Photos: Four days on the Milo: surfing and stand-up paddling

ExpandAutoplay

Image 1 of 10

Heading back to the Milo for a hot meal after stand-up paddling in Aialik Bay, Alaska.

Mike McCune spent most of the run up Aialik Bay sitting back in his captain's chair, keeping the M/V Milo on course with his feet hooked between the lower spokes of the ship's wheel while he chatted with whomever happened to be sitting on the makeshift daybed behind him. On the floor was a small hatch that led down to the captain's berth and galley, and as would happen for the better part of the four-day trip, there was a steady flow of people climbing up and down it, with snacks, and questions ("Where are we?" "Can you believe this?") and Pete's guitar.

It was our first surf day and we were a novice bunch. Of the six passengers, two had sailed on the Milo before and none of us had more than a passing familiarity with surfing or stand up paddleboarding. That morning we had woken up to snow flurries and were traveling in and out of patches of snow and fog and sleet, each with its own surreal effect on the water. Mike, whose captain's uniform that morning (as well as the rest of the trip) consisted of a sweatshirt, pajama pants and flip flops, seemed to take delight in his passengers' incredulity both at the weather (snow in April!) and the quirkiness of the boat's controls (among others, the ship's autopilot has to be tricked into steering north). Pete, a former neighbor of Mike's and a veteran of voyages on the Milo, rested his head on his guitar, playing Jack Johnson tunes that melted into made-up riffs and emerged as Beach Boys classics.

As the bay began to narrow and we closed in on the coastline, Mike was on his feet, steering with one hand, squeegeeing the wheelhouse's fogged up windshield with the other. Occasionally he'd pull out a pair of binoculars and make a closer inspection of the coastline. When someone asked what he was looking for, he explained that a big problem with finding good surf spots in Alaska was that it was hard to distinguish the white water of the breakers from the snow on the beach. The best months to surf in Alaska, we learned, are April and September (neither of which can be guaranteed snow-free).

READ MORE: Four days on the Milo: surfing and stand-up paddling near the Kenai fjords