The sailing adventures of SV Meriwether and her crew
With the Canadian border closed to all non-essential traffic, the stress to leave Bellingham by our arbitrarily-set-by-us-date has been released. Although there has been no rush to complete the slew of projects, they do keep getting accomplished at a good pace. I even took a few days – alright, a full week – off major projects to give my back...
We got back to Meriwether a month ago, just as people started taking this whole virus thing seriously. Since Kerri and I already live on the fringe of society, distancing ourselves from society is not much of a burden on us. We have been practicing social distancing for some time now, virus or not. Combine that with the fact that...
This year we have planned to make the trip North via the Inside Passage to Ketchikan or Petersburg Alaska. The route will bring us up into Canada for our first International border crossing before weaving our way through the coastal islands of British Columbia. It is more than 700 miles of sailing before the end of our year, even without any...
The next few years of our life is not going to be conducive to Moose’s happiness. With long days of motoring up the inside passage to Alaska, and then leaving the boat up there during the winters while we escape to other countries, Moose would have had to suffer through multiple flights and long periods of dog-sitting with random people....
This year we were quite pleased to get back to the boat by the beginning of March. Mostly, we just wanted to get to work on all the projects we had compiled during the 2019 sailing season so we could begin our 2020 season as early as possible. The weather has been laying pretty nicely so far. Sure it has...
Kerri and I have returned to Meriwether after three months in the van visiting with our land-based nomadic friends in the South West. The land-vacation didn’t come easy, with a horrific month long breakdown that trapped us in Las Vegas (of all places). Eventually we escaped and got to all the visiting of friends, which was great. However, by the...
Well, we did it. We went from a being land based nomads to sea-based, learned to sail, and finished off our first full sailing season… all in a single year. Not that we intended to rush it at all, but looking back at where we were and what was in our minds just 14 months ago, it’s pretty crazy where...
T’was a truly angry looking wind that would be arriving from the south by Saturday morning and we had no protection from the south at Doe Bay. With land directly to our north nothing would be less comfortable than spending a night or two with heavy winds pushing us towards shore with no idea how well maintained the moorings are...
One of the few places on our list in the San Juan’s that we had not yet visited was Doe Bay. We were told months ago about the resort here, with a great restaurant and hot springs to die for. Since we had recently decided to end our 2019 sailing season the following week, we didn’t want to head further...
We couldn’t decide where to go after English Camp, ending up choosing a return to Friday Harbor to restock the fridge and firewood. The route would consist of a few miles backtrack and more motoring than sailing. We did get an hour or so of sailing in that day… close hauled, and tacking, of course – but eventually the wind...
