West Coast of Chichagof Island, Icy Strait to Auke Bay.

At 11.30, a little over 24 hours after arriving in Sitka we pulled away from the beach and our last landfall on Baranof Is. 

We would have liked to have stayed longer but with a ferry to catch to Homer from Juneau on the 24th we really couldn't afford the time just in case we were held up by the weather or other circumstances. 

We stayed at the hostel in Sitka, run in the quaint way all hostels used to be with a curfew and lights out at 11pm, morning cleaning tasks and 'guests' are locked out between 10am and 6pm. The hostel was $48 for both of us for the night, the next cheapest vacancy we found was $225. 

On the recommendation of the hostel vollies we ate out at 'The Pub'. They had the local Baranof Is beers and a nice drop of Californian Cab Sav. The place was rocking, crowded with young people with a free blues band on Weds nights and Saturday night a hip-hop gig. There were at least four pool tables and half a dozen darts boards all busy as hell. We quizzed our waiter at length as he came and went with food and drink, to try and pin down why such a little place (popn. 8,500) relatively in the middle of nowhere was just so radically different to any of the other towns we have visited. Sitka is a major administrative centre and there is University of Alaska campus; tourism too of course but only the small cruise ships call in there with far less frequency than the large ones that call in to Ketchikan and Juneau.

Dave at the Hostel had another explanation; "Don't forget" he said, "Sitka's located over a major geo-magnetic focus."

As we cleared the harbour breakwater the forecast Sou'westerly picked up so both sails went up and we had the best downwind run of the trip so far. The wind and the tide took us north and most of the way through Neva Strait. By the time we were scouting for a suitable landing and camping spot it was pouring with rain and I was thinking we would be using our kitchen tarp for the first time. 

We rounded a point and I noticed a mooring buoy; at first I didn't take any notice of it but then it dawned on me that it was a strange place to have such a professionally constructed mooring. Just back in the trees there was a cabin, again I didn't take much notice as in places the coastline is dotted with private cabins. 

A second look and I noticed the cabin was a bit small for a private one, then the penny dropped - it was a Forestry Service public use cabin and mooring. We did the quickest U turn in kayaking history. 

Sure enough on landing it proved to be a three sided emergency shelter. Someone had draped a big plastic tarp across the opening, there was a wood stove, big chunks of dry firewood and sleeping benches. It was still bucketing with rain. 

Within an hour we had unpacked, got the kayak above high water level, got the stove roaring and dinner on. 

Luxury!

The next day was a wild one, pretty grim weather, pogies on, hoods up we set off out of the shelter of Neva Straight along the exposed west coast of Khaz Peninsular. Sure enough the swell had picked up during the night so it was a wild ride for about 8km to shelter inside Klokachef Island. The forecast had been for 30kn Southerlies but as every forecast in the trip so far had overestimated the wind speed we had taken a punt that today would be the same and we were right. 

The interesting bit though was getting into the channel behind Klokachef Is, the swells were steepening up in a very worrying fashion so we dare not head right in. For a while we still had one sail up but it would gybe every time we crested a swell so it came down pretty quickly and things seemed a little more under control. The swells were big, and they felt about the same distance apart as they were high, they were so close together. Every now again the wind would blow the top off of one just as we were at its crest and we'd get a couple of buckets of very cold water over our heads just to add to the fun. 

From the crests we could see calm water inside the island but it never seemed to get any closer, until suddenly the waves didn't seem quite so big and confused and then equally quickly we were breathing a sigh of relief as we glided through smooth water. 

There was no sheltered landing spot on the island so we crossed to the mainland and into the lee of a rocky spit. 

It was an obvious place to land with shelter from wind and sea and there sure enough was some colour in amongst the trees. Orange, blue and red - kayaks and tents. Other paddlers! 

A figure emerged and came down on to the bouldery beach as we landed. As we greeted I couldn't help recognising the accent - the paddler was from Darwin and had lived in Hobart! 

There were five of them altogether, the remaining four from Alaska, and we soon joined them in their cooking spot. After a couple of hours paddling and the tension of big seas we were starving but couldn't stop long because of the rising tide, the surging waves on the bouldery beach with a strong off shore wind! What could possibly go wrong!

The other paddlers were having a day off, both because of the weather and also they'd had a very early start the day before to catch the tide through a strait that dries at low tide. 

They too were paddling from Sitka to Juneau but with a few extra days than we had, and we caught up on our respective trips. They had never seen a breakdown boat or sails like we have and I think we enhanced the reputation of Tasmanian sea kayakers as we set off back into the big seas northward along the rest of Khaz Peninsular. 

A couple of hours later we had the same problem, we couldn't get into the shelter of the offshore reefs and islands because of the steepening swells and we didn't want to get into the same conditions we'd had at Klokachef Is. We eventually found a more sheltered gap in the rocks and then almost immediately a lovely little sheltered beach for a second, less social but more relaxed lunch. 

The next day the sea had calmed down considerably and it was quite sunny and warm, very pleasant paddling plus we had more hot springs to look forward to. 

We had heard the bath house at White Sulphur Springs had been rebuilt recently and that it was very nice but we were totally blown away by the bath house and hot pool inside. The quality and aesthetics of the cedar post and beam construction, the natural rock pool and two big sliding windows that opened to the view across the bay and out to sea were stunning. The water was HOT too, it took us quite a while to gingerly immerse ourselves. 

Again as at Goddard hot springs we were the only ones there, but only just. A large group were leaving in a big tinny as we arrived. The guy at the helm had shouted to us "You're brave being out in that swell today".

We had received similar comments a number of times, paddling the 'outside' waters rather than the sheltered 'inside' waters seemed to be the reserve of the brave or foolhardy. The inside waters are very pleasant paddling, similar in many ways to a ginormous D'Entrecasteaux Channel. The only conditions that might be of concern are the wind and a big fetch, the most technical decision would probably be, "Do I want to paddle into this headwind any longer or shall we just stop here and have a cuppa and wait for it to drop?"

The conditions the helmsman thought we were brave in tackling would not be out of place on the East Coast of Tasmania. The sun would have been a bit hotter, the water a lot warmer but a 1.5-2m swell is not uncommon on the East Coast. Here, unlike a lot of the Tasmanian coast there are lots of opportunities for shelter and landing inside the deep fjord like inlets or behind the islands dotted along much of the coast. 

The next day just north of the hot springs we headed into Lisianski Strait, our short cut through to Cross Sound and Icy Strait, uneventful inside waters apart from a few hot sunny hours on a sheltered beach fixing our mast steps. Long story and I thought I had fixed them but obviously not. 

As we headed into Icy Strait through Inian Narrows and South Passage with the flooding tide and the last few days to Juneau we realised we had been paddling for exactly three weeks. Throughout that time we had seen whales or seen them blowing in the distance just about every day. Throughout the day entering Icy Strait we rarely saw less than three groups of whales or plumes of vapour in the distance at any one time! 

We sat out of the rain under our tarp that night as humpbacks, sea otters, porpoises and sea lions cruised backwards and forwards only a few hundred meters off shore. 

We are now camped on Louisa Point, near Auke Bay and the Alaskan Marine Highway ferry terminal. 

Another full value day's paddling today. Cold and rain all day, some great sailing, a sprint in the middle of a 6km crossing to miss being run over by a ferry, a good few hours of solid plugging into a headwind and pretty much all day against the current.

Then having reached our camping spot and settled in, a very friendly local, Bob, took us for a drive to the Mendenhall Glacier.