are not favorable to continue westward. Despite mostly rainy, windy, and cold weather for May, we enjoy our stopover thanks to the hospitality of its 6000 inhabitants and the friendly encounters we make. Mike and Alysa, marine biologists at the town's research center, sailed the same regions as us a few years ago with their children on their sailboat Galactic, and it is with pleasure that we reminisce about some stopovers. Martine and Joël, a French couple settled in Kodiak for 20 years where they ran a pastry shop, prepare delicious cakes for us; Sylvie and Manu, who travel in a camper van, offer us a car ride to White Sand Beach and Fort Abercrombie... We find a bit of blue sky at sea as we reach Eagle Harbour in the Shumagin Islands 380 miles to the west, then the small village of Sand Point. We take advantage of a rare sunny day to anchor in Baranof Bay, where we visit an old fish cannery and enjoy the beautiful hike overlooking it. There are normally no bears on the island, but we quickly spot suspicious tracks... A grizzly indeed swam across the 8km passage separating us from the Alaskan peninsula. So we keep our Bear-spray within reach!
Then, after 36 hours of sailing downwind, we reach the islands of Akun and Akutan, where the good weather and lengthening days allow us to fully enjoy our new playground, these first islands of the Aleutians.
We have been in Dutch Harbour since noon, an important and welcoming fishing port where the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea meet. The Aleutians are ours!
