reefs and channels, the signal bounced around a lot, and it was difficult to determine exactly where the ROV was at any time.
As Mark drove, I constantly scribbled notes about depth, distance, and bearing, and made a crude chart of where I thought the ROV actually was. Another problem with using ROVs was that while looking at a video screen, you have no depth perception or scale. Is that rock large or small? Is it close or far away? The narrow view provided by the camera results in tunnel vision. You might pass right by something without seeing it, and if you turn the ROV around, you lose all sense of direction. How far did we turn? Which way are we facing now? In a submarine, you still have a sense of spatial orientation. But staring at a video screen can be very disorienting.
In the end, we could only make a general picture of the bay bottom. There were at least two channels that ran from southeast to northwest into the bay; each had a bottom depth ranging from 50 to 90 feet, and were mostly covered with sand. Running roughly parallel with the channels were rocky reefs that came up to within 20 to 30 feet of the surface. We might also have detected some hidden basins inshore of the reefs that dropped down to deeper depths, but it was difficult to say exactly where they were. We could even have passed over parts of the Kad’yak wreckage and not been able to identify it from the ROV video.
By the end of the second day I concluded that using an ROV was not the best way to explore the bay. I would just have to dive there myself and use my own eyes if I was going to see what lay on the bottom, if anything. Dan started up the engine and pulled up the Anna D’s anchor. Then he put her in gear and began to turn around. As the boat turned to starboard, we heard a loud thunk and felt the boat lurch.
“What the heck was that?” I asked, not wanting to say what I really thought.
“Crap! We hit the reef,” Dan said. He threw the engine into reverse then neutral, and ran out of the wheelhouse. Looking over the side, we could see rocks a few feet below the water that we had not seen before. (Maybe these were some of the mysterious rocks that spontaneously “grew” in Kodiak waters, as suggested by our Russian predecessors.) We must have been anchored right next to them. Dan came back inside, opened a hatch, and climbed down into the engine room. Mark and I listened to the clunks, bangs, and curses emanating from below as Dan rummaged around, checking the bilge, various compartments, and valves.
When he reappeared, he seemed satisfied. “No major damage, as far as I can tell. We’re not flooding. It must have just been a minor bump.” With that, he carefully backed away from the reef, then turned and headed back to Kodiak.
An hour and a half later, we nosed into the dock. As I was packing up my gear, Dan noticed that his engine temperature seemed a bit high. He climbed down into the engine room to check it out. The Anna D’s diesel engine was cooled by a keel cooler; coolant circulated from the engine into the keel, where it was cooled by exterior seawater, then returned to the engine. When Dan took the cap off the coolant reservoir, a geyser of seawater rushed out. He struggled to get the cap back on before it flooded the engine room.
“We must have damaged the keel cooler,” he said. “That’s gonna be expensive to fix. I’m going to have to put the boat in drydock and get it checked out.” He shook his head. “I’ve got a week before my next fishing trip; I just hope I can get it repaired before then.”
A few days later, he had the Anna D lifted out of the water and discovered that when she hit the reef, welds in the keel cooler had been forced open, letting seawater in. Fortunately, he had made enough money from my charter fees to cover the repairs and still make a profit.
But the whole experience was a bad omen. We had hit a reef in almost the same place where we thought that the Kad’yak had sunk. It wasn’t the same reef it had hit, but who knew whether this reef had stopped the Kad’yak from washing ashore. Maybe the ship had been right underneath us all the time. And certainly we had not sunk the Anna D, but if we had hit a little harder, perhaps we might have.
NEVERTHELESS, MY INTEREST IN THE Kad’yak did not suffer from this setback. If anything, it intensified. If it was that easy to get to Icon Bay, and the water was that clear and that shallow, it should be simple to go diving over there. Just get a boat and a few divers, and go do it. But I had to know where I was going, otherwise we would just be wasting a lot of time and effort. I pulled my dog-eared folders out of my filing cabinet and once again pored over the translation of Arkhimandritov’s log that Mike Yarborough had sent me. I drew lines on navigation charts, trying to trace each waypoint and landmark that had been mentioned. I carefully reconstructed every hour of the captain’s journey in June of 1860, trying to see if it would lead me to the Kad’yak. But none of it made much sense.
Nonetheless, I began to make plans for an expedition. If I were to go look for the Kad’yak, I would need at least a week of time and would have to charter a boat. I couldn’t use one of the boats from our lab, since I wouldn’t be doing the work on government time. I’d need some new scuba gear, and we’d need some food. At a minimum it would cost about $10,000, probably $15,000. Where was I going to get that kind of money? I had approached the Undersea Research Program with my idea, but it was just too risky for them; after all, there was no good evidence that the Kad’yak still existed or was where I thought it was, and I didn’t even know where that was. But you don’t get anything if you don’t ask, so I wrote up my plan as a proposal and began shopping it around. I sent it to National Geographic, but they wouldn’t fund it unless I could guarantee them that we would find the ship and make an hour TV show out of it. I sent it to Rolex Corporation (yes, they actually fund exploration), but they weren’t interested either, despite being a well-known supporter of exploration and adventure. I sent it to several other small nonprofit foundations, all with the same result. None of this is unusual; less than 10 percent of research proposals submitted to the National Science Foundation is successfully funded, and most scientists have to revise and resubmit proposals several times before they get funding. The major hurdle seemed to be that I was not an archaeologist and did not have any credentials for marine archaeological research.
But I also felt that I was missing something. I wasn’t convinced of the Kad’yak’s location, and it would be impossible for me to convince anyone else unless I was 100 percent certain of my own argument. I still didn’t understand how Arkhimandritov had recorded bearings to some landmarks, which, according to my reading of the chart, would have been extremely difficult to see from a kayak. If I could see it from his point of view, perhaps I would understand.
That was it, I thought. I had to go over to Spruce Island in a kayak and retrace his journey.
CHAPTER 6
A VISIT TO
MONK’S LAGOON
AUGUST 2002: ON A LATE summer morning, I set off in a kayak from what we now call Miller Point, at Fort Abercrombie State Park, at the northeast end of Kodiak Island. My wife, Meri, and my twelve-year-old daughter, Cailey, accompanied me in a double kayak. During WWII, Fort Abercrombie held the location of two 8-inch guns, put there to protect the Navy base at Womens Bay, 10 miles to the south. The guns were originally battleship guns and were installed on top of special rotating carriages, on top of a 100-foot-high bluff looking out over Monashka Bay. The guns were never fired, and after the war they were destroyed in place. Now, a military museum occupied what was once the ammunition battery. But if you stood where the gun emplacements were, you could look out across 4 miles of open ocean to Spruce Island and see the entrance to Icon Bay along with some islands. On one of those islands, Arkhimandritov had stood to take his bearing on the Kad’yak over 140 years ago. That was our destination.
Paddling a kayak in the open ocean is always a dangerous activity, whether you are 2 miles or 200 feet from shore. Anything can happen, and you need to take precautions. I had never gone kayaking before coming to Kodiak, but Meri was an experienced kayaker and had introduced me to the sport. Every summer we used to make day trips or overnight camping trips in our kayaks. After Cailey came into our lives, those trips became shorter and less frequent, but by the age of five or six, Cailey had her own life jacket and a toy paddle. Now, at the age of twelve, she was capable of handling a standard paddle and doing