Greenpeace / Time Bandit

In a post last July I photographed the Greenpeace vessel Esperanza parked in Iliuliauk Bay in front on my place, here in Dutch Harbor as part of their Bering Witness voyage. We have BBC as our homepage and an article today mentioned the Esperanza was currently engaged in a high speed game of chess with Japanese whaling vessels in the South Pacific near Antartica. Greenpeace and I don't always see eye to eye but I do appreciate all the work and research they do to protect the oceans all over the world - and I loved seeing their Zodiac chaser boats whizzing by the plant last summer!

Yesterday we had a pretty intense storm out here, winds 30 to 50 mph with gusts to 70, along with heavy wet snow. Because our internet is delivered by satellite those conditions pretty much shut it down. That wasn't the only reason I didn't post last night though; I've been pushing pretty hard these days between work and play and it caught up with me. I was lying on the spare bed with the dog after work, listening to the storm howl outside, and I fell asleep. I woke up a couple times here and there but got probably 10 hours of sleep, just what I needed. Thank you Goldfish for walking Chico in the storm while I slept!

We had the perfect session of snowshoeing tonight - the weather was perfect, we both had our tunes with us, I was super rested from last night, and the stars were coming out in a clear sky. I noticed that the Big Dipper comes out right over Ballyhoo - I'll have to try to get a picture. I took a few pictures tonight that I'll share later this week but on the way over we saw F/V Time Bandit taking on pots and snapped a shot. The helicopter was circling around today as well so I suspect the DC crew is filming the start of opilio season.