The sailing adventures of SV Meriwether and her crew
Day 5: 36 nautical miles. We weighed anchor at peaceful Tuna Point, with just this cabin with the tractor tire dock overlooking us. It seems unoccupied (by the living anyway), but I swear the door wasn’t cracked open when we pulled in the night before. We’ve been choosing anchorages by pure convenience—whatever’s a quick stop from our route, in and...
Day 4: 45 leisurely nautical miles motoring in light headwind. We planned departure at 7am to motor up to Seymore Narrows. Known for its extreme currents which can reach reach up to 16 knots, everybody gathers at its head just before slack tide, to make the transit through. First thing, we ran into a snag…literally. Our anchor chain was extremely...
Day 3: 62 nautical miles, almost all by sail. We departed Lasqueti Island at 6am to catch the last of the slow current out and anchored at Hornby Island until the tide changed. Weather forecasts predicted a downwind sail up the Straight of Georgia, building from 10 to 20 knots by the evening, and for once, the forecasts were right....
It was sort of a perfect first day of our transit through to AK, which made me ask multiple times, “Why didn’t we just to this in the first place?” We would have been in AK two weeks ago! The forecast told us that we should expect to be motoring the whole time, but we had wind for much of...
Yes! We are re-attempting the passage to Alaska, this time via a “hybrid inside passage” which will include following the east coast of Vancouver Island to its northern tip, then sailing north, across 300+ miles of open water, to get to Alaska. Once again, we can be followed via our maps page which shows our location in real time (along...
We had one more week before our planned re-departure towards Alaska and we did not want to spend it in the same place as last week (Friday Harbor). All the major repairs and provisions are complete so we chose to get away from civilization and get a little relaxing on. We decided on a return trip to Garrison Bay at...
Rested and recovered, we are ready to get back to our lives living and traveling on our boat. Already supplies were being ordered and shipped into Friday Harbor – not only replacements to our broken items, but also some new items after lessons learned in the wide open ocean. We had some new estimated dates to start our hybrid inside...
Meriwether and her crew (we) made it back to San Juan Island to start our week long recovery process after last two weeks of preparing for and failing at a Pacific passage. Just getting the boat back into ‘living mode’ was a whole day process. Then came the shopping for a new fridge unit. Of course, our previous unit was...
12 hours is what it took. 12 sweet hours of undisturbed sleep. I haven’t slept that long ever in my life. We woke to a bright and beautiful Canadian cove right outside our salt coated portlights. Bald eagles were soaring above the green pines on shore. The very land that we could not legally set foot on. Life was certainly...
Kerri took the first watch of our first overnight at sea. From 10 PM to 1 AM she ensured all was well as we sailed west (with a smidge of south) with only the moon and an audio book to keep her company. She did tell me that she passed by a few ships during those hours, but I can...
