Starting Out

Perhaps the single most pleasurable way to travel is without a schedule. We had some definite areas in mind but no real time constraints. Weather would be our scheduler. Sunshine greeted our departure day and we planned to make the most of it. However, it was nearly noon before we actually untied from the dock. Amid good natured shouts of “you’re going the wrong direction,” we headed north out of the harbor. Our long awaited wilderness winter cruising vacation had started.

Two days later, still in full sunshine, we were walking along a huge flat gravel bar with salmon carcasses strewn in every direction along the nearby stream banks.

There were hundreds and hundreds of small hollows in the gravel where the low tide had left the gravel bare. Cindy was baffled at what would cause them. I wondered if they were redds left from the spawned out salmon. It wasn’t long before we found where fresh gravel and sand had been dug away from some of the holes further up stream and realized the sea gulls were digging the holes deeper. Getting to our knees we removed some of the loose pebbles from the bottom of the holes. Salmon eggs! They were redds and we were glad the seagulls hadn’t gotten them all. It seems, the continuation of the salmon species as a whole is a numbers game that is dependent on millions and millions of participants. The huge volumes of fish that return each year to this stream and others like it always face a gauntlet of predators of which the hooks and nets of man are almost miniscule by comparison. From the time they were laid in these nests until they leave this stream as small smolt, to their ultimate return as adults, predators, of which weather is one we don’t always consider, are always picking away at their numbers.

I’ve been told that high wind conditions that result in waves dashing against the beaches take a great number since the smolt follow the shallow shore lines out from the fresh water to the ocean. And who knows how many the whales sucked down as the young smolt entered the sea the first time? As young salmon, they are most certainly preyed upon by other fish just as they prey upon others during their two year stay at sea. Then, turning the corner on the home stretch, there are the sea lions, porpoises, nets, fishing lines and bears until finally the eggs are laid for a new generation which puts us right back to the sea gulls picking at the eggs just upstream from where we are standing right now. Numbers, in the case of salmon, are a blessing.

Winter Cruising l Starting Out l We Get Visitors l Winter Comes l A Windy Night l A Special Day
Rhythms l Back to Civilization

Skipper Ted Mattson is an Alaska sailor with broad experience in Bristol Bay and especially his home, the Alexander Archipelago, Alaska's panhandle.  Ted operates popular adventure sailing cruises with guests in the summer months aboard the Skookumchuck.