St Paul, Pribilof Islands, Bering Sea
After sitting out the gales in Port Clarence, we had good northerly winds taking us south. We could have made it all the way to Dutch Harbor, but the forecast showed the northerly winds would be a gale by the time we reached Dutch Harbor, and while it looked like a safe entrance in a northerly gale, I hate entering unfamiliar places in gales–there is little room for correcting problems. So we went into the harbor of St Paul, one of the Pribilof Islands, about 230 miles north of the Aleutian islands. The cannery manager was nice to us and let us use their dock for a while. When some fishing boats came in later that night needing to unload, we moved out of the harbor and anchored nearby, in a location protected from the approaching NE gale.St Paul has a church, school, small hospital, weather station, general store and a library with internet access, which was nice. We spent three days sitting out gales in St Paul. After the wind moved from NE towards NW, we moved around to a different spot for better protection from NW. As the gale started to ease, we left, taking advantage of the gale’s strong northerly winds to get us to Dutch Harbor, planning to arrive when the winds were down to Force 7.