A very special experience in a land of visual treats
Issue 21 : Nov/Dec 2001
Sails full of wind, and the sun warming us, we tacked around the group of humpbacks, trying not to bother their feeding. There were four in their family and four in ours. We watched as they swam in a circle at the surface then slowly disappeared into the deep blue. Only a moment to look to the wind and trim our sails before the water boiled 100 yards or so away, and the family burst into the air with mouths gaping. Tiny fish leaped from the huge mouths, only to be caught by the air patrol of glaucous-winged gulls hovering above the whales. The noise of the whales splashing back into the water as the gulls screamed excitedly rang through our ears.
Chuck called for a tack. The kids and I unglued our eyes to do our jobs. We made a large triangular path around the family of whales, watching them catch their dinner. Our senses were full; we didn’t hear the whale sightseeing boat that appeared before us suddenly. Our curiosity sated, we retreated. Our turn was over. We sailed past the boat, full of tourists with their mouths agape.
Alaskan cruisers Roy and Barb, aboard Gadfly II, had told us to look for a red bluff that would mark the entrance to Red Bluff Bay. Our plan was to anchor there for the night. We were surprised when one of the children spotted the burnt red outcropping. It was too close, too easy to find, too red against the cerulean sky. After a short, but spirited, sail we reluctantly took down the sails and approached the bay entrance. The blazing red rock formation stood out against the backdrop of the emerald greens of the trees, the deep blues of the sky and water, and the glaring white of the mountain snows. The scenery was larger than life, surreal. We all were filled with awe of our world.
Breathtaking
A waterfall came into sight, taking our breath away. We had seen many waterfalls on this trip, but this one was special. It was a personal waterfall, one we could get to know. I can still hear the kids’ call to motor closer to it. At our request, Alex checked the depth along the waterfall edge on the chart, and finding it was tens of fathoms deep, we approached closely, several times. But each time we drew near, the current pushed us away. All four of us were children then, giggling as the spray touched our faces, trying to get close enough to feel the water with our hands but always being pushed away, no matter what angle we chose for the approach. Finally tired of our play, we explored our bay further.
Around each corner, there were sights large enough to take our breath away. I felt as though my eyes had been dulled all my life, and I was seeing everything finally without blinders or filters. We anchored beneath a beautiful mountain peak tipped with snow. It was hard to concentrate on the anchoring. My eyes, starved for the scenery, wanted to feast forever. As usual, the call to go ashore to explore was issued. But this time I was the one who called it. The kids had been lax, preoccupied with looking around at our home for the night.
Ashore, touching the land and feeling the silence all around us, it was almost unbearable. Our voices seemed diminutive in a larger-than-life land; we could never hope to fill it up with our sounds. Though the kids gave a first-rate try, the silence was too loud to overcome.
Before long, the silence proved too loud for our small family. We rowed back toward our home and climbed aboard, weary from our exploration and the discoveries of the day. Climbing aboard, I felt the real sense of being home. Lindsay Christine was our home now; we were no longer “getting used to living aboard.” Amie and I began to fix our dinner in view of our waterfall. What better way to end a day?
Lifetime experience
In bed that night I wondered if maybe we had been transported to another world, one clearer and bolder of colors, a world larger than our own, one that we humans could never scar because of its grandeur. Had everything really happened in one day or was that day one lifetime? It was enough experience for one lifetime — enough pure joy, enough pure love shared, enough pure enlightenment experienced. I had been a mayfly, experiencing my whole life in one day, and it had been a perfect life. Would I wake up in the morning? It didn’t matter.
As I look back on that experience, I realize that it was a time when nothing could touch me inside but the beauty of the land around me and the fullness of sharing it with my family. I use that day for meditation or relaxation when the troubles of our world are getting me down. It is a gift of our visit, a forever souvenir.
There have been many times when I have been thankful that we travel aboard a boat, that our path is never indelibly set, that no one can definitively say, “Yes, they have passed this way.” Red Bluff Bay is one of those places I am glad no one will know we have touched. It is a place that should never be scarred with the rough hands of our kind. It is too delicate, and yet too bold, a place. It is a place where we are the tiny, where nature is busy doing “its thing,” and we humans play a bit part. It is an Alaska of Alaska.
Theresa and Chuck Fort and children, Amie and Alex, moved aboard Lindsay Christine, a Mercator Offshore 30, in 1995. They were landbound in Florida for a period of time to accommodate their children’s orthodontic appointments, but they are underway again.
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