Escape From Akutan, Alaska

 

Story :

Evangeline White

 

I’ll swim for it. It’s only 1000 yards. So what if it’s Alaska. Even if it is October, the water can’t be colder than 40°F. I can handle that. So what if I don’t have a wetsuit. Or a drysuit. Or enough fat on my frame to keep hypothermia at bay. If only I hadn’t been seasick all week.

“There’s no room at the dock, but we’ll only be anchored out here for a couple hours,” captain of the Michelle Renee cheerfully informed me.

In 2005, I spent nearly 200 days in the North Pacific and Bering Sea living aboard commercial fishing vessels as a federal observer, providing biological oversight of the industry. A rare feminine presence in an overwhelmingly male environment, I’d fabricated jealous lovers, lied about my sexual orientation, and cut back on showers to ward off my lusty shipmates. The heavy lifting, rough weather, and bouts of seasickness weren’t so bad. But when I began to develop a strange emotional affinity to all those helpless Pollock, I wondered how much more I could take. To add to my desperation, my real boyfriend was in Anchorage, but only for a few days, and if I didn’t get there before he left it would be two months before we would see each other again.

I didn’t have a couple hours. I had a flight to catch, a lover to see, and here— just half a mile away from Akutan Island’s rocky shore— was the last place I wanted to be. Resigned, I settled back in my wheelhouse chair, plopped my feet atop a pile of fishing logs and nautical charts and watched the last departing plane of the day— my flight home—carve a long, graceful arc into the sky.

I should have braved the swim. It would have been easier than what I was about to face.

Seven hundred sixty-six miles west of Anchorage and 35 miles east of its more famous neighbor, Dutch Harbor, Akutan Island encompasses just 129 square miles and supports 800 residents (90 percent of whom are seasonal plant employees). Like the rest of the Aleutian chain, it’s a nice place to visit in the summer— not too hot and impossibly green. Winter is different. Explorer Bernard R. Hubbard was so impressed with the Aleutian chain’s inhospitable conditions that he theorized it was the origin of North America’s bad weather, titling a 1935 book about his expeditions there Cradle of the Storms. “Akutan Island,” he wrote, “is probably one of the windiest of the windswept Aleutians.

Getting almost to Akutan is easy; several flights leave Anchorage for Dutch Harbor every day. Although inclement weather and the occasional volcanic eruption— the Aleutians include at least 26 active volcanoes— delay or ground some planes, most Dutch Harbor flights take off and arrive on time. It is the remaining 35 miles to Akutan that are tricky. The island has no airport, no runway and no regularly scheduled passenger ferry service. To get there— and away— requires a flight on a small seaplane called the Grumman Goose.

Developed in 1937 by Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, the original Gooses (don’t get caught calling them Geese) were commissioned by a group of millionaires to ease their commute from Long Island to New York’s financial district. The planes departed from private airstrips and landed on the water just blocks away from Wall Street. Grumman equipped the planes with a bar, bathroom, and seating for up to three passengers. During World War II, the hardy Gooses caught the attention of the Navy and many more were built and put to work for the US military and its allies. The birds’ heyday, however, was over quickly. Only 345 were ever made and the last Goose rolled off Grumman’s production line in 1945. Those that survived the war were bought up by civilian pilots, the Coast Guard, and small airlines such as Alaska’s Peninsula Airways; who use the planes to fly to Akutan.

 

For several decades it looked as though Grumman’s Goose was destined to the same fate of the dodo bird. Not anymore. In November 2007, Antilles Seaplanes LLC, a small company based in Gibsonville, North Carolina announced that it would begin production of the new “Super Goose.” They expect the first updated plane will be ready to fly next summer, but until then travelers in remote Alaska will have to rely on the originals.

Although the Goose can land almost anywhere, it isn’t without limitations. The route to Dutch Harbor is flown at low altitudes through narrow mountain passes, making flights unsafe in anything but clear conditions— conditions that become increasingly rare in the Aleutians during fall. A bad stretch of weather can ground the Goose for a week or more. The Michelle Renee crew and I had just enjoyed nine breezy, sunny days—some of the nicest I had seen all year. Yet in the two hours we waited for dock space to open up, the barometric pressure plummeted unforgivably. By the time I disembarked, a 40-knot wind had howled in from the north, flattening Akutan’s grassy meadows and streaking the bay with spray.

A grim forecast predicted more of the same weather. Realizing the Goose could be delayed indefinitely and not willing to wait that long, I zipped up my rain jacket, cinched down the hood, and fought my way to the docks in hopes of hitching a ride on a fishing vessel bound for Dutch Harbor that night. No luck.

Click on the Goose to continue.

 

 

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2008 Travel Journal

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