autohelm

the good news is that this mechanical autohelm works, the bad news is the amount of duct tape I used to get it to work -

shipwrecks in Barkley Sound

Navigating the Broken Islands was a challenge. There are many partially submerged rocks and neither my paper charts nor chartplotter had high resolution data of the area.

So, Newman and I had to be on point as we set headings and tack lines. The numerous shipwrecks served as ominous canaries in the sentinel coalmine, there but for the grace of canary warning, red flag god goes I.

rock fish and red tide

this spot was hot with rock fish - and Kitson cleaned up. However, Barkley Sound was also being visited with a viscous red tide. The water was the color of Guatemalan coffee - no shellfish harvesting, and no visibility for spearfishing.

just plain nice

kayaking back to the boat after exploring land is one of the high highs of boat ownership -

effingham island in the Broken Group Islands

We made it to the Broken Group Islands - and tucked into Effingham inlet for the night. This spot is just as gorgeous as it is remote. We put on our land exploration outfits and hiked across the island. We quickly got into a Lord of the Flies routine. I can't remember, but I think I won the machete and baseball bat fight.

bamfield in Barkley Sound

Bamfield is a remote town on the West Coast of Vancouver, no streets - just a waterway. What they lack in essential services like diesel, they make up for with eccentric oddities - like this cat house.

Out of desperation I hitched ride in an Australian's truck up into a logging road - so that we could siphon diesel out of his tractor's fuel tank with a garden hose.

That kept our operation moving forward.

getting searched

i have a terrible track record with border crossing. this trip was no different. Before i had a boat, I would always get searched at airports, now that I cross borders in a small boat, the boat gets the intensive inspection. These searches are always futile, since I carry no contraband. But they are always nerve-wracking. The Canadian authorities spent 30 minutes digging into all the remote holes in my boat. All they found were potatoes. Apparently potato smuggling is currently frowned upon.

royalty

We don't have much royalty in the US.

Okay, we have the Kennedy's - but theyre 'dropping like flies. So, upon arriving in a British protectorate, I demanded that the Alizé be berthed as close as possible to the Parliamentary Building in Victoria. I then said, "Where does the Queen have tea when visiting?" The harbormaster replied, "At the Empress Hotel" I said, "Fine, well how close can we get to that as well?"

First trip to the Pacific Ocean

Sailing in and around Seattle is good stuff, but there is so much to explore, you forget about the giant ocean around the corner. This summer trip served to remedy that wrong.

I put together a crack crew and headed up the West coast of Vancouver Island. It was a skeleton crack crew, in that there was only 2 dudes. One guy -Newman, was the detail oriented tactician with much offshore experience and then there was Kitson - an old homie who had no boat experience, but tons of good vibes.

Together, we rode the Pacific swells like native sons.

Here the crack crew is seen feasting on fresh harvest. We ate a lot of seafood on the trip: dungeness crab, salmon and rockfish. And when we weren't eating that, we ate cheese and British gin.

minutes after a summer rain

crazy from the heat

There are a few items of interest in this movie.

One: everyone is crazy from the heat, and by crazy, I mean giddy. You cannot tell from this video, but Seattle was 103 degrees when we went out for a sail. That is a heat record that will not be broken soon. Seattlites don't know what to do with themselves when we get over 90 let alone 100. Nobody has air conditioning, so no one can sleep. The whole town wilted.

Two: Although I dropped the sails so that we would drift aimlessly while we swam, a steady northerly kept the boat moving at 1 knot. That is why you can see a slight look of panic as Ryan and Steve attempt to remove themselves from the 50 degree waters of Puget Sound.

going aloft

I have begun the daunting task of replacing all of the standing rigging on Alizé II. This means many journeys to the top of of the mast to pull cotter pins and clevis pins and tension turnbuckles and check for weeping pits in my swages.