Amchitka Island

Constantine Harbour.

General.     This island, while it appears to be cleaned up, was the sight of US nuclear bomb tests in the seventies so be warned. We did walk across bright green pools of water when walking around on shore and although this may have been caused by naturally forming algae it looked mighty suspicious to us and so we left  next morning. This is quite a large harbour and would have no worries accommodating a few hundred yachts.

Reported.    July 2003 by Fine Tolerance

Charts.    NOAA 16450, large scale harbour chart NOAA 16446.

Approach.    There are no off-shore dangers and this is a nice easy harbour entrance to negotiate. It appears that one could sneak in through the gap to the west of the entrance islands but we felt that that would be asking for trouble. The mooring buoys inside the harbour entrance shown on the charts no longer exist. There is a certain exposure to the north and the large concrete wharf carried a sign warning not to remained tied alongside in a blow due to waves entering  the harbour.

Anchoring.    We headed well into the harbour and dropped anchor in 9 meters on rock and black sand at 51° 24.0 N,   179°15.7 E.  Kelp lied in long strands throughout a lot of the harbour but did not present any problems to either the yacht or dinghy. MV ‘Starlight’ reported anchoring between the wharfs and the entrance islands in 18 meters.

Points of Interest.  The runway, seen at the head of the harbour when entering, is just a minor one compared with the main one’s further inland. We were informed that the wharf, by far the best one in the Aleutians, was built solely for the clean up program undertaken after testing was abandoned. Although well cleaned up there were still many thing of interest lying around.

Looking out over the wharf to the island at the mouth of the bay.

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