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.

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.

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.