Semisopochnoi, 7/14/08, by Bob

We anchored at Semisopochnoi in the dark and in the rain. To top things off, our high-performance Raymarine electronic chart had a
bug in the software that kept it from showing this island at any reasonably high resolution. It was also windy -- gusting over 30
knots.

I hooked up a handheld GPS to the computer to give us a moving map. Josh and Melinda got out front in the wind and rain with lights.
I drove. Mike slept. The spotlights quit working, so we ended up with one flashlight.

We anchored without hitting anything bigger than kelp. I put a go-to point in the chart plotter so we could find our way out if the
anchor let go, since we couldn't use the moving map. Then I set the anchor alarm and went to sleep. Sometime in the night, the
anchor alarm beeping went off. I jumped out of bed real quick, only to find some meanlingless error about too many points in the
track.

Semisopochnoi is a volcano, with about 5 peaks ranging from 2600 to 4000 feet high. It averages around 10 miles in diameter.

The next day Mike and I kayaked a wet, windy, trip to shore and walked around for a while. I had been thinking about climbing Ragged
Top Mountain, about 3000 feet up, but I decided that was out of the question when I saw it. It has a REALLY ragged top!

The wind around these islands is a little like the Hawaiian Islands -- strange! I'm sure there is a rhyme or reason to it, but
usually it blows hard where I don't expect it.