Author: Kristen

A quick update:

We’re back on land! We’ve been in Seattle for a few (busy) weeks — long enough for the kids to start school and hockey practice, but not long enough to tire of the little joys of toasted bread and refrigerator ice dispensers. Flyer is hauled out and sitting on blocks in Seward, Alaska, where Steve spent the past week winterizing the boat and cleaning up the mess we left after rushing to pack four carry-ons, nine oversized bags, and one cat.

We’re already planning a spring (snowy?) trip back to the Kenai Peninsula and a summer in Prince William Sound, but for now we’re going to try to document the last weeks of our year aboard Flyer. We’ve mostly thought of this blog as something the four of us will be able to look back at years from now, but are so thankful to all of you who read along and gave us more reasons to keep recording. So, back to bears and glaciers…

After leaving the airborne volcanic ash in Geographic Harbor, we crossed Shelikof Strait and decided to keep moving through the passes between Kodiak and Afognak islands while the current was favorable. It was dark when we finally tucked into a little anchorage on the north end of Kodiak Island. The kids were asleep, so only Steve and I shared the delight of smelling evergreen trees all around us before we could see them. At home, this smell is so pervasive that it doesn’t even register. After months away, it was overwhelming. 

The next morning, we docked at the harbor in Kodiak right in the middle of the commercial fishing fleet. (Those smells aren’t quite as delightful.) 

One of the first things we noticed in Kodiak was the wealth of public signage. The sidewalk next to the harbor is lined with interpretive signs that help identify the various types of fishing boats and fish. Many of the buildings in town have big black and white photos of local fisherman with links to a web site where you can hear their stories about the rise and fall of the Kodiak king crab fishery. Big Ray’s, the Alaskan outdoor chain, has a whole wall dedicated the Kodiak store’s history including the year they sold more Carhartts than any other dealer in the world.

We already had the feeling that people in Kodiak take pride in their community — and find funding for public projects — when we stopped in at the Kodiak History Museum, a little gem of a museum in the oldest, remaining building in Alaska. The docent was eager to give us a full chronology of the place from Aleut settlers all the way through to the Coast Guard base (the largest in the U.S.). She also suggested some nice walks and advised that it costs $200/day to rent a car through Hertz, but only $20 to rent a truck at UHaul.  

After being stuck on the boat, Steve and I were desperate to get out and walk. James and Paul were less enthusiastic, but ultimately declared the rock at the north end of Near Island the 2nd best place to sit in Alaska.

We spent a sunny afternoon at Fort Abercrombie State Park, another beautiful spot for a walk. We didn’t make it to the Military History Museum, but saw plenty of old fortifications along the trails.

One cloudy morning, Mike and Alisa (the sailor/biologists we met in Sand Point) picked us up at the harbor and drove us out to Womens Bay. Their older son was home from college and joined us on the walk up to Heitman Lake, where their younger son helps to maintain the trails. Elias humored me with stories from Dartmouth (our shared alma mater) and humored Paul with stories from Bristol Bay, where he’d spent the summer working on a salmon gillnetter.

Walking the narrow trail with wet grasses brushing our legs and soaking our feet, I listened to Paul and Elias trade fish stories and pictured the alternate life Paul might have had if he’d grown up fishing, hunting, and surfing in Kodiak. We really haven’t indulged in much wistful thinking this year, probably because we’ve been busy with the basics (food, water, weather, safety), but after the hike I re-read Cheryl Strayed’s Dear Sugar column about the paths we don’t choose, sister lives we’ll never know, ghost ships that won’t carry us. As we get closer to home, it’s hard not to imagine some phantom version of our family continuing on, sailing off along a different route.

Of course, the real version of our family quickly got back to the practicalities of life on the boat. The engine realignment in Dutch Harbor solved some, but not all of the water leaking through the prop shaft. With his typical mix of open-minded deliberation and pure brute force, Steve had quickly rigged up a makeshift pump; consulted every expert (his dad, friends, mechanics, the Boreal owners forum, ChatGPT); adjusted the shaft from the freezing cold water several times; and ordered a new prop seal to be delivered to Kodiak. By now, we completely take for granted that Steve will fix anything that goes wrong on the boat, but we did notice that even local fisherman were impressed to see Steve diving in St. Paul Harbor to replace the shaft seal while Flyer was still in the water.

At this point, all our thoughts turned to where and how we’d leave the boat for the winter. Mike and Alisa had been so welcoming and generous with advice and local knowledge — one of many reasons we seriously considered doubling back to haul out in Kodiak after going to visit a couple of glaciers in Kenai. One of their best recommendations was the lagoon anchorage at Long Island, a beautiful spot close to Kodiak made completely magical by an evening of perfect calm. We took about a thousand photos of the sky mirrored in the lagoon. 

Before heading back across Shelikof Strait to the Kenai Penisula, we spent a couple of nights in Kitoi Bay on Afognak Island where we saw a lifetime’s worth of bears thanks to the Kitoi Hatchey.  

The hatchery itself is impressive — and generously offers tours to anyone who shows up between 8am and 12pm. Each year, they harvest and incubate 32 million chum salmon eggs and 300 million pink salmon eggs. (Only about 2% of those survive to be released into saltwater.) In Washington State, hatcheries clip adipose fins so hatchery salmon can be identified if caught. We were amazed to learn that hatcheries in Alaska essentially create bar codes in salmon ear bones by changing water temperature and salinity at precise times to stress the eggs and create unique patterns of bone growth. 

We happened to visit when the chums were running and pinks were starting to return, so the hatchery set a series of nets to keep the chums in and pinks out. There were fish everywhere! Fishing outside the nets was almost literally like shooting fish in a barrel. Paul snagged us a couple of pinks for dinner.

Of course, we weren’t the only ones catching the returning salmon. At low tide, the area around the hatchery’s fish ladder is a grocery store for bears. We saw more than 20 at a time gorging themselves, ripping open salmon bellies, slurping eggs, and throwing back the rest. With all this food, the bears couldn’t have cared less about the humans taking photos and videos of them. It was incredible to get so close and to observe the bears’ social dynamics in this not-entirely-wild setting. We spent a long time watching a mama bear who was hesitant to leave her small cubs alone on shore. When she finally waded far enough to catch her first salmon, we all erupted in cheers.

