Nunivak Island
Posted in Posts by Edvin, Powered by Xsat, Uncategorized on Oct 14th, 2012
We sailed away from Nome in a building northerly and made great speed towards Nunivak Island where we knew that we had to shelter before the next low pressure would hit us. And after three days we reached the south side and the wind decreased and we anchored for the night. The weather forecast showed that we would see a strong Easterly gale the next morning so when we woke up we spent the day cruising around the shallow uncharted bay in search for a better anchorage. We found a small stretch of land that would give us just enough shelter from the East but that meant that we had to go all the way into the beach to only three meters depth. It was a beautiful evening and we decided to take the dinghy ashore for some exploring. The barren beach was lined with tall beautiful sand dunes which reminded me of the Swedish West coast and beyond them a vast marsh land appeared. We waded through the bogs for about an hour in the direction of a few moving dots on the hillside ahead which we assumed to be Muskox. Halfway there 
we encountered a large furry muskox all by itself. It did not move as we slowly approached it and we soon realized that one of its legs was badly injured. We moved quite close to it but when we realized it was trying to get away on it´s bad legs we backed off and watched it from a distance. It was sad to see the magnificent animal abandoned by it´s herd and we figured that it would be dead in a matter of days. We continued to explore an abandoned summer hunting camp complete with sweat lodge before we headed back to the boat to sleep for the night. At dawn we where abruptly woken by the terrible noise and motion of huge waves washing over the boat. The wind had turned to the East and we swung into it by the anchor, but a large swell came in from the South and at our shallow anchorage that meant huge breaking surf waves washing over the boat from the side. The waves rapidly increased in height and force and the boat was knocked over with only a few meters between the mast and the surface. We fearfully realized that in the time it would take to raise the anchor onto the boat we would most likely end up on the Beach so we decided to put another anchor out to align the bow against the waves or in a worst case scenario we could sacrifice it in order to bring up our main anchor. But with both chain and line in the water it soon turned in to an uncontrolled situation where the anchor line got stuck in the propeller killing the engine and pinning the rudder. At this point we were seriously afraid to loose the boat or worse and while Morgan got into the dry suit Nick and I rigged a blade on to the boat hook and managed to pull out and cut the anchor line. With the adrenaline pumping we decided to abandon our main anchor and 35 meters of chain and tied a line and a fender to it and set a mark on the GPS for later retrieval. At full RPM we motored out into the waves until we reached deeper waters where the waves no longer broke as severely. We got some heavily reefed sails up and headed for a cape 20 nautical miles away that would shelter us from the Southeast where we hoped that the waves wouldn’t be as bad. A few hours later the wind dropped as we came around the cape and we managed to anchor with our third anchor. With the wind howling in the rig we set up the computer and watched at least 4 movies in a row in order to forget the wind, waves and our traumatic morning. The next morning the wind had changed to the north and we sailed back in heavy wind to retrieve our main anchor. At the scene of the close call there was no floating fender to be found. With vague hopes of ever finding the anchor we began to drag the third anchor in circles around the GPS point trying to hook the chain from the bottom but when darkness fell we where tired and out of ideas.
