Torries

cruisingworld.com

50

january/february 2017

MY 

husband, Seth, and I stood

less than a yard from an

Alaskan brown bear. We could see every

hair on his body and his powerful mus-

cles underneath. His claws stretched

three inches out from his paws, and

he was studying us with slightly blood-

shot eyes. His nostrils fl ared to take

in our scent. But then he turned back

to the stream on whose bank all of

us — humans and bear — were sit-

ting or standing. He leaped into the

river after a salmon. He missed it and

charged again, back toward us! But his

focus was concentrated on the spawn-

ing pinks, and this time he caught one.

He started upstream, ignoring us as he

passed so close I could see the blood run

from where his jaws pierced the fi sh.

Geographic Harbor was turning into an

exciting place to be weather-bound.

By this point, Seth and I were a week

into our cruise of the Alaska Peninsula

aboard our cold-molded cutter, Celeste.

The peninsula and Aleutian Islands were

the last leg of our 2014 cruise. It was the

portion for which we’d had the fewest

expectations, and it was turning into the

most memorable by far.

This region of rocks, wind and currents

deserves its reputation for diffi cult voyag-

ing. It’s rarely visited by cruising yachts,

partly because of the conditions and

partly because — unless you’re crossing

from Japan to America — it’s not on the

way to anywhere. Seth and I had faced the

gales and short weather windows of New

Zealand and the Cape of Good Hope, but

opportunities to progress westward here

were fewer and farther between. If we

missed one, we could be stuck for a very

long time. We were fi nding the Alaska

january/february 2017

cruisingworld.com

50

CW0217_FEAT4_Alaska.indd 50 11/21/16 10:44 AM