We shared our time in Kitoi Bay with Erik and Viveka of Embla, a wonderful Swedish couple who sailed from Hawaii to Alaska just after we did. One day, while Viveka was working — editing a book on cold weather sailing — Erik gave us a Google Maps tour of Sweden and showed us some of the buildings he’s worked on as an engineer, including one in the middle of a lake that was constructed during the winter so materials could be driven in over the ice. Erik and Viveka also have very nice zoom lenses and got some great footage of the bear gluttony:

The weather window appeared to be closing for the passage west, so we left Kitoi Bay early in the morning and anchored at Nuka Island later that night, 100nm to the northeast of Kitoi. Our arrival at Nuka Island was our first taste of anchoring in the Kenai Peninsula, where the sea floor is typically steep, deep, rocky, and kelp-covered. It takes a lot of rode and a little bit of faith. We got pretty comfortable setting out most of our 100 meter chain in almost every anchorage.

We were up early again the next morning, hoping to make it to Northwestern Glacier before a period of rain set in. We were not disappointed.

What is it about staring at a sloooooowly moving wall of ice? Tourists pay $250 per person to take an 8-hour tour of the glaciers near Seward. It sounds ridiculous, but it really is awe-inspiring. Even Pelle seemed impressed — or at least excited about all the seals, cormorants, and kittiwakes that hang out near the terminus.

In Mexico or French Polynesia, an aluminum sailboat feels a bit out of place. But Flyer was right at home in Alaska surrounded by chunks of glacial ice. Steve drove right into a field of bergy bits so the kids could scoop up ice for drinks, and we didn’t worry at all when ice clinked against the hull.

The next day we continued on to Holgate glacier, then enormous Aialik. We spent hours bobbing around, waiting for the glacier to calve, and cheering like maniacs whenever ice broke off and crashed thunderously into the water, sending waves out to the boat. James became convinced that the glacier only calved when he got tired of waiting and looked away, so he tried to trick it into action by calling out, “Oh, Glaicer! I’m about to go inside!”

The scale of these things is nearly impossible to capture or even comprehend. The face of Aialik glacier is up to 600 feet tall and fractured into surreal, almost chaotic shapes. I had to keep reminding myself that what we could see from the boat was just the tiny tip of a massive river of frozen ice.

We spent a few nights anchored in view of Aialik and loved hearing the sounds of the glacier creaking and crashing in the dark. One morning, Paul pulled up the line he’d left in the water overnight and found that he’d hooked a big, slimy cod. In one of life’s strange and delightful coincidences, the NYT Cooking newsletter that day featured baked fish and chips.

It didn’t take much time for us to recognize the many tour boats that run out of Seward. We even started to understand some of the lingo they use on channel 72 for navigation and wildlife scouting: “fur balls” are groups of sea otters; a “CMG” is a mountain goat; and “Chicken Pass” is a narrow shortcut between Resurrection Bay and Aialik Bay.

By far, the best radio calls we got were from our buddy Kevin’s friend, Brent, who spends summers running a fast boat around Kenai Fjords National Park. Brent recognized us on AIS and, as we crossed paths over the next few days, called to recommend great anchorages, hikes, places to see whales, and spots to catch fish. When we made our way to Seward and finally met Brent in person, he gifted us a huge king salmon he’d caught earlier that day. (He and his partner, Emily, have continued to help — feeding Steve more salmon and giving him a place to stay in Seward while winterizing the boat.)

We have a lot of work to do to balance the karmic scales after all the kindnesses shown to us this year. In a very small step, we shared Brent’s salmon with Erik and Viveka of Embla, who had arrived in Seward before us and gone out of their way to help find a spot on one of the harbor’s first-come-first-serve guest docks — a seemingly haphazard system made chaotic by the influx of fishing boats for the annual Seward Silver Salmon Derby.

Seward was the first place we stopped in Alaska that’s connected to the highway system. It’s a two-hour drive from Anchorage, which is what ultimately tipped the scales in favor of leaving Flyer in Seward for the winter. We spent a couple of days getting to know the town and making plans to haul the boat, and then headed back out to Aialik Bay for our last week, which included Steve’s 50th birthday.

We would have loved to sail around Alaska with our Alaskan buddies aboard Dark Star, but made do with visiting some of the places that have been important to them. We saw the octopus at the SeaLife Center in Seward and checked out a lodge Kevin built in one of his many past lives. Kenai Fjords Glacier Lodge is an exclusive, remote place, but anyone is welcome to anchor nearby and hike up their trail to a ridge with an incredible view of Pedersen Glacier.

In another one of life’s strange and delightful coincidences, we passed one other person on this hike, stopped to say hello, and discovered that she lives exactly one block away from us in Seattle. What a big, small world.

Steve intends to write something about packing up the boat and maybe eventually we’ll collect our thoughts about the experience as a whole, but those last few weeks in Alaska were surprisingly sweet. We had made it. No one had fallen overboard or needed stitches. We didn’t lose the cat. The boat (mostly) held together. We knew we’d soon be back to the comforts of home, so the discomforts of the boat didn’t seem like such a big deal. If anything, we savored them.

We spent our last night at anchor in Bulldog Cove with a view of Bear Glacier, surrounded by sea birds and otters, messing around on deck as usual. I think it’s a safe bet that we’ll be back there next summer.

We’ve been making our way east along the Alaska Peninsula, enduring the rain, enjoying some sun, and trying to eat our way through our remaining stores.

Here are some more scenes from Southwest Alaska…

When Short Passages Feel Long

The 3 day/280nm sail from Unalaska Island in the Aleutian Islands to Sand Point in the Shumagin Islands was pretty rough, mostly because the weather forecasting around here is inconsistent at best. We were constantly having to adjust our expectations — and our sails. 

