TRAVEL: ALASKA
“Where the Sea
Breaks its Back”
— Surfing by trawler in Alaska
W O R D S B Y C H R I S T I A N B E A M I S H / P H OTO S B Y C H R I S B U R K A R D
“
W
here the Sea Breaks its Back” is a book by Corey Ford
about the 1741 - 1742 Russian Alaska Expedition with naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller
and explorer Vitus Bearing aboard the brig Saint Peter. A tale of shipwreck and disaster,
it is the complete opposite of the experience our small crew had last summer, but makes
for a hell of a title. Still —even at the height of June, motoring out the Cook Inlet from
the town of Homer aboard the 58-foot trawler Milo under bright, sunny skies — it was
easy to imagine the winds that could blow through this long, wide and mountain-lined
body of water. Far in the distance, maybe 50-miles off the starboard bow, the snowcapped cone of Mt. Redoubt stood looking its part of frozen storm catcher, poised to
funnel them in. Closer in, just a mile off the port rail, lower mountains held snow in
patches along their ridges. The sea was greeny-blue, pleasant looking under six knots of
wind with sun-sparkling the ripples, but the vastness of the place and thoughts of the
massive tide runs here, made it feel as though we were on a pass which the conditions
could revoke at any time.
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DEEP SURF MAGAZINE April 2014
There were plenty of people around on land — new cars on the highway, hotels and
restaurants of the type you get in the lower 48 — but once clear of the harbor, we began to
realize the vastness of Alaska. Our captain, Mike McCunne, and Scott and Stephanie Dickerson,
both surfers, were showing the Kenai Peninsula to me and fellow charter passengers Chris and
Keith Malloy, photographer Chris Burkard, and two surfers from San Diego.
After six hours, we reached the open ocean and turned to run down-coast. A sizable
south swell was forecast, and in the evening light of 11 p.m. in summer in Alaska, we
approached a steep, rocky island that sat a few miles off the shrouded coast of coves
and thick forest. “That can be a good left over there,” the captain told us, pointing to a
cobblestone beach at the corner of the island. A strong surge pushed in, hugging the shore
and almost doing it, but the tide seemed too high for the waves to break properly. Along the
next side of the island, McCunne pointed out a right reef, and idling mid-channel, a set of
deep-bellied swells rolled beneath the hull.
Scott Dickerson hoisted the inflatable over the side with Milo’s crane, and soon he,