Jane Dodd

In July 2016 my husband, myself and another couple of friends set off from Kodiak harbour for a wonderful week with Mike, Mary, and Sam on the Single Star.

The boat is wonderfully comfortable and clearly equipped with very up to date navigational gear. Sam picked us up at the airport and drove us to the harbor via a quick liquor stop.

We were lucky and had wonderful weather and so spent most of our time on deck watching birds (puffins, kittiwakes, eagles to name a few), whales, seals, and sea otters.

The wildlife is truly amazing and we all felt a huge sense of anticipation as we approached the landings where we were likely to see bears.

Our encounters with the bears were at Geographical Harbor. It’s pretty amazing all piling into the zodiac and climbing out on a beach where you can literally see bears walking about and hunting for fish!! We saw a number of bears over two days including a Mama bear with two cubs, adolescent sibling bears wrestling and big boars.

The bears do come quite close (sometimes only twenty feet away) but I felt very safe with Mike who has many years experience around coastal brown bears. We were also very lucky to see a stunning wolf on the same beach!!

Mary’s cooking is amazing! It is total luxury to start the day with a wonderful cooked breakfast, have an adrenaline pumped day of bears and wolves and come back to the boat for a delicious meal and a glass of wine.

One night I went to sleep watching a bear from my porthole window wandering along the beach off in the distance. 

Heaven!