2 August: Days-53, Total-57; Miles-21, Total-1907 - Chuck

It was a great night's sleep on the thick, soft horses tail growing where we had pitched our tents. We were on our way before 7am.

The water was calm and a light breeze felt good as we warmed up to the paddle. By 8am, a stronger wind was putting a chop on the surface of the river. At 10am we had two foot waves and a steady 15 knot headwind. We decided to sail and tow my canoe. This meant endless tacking legs with little forward progress. Of course, the alternative was endless paddling into wind and waves with little forward progress.

As the seas grew and our point of sail changed, the waves were belting my canoe sideways. Then, as we came about, the towline got fouled around my leeboard. When the line pulled tight it nearly flipped me. If a big wave had rolled me at the same time, Bill might have been towing an upside down canoe without occupant. I yelled to have Bill pull the quick release; he set me free in an instant. I then paddled close to the shore where the waves are not as strong while Bill continued to tack.

The anticipation was high as we got nearer Emo (Emmonak). We knew we were getting close but the channel on the right side seemed to never come. Finally, a local fisherman, Jacob Kamerof, told us it was around the next point; about five miles.

A right turn into this channel of the river, calmer wind, no waves and we slowly sailed into Emo. Kids on the shore welcomed us as we passed by. A woman and her family were sitting in their boat with recently purchased groceries. She said, "Welcome to the last town on the Yukon". Emo stretches for over a mile along the river. The bank has been reinforced with large rocks. This helps prevent erosion, but makes it difficult to land a loaded canoe. We 'made-do' and set off to explore the town. At the town's only open restaurant, we met the owner, Dave McCabe. He really made us feel welcome and was eager to hear about our trip. He said we could use the shower in his home attached to the cafe. He suggested we camp across the narrow river channel on an island. We promised to return after we pitched our tents on the island and checked on some other things.

The pay phone in the grocery store was out of order and the one at the laundromat had been removed last month due to abuse. The only other phone was a 15 minute walk and they closed in five minutes. Just outside the laundromat, a young man approached us. It was Kiyohiko Hachiya from Kyushu, Japan, the Japanese canoeist that we kept hearing was in front of us. He started two weeks before us on the Teslin River which flows into the Yukon. His English was better than my Japanese and we had a good, if somewhat strained, talk. We invited him to eat with us at the cafe but he said he was already fixing his meal at his campsite. He had received permission to pitch his tent in someone's small back yard.

Back at the restaurant, Bill and I had a large order of burger and fries. Kevin was cooking and Dave was taking the night off because it was his birthday. Dave invited us back into his living quarters. It looked like a pretty typical bachelor pad; Kevin and Alex, who is deaf, also live there.

While Bill leafed through some very interesting albums and talked with Dave, I took a great shower. Then Bill hit the shower and Dave told me about some of the fascinating things he has done: worked on a crabbing ship, lived in Russia for two years, lived by himself at a remote seafood processing plant during the cold dark arctic winters, earns an extra $7,000 a year on his winter trapline, owns a bar in Thailand, now being run by his Thai fiancee, and is an 'on-call' river pilot that guides barges and other ships through the tricky sandbars of the Yukon.

We helped Dave celebrate his birthday and, later, Kenny Lee joined us. Kenny is an Eskimo hunter and fisherman who agreed to transport us and our canoe from the Bering Sea back to Emo. We decided on a meeting point and we would monitor his channel on our VHF radios.

It was nearly midnight and we wanted to get an early start, we excused ourselves and canoed back to our island camp. We had noticed Dave was running low, so we grabbed some party juice and quickly paddled back to drop it off with him.