Capturing the Moment

  Our kayakers and small boats hanging out with thousands of feeding sea birds with whales surfacing in between them. We were offshore from Castle Cape, taking advantage of some unusually calm offshore waters. One of the best parts of expedition cruising, is the amount of flexibility that you have to change the schedule and take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves. Earlier in the week we spontaneously canceled the evening presentation in order to load up our small boats and go skiffing in the middle of the ocean with fin whales. The sea conditions were so calm, and the whales so plentiful, that we had to take advantage. Today we pulled into a bay that we had never been to before. Its name is Hook Bay, named after a big rocky spit with a big bend in it. Since we have never been here before, my coworker Christian and I took a small boat out in the morning before breakfast to scout out different landings and hiking areas. We found a few places that looked great from ...

  Our mobile adventure platform, the Safari Explorer, anchored of a remote island in the Shumagin Islands, called Unga Island. Today we explored the Shumagin Islands, far out the Alaskan Peninsula. These islands are almost out to the start of the Aleutians. Again, we weren't sure what we would find once we got here, but this turned into one of my favorite stops on the entire trip. We anchored in Delarof Bay, the site of an abandoned village. There were whales a few miles out, and lots of birds flying around the rocky headlands. Huge sea arches were also visible off to the south of the boat. Right after anchoring, Christian and I jumped in one of our small boats and raced off for some early morning recon. We checked out the ghost town, which was inhabited by a bunch of big, hairy cows. Then we slipped through the rock arch, and drove over to where we saw the birds. It turns out that there were many, many more birds than we thought. Tens of thousands of kittiwakes, five thousand puff...