Gareloi, Tanaga, 7/15/08, by Bob

We crossed from the Eastern Hemisphere into the West today, to Gareloi Island. It's a volcano with a single peak a little over 5000 feet high. The island is 4 or 5 miles in diameter.

We came around the north side of the island and anchored on the east just offshore from a waterfall. There were thousands of parakeet auklets there.

There wasn't a good place to land at shore. Mike went in, but almost fell it when he was coming back to the boat. There was quite a bit of wind, and the rocks were covered with slippery seaweed. I kayaked around for a little while. It was windy and gusty, but the sun came out so it felt pretty good.

When we pulled up the anchor, we also pulled up a huge amount of kelp. We eventually extracted ourselves and headed out to motor down the coast.

Gareloi has a lot of waterfalls coming off the old lava flows. We saw steam coming out the side of the mountain. It must be either a steam vent, or steam coming off a stream of hot water. The grass is bright green up the mountain a few hundred feet until there is lava that doesn't grow much.

We left Gareloi and headed to Tanaga Island. We started seeing some waterfalls and sea caves along the north shore of Tanaga. One sea cave was a tunnel, probably big and tall enough to fit the Minnow through, but we were chicken to try. The clouds had come in so we couldn't see the high mountains.

We came to a place on the map called Falls Point. There was one giant waterfall there and two other good-sized ones. We stopped and rode the dinghy around to the falls, then walked around a bit. It's really pretty there.

Then we headed on and anchored at Portage Bight. The next morning Mike kayaked 4 or 5 miles before we took off. I slept.