Wallhangers & Lawn Art
No cruise is complete without a thorough exploration of the local pubs, restaurants, and neighborhoods (usually in that order). It’s not just beer, food, and exercise that I’m after when I’m poking about town. I enjoy looking at the art and artifacts that the locals put on display. What you find hanging from the walls…
Sail Like a Girl…
While this phrase inspires Girl Power on it’s own, in this case I’m referring to the all-girl winning crew of the 2018 Race to Alaska (R2AK). The spirit of these courageous and tenacious ladies was an inspirational force aboard Awesome and will surely endure in the mind of our little 5 year old. She followed their…
Signs of Alaska
I grew up in a sign-painting family and worked in the industry for a number of my early years. Back then, the zoning boards and code enforcers did everything they could to tamp down signage in the visible landscape. Urban planners said signs were, “just a means of indexing the environment.” Well such ‘planning’ was…
Sitka: Can you hear me now?
By boat, Sitka is pretty darn far out there – for us anyway. To reach Sitka without exposing ourselves to big open ocean, there are a series of narrow and breath-taking passages that wind through, past, and by places like Murder Cove, Peril Strait, Poison Cove, Sergius Narrows, and The Eye Opener (a lone rock,…
Whale Watching in Reverse
There’s a perpetual joke aboard Awesome that I have somehow been whale jinxed: whales seem to avoid me like the plague. I’ve come to accept this as one of my real-life super powers. Along with choosing the slowest line at the grocery store and causing all cross-town traffic lights to go red, I also have…
Optics
Happy Birthday to me! I’m old and can’t see! . . . In my younger years, I had eagle eyes. I could spot things miles before my peers. Then I hit forty and things started slowly going downhill. Books got a bit blurry and copy on the laptop got fuzzy towards the end of the…
What Are The Odds?
Seventeen years ago I bought my first power catamaran. Little did I know it was to be the trading stock that propelled me towards hundreds of future multihull deals. I was living on Bainbridge Island and working in Seattle’s SoDo district down near the Duwamish River. The cattle-call of the ferry commute was breaking my…
Petersburg: Alaska’s Little Norway
At a low slack tide on a Sunday, we carefully meandered through the maze of rocks and day marks that peppered the winding length of Wrangell Pass on our way to Petersburg. Once we arrived, Matthew swung the boat into position for docking on the end tie and I stood on our transom steps, stern line…
West of North
Ken & Kim Hoover retired, bought a power cat from me in Tacoma, Washington, and promptly pointed their bows West of North to Wrangell, Alaska. Then Ken wrote a novel – West of North (https://www.amazon.com/West-N). I ran into Ken on the docks and he gave me a copy. Right now, I am sitting in the…
Wrangell: Time to Mow
The vibrancy of the late spring growth erupts from everywhere in this part of the world and any inch of terra firma, including sturdy docks awaiting a make-over, are quickly taken over by the bountiful wild greenery. The wet earthy aroma infuses with the salt air during sun breaks for a deliciously primordial olfactory stew.…