The wind gusted, died, and swung around. We turned the engine off, then back on, then off again. We reefed once, twice, shook both reefs out, then reefed again. Approaching the designated fairway for commercial ships using Unimak Pass to cross between the Pacific and the Bering Sea, we had to turn 90 degrees to let a huge container ship pass us and then fall in behind them to avoid another massive ship headed in the opposite direction. In the middle of the night, sailing downwind wing-on-wing, the wind dropped below 3kts and the boat spun around 180 degrees. We got righted and then it happned again. Arrrrggghhhh.

We were passing a group of tiny islands north of Sanak in the dark when we started to hear birds in the sky. Then we saw them illuminated by our running lights. They seemed drawn to the light — and then stunned when they found themselves in the cockpit of a sailboat. Steve had to scoop three of them up off the deck and back into the sky. It’s amazing how much a little thing like that will lift your spirits.

Sand Point Wayfinding

In our limited experience, it’s not always easy to locate things in Sand Point, Alaska (pop. 578). The business identified as The Shop on Google Maps is called Legendary Pizza in real life (and on Facebook), and may be open even when the neon “Open” sign is off. It’s one of three restaurants in town. There also two grocery stores: a smaller one operated by Trident Seafoods and a larger one with no obvious front door. (Steve texted me from inside to tell me how to get in.) But why spend time and money on a legible entry and circulation sequence? This is another remote, friendly fishing town where everyone already knows how to get into the store and probably needs to save their money for groceries. 

All of these items cost $13 in Sand Point: a pint of strawberries, a pound of ground beef, a bag of Lay’s potato chips, a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. 

Midnight Dinner

Derelof Harbor is another one of those magical places you can only access by boat. The sea stacks and rock arches are dramatic. You can wander the collapsing ghost town of Unga village. And every cast brings up a fish. 

We shared the anchorage with Mike and Alisa of Galactic, who settled in Kodiak after spending 10 years sailing around the world with their two sons. They’ve been to most of the places we’ve been and to most of the places we want to go. They’re also marine biologists who study fish populations, so they could tell Paul exactly where to fish and which lures to use — they even gave him a couple of circle hooks for halibut. We enjoyed their company so much that we completely lost track of time and ended up eating dinner (halibut they’d given us) at 11:30pm in full daylight.

Shumagin Geography

The landscape leaving the Shumagin Islands was impressive — lots of rocky sea cliffs with green tops. This is what we imagine New Zealand looks like, though Google thought these images were from Cape Horn and Scotland.

Paul Island

We spent two nights at Kupreanof Harbor between Paul Island and Jacob Island waiting out the weather. It’s a pretty spot, but it rained so much while we were there that we actually made popcorn and watched a movie in the middle of the day. We knew we were in the right place when a couple of fishing boats showed up to shelter from the weather for a few hours.

We went ashore mainly so we could say we’d been to Paul Island. We found a bear print in the sand, lots of coastal wildflowers, and not much else.

Back on the Continent

Agripina Bay was our first official stop on the peninsula. We thought we might finally see some trees and were surprised to find that the landscape was dominated by rocky scree fields. We did finally see some bears, though!

We saw a lot of rain at Agripina, but got to shore during a few breaks to explore and exercise our atrophied leg muscles.

Sunbathing with Bears

Katmai National Park is known for the gigantic volcanic eruption of 1912 (the largest of the 20th century) and for their annual Fat Bear Week tournament. Here are a couple of the contenders:

We spent three days anchored in Geographic Harbor in Katmai. It’s a frequent stop for bear watchers on seaplanes, but arriving by boat is a special experience. Once you leave Shelikof Strait — between Kodiak Island and the Peninsula — and pass Takli Island, the water becomes a beautiful, glacial green color. You’re funneled towards a narrow channel with a series of little, rocky beaches on either side. When the channel opens up onto a secluded bay surrounded by steep green mountains and waterfalls, you’re greeted by otters floating around the boat and bears roaming the wide tidal flats.

We couldn’t believe our luck when the skies cleared and the sun felt so warm that we could lounge in the cockpit again. It was almost like we were back in the tropics!

And then, the wind came up. It was too windy to safely lift the dinghy off the bow — and it stayed that way for three days. After feeling stuck on the boat because of rain, we were now stuck on the boat because of wind.

We finally moved to the slightly-more-protected east side of the bay and had just enough of a break in the breeze to get the dinghy out for a quick ride before the waves turned us back. We’d hoped to get closer to some bears, but had to settle for what we could see from the boat through binoculars. It was so warm that Steve and Paul declared they were going for a swim, then ultimately decided on outdoor showers.

Resuspended Volcanic Ash

Ash from the 1912 volcanic eruption is still visible in the mountains around Geographic Harbor.

After days of strong winds, we started to notice dust in the air and decided to make a move towards Kodiak. It was even more obvious once we were looking back from Shelikof Strait.

The National Weather Service had issued an air quality warning for resuspended volcanic ash in the area — something that happens a couple of times a year in Katmai. Kevin, our official Alaska expert and personal consultant, told us to wash our boat, glasses, phones, etc. as soon as we could since the volcanic particles act like sandpaper when wiped across a surface.

This is a bittersweet time aboard Flyer. In a couple of weeks, we’ll leave the boat in Alaska and head back to Seattle. To school and work and schedules and traffic. To friends and lattes and big cozy beds and as much fresh produce as we can eat. We’re already thinking about where we’ll take the boat when we come back to Alaska next summer. But before all that, we’ve got to see a glacier!

After leaving Dutch Harbor, we had a pretty great time exploring Unalaska Island, where we encountered a grand total of three boats and three people.

Here are some scenes from our time…

Refueling at Dutch Harbor

If you want to feel small, take a 44’ sailboat to North Pacific Fuel in Dutch Harbor. Their average marine diesel sale is 15,000 gallons. We got 47. 

We had to yell up to ask if they had a smaller nozzle, and they needed about 10 minutes to confirm that they could accept a personal credit card. At one point, Steve asked if they could slow the pump down and they told us it wasn’t even on. It was being gravity fed.

