Bird Island, Thursday, July 31, 2008, by Bob

We are at Bird Island in the Shumagin Islands, more specifically 54°48.9N 159°44.2W next to Otter Strait. It is 10:35 pm, the Big
Lebowski is on, the temperature outside is 55, inside 69, water temperature 48, wind 9 knots out of the northwest, and we are out of
brownies. Melinda has shirked her responsibilities and took off for Seattle, France, and parts unknown.

I was a little nervous coming into this island. On the charts for this location there is a single sounding of 240 feet for an area
of about 25 square miles. There are no depths shown near shore. The Coast Pilot has this warning: "Many areas adjacent to the
Shumagin Islands are unsurveyed and may present unknown hazards to navigation."

So we came in slowly. We didn't sink, although there is a wrecked schooner in the cove next door. We ended up in a great anchorage,
complete with rocky islands, birds, and alien spacecraft.

There is a bug in the Raymarine chart plotter and the tide prediction for Nagai Island is all messed up. Either that or there is a
daily tsunami here. The tide does change 11 feet here, according to my computer.

This morning we took off and had some weather suitable for sailing -- wind and sunshine both! We made over 10 knots for a couple
hours. Then the wind changed directions, died, came up, died, etc. I put the gennaker in and out 5 times today.

Some humpback whales were jumping out of the water when we go close to Bird Island. One of them breached close to the boat, but he
missed us. Whales are big.