Landfall on some lonely islands
The rain blew sideways as we beat to windward. Rock!
A welter of whitewater appeared fine to starboard. Were our charts for the Aleutian Islands off? In the past few years, we’ve become accustomed to the fine charting in Alaska—could there be an uncharted reef off the Kilokak Rocks? The waves, however, didn’t break again.
Another burst of white water and—this time I saw it—a black shape in the fading light, coming three-quarters out of the water. Stubby pectoral fins. No dorsal. “Whale! Get up! Get up!”
Everyone else was curled up in their warm beds. We’d seen a lot of whales this summer—40 orcas circling, a dozen humpbacks feeding, the surge of a handful of orcas and humpbacks in the tidal swirl of the Aleutian