Makushin

Makushin Bay is named for the active, ice-covered volcano at its head. Humpbacks greeted us there, all moving along the shore at a languorous pace except for one calf who was breaching. We anchored in one of the arms of the bay, at the mouth of a river surrounded by mountains, and spent several days clambering around on the springy tundra. We kept talking about climbing up to the snow and kept getting sidetracked — by flying the drone, fishing, finding perfect natural beds with backrests, rolling down the soft hills, picking wildflowers to press, and drinking Dr. Pepper. The kids resisted when Steve offered a water bottle filled from a mountain stream (totally fine!) and suggested harvesting mussels (potentially lethal!). 

This is one of those magical places that you can only access by boat, and need to remember when water is leaking in around the prop shaft, an engine mount is loose, the line cutter is rattling, the diesel heater keeps backdrafting, and the galley sink drain is clogged.

Sheep Ranch

We received a radio call: “Sailboat entering Chernofsky Harbor, this is Chernofsky Harbor.” It was Art, a man who has spent the past 50 odd summers raising sheep at the south end of Unalasa Island, a 9-hour boat ride from the Dutch Harbor airport. For the past 8 summers, he’s been joined by Parker, a much younger guy. This summer, they have two teenagers with them, Parker’s nephew and a close friend.  

Art invited us to come ashore and look around. He said the boys were happy to come out in the skiff to pick us up if we were nervous about taking our own dinghy in the strong breeze. We got the feeling they were pretty eager for company.

We waited until the next day to take our dinghy over to say hello. Art and the teenagers had taken four wheelers out to collect wire for fencing, but Parker and his dog welcomed us into the house. Walking inside felt a little like stepping back in time. Other than a Starlink panel, most everything in and around the house looks like it’s been there almost a century. 

Parker had water boiing on the massive cast iron stove for tea and offered us oatmeal cookies. We liked him immediately — warm, funny, resourceful, and overly generous. We admired a couple of the glass Japanese fishing floats that occasionally wash up on Alaskan beaches and he insisted that we take one with us. He also gamely answered all of our prying questions, such as:

What is a typical day like here?

Parker gets up an hour or two before everyone else to light the stove with driftwood, get the house warmed up, and make breakfast. Together, they read from the bible and discuss their reading, then talk about what work they’ll do that day. There’s lots of post hole digging and fence repair. Recently, Parker has been working on fixing up the chicken coop. This year, he brought a handful of chickens and Barney, a Guinea fowl, with him to the ranch. He sent us back to the boat with fresh eggs. 

The sheep are hardy and mostly take care of themselves. In the spring, Art uses four wheelers to round them up into pens, shear, and sort them. Then the sheep go back to roaming and grazing the ranch’s 5,000 acres.

Where does everyone spend the rest of the year?

Art spends April to October in Chernofsky Harbor and the rest of the year in California. Parker is originally from Arizona and considers himself a cowboy who ended up working at a sheep farm. His family came to Alaska in the early 2000s when his father was hired to round up the feral Russian cattle on Chirifkof Island. When that project ended — and cattle remained, for complicated political reasons — his family settled in Nikolski, a tiny village on Umnak Island. In Parker’s time there, Nikolski has grown to 35 residents, enough to reopen the school.

How do you get power, groceries or anything else here?

There’s one generator that powers the house, the shop, and everything else on the ranch. For fuel, they get our friends at North Pacific Fuel in Dutch Harbor to find some empty 55-gallon gasoline drums, clean them, and fill them with diesel. Then they find a fishing boat in Dutch Harbor who’s willing to transport the drums to Chernofsky Harbor and dump them into the water to be floated to shore. Fishing boats also occasionally deliver grocery orders from the Safeway in Dutch Harbor. Once, Parker caught a ride to Dutch Harbor on a fishing boat and the trip ended up taking three days, because the captain decided to fish for halibut along the way.

Other than fishing boats, there are always some sailboats that stop by each year, most headed east from Japan. Everyone who comes to shore signs the white and gold guestbook, which was clearly intended as a wedding keepsake. We signed it too, and feel pretty grateful to have been included. We’ll be remembering this one for a long time.  

If you’re curious, there’s more info about Art and some nice photos of the ranch here.

Stand Off

Mutton Cove has a number of military structures that were abandoned after WW2 and are now overseen by wild cattle. Two of these creatures ambled away up the hill when we beached the dingy to take a look around. 

We walked north across the isthmus to a beach facing the Bering Sea and collected pocketfuls of sea-polished green jasper pebbles. When we reappeared on the south side of the isthmus, headed back to our dinghy, the cattle pair were obviously unhappy to see us approaching. The bull bellowed and made a couple of bluff charges. They were about 1,000 feet away, but unfortunately, our dinghy was between us and them — and much closer to them.

What do city folk do when faced with a potentially aggressive bull? Google, obviously. What are the signs a bull will charge? Does bright red really make a bull mad? Why is foul weather gear bright red? 

We decided to huddle (cower?) behind an old pier and wait. Emotions ran the gamut: anxiety, fear, recrimination, bemused embarrassment. We spent 20 minutes in a long-distance staring match, then the bull and cow laid down. We took it as a good sign and sent Steve forth alone for the dinghy, then quickly called him back when the bull jumped up and bellowed again. When five more cows sloooooowly moseyed over to join the first two and the whole group stood there staring at us, we debated whether this was just some dumb cow stuff or possibly a brilliant Machiavellian power move. We wondered if we’d ever been closer to living in a Monty Python skit. We almost couldn’t believe it when all the cattle finally retreated a few hundred feet and we felt safe hustling to the dinghy. As we fled triumpantly back to the boat, we bravely yelled to the cows about how we were going to eat them for dinner. 

In the end, what is a family, really, if not a group of people who tell the same set of stories about vacation misadventures? 

