Amagat, King Cove, 7/29/08 by Bob

In the morning we headed landed at Amagat Island for frolicking, fun, and games. I kayaked in, and the other three took the dinghy.
They wisely left the dinghy where I suggested.

Melinda and I climbed up the hill and sat on the ridge. Puffins flew over us almost constantly. Some of the puffins would go really
fast, and some would come over slow with feet down, kind of like landing gear.

Then I went up and Melinda went down. On the top of the island some gulls had nests and chicks. They got excited and flew over and
yelled at me. They were not nearly as nice as the puffins, particularly when they deficated on my head.

Melinda lost a contact, so I was going to go get one on the boat for her. We got to the dinghy and noticed that (a) the tide came
in, and (b) the waves had gotten big enough to swamp the boat. It was completely full of water. Melinda and I managed to get ride of
3/4 of the water from the dinghy, and took an interesting ride to the boat where we hoisted it and drained the rest of the water. In
the process of all this, Melinda got my feet wet.

The night before, the plastic piece that holds the dinghy drain plug broke and we (the Kiwi) lost the plug. Fullerton built another
one. It worked very well in keeping the water inside the dinghy.

Melinda and I went back to the island and took more puffin pictures. We may even have one or two that look decent. Josh got some
good video. Fullerton did some serious beachcombing.

We headed for King Cove. Wind is weird around these islands. We took off with 25-30 knot winds. By the time the sails were up, the
wind was 15-18. So I took down the solent and put up the gennaker. A while later, the wind was around 5 knots. So we dropped the
sails and motored. I took a nap for a few minutes. When I woke up, the wind was around 30 knots again. Within a few minutes, it was
25 knots but had shifted 90 degrees. It's hard to sail with changes like that.

We got to King Cove around 10:00. I thought it would be too late to park at the dock, and planned to go back out to anchor
somewhere. But they called on the radio and directed us to their new floating dock. We eventually tied up after some excellent boat
driving in a 20+ knot wind. I took an evening bicycle tour through King Cove and its suburbs (population 800+).