A Year and a Day

And Like That, We’re Back

–by Caitlin

A quiet dawn turned into a brilliant and windy afternoon as we sailed through Canadian waters toward the border with Washington State. The enormous ferries that move people through the waterways of British Columbia crossed Debonair’s bow or overtook us. A mile from the border a Royal Canadian Mounted Police boat buzzed us.

We’d spent the last 18 days sailing from Alaska through British Columbia. We sailed through fjords, across straits, and through narrows that boiled with fast moving water, swirled into whirlpools, and rose into standing waves. While we’d anchored up each night, we weren’t allowed ashore due to Covid restrictions. We felt alone, but we also felt our completeness, our wholeness as a crew as we pushed south through the remote watery world of British Columbia.

So much fog.

So many logs.

“How you folks doing?” The Canadian police boat cruised alongside us as we shouted names and passport numbers into the wind. After ascertaining that we weren’t trying to sneak into Canada and offering us info about places we need to return to see, the police sped off, and we barreled across the border, sailing against a wicked current, but with the wind.

Just outside of Washington State’s Roche Harbor, we lowered our sails. We motored into the harbor to anchor among gleaming yachts. Sportfishing boats zipped by, and float planes took off and landed every hour. Ashore, we stretched our legs and tried to keep up with ice cream cones melting in the heat. We hadn’t been in contact with anyone while we were in Canada, so this busy vacation town felt overwhelming. I thought about posting a blog entry, but there was too much going on, too much still to process.

A few days and a few anchorages later we put Arlo on a bus in Anacortes—he was flying back to the Bay Area for pre-season cross country training. Before Arlo left, he asked me, “Mom, we had a five-year plan for our voyage, and we pretty much stuck to it, right?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” I said. “We always planned to end the voyage here in the Pacific Northwest.”

“So now what?” he said. “What’s next?” I don’t remember how I answered, but I know how we felt as Jason and Alma and I walked away from the bus depot without Arlo, back to the marina where Debonair was waiting. For so long we’d been a voyaging family, a crew of four, and now, as the three of us walked back to Debonair, we weren’t. We were aware that next time Arlo returned to Debonair, he would have graduated from high school, and the time he spent on board would become provisional.

A crew of four.

Our melancholy mood stemmed from more than an awareness of our shifting family dynamics. We were also coming closer and closer to the last days of this multi-year odyssey. Alma and Jason and I were about to bring Debonair home to her last port. For so long we’d been a voyaging family, and soon we’d be a family that had completed a voyage and returned.

Alma and Jason and I sailed to a little cove on the south side of Lopez Island where we hiked and picked blackberries and rode out a windy night. Another day’s sail brought us into a marina in Port Townsend where we spent a busy week preparing Debonair for winter. Then Alma and I flew home to join Arlo and to start school and work, while Jason stayed behind to haul Debonair out and do long-postponed maintenance work.

After sailing from Hawaii to Alaska in 2019, Debonair spent two years in harsh Alaska conditions. This fall, Jason spent almost a month on long overdue maintenance.

New topside paint and Debonair’s looking good!

In her winter berth, cover partly on.

Back in California now, one of us will sometimes look up from whatever we’re doing and pause. “You remember when?” we’ll say, and everyone else will look up too. Remember when we raised the staysail off the mizzen mast? Remember when Christian gave us the boeuf sauvage? And lobster hunting and freediving in Toau? Remember the huge seas in the Alenuihaha channel? Remember saving Pepita in the williwaws of the Kenai peninsula? And from this summer: remember floating Debonair free when we ran aground, remember hauling the big halibut aboard, remember anchoring among log booms. Remember the grizzlies and the crazy call of the sandhill cranes and that wolf on the beach and the whales. Remember how good it feels to be just us sailing, to be a crew, to be out in the weather all the time, to be out in the world.

When I think about what we’re taking with us from the voyage, I think about mountains and reefs and islands, about banyan trees and spruce trees and endless clouds. I think about how familiar anxiousness feels. And I think about newfound competence–and confidence. I think about desire and work and wonder. I think about Debonair, the beautiful vessel that kept us safe across oceans, the boat that sheltered us wherever we were and taught us to be voyaging sailors.

If we were to retrace our voyage, we’d probably do it differently. But we know there’s no perfect voyage, for the unknowns and our imperfect responses to them are the essence of any voyage, and we feel so lucky to have been able to draw our imperfect wiggly wake across the ocean. We were scared sometimes, but we found we felt connected—to those we met, to the natural world, to Debonair, and to each other. We got to add this wiggly line to the beautiful tangle of our life.

I didn’t write a blog entry when we re-entered the US in Roche Harbor or when we tied Debonair up in Port Townsend or even when we came back to Alameda. I’ve postponed writing, I think, because it’s hard to acknowledge the end. We set out from San Francisco in January 2018. We sailed south to Mexico, then west for 26 days across the ocean to the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific, and on to the Tuamotu Islands and to the Society Islands. Sailing north from French Polynesia back across the equator to Hawaii, we encountered heavy weather. Completing the circle, we sailed North from Hawaii to Kodiak, Alaska. We’ve spent the last two summers working our way south from Kodiak. Our arrival in Washington two months ago marked the end of our planned 16,000 mile voyage.

While we’ll return to Debonair next summer to sail back into British Columbia and visit some of the places recommended by our friends from the Mounted Police, the trip will feel different, somehow–more summer expedition than a continuation of the longer voyage.

That longer voyage–that sometimes frightening, often exhilarating voyage–has come to an end. As is probably true for so many voyages, it was hard to go out and hard to come back. And we’re so glad for all of it.

Thank you all for your generosity along the way—for reading our words, for sharing yours with us, for your help and your enthusiasm and kindness. We’ll keep you posted.

A few more pictures from this last summer:

In the last village we visited in Alaska, we met the maker of this beautiful cedar bentwood box

O Canada!

“We’re in Canadian waters,” Jason said. Arlo had just come up from below, hair still tousled. Moving from handhold to handhold as the boat rolled, he paused and looked through the mist to a gray island covered in charcoal gray trees.

“Looks like Alaskan waters,” Arlo said.

Each day of our life on board Debonair consists of whatever tasks are required to move us forward. We raise an anchor, we set sail, we lower the anchor again in the evening. We cook and clean and paint and varnish and study the chart, and this morning, after I turned the key to start the engine at 4am and nothing happened, Jason replaced the starter relay switch.

When the sun comes out, we dry our foul weather gear.

Two years ago we arrived in Kodiak, Alaska from Hawaii. None of us had been in Alaska before, and we fell in love with the place—read Alma’s and Jason’s recent posts on whales and wolves and wood and water to see why. And so, despite our relief when the engine turned over this morning, we were sad as we motored out of Kelp Bay between dark rocks, as we watched the sky and the sea and the distant land in all their gray glory.

Alaska? British Columbia? (It’s our view this morning as we left our last Alaskan anchorage.)

Canada’s borders are not yet fully open, but as long as we remain quarantined on board, we’re allowed to transit the inside passage. While we’ll meet fewer folks than we’d like to, we’re looking forward to seeing this beautiful place. We won’t have cell phone service until we arrive in Washington State. We’ll post then as we bring the circle of our 16,000 mile Pacific crossing full circle, back to the continental United States and toward home.

Into the Woods

–by Jason

Sailing down Sumner Strait on our second day out of Petersburg, the blue sky disappearing behind a dark gray line of cloud, we saw a dark shape on the water in the distance that didn’t move like whales or porpoises or birds. We squinted and tried to see what it was as it bobbed in and out of sight behind waves. An immense log, waterlogged and floating low in the water, moved heavily and slowly, out of sync with the waves.

Since then we’ve sailed with a lookout all the time. One person is at the helm, another stands forward scanning for wood in the water. It can get thick at times. We’ll slow the boat and weave through the stumps and logs. These waterways of Southeast Alaska are all within the Tongass, the largest National Forest in the country, the largest temperate rain-forest in the world, a dense sea of deep woods almost the size of the state of Maine. Lumber operations in the Tongass lose logs from floating log pens and from rafts of logs they tow from forest to mill.

Trees fall along the watery perimeter of the Tongass and become logs at sea.

All that wood rides the strong currents of these inland waterways till they are driven up by tides and waves to get stuck high on the beach.

When we row ashore in Warren Cove, the beach just above the high tide line is piled high with a jumble of weather-whitened, bone-like wood. We climb from log to log, watching our step and watching the infinite variety of shapes: long straight-grained logs, stumps with twisting roots, chunks with dense branches embedded perpendicular to the flow of the grain of the tree, and broken bits of twig and branch and trunk and root filling the spaces among the bigger logs. Walking atop the pile the shapes stand out like animals, like ribs and shoulder-blades, like sinewy muscle, like waves.

On Coronation Island, we walk from the beach back through a margin of alders and devil’s club, into the forest. When we push our way in the trees block out the light, and the forest floor is open and thick with fallen trees rotting back into the earth, all covered in a thick moss. The moss makes the landscape feel soft, as if covered by a thick snow. There’s something in these old growth forests that shows the cycle of life so clearly that we feel we can sense the entirety of it all at once. The ground we walk on isn’t mineral, it’s the lumpy accumulation of centuries of trees, grown through with bacteria and fungi and bugs and grown over with moss. New trees grow out of old logs and stumps and blueberry bushes grow out of the crooks of living trees. Newly fallen trees from this past winter’s storms open up holes in the canopy. Where light comes in, new growth springs up.

The forests here are a mix of spruce, cedars and hemlock. Working as a boatbuilder, I’ve gotten to work with some beautiful western red cedar, Alaskan yellow cedar and Sitka spruce. They’re beautiful woods, and great for boats. The cedars are strong and flexible and rot resistant. They’re used for planking. The spruce is light yet strong. It’s used for masts and booms. Walking in this forest highlights a conflict between appreciating the beauty and quality of the wood while working with it, and feeling the beauty and power of this living forest.

Ashore one afternoon, we stand looking up at a totem, grayed from weather, backed by two enormous spruce and overgrown with a thicket of prickly devil’s club. Our backs are to the beach as we face the totem which looks out from the shoreline over the water. At the top an orca faces downward, large ovoid eyes on either side. We stand in silence. There’s a buzzing hum of bees, a bit of breeze, the distant squeak of an eagle. Tlingit and Haida people, and the people who came before them, have lived from the abundance of these forests for thousands of years. The traditional woodworking arts are being carried on by contemporary carvers. In Kasaan, we talk with Stormy Hamar who’s carving a beautiful Haida canoe in a shed in the woods. At the village carving shed in Hydaburg Matthew and Sonny show us the paddles, bentwood cedar boxes, and totems underway there.

If wood and forests wasn’t the first thing we thought of when we sailed into Southeast Alaska last summer, we quickly learned that the forest that we’re living in here is what makes this place what it is. While we’re spending most of our time on the water, we feel immersed in the forest.

Whales Doing Whale Things

–by Alma

I’m down below reading my book when Arlo looks down the companionway and yells, “Whales doing whale things!” I run up on deck, and true enough, I see spouts all around us. They’re breaching and then diving deep down, showing us their flukes, each with a distinct pattern of white and black on the underside. Suddenly we see one launch itself straight up, mouth opening around a school of fish.

A humpback whale works the perimeter of a school of herring. Other whales are below the herring, creating a net of bubbles around it.

Here, half a dozen whales emerge from the depths, mouths open to scoop up the herring they’ve herded together.

Like the last two summers here in Alaska, the three weeks that we’ve spent sailing south from Petersburg have been full of wildlife. Despite the fact that we are on a boat, we’ve seen all sorts of fascinating land animals. One day we were rowing ashore when my dad looked up and said, “that’s some sort of canine.” Just a few yards from the beach, we looked up only to realize that it was lupine. We watched the wolf for about five minutes as it walked along the shore watching us. At one point it sat down, observing us as we were it. Eventually we landed the dingy, and it ran up into the woods. Ashore, we saw many lines of tracks running up and down the beach in the hard packed sand.

Each paw print measured five inches long, prompting us to remind each other that the bear spray we all carried worked on wolves too, should the need arise.

The stick is just over five inches long.

In addition to the wolf, we have seen bears looking for mussels along the rocky shores, we’ve seen deer, and then there was an odd one. We were walking along the beach at coronation island when we heard the most bizarre noise. It was a combination of a bark, a warbled screech, and a donkey braying, if you can imagine what that might sound like. We came to a little stream and looked up it to see two birds that resembled oversize Great Blue Herons. When they saw us they went up into the woods, continuing to make their strange call. I had never realized that there was an animal capable of making a sound like that, but there they were—Sandhill Cranes!

In addition to the land animals, we have of course seen many sea mammals. There have been otters carrying babies, Dahl’s porpoises playing under our bow, and seals that pop their heads up as we row by, as well as the magnificent whales. Despite the hundreds of whales we have seen over the years, we can still get blown away when we see them. They breach, sometimes propelling their entire body out of the water and landing in a huge splash.

This humpback breached 36 times before we stopped counting and sailed on. It was breaching about ten times each minute, and ten minutes later when we’d left it a mile behind us, we could see that it was still going strong.

The whales also work together to bubble net and pull the schools of fish tighter and tighter until they shoot straight up right in the middle, mouths open to catch the fish only to sink back down and do it again.

Here in Alaska it seems like if you just watch in any direction for long enough you’ll see something that you never could have guessed you would see. We have no idea what we’ll see as we head down through British Columbia to Puget Sound, but we expect it will be spectacular!

We’ll leave you with this awesome video Arlo took. Enjoy!

Our gymnastic whale.

Looks Like Rain

Jason flew into Petersburg, Alaska two weeks ago, and five days ago he met Arlo and Alma and I on the wet tarmac at the Petersburg airport. The transition from our lives on land to our lives on Debonair happens physically the moment we step aboard, but it takes more time to make the mental and emotional shifts. And it takes work.

Although it’s been raining almost continuously since we arrived, we’ve been working in our foul weather gear and under tarps, and now Debonair’s systems are up and running, the electronics are functioning, her rig is up, and her lockers and tanks are full.

Alma, who got her first Covid vaccine shot in California, finished the job here in Alaska.

Arlo got away from the work on *Debonair* to check shrimp pots with new friends.

We’re getting used to the rhythms of living aboard again and we’re itching to get away. We leave Petersburg tomorrow, heading south through Wrangell Narrows toward Prince of Wales and Kuiu Islands., and, eventually, to British Columbia.

Thanks so much for reading! We’ll post more in the coming weeks. Do send any questions you have (about the boat or the place or anything else) our way.

We’ll leave you with a final image of fishermen repairing nets–a multiday process. Nobody stops for rain here.

This is a salmon seiner. You can see the nets cascading from the hydraulic winch on the boat and down the length of the dock. The near corner of the dock is weighted down by the lead weights on the nets. Each of the men on the dock is using a big net needle to repair the net.

Summer Close Out

–posted by Caitlin + Jason, with photos from the whole crew

Our little dog Moby is glad to have us home again, and we are adjusting well enough to life back ashore. But at first it has seemed odd to have so much space and strange to be around so many people.

Since we posted in Seward, a couple of months ago, we’ve only been to a few towns: first, there was Whittier (population 400, stay of 6 hours), then Yakutat (population 600, stay of 2 days), and Pelican (population 100, stay of 1 hour). Finally , we arrived in Sitka (population 8,000, stay a few days), where we’d planned to leave Debonair for the winter. On finding that the available slips wouldn’t work for Debonair, we pushed on to Petersburg (population 4,000, stay, for Debonair, all winter long). Here she is, covered in her slip in Petersburg, awaiting our return.

So if our last couple months were less town, they were certainly more ice, sky, and mountain, more sea, wood and rock. Back in smoky Alameda (population 80,000, stay for us is all winter), we are feeling thankful for the abundance of those elements in our lives this summer.

We leave you with a few more photos to close out the summer. Thank you for reading and connecting over the past few months of our voyage. We hope you are well wherever you are.

–with love, Caitlin, Jason, Arlo & Alma

In the South Pacific we learned to swim with sharks, and this summer we learned to hike with bears.

We loved hiking–and talking and fishing and eating and adventuring and so much more–with the crew of S/V Dogbark, whom we first met way back in Hawaii.

We swam only a couple of times, here in the coldest, most perfect swimming hole we found up an unnamed creek.

The bears were swimming too. We were surprised enough seeing a couple black bear cruising past Debonair where we lay at anchor in Prince William Sound.

But then we saw this grizzly bear. In this picture Griz pauses, a mile from shore, to check us out as we motor along down a fjord.

Here’s the requisite dead fish picture–a halibut Arlo caught right after we arrived in Southeast Alaska.

And then there’s this lake outside of Yakutat, where it was too foggy to even see the glacier that spills into it.

The glacial lake empties into a river that empties into the sea.

The coast of the Gulf of Alaska is all mountain and glacier. In fact the second and third highest mountains in North America (behind only Denali) rise here from the sea.

There’s not always a lot of wind in Southeast Alaska (although sometimes there’s too much). Here we are fueling up in Pelican.

We sail whenever there is wind.

And when we do sail, it is glorious.

But no matter how good the sailing, standing watch is always better with homemade pizza.

Listen to This

— by Jason

Tomorrow morning we’re scheduled to relaunch Debonair at the boatyard here in Sitka. We’d hoped to work on her out of the water for about a week, but it’s been raining and it’s forecast to continue raining for the foreseeable future, so we cut the haul out short. It was gratifying to work as a family—a team, a crew—on the boat in the yard this year. With limited time, we all worked hard, got dirty and got done what we needed to get done.

After launching, we’ll push on towards the little village of Petersburg. We’ll move pretty quickly through some beautiful parts of Southeast Alaska, so that we can get there and have time to downrig and winterize the boat. After last winter’s punishing snow, we’ll cover her this year to try to protect her better from the elements.

We’ll send another post from Petersburg about what we’ve been up to since we left Prince William Sound. (The short version is: Alaska continues to amaze us.) For now, I wanted to give you the link to a podcast of a conversation that Caitlin had with a colleague of hers. The conversation begins as a discussion about courage and ends up being about life and challenges and risk and considering your values and how to follow them. We listened to it as a family tonight, and I know I’m biased, but I loved it. For me, what Caitlin talks about in that conversation, and how she says it, is the clearest, most complete and thoughtful distillation of the important parts of what we’re trying to do with our family and this boat.

Listen to Caitlin on the Bright Morning Podcast

We’ll sail through Olga Strait, Neva Strait, Sergius Narrows, Peril Strait, Chatham Strait and Frederick Sound on the way to Petersburg. Tonight, Arlo said he was looking forward to getting underway again. It made me glad to hear that, to be reminded of that. Here in the final days of this summer, as Caitlin and I turn toward the challenges of putting the boat to bed and getting ourselves back into our life at home, we have one more little passage together here in Alaska.

Abundance

— Arlo

As I write this, it’s wet and cold outside, but it’s hot and steamy below, and the pressure cooker emits quick bursts of steam, finishing the canning process for eight little jars of salmon. After just over two idyllic weeks in Prince William Sound, we come to the middle of our second season in Alaska, and we continue to be amazed by the abundance of natural resources in this part of the world. Consuming these resources has been one long highlight of my summer.

Alaska has a variety of tasty fish, and we continually try, with mixed results, to make a dent in the local fish populations. Earlier this summer, we had enough good luck to catch a large King Salmon and some assorted Lingcod and Rockfish. More recently, on my birthday, we happened to be in a cove where there were plentiful Salmon running. As my dad rowed our little dinghy along the edges of the river at the head of the cove, I stood in the stern looking out across the water for the telltale signs of a school of Sockeye or Humpie Salmon: fins breaking the surface, little ripples in the water, or the forms of quick moving fish beneath the surface. I cast, and then as I retrieved my lure through the fish, my line came tight and the rod doubled over. Thirty seconds later we hauled aboard a beautiful, gleaming, flapping Sockeye Salmon, eventually catching four of these magnificent fish.

Abundant salmon.

Because of this abundance of (mostly) easily caught fish, Alaska supports a huge commercial fishing fleet; Alaska’s commercial fishers alone produce over half of the nation’s seafood.

Abundant salmon.

Beyond fish, there are plenty of other sources of food that you don’t have to go out of your way to get. When we go hiking through the ever present scrubby forests, scraggly spruces, marshy, grassy meadows, and craggy ridges, there are many plants and fruits that you can grab as you go. Some of these we already knew what to do with, like blueberries, salmonberries, wild mushrooms, rockweed, and dandelion greens. The rockweed and dandelion greens in particular have seen a lot of usage on our boat, making appearances in everything from pasta salad to a vegetable stir-fry. Other plants that we had never tried before, like fiddleheads, the curled heads of ferns, are plentiful, and, as we found, are good in soup.

Abundant rockweed.

Abundant wild greens.

Alaska’s abundant resources also include minerals and trees, which support mining and logging industries. While tourism is relatively new to Alaska, Alaska’s abundant trees and minerals have been extracted for over a century. Often, the bays that we anchor in have old ruins of mines, mining camps, logging roads, sawmills, and ships that remain from industries of the first half on the 20th century. These forgotten ruins are slowly being overcome by vegetation and rust. I particularly find it fun to explore these old ruins, stripping anything that might be of value to me, mostly in the form of the precious resources of rusty bolts, nails, and other assorted metal parts.

With all of these tantalizing food sources (and rusty bolt sources) it is extremely tempting to stay in Prince William Sound longer. However, we are planning on moving along across the Gulf of Alaska. We may depart day after tomorrow after a nasty low pressure weather system passes. We’ll be bound for the Alaskan panhandle, and I’m pretty sure that there will be plenty of fish, dandelion greens, and rusty bolts on the other side of this passage as well.

Abundant beauty.

Editor’s note: In addition to the pleasure we get indulging ourselves in the richness of Alaskan nature, we’ve marveled at the interconnected web of this abundance. The same day Arlo caught the salmon from the dinghy, we observed two brown bears fishing for salmon on the same river, and bald eagles tussling over salmon scraps the bears left behind. As Arlo explains, Alaska’s natural abundance is impressive. As we sail Prince William Sound 31 years after the tragic Exxon Valdez oil spill in these waters, we all continue to be concerned about the impacts of mining, logging and fishing, and the ability of this beautiful abundant ecosystem to survive. (Jason)

Alaska, Again.

–Caitlin + Jason

Face-masked and carrying duffels of food, the four of us flew from Oakland to Kodiak on June 1. As much as we were looking forward to reuniting with Debonair and to resuming our voyage as a family, it was hard to leave California as the protests were gaining powerful momentum. We haven’t had access to any news in two weeks, and we wonder how you and the world around you are.

In the meantime, we are plunged in other worlds and states of being here. The winter in Kodiak, one of the snowiest in years, was hard on Debonair. We arrived at the head of her dock by taxi on a rainy evening and set to unearthing our bunks from under piles of sails. Water had found its way into every crevice on deck and ice had opened some of those crevices into leaks. Our bunk was far too wet to sleep on that first night.

Clear late evening skies across St Paul’s boat harbor in Kodiak.

After a week of long work days for all four of us, and after being screened for Covid, we came out of quarantine to fill our lockers with provisions and pick up tools and supplies.

A leak in the galley left our ancient propane stove rusted beyond recognition. Caitlin rows a new stove home to Debonair. Alma assists.

Jason installs the new stove. Alma gets the assist again.

Alma’s back on deck, using a block plane to shape a cutting board for the galley.

We didn’t manage to repair our electric windlass (still hauling the chain by hand), but it was time to go. We said good bye to kind friends we made in Kodiak and sailed for Afognak, the island just to the north. It was a relief to be underway again, the boat moving through and over the water in the way that’s become so familiar to us.

Sailing toward our final Afognak anchorage, the breeze began to die. We ghosted along. Then, in the quiet, we started to hear a great distant roar, which resolved, as we approached the shore, into the barking and groaning of hundreds of sea lions. Humpback whales surfaced ahead of us, and then all around us–gliding, feeding, releasing great sighing breaths, and then diving. Behind us, they started spyhopping and slapping the water with their fins. As if it were one big party, bald eagles soared onto the scene, and tufted puffins skittered off the water ahead of us. Arctic terns dove again and again as the sun, still high in the sky, fell a little lower. We felt like we were being given a great welcome back to this wild place after our time away, after the challenges of this year, after the work to get Debonair sailing again.

After most of an hour drifting under the sheer cliffs among the whales, we started the engine, motored into Tonki Bay, and dropped the hook to sleep before the next day’s long trip across to the Kenai Peninsula.

Leaving Afognak bound for the Kenai Peninsula. Sunrise at 0400.

This coast of the Kenai is true wilderness. We are so far from anybody here. Snow-capped peaks and spruce-covered islets slide by as we sail through fjords. We spent one day motoring up to the head of a fjord to meet the Aialik Glacier, a very active glacier flowing into Aialik Bay from the Harding Ice Field. We drifted for an hour in the slush ice and listened in awe to the booming and cracking of the glacier.

Arlo fending off larger “bergy bits” (Bergy bits not pictured here. Some were hazards.)

Due to Covid concerns, we aren’t using the showers at the boat harbors this year, so we took advantage of a windless and relatively warm day in Tonsina Bay, our first anchorage in the Kenai, and set up a bit of a spa in the sun on the foredeck. You might disagree with our use of the term, but to us it was a spa, and we took turns with pots of hot water and soap and thick dry towels, and all was good.

Catching this King Salmon did even more for Arlo’s sense of well-being.

When a low pressure system was forecast to come through a few days ago, we took cover in one of the few anchorages on this part of the coast—the depths are generally too great for anchoring. We were glad to turn a sharp corner just past the entrance into Crater Bay and find almost 360 degree protection from the wind and, as a stunning bonus, two 500’ waterfalls spilling down steep walls. We learned pretty quickly, though, that the geography of this particular cove, instead of protecting us from the easterly wind, increased that wind and directed it at us from different directions in a meteorological phenomena called a williwaw.

Through the night and the next morning, as we strained at our anchor, the wind alternately gusted from the north, driving against our starboard bow and healing us hard to port, and from the west, pummeling our port bow. In the strongest gusts, we would hear a seething roar as we watched whitecaps race toward us ahead of the wind; as the gust increased to 50 knots and more, it blew the tops of the waves up in great, white, wedge-shaped spumes of spray. Wearing exposure suits against the wind and horizontal rain, we went on deck to secure halyards and lash down flogging sail covers. The wind was powerful on deck—you couldn’t look into it–but it was reassuring to see that, despite the forces, Debonair and her anchor tackle were keeping us safe.

In the morning the wind flipped our little dinghy, Pepita. She was mostly submerged, and it would take concerted teamwork to bring her aboard safely in these conditions. As the gusts allowed, Caitlin and Alma brought Pepita alongside, Jason used a brief lull to climb into the dinghy to attach a lifting rig, and Arlo handled the halyard at the winch. After she was secured on deck, we felt as if someone had been looking out for us. We were lucky that the oars were still wedged in under the thwarts where we’d left them.

There’s some recovery after 18 hours like that. Exposure suits need to dry, sail covers need to be resewn, hearts need to return to their normal resting state. Though the wind was down today, we stayed put, running the diesel heater to dry out, eating pancakes to start the day and baking cookies to end it, reading, writing and appreciating the quiet and the stillness.

We’re looking forward to sailing into Seward soon, where we’ll get news of the outside world and post this news of ours. We are thankful for our boat, for each other, for this beautiful place and the opportunity to see it, for the welcome we’ve received from Alaskans, and for you all–wherever you are–and for the good work you are doing.

A few days ago we were all lying on a great granite erratic on the shore of Midnight Cove, soaking in the sun, thinking our own thoughts. Arlo moved his head from Jason’s boot, which he’d been using as a pillow. “I like thinking,” he said, “that there’s nothing but earth between me and the center of the earth, and there’s nothing but sky between me and the ends of the universe.” It’s useful to be away from some of the distractions, the noise of life ashore, to remember our place in the world.

We made it to Seward! Here you can see Debonair here at the transient wharf among the commercial fishing boats. It’s quiet in a town that’s usually full of summer tourists.Despite the rain, we’re enjoying this little Alaska town, and especially the chance to wash our clothes and run on trails in the woods

Sheltering in Place

Jason and Arlo Reading-in-Place in the backyard.

Today is Day 11 of California’s Shelter in Place order as the result of the Covid-19 pandemic, and we’re doing just that. We’re healthy and, most of the time, in good spirits. In some ways our time on the boat prepared us well for this sequestration. We can stock a galley and make do with what we have in our lockers, we’re used to filling large chunks of unstructured time, and spending a lot of time together–and away from others–in a confined space isn’t new to us. If you want to skip our thoughts about this strange time and hear more about sailing, scroll to the end on this post to see the link to the cool podcast about our voyage. Otherwise keep reading.

In a lot of ways sheltering in place is easier than going to sea. Ashore we can visit Costco, go online, and walk through the house without bracing ourselves for a big sea. In other ways, though, it’s harder. Navigating grocery store aisles and consuming the internet’s incessant bad news bring their own challenges. Screens are connecting us, but they’re not making us feel good. The way forward often isn’t as clear here as it is at sea, and there’s the added difficulty that none of us chose this particular voyage.

But there are real similarities between life here and ocean voyaging beyond what’s obvious, beyond the alone-ness, the boredom, beyond the underlying threat that something could go mortally wrong. Both ways of living offer the pleasures of moving more slowly and of being with family. In both settings, we are continually adjusting to changing context, finding that fears and anxieties walk alongside opportunities for making do and ingenuity. In each setting there is the good in focusing on food and shelter and health and the safety of the people you love, of focusing on what matters. We’re all feeling the pain of this pandemic differently of course, and some folks are under the greatest of stresses. Our hearts go out to everyone who is struggling now.

Then of course, there’s school at home. If our year of school at sea offers us anything here, it is a reminder that the education we offer our children is so much bigger than the classes we call school, and that how we are in these strange times is part of a powerful education. Talking together as a family about where we are getting our news or about who we need to reach out to, we are learning. Talking about how to stay connected and how not to, about opportunities for creativity and political action, about caring for our bodies is an education. When we think about what feels most important, daily schedules and schoolwork can feel less stressful.

As we settle into this, we are finding our way. Arlo’s been making his own arrows with materials he finds around the house, learning to drive, and running every day. Alma’s been reading as much as she can, memorizing lines for a play she hopes will be staged this spring, and taking bike rides. We, Jason and Caitlin, have each lost some work, but we’re also both lucky to be able to continue to do the rest of our work from home. We’re working to focus our scattered brains so we can get back to the woodblock printing we haven’t been doing. And we’re all still hoping in spite of the odds that in a couple of months it will be possible to return to Alaska, where, under a layer of snow and with newly blistered paint, Debonair is waiting for us in her berth in the Kodiak boat harbor.

We’re keeping our fingers crossed. We’re hoping for so many reasons for the crazy political seas to calm, for the curves to flatten, for healthy folks to stay healthy, for the sick to recover quickly, for all who are struggling emotionally and financially and physically to find ways forward, for everybody, for all of us, to be as connected as we want to be, and above all to be well.

Although there seems to be no dearth of media to entertain us in our seclusion, we offer this episode of the Out the Gate Sailing podcast–an interview Ben Shaw recorded with the four of us in January. It’s long, and our voices sure sound funny, but we think it captures a lot of what’s important to us about our voyages. Enjoy.

Sending you love in these crazy times.