–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.