Williwaws 

When we hailed Chernofsky Harbor on the radio to say goodbye, Art told us that the south side of Unalaska Island is one of the most beautiful places in the world. We weren’t planning to find out for ourselves, but after almost 6 hours of beating upwind in 20 knots of breeze, we gave up and took refuge in Kuliliak Bay. Art was right, it’s beautiful.

We surveyed the damage from the day’s sail. Multiple broken hatch covers, a broken fairlead on a stanchion that allowed the staysail furling line to work its way under a hatch, a wet bed below the hatch, saltwater in the engine room bilge, a rattling sound somewhere near the propellor, etc, etc. Steve got suited up to dive in order to check the line cutter on the propeller shaft. Then the williwaws hit. 40+ knots rushing down the mountains from multiple directions. The boat spun around. Spray whipped off the water. (“Spindrift” isn’t just fancy sparkling water. It’s also a word for spray blown off the top of cresting waves in a gale, and a sign that you’ve reached an 8 on the Beaufort Wind Scale.)

It’s pretty fun to watch gusts of wind approach you over the water from a safe anchorage with good holding. It’s a lot better than trying to sail with the wind on your nose, at least. We hunkered down for the night and watched a few episodes of Ted Lasso — a backup plan since we didn’t pay to watch any World Cup matches online until the final. As Ted would say, “Taking on a challenge is a lot like riding a horse. If you’re comfortable while you’re doing it, you’re probably doing it wrong.” 

We’ve now finished the last of three long, offshore passages: 22 days from Mexico to the Marquesas, 17 days from the Tuamotus to Hawaii, and 15 days from Hawaii to Alaska. Those weeks in the middle of the ocean are a little like sensory resets. Life shrinks down to the size of the boat. Outside water and sky are a spectrum of blue from black to white, occasionally warmed by the glow of a sunset.

Inside the boat, little things balloon: a freshwater shower is an event; a bag of Doritos is a celebration; the mystery of the awful smell near the refrigerator on starboard tacks is an obsession; a brother’s refusal to move his feet off the seat is the end of the world. With distance and sleep deprivation, memories of the last place fade. When the new place comes into view — new sights, sounds, smells, and temperature — it feels like a discovery.

Of the three passages, Hawaii to Alaska was the most extreme of these resets. And thanks to Cameron — the most positive, fun, helpful crew member aboard by miles — we actually had enough sleep to appreciate it all. After the early excitements of landing a tuna, seeing our first false killer whales, and swimming in the middle of the open ocean, life slowed way down. The switch from warm to cold was surprisingly quick, and with the cold weather, our living space shrunk even further. No more lounging in the cockpit, or even leaving the cockpit door open. We cozied up in the salon, trying to stay quiet if someone was napping, shifting around every couple of minutes when a snack or tool was needed from a storage spot below a seat. 

Things got really cold since we weren’t running the engine and don’t light the diesel-powered Refleks heater when we’re underway. Flyer is heavily insulated above the water line, but condensation dripped down the walls below. Wet towels piled up in the head. Snuggling with Pelle became a practical way to stay warm.

The color of the water changed from surreal sapphire blue to a more menacing steely grey. Fog cut our visibility down to a few hundred feet, but when it lifted enough to get a glimpse of land in the distance, everyone came back to life. The kids came outside for the first time in days. We started to hear the sounds of seabirds and the breath of whales. We noticed the clean, salty scent of sea air, which you only smell close to land. As we got closer, the hazy grey profile of the mountains moved towards vibrant emerald green, like someone was slowly sliding a saturation button. Despite being almost 2,000 miles from Seattle, our senses started to detect something like home.

Now, about a week later, we have been completely charmed by Dutch Harbor. It could just be the exceptional physical relief we feel being back in a climate that allows sleeping under blankets. Maybe it’s circadion confusion from experiencing full daylight at 11pm. (Despite sailing west from Hawaii, Alaska’s Juneau-centric time zone means we set our clocks forward two hours.) Definitely, it’s some nostalgia leftover from Steve’s 1992 NOLS trip in the Talkeetna Mountains and the 2008 Juneau-to-Sitka cruise that convinced us to leave NYC for the Pacific Northwest. Probably, it’s because a small, friendly American island feels knowable to us in a way that a small, friendly Polynesian island never will. Whatever the reason, you know you’ve got it bad when you start searching available real estate ($4k for a duplex, $2.5m for a 28-bed multi family home).

Dutch Harbor is actually the name of the bay. The town is called Unalaska, as is the whole island. All of it is ridiculously beautiful. The natural environment is dramatic. Steep, snow-capped mountains covered in treeless, green tundra. Fjord-like bays surrounded by waterfalls. Otters, whales, bald eagles, puffins.

Aside from an onion-domed Russian Orthodox Church, the built environment is strikingly utilitarian. Colorful piles of fishing gear are stacked around town. Culturally, it’s surprisingly interesting. The area was fished by Unangax people in sealskin kayaks, colonized by Russians in search of sea otter pelts, passed through by gold prospectors, fortified by the U.S., bombed by Japan, and made famous by reality TV.   

What makes Dutch Harbor really interesting, though, is the combination of a small, tight-knit permanent community with an absolutely massive international fishing industry. It’s both a remote, wild west frontier town and a prosperous commercial hub — the largest port in the nation by volume of fish landed. (90% of the business is Alaskan pollock that ends up in frozen fish sticks and imitation crab.) We were docked in the land of Uni-Sea, a subsidiary of a Japanese seafood giant with a campus that includes fish-processing plants, employee bunkhouses, the Grand Aleutian Hotel, Harbor View Inn, and most of the restaurants in town.

Everywhere we went in Dutch Harbor, we ended up in a conversation with someone who already knew that we’d just arrived on a small sailboat. There was the guy at the hotel desk who told us about the Wednesday night seafood buffet, the woman at the car rental/freight company who told us the local name for our dock (“the new ghetto dock”), the civil engineer/owner of a fish oil company who gave us a huge piece of just-caught halibut, the gift shop owner who keeps a couple of lounge chairs for visiting Coasties looking for a quiet place to read, the guy at the bar whose new puppy will arrive soon by ferry and who double-checked our boat’s name so he could pray for us. 

It’s shocking that there aren’t a hundred small-town mysteries set in Dutch Harbor. It’s a perfect setting: an incredibly picturesque environment, a small cast of interesting locals with shared histories and varied politics, a constant stream of outsiders, and lots of potentially lethal fishing gear. Maybe once we get back home and miss writing this blog, we’ll start our own Dutch Harbor story. If so, these are some of the real people who will become thinly-veiled fictional characters:

George

There is one Customs and Border Patrol agent in Unalaska. He told us that we didn’t need to check in since we were coming from Hawaii, but came down to the dock to meet us anyway. If you’re picturing any CBP agent you’ve ever encountered before, George isn’t like that. George is more like Dutch Harbor’s laid-back docent. His welcome included where to get groceries, where to do laundry, and his favorite places to eat. He told us that some of the thousands of bald eagles on the island were nesting and warned us about getting too close since there’s no hospital on the island. He also said: “The police don’t have a lot do here, so try not to give them something to do.” 

Later, when we went to check out George’s favorite restaurant, the Norwegian Rat Saloon, we found his CBP car in the parking lot. There he was at the bar, drinking a Coke near a big bell labeled “ring for service.” One more piece of local advice from George: don’t ring that bell or you’ll have to buy a round for everyone in the bar. But maybe do tell someone you don’t like so much to ring it.

Daneen

Daneen came over to our table to at the Norwegian Rat Saloon to say hello. George had told her about us and she wanted to know what we were up to, since she and her husband spent 13 years sailing around the world on their sailboat, Rose. She told us about the nasty seas at the Cape of Good Hope and how Dutch Harbor has changed since the 70s and 80s when the old Elbow Room bar was considered the second most dangerous bar in America. 

It took a very long time for it to come out that Daneen owns the Rat, a busy spot with delicious fisherman-sized hamburgers, a stack of old pallets for feeding the bonfire, an incredible view, and lots of merch. She told us to keep an eye our for her husband, Andy, who’s always down at the dock, and not to worry too much about the bald eagles since the clinic is great at sewing people up.

Andy

Andy has a long grey pony-tail and isn’t allowed into the Norwegian Rat Saloon where he’d just get in the way of the girls who run it. He’d like to be out sailing, but Daneen wants to be home near the grandkids. He knows exactly how lucky he is to be retired with time to do whatever he wants on his own schedule: working on his sailboat, telling stories about friends who wrecked their boats after long nights of drinking, or offering advice to visitors like, “Bears are like people. Some are going to be curious about you, some are scared of you, and some are mean. Best to assume they’re all going to be mean.”

Dan

Dan is many things: a commercial diver, a licensed explosives handler, an underwater welder, a storyteller, a family man, a business acquaintance of our friend Kuhrt, who called him “one of the original cowboys up there that used to blow stuff up with dynamite.” Basically, a legend. He’s salvaged or removed the wrecks of 79 vessels over 58′ long. He is the guy who is called when everyone else has run out of ideas, or needs someone with an explosives license to sign the permit for the 4th of July fireworks show. Also, he aligned our engine to 0.002”.

AmzerZo

A few days after we arrived, another aluminum sailboat tied up at the dock. The boat is registered in the Netherlands, but they’d also come from French Polynesia via Hawaii and had to be towed into the massive Resolve Marine shipyard in Dutch Harbor due to engine trouble. When the guys at Resolve couldn’t figure it out, they called Dan, who fixed it. It turns out, the couple on board are semi-retired lawyers who specialize in investigating white collar crimes.

What a total pleasure to visit Dutch Harbor in the summer months when the grass is green, the days are long, and the people are so welcoming. (We probably won’t be back in winter when everything is brown and winds whip up to 100kts.) From here, we’re headed east towards Kodiak where we hope to meet some more Alaskan characters, both human and ursine.

We’re now over 200 nautical miles from Kauai and officially in international waters, but wanted to go back in time to record a little bit about our stay in Hawaii before we get too far north and completely forget what it felt like to be warm.

After a couple of months in relatively remote anchorages and then 17 days alone on the boat, arriving in the big city of Honolulu was overwhelming. It was such a relief to get off the boat and stretch our legs, to sleep through the night on a mostly-level bed, to speak English, and take long, indoor showers. What pleasure to eat whatever our hearts desired! How exciting to rent a car and drive again! And then, immediately, how annoying to be stuck at a ridiculously long red light. It was surprising to see so many people at the beach and a shock to realize how long it had been since we’d seen anyone who appeared homeless. The high rises! The highways! The Amazon lockers! The lush mountains of Oahu are pure Polynesia, but there was no question that we were back in the US of A. 

Despite a long list of boat projects, we fit in some classic tourism on Oahu. We visited Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial, a beautiful pavilion on a platform above the sunken ship. We walked up to the top of Diamond Head for an amazing view of the south shore where crowds of surfers were enjoying a rare, early-summer big swell. We snorkeled at Hanauma Bay, where daily visits are limited to 1,400 people — 1,396 more than we’re used to these days. We visited the Bishop Museum, which has the world’s largest collection of Polynesian cultural artifacts. Paul had a surf lesson at Publics in Waikiki with a super enthusiastic teenager who competes on his high school surf team. Despite driving through Waikiki daily, we never did stop at Chanel or Hermès, but we did hit the Ala Moana mall to replace Paul’s completely delaminated flip flops. 

We ate poke and shave ice, incredible pho at A Pig and a Lady and a giant platter of sushi at Mitch’s. We sat next to the “presidential table” at the back corner of the patio at Buzz’s Steak House in Kailua, where the Clinton and Obama families have dined. Almost every restaurant on the island seems to have a photo of the Obamas, and I was reminded of visiting my sister at college in Williamsburg, VA in the 80s when every Greek-owned Pancake House had a photo of Michael Dukakais.

Driving around the island listening to the Project Hail Mary audiobook, we discovered that Paul knows the name of every beach on Oahu thanks to his deep study of surfing videos on YouTube. He told us where to pull over, so he and James could play in big waves. They got rolled around in the smaller summer waves at Pipeline and completely pummeled by the shore break at Sandy Beach. 

Some of our least glamorous/most useful stops were at King Laundromat, Hawaii Nut and Bolt, and Wailua Fresh Egg Farm, where you can get a flat of 30 eggs for $7. Steve spent days and days working on the watermaker, rerigging our reefing lines, swapping the jib sheet and preventer lines, etc, etc, etc.

As always, what really made our time in Hawaii special was the warmth of the reception. Even before we were securely tied to the dock at the Hawaii Yacht Club, people stopped by to ask about the boat and our travels, offer help, and recommend future anchorages. Our friend, Liz, texted to say that her brother was in Honolulu for work and, within hours, we were having a beer with him on Flyer, catching up and getting an expert surf report.

A couple of days after we arrived, we reconnected with the French-American crew of Zorba, who left Rangiroa a day before us and were in touch along the way, including when they lost their steering in the middle of the ocean. They tied up to Flyer and had to walk across our bow to get to the dock, but also invited us to climb up to their vast catamaran deck for several meals and long conversations that had us dreaming about skiing in the Alps.

Dean, a professor of ours from architecture school, had been in touch along the way, working his connections to help us find dock space in Honolulu. He hosted us for lunch at the Waikiki Yacht Club and again for Friday happy hour at his office in the former Liberty Bank building in Chinatown, an awesome space designed by Vladimir Ossipoff in 1952. Afterwards, the kids teased us for sounding like architecture nerds, but continued to mention how nice Dean was every time we passed the yacht club or his office. (This definitely gave them the wrong idea about what architecture school was really like.)

It was hard to leave the dock in Oahu — because of the beaches, restaurants, stores, and people, but also because of all the double parked boats. After a complicated maneuver involving five boats and resembling a game of Tetris, we headed towards quieter Kauai. 

The 120nm sail from Oahu to Hanalei Bay was relatively straightforward and, thankfully, not as rough and windy as our prior approaches in the Hawaiian Islands. But still somehow the shortest legs can be the most exhausting. After departing Ala Wai harbor at 11am and making a brief stop for fuel, we dropped anchor at 8am the next morning, exhausted. We barely noticed the mountains, waterfalls, flowers, or general overwhelming beauty before falling into a long nap.

If we’ve learned anything in the past 10 months, it’s that arriving somewhere on an aluminum sailboat tends to spark peoples’ interest and expose their generosity. Before we even made it to shore, we met Brenda, who came by in her dinghy to ask about our boat. Within minutes, she had shared her phone number, offered to drive us to the grocery store, and invited Paul to surf with her and her husband, Craig, in the morning.

We quickly developed a routine. Each morning, Paul and Steve joined a group of retirees who surf the reef break below the big hotel. Afterwards, we’d dinghy into the beach, drop off our trash, eat lunch somewhere in town, and spend some time at the beach swimming, reading, and watching the Hanalei Canoe Club outrigger races before returning to the boat for dinner, sunset, and The Office.

The day before we left, we took the dinghy up the the river to Brenda and Craig’s house where they gave us a jar of honey from their own hive and lent us their truck so we could stock up on fresh foods and diesel in Princeville and Kilauea. In return, we left them Paul’s outgrown Crocs and the used foam surfboard we bought in Santa Barbara. Maybe their grandchildren will be able to use them — and maybe we’ll be lucky enough to see them again one of these days.

And just like that, our time in French Polynesia has come to an end. Yesterday, we sailed out of Tiputa pass at Rangiroa — the largest atoll in the Tuamotus and the only one with a Gendarmerie where you can check out of the country — and pointed north towards Hawaii.

Like most non-EU citizens, we had a 90-day visa for French Polynesia, but unlike most reasonable cruisers, we only budgeted two months to explore this part of the world. We spent a month in Nuku Hiva waiting for parts and wedding attendees, so we rushed through the atolls of the Tuamotus, leaving most stones unturned and most coral unsnorkeled. It felt a little unconscionable considering how far we sailed to get here, but it was worth every nautical mile for the magic of quiet days with dear friends in the perfectly clear, calm water of the atolls’ lagoons.

After dropping anchor in Tahanea, there was a lot we didn’t do. We didn’t wonder if our anchor chain was wrapped around a coral bommie, because we could see all 20 meters of it right down to where the anchor was set in white sand. We didn’t wake up at night when the movement of the boat changed, because the water was so still that the boat didn’t move. We didn’t spend a single minute thinking about what to buy, because there wasn’t a store within 80 miles.

We did snorkel until our foreheads had permanent indents from our masks. We saw disinterested black-tipped reef sharks, curious remoras, spotted grouper, blinking parrot fish, fluttering trigger fish, intricately-patterned butterflyfish, and a million types of wrasses. 

When the weather was calm, Steve towed Paul behind the dinghy on a skimboard. When there was wind, he wingfoiled.

James and Paul discovered the joys of weight belts and Kevin’s unofficial Navy Seal training. He had them swimming down 20 feet, filling their masks with water, and emptying them before resurfacing. He started throwing things in the water for them to retrieve with and without fins, starting with a winch handle and working up to our stern anchor.

I finally felt like I could turn the oven on without melting and went on a baking tear. Paul and I spent a few hours making hamburger buns and french fries. I made loaves of sourdough and opened a can of (delicious!) shelf-stable New Zealand butter that’s sold all over French Polynesia. We made naan to eat with Melissa’s amazing curry with pineapples. 

While the weather was calm, we moved to a less protected anchorage on the west side of Tahanea. (Forever to be known as the Gary Larson Memorial Anchorage on No Foreign Land.) The reef here was teeming with fish, many we’d never seen before, and the nearest motu had lots of boobies including a sweet, fuzzy baby in a nest and alert parents taking turns incubating thier egg on top of their big, webbed feet.

Our quiet, happy days in Tahanea were bittersweet, too. We were constantly thinking about our friends on Rocket Science who would have been with us if transmission issues hadn’t forced them to less-remote Fakarava — where they were spending their days figuring out how to get a transmission delivered before their visa expired. We were closely following Hepatica’s slow passage from Mexico, cheering when they finally crossed the equator, imagining everything they’d enjoy in Nuku Hiva, and regretting that we wouldn’t get to hear about it in person. (Though we will be seeing them on YouTube.) We nearly missed Sentijn, who arrived at the anchorage in Tahanea just as we were heading out. We had just enough time to catch a glimpse of Dean’s boat-made marble maze from afar and yell a quick goodbye. Most of our boat friends will be continuing west towards New Zealand, while we head towards home, so turning north from Tahanea felt like a parting of ways, the end of a chapter.

There wasn’t much time to reflect on our overnight passage to Fakarava, however, as the seas were uncomfortable and a series of squalls kept us on our toes. In order to time our arrival at the north pass with favorable current, we sailed a long route with only the genoa out, which made it easy to quickly reef when we saw winds up to 44 knots and unfurl again when the breeze backed down to 15 knots.

Fakarava is the second largest of the atolls in the Tuamotus and a common stop for cruisers looking to provision in the village of Rotoava, as well as tourists arriving by plane. After a nap, we met Rocket Science at the Pearl Farm, an actual pearl farm, but also a hotel restaurant where you can drink a beer or milkshake sitting at a table in the water while nurse sharks swim by. It was a lovely soft landing after almost two weeks away from civilization. 

The next night, we had a proper dinner out with Rocket Science and their Dutch friends on Pandion and Paradiso to celebrate Caroline’s birthday. The mahi was delicious but the real highlight was the three-man band (ukulele, guitar, and gut bucket) who seemed to be having the time of their lives playing Polynesian and French songs, and even some American mashups. 

We scoured the grocery aisles for fresh lettuce and Tim Tams and snorkeled with Mara and Griffin who led us to the best spots including a bommie right in the middle of the anchorage. For the first time, we saw unicornfish, birdnose wrasses, Picasso triggerfish, and a moray eel. I loved approaching schools of little blue chromis hovering around tree-shaped coral and watching them dart into the branches. But the highlight was the day James discovered an octopus.

James is always the last off the boat, but the first to find an interesting animal. Melissa (a vet) has seen thousands of animals, but really, really loves octopuses. (In the time we’ve known her, Melissa flew back to Anchorage and got a beautiful, super realistic octopus tattoo.) It was a total delight just to watch the two of them face down in the water, waiting for the octopus to emerge from its hideout and squealing through their snorkels when it changed color and texture.

On Flyer, Steve and I looked at the calendar over and over, working backwards from a July 1st arrival in Kodiak, factoring in provisioning and crew pick up in Honolulu (we can’t wait to see you again, Cameron!), and cross referencing the long list of French holidays in May when immigration offices are closed. No matter how many times we tried to find more days into the month, it looked like we had to keep moving. That meant saying goodbye to Rocket Science — who were still waiting for their transmission in Fakarava — until we reunite in Seattle. We had one last meal together with Mara’s amazing hummus, just one in a very long list of amazing things Mara has fed us over the years. The next day, Griffin buzzed us in the dinghy as we left the anchorage — a mirror image of our arrival in Nuku Hiva but with a lot more Napoleon Dynamite and Austin Powers catch phrases yelled back and forth. 

En route to check out at Rangiroa, we spent our last two nights with Dark Star at Toau, a quiet atoll where we checked the “snorkel a pass” box on the list of Tuamotus musts. 

It’s hard to put to words just how much Kevin and Melissa’s easy companionship and steady support have meant to us since our accidental sleepover in the Channel Islands seven months ago. They’ve seen us through three transmissions and associated emotional roller coasters. We spent Christmas together in Agua Verde. We met Melissa’s aunt and uncle when they visited La Paz. We spoke every night on our 22 day passage from Mexico to French Polynesia.

On our last night together, under the stars, Kevin jumped into the water with some incredible underwater lights and made us one more once-in-a-lifetime memory. Paul overcame his nerves and jumped in next, then Steve and James couldn’t resist. There was hooting, hollering, laughter, amazement, and mostly gratitude.

After one more mostly uneventful overnight passage, we anchored at Rangiroa which looked like a metropolis after Toau. We watched guests at the Kia Ora Resort snorkel from their overwater bungalows and headed to the restaurant for lunch and COLD DRINKS!! What a luxury.

Steve rented a scooter and dropped off our passports at the Gendarmerie. We had dinner with Atisha (Roger and Jenny, who we met back in the Channel Islands, and their friends visiting from Australia) at a family restaurant where the pre-teen son acts as maitre’d, waiter, and busboy while speaking perfect English. Riding back to Flyer on the dinghy that night, the little needlefish that swim just below the surface of the water were jumping like crazy and a couple jumped right into the dinghy with us.

The next morning, Olivier, a taxi driver and the unofficial mayor of Rangiroa, picked us up at the dock and drove us 6 miles to the village of Atuana where we found plenty of provisions for the trip to Hawaii — including as many cartons of Rotui fruit juices as we could carry— then to the Gendarmerie to collect our passports. We were ready to go.

Now we’re alone again on a beam reach towards the equator and family futures betting has opened for the date and time of our crossing. If all goes well, we’ll be eating poke and shave ice in Honolulu in about 17 days. 

Our hope for traveling down the west coast of Baja was to experience some of the more remote parts of Mexico, and Islas San Benito are about as remote as one can find on (or near) the Baja peninsula.

The three small islands that make up Islas San Benito are uninhabited except for a temporary fishing village, and it didn’t take long for friendly local fishermen to stop by in their panga (fishing skiff) and offer us a few lobsters. When we tried to pay, they insisted, “no dinero!” We had a creamy lobster pasta for dinner.

Almost as friendly as the fishermen were the hundreds of juvenile sea lions congregated around the islands. They swam around the anchorage in large groups and the most curