Sailing Across the Gulf of Alaska: A Passage from Kodiak to Sitka
A four-day voyage beneath meteors & moonlight
Having traced the edges of Alaska’s wild frontier, from glacier-bound bays to remote island harbors, we found ourselves at the threshold of something larger: the open Gulf of Alaska, where the horizon is unbroken and the night holds its own kind of test. This was to be our first ocean crossing aboard Arcturus across Alaska’s tempestuous gulf. There’s a peculiar fear that gripped my mind before my first ocean crossing… For me, it wasn’t the thought of being hundreds of miles from land—that, in some ways, felt abstract and far away—but the fear of the night. How do you sail into darkness, unable to see where you’re going? I carried that weight in the days and weeks (perhaps even months) leading up to our departure from Kodiak, my first non-stop, multi-day passage.Part of building the ocean crossing into our summer itinerary was to test my seaworthiness and discover whether I actually liked, and could handle, multi-day sailing. The completion of this crossing would help us determine if we would press on farther in our journey, continuing south once we returned to Southeast Alaska and wrapped up the season with a few charters in August and September, ending our Alaska season in Ketchikan. What I learned, over four days and 550 nautical miles, is that you lean into trust: in the instruments, in your captain, in your crew, and eventually in yourself.
S/V Arcturus under full sail in the Gulf of Alaska
Preparations and Waiting Out the Storm
Preparing for multiple days at sea is a discipline all its own. Considering the distance and the time we’d be away from land, and thus setting an appropriate weather window ahead of time with our crew. We stocked adequate rations of food and water, a skill already honed from Alaskan voyages where it’s common to go 5–10 days without seeing a town. The fuel tank was topped off, every line, sail, and piece of rigging inspected, and safety gear checked (our newly installed liferaft among the most vital additions for this summer’s grand adventure). Medical supplies, communication systems, and clear emergency procedures rounded out the list. Yet more than equipment, it is the readiness of the crew that matters most: the shared commitment to face the Gulf’s open miles together, with vigilance and trust.
Map of Alaska, Circa 1905
Cropped Map of the Gulf of Alaska, Departure & Arrival points
Wind Forecast Before LEaving
Wind forecast upon departure
We had built the Gulf crossing into our summer itinerary not only as a route homeward but as a trial: would I be seaworthy enough, night after night, to dream of longer passages beyond Alaska? The Gulf of Alaska holds a notorious reputation: a broad sweep of open ocean where storms build their strength, where winds funnel between mountains, and where a sailor can be humbled in an instant. We knew it demanded respect, so we waited.
Hiking Three Sisters Trail in Kodiak
For four nights we hunkered in Kodiak at St. Paul Harbor, letting a storm pass through while we explored town, visited friends, explored the Near Island Hiking Trails across from the harbor, and even hosted a rainy-evening movie night. Half the crew had never seen the 1990’s cult classic Captain Ron, so we set up the Arcturus home theater (yes, we do in fact have a projector on board) and laughed at its absurd, sailor-loved humor. (Side note: I’ve carried this movie with me since childhood, watching it annually on VHS with my parents. Over the years I’ve shown it to friends, previous partners, really anyone willing to indulge me. Once, while telling my close friend (and wonderful writer) Jenna Tico about the movie, her musician father Randy Tico casually mentioned, “Oh, Captain Ron? I worked on that soundtrack!” Fate, it seemed, had a sense of humor. Louie, who referenced “pulling a Captain Ron” the first week I met him, only proved it further. By the time our Gulf crew watched it together in Kodiak, the circle was complete.)
At last the winds eased, leaving a bright blue morning in their wake. We cast off from Kodiak’s harbor, the island shrinking behind us, our compass skewed by the island’s magnetic pull. Calm seas meant a few hours of motoring before the breeze returned, and just before losing our Starlink connection twelve miles offshore, took one last look to see if the Captain Ron soundtrack was available for streaming (it was not), but instead discovered a hilariously titled Spotify playlist: Captain Ron’s Cocaine Jungle. Fifteen hours of eclectic tracks that was self-described by the author as “Disney's idea of world music: Caribbean and Latin flair poorly replicated and executed in the 80s on keyboards.” It, against all odds, proved to be the perfect soundtrack for our crossing.Finding Rhythm at Sea
As we sailed away from Kodiak, we noticed how our magnetic compass was pointing north (directly toward Kodiak) though in reality the island lay due east. Vast deposits of iron and volcanic rock throughout Alaska pull the needle from true, sometimes by dozens of degrees, making Alaska’s coast notorious for casting compasses of sailors wayward. Russian fur traders noted the phenomenon in the 1700s, and modern sailors typically rely entirely on contemporary navigational systems. In these waters, faith rests not on the magnet’s fickle swing but on charts, bearings, and the steady eye of the navigator.By afternoon, sails filled and the engine fell silent. Sunlight warmed Arcturus’ steel decks, and we sprawled on deck in the rare Alaskan summer heat. Our crew of four set a strict watch rotation: six hours on, six off, staggered by three. Louie, ever the captain, remained on call at all hours, snatching micro-naps between cooking meals and overseeing sail trim. Two of our crew battled seasickness the first two days, but by the beginning of the third, everyone had found their sea legs.
Sunbathing on the decks of S/V Arcturus
Smiles & Stoke
full sails
Nights revealed the true gift of the crossing. Out here, discipline is the marrow of safety. Someone always has eyes on the sails, even in the softest hours before dawn. Radar sweeps the horizon to help spot ships beyond sight, and every crew on deck clips into jacklines with harness and tether if and when the seas get rough and the boat gets sideways (which, luckily it never did on this passage). It is a pact with the sea: vigilance in exchange for safe passage.Our departure coincided with the peak of the Perseids Meteor Shower. Every August, the Perseids light the skies of the Northern Hemisphere as Earth passes through the trail of the Swift-Tuttle comet. At their peak, meteors can fall at a rate of 60 or more per hour, fiery streaks burning through the dark. To witness them from the deck of a small vessel, far from light or land, is to watch the universe itself aflame. After the moon set that first night, streaks of light fanned across the star-drenched dome of sky. I lay on deck under taut sails, watching meteors burn above the horizon, the sea whispering beneath. Fear of night gave way to awe, and I began to love the solitude of watch: the shifting play of moonlight across waves, the slow dance of the moon rising later each evening, the hypnotic rhythm of the boat pressing forward into unseen miles.
Exercise hour in the middle of the ocean
We filled hours both day and night with shared audiobooks and long conversations, the kind only possible when time stretches unmeasured. On the second day, at the exact middle of the Gulf, the wind died. We shut off the motor and leapt overboard, plunging into water so frigid it stole our breath in an instant. We climbed back aboard laughing, shivering, alive – able now to say we had swum in the heart of the Gulf of Alaska. The water hovered in the low fifties. Unlike the glacier-fed bays of Southeast, it was startlingly clear, a fathomless indigo with no kelp, no seabed, just depth. To swim there, even for a heartbeat, was to surrender to the immensity of the Pacific.
Jumping into the Gulf of Alaska
Seven Knots and St. Elias Peaks
By day three the swell found its rhythm: long Pacific rollers rising steady from the southwest, their shoulders lifting Arcturus as if to remind her of the ocean’s scale. She sailed sweetly at around five knots, her steady average across days one, two, and three. But at seven knots, her hull speed, we keep a tradition aboard: ring the bell, shout “Seven Knot Shot!” and celebrate. We don’t consume alcohol on ocean crossings, so we swore to toast with pickle juice instead. Night after night we pushed close, creeping into the high sixes, until at last, at four-thirty a.m. on the third night, after winds had been building, Arcturus surged at seven knots. As I lay asleep I heard the bell ring, Louie’s voice carrying through the cabin, and somewhere in my dreams I joined the cheer. At that speed, the hull itself begins to hum – a low, melodic vibration that feels like the sea singing beneath you.
Captain Hoock & the S/V Arcturus boat garden
By the fourth day, our eyes strained at the horizon, hungry for land. Mid-morning, while watering the plants along the port rail, I realized that the distant “clouds” were in fact the snowy summits of the Fairweather Range, rising ghostlike against the sky. The sight of land after days of nothing but ocean was a revelation, and not at all in the direction we expected, appearing to the north instead of the east. I slipped inside and rang the bell and shouted “Land ho!”Peering out at those distant peaks, I thought of the past four months at sea, and how in May we had sailed past those same mountains on our way from the Inside Passage to Yakutat and Icy Bay along that desolate stretch of coastline. For millennia, mountains served as the sailor’s first promise of land. Aleut hunters in skin boats and Russian fur traders in square-riggers alike used the white summits of the Fairweather Range as their bearing across the Gulf. To glimpse them after days of horizonless sea was to share in that ancient relief: proof that the gamble of open water had found its shore.
The Fairweather Range as seen from Alaska’s inside passage, May 2024
That last night we rounded Cape Edgecumbe on Kruzof Island in darkness, sails straining in shifting winds and currents. Our crew-mate and I fought the mainsail down between us, our muscles tested against canvas and line, while Louie wrestled the helm. Mount Edgecumbe, nearly perfect in its volcanic cone, stands sentinel over Sitka Sound. Though dormant now, Tlingit oral histories tell of eruptions centuries past, when fire leapt from its summit and the sea boiled with ash. To round this darkened headland at night is still to pass beneath a mountain that once breathed fire into the sky.
Mount Edgecumbe on Kruzof Island
By dawn, Louie anchored us safely into Kliuchevoi Bay on Baranof Island. That morning we awoke late, after a deep sleep, to find Goddard Hot Springs awaiting us – a place of steam and cedar, where we bathed our tired bodies and let the salt wash away in mineral pools beneath the forest canopy. It was my second time visiting, the first being on Louie’s and my two-week-long first date a couple years prior, when we sailed from Sitka to Juneau. It felt comforting now to be back in familiar waters.
Landfall in Sitka
We arrived in Sitka the next day, lines tied at Eliason Harbor, hearts buoyed by the knowledge that we had crossed the Gulf. Mariners who face it treat the passage with wary reverence. To any sailor eyeing the crossing, know this: wait for your weather window. The Gulf is a crucible where Pacific storms gather strength. Open and fetchless, the seas here can rise in steep, chaotic walls, driven by gales funneled through mountain gaps. We were fortunate, as our passage was mercifully uneventful, with kind seas and bluebird days. Once ashore, we celebrated as any crew might: with a steaming plate of authentic Russian dumplings at Pel’Meni, an Alaskan classic, followed by a round of drinks at Pioneer Bar (known to locals as “P-Bar”), a fisherman’s joint with a salty maritime flare.
Sunset in Sitka’s Eliason Harbor
Russian Dumplings at Pel’Meni
Russian Dumplings at Pel’Meni
Four days, 550 nautical miles, a rite of passage complete. Our summer of exploration through Prince William Sound, Kenai Fjords, Cook Inlet, and Kodiak had carried us nearly 6,000 miles along Alaska’s wild coasts. Now, back in familiar waters, we felt the horizon tilt open. We decided we would sail south once our charter trips in Southeast Alaska wrapped up at the end of September, setting our sights on British Columbia, the U.S. coast, and onward to Mexico.Crossing the Gulf rewarded us with moments rare and unrepeatable: meteors across a star-drenched sky, the laughter of a crew plunging into icy depths, the first glimpse of mountains after days of blue. Fear of the night gave way to awe, and in that transformation lay the true passage.And lastly, the Gulf answered the question we asked of it: yes, we were ready for oceans beyond Alaska.Adventures, Words & Photos by Lerina Winter & Captain Louis Hoock
Originally Published: September 9th, 2025
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