7/20/2008 by Melinda the Captain

We're mot'rin!

Josh and I did the dawn watch and we watched "Once Upon a time in the West." I made raspberry pancakes, biscuits, coffee, hot chocolate, and tea. After that I woke up a little bit.

Bob, Josh and I pulled an all nighter and ended up on Seguam Island at noon.

Bob went off in the kayak while Josh and I traversed in the dinghy.

I bailed out too early and got my boots completely drenched. Luckily the landing was sandy and black so I went for a barefoot stroll down the beach and stayed surprisingly warm while my socks, boots and trousers layer #1 dried.

There wasn't a whole lot going on where we landed except that we saw a lot of sparrows in Finch Cove.

Bob tugged Josh and me around in the dinghy with his kayak. It took him a while to figure out we were paddling in the opposite direction for part of the time.

Yesterday was an amazing day at Kasatochi and Koniuji Islands.

First, I was very certain that Stellar Sea Lions were going to chomp us when we paddled in the dinghy through rocks and kelp to Kasatochi's shore. All I could see were massive heads and sharp, pointy teeth. Once we landed, we fled the scene up the hill. Bob kept dropping rocks and boulders on Josh and me while we climbed below. We moved quickly.

Kasatochi's summit is a 1000 foot lake-filled caldera with fog ripping through the middle. The lake was aqua marine and had white specks in it. The specks sounded an awful lot like sea gulls.

Everyone broke a sweat through the lupines on the way up. At the top we got moisturized and chilled instantly. The fog poured down the farthest rim shooting right up into our faces. It was pretty neat.

We fluffed our way down, hopped back on the boat and headed for Koniuji Island. We weren't expecting the spectacular scene at the island. We saw distant mushroom clouds of birds twisting, darting, and diving. It looked pretty cool from afar but we got a huge surprise when we got closer.

There were literally hundreds and hundreds of Least, Crested, and Parakeet Auklets diving below the boat at the bow and shooting back up at the stern and flying in erratic, yet uniform motion. We cruised around the island twice (it's tiny) and had the best of luck the second time to get sunshine.

We eventually got back on our way and continued following the line of puffins and sea weed east. We ate pizza for dinner and watched Star Trek… again.

The end.