RE: [Paddlewise] High points of 2010?

Craig said:	muthah-ship...perfect...camp without the worry of bears 
	
Craig, I will freely acknowledge that a mothership would have come in very
handy on one occasion. After putting in a long day (that for tidal reasons
had begun at 03:30), we reached one of the few islands in upper Glacier Bay,
in search of a off-shore (bear-unlikely) tent site. Coming ashore at the
obvious flat meadow with wide sight-lines (to allow the bears - which
wouldn't be on the island anyway - to avoid startling themselves into
untoward and regrettable violence); what should we find but half an acre of
trashed strawberry patch almost knee-deep in bear scat...

Tears were very nearly shed.

Happily, a long afternoon nap put things right for Natasha. I am now sold on
the deep links that remain in the modern mind between wood smoke and
security... with the occasional cheerful crackle being completely inaudible
to ears that can mouse-detect at 100 paces. 

I pitched the tent half a mile along the shoreline from the bear meadow, and
festered around quietly while Natasha got about 4000 winks. It was great fun
to sit on a remote & pebbly beach, surrounded by vistas of glaciers, the
fluke-splashing of miles-distant humpbacks and prosaically type in some trip
notes on my little 11" notebook - which proved a great success.

It gave us a lightweight backup of all our paperwork - from tickets to the
570 pages of the Alaska Pilot. It accumulated the daily download of all
photos and allowed their immediate transfer to a flash-drive (data-stick)
for a tiny secondary backup in a secondary drybag (my VHF's Aquapac). It
held all the charts that we didn't print (as opposed to all those that we
had printed, annotated & laminated) in case we chickened out on Plan A and
needed to re-route. Also, it lasted its hoped-for 10 hours between visits to
places like Park Headquarters in Glacier Bay - where we took a lay day to
view the museum, watch the film, wash some clothes and reacquaint ourselves
with hot water ;-) 

As a multi-purpose device & tool, I think it earned its weight allowance.

For any geeks amongst you, I should note that it's not an Atom-based unit,
but an Acer ULV dual-core which cheerfully runs W7x64 in 4GB - allowing me
to have several VMs running for testing purposes. Not, I hasten to add, when
sitting in Glacier Bay; but I did mention it was multi-purpose...

Craig also said: You got two summers (if you can count...Alaska ...as
"summer").

Well we got what we had expected in coastal Alaska's mild & misty weather. A
daily 'Rain Likely' was the catch phrase that we lived by, but there was a
decent amount of blue sky to keep us happy and (except for the night amidst
the ice field), we didn't find it cold.

Further from the coast, in Juneau and more-so in the Yukon, there was lots
of warmth and sunshine. The preliminary 1.5 days in Vancouver and the final
3 days there and in Victoria were high summer and much appreciated. 

We put our heads in the door at Feathercraft in Vancouver - to say thanks
for such a splendid vessel - and they kindly let us take one of their newish
semi-inflatable sit-on-top doubles out for a hoon round the harbour. Great
fun! 

Then in Victoria, friends led us out for a day's play in the Oak Bay Islands
(East of Victoria) in a couple of borrowed singles - which was also great
fun, if slightly weird after weeks of doubling.  

So, I think we got a good shot of Northern Hemisphere summer before
returning to our vicious Auckland winter, where the water temp drops scarily
below 60F and it's almost always too hot to wear our drysuits... Makes it
difficult to complain ;-)

Best Regards
Paul Hayward, Auckland, New Zealand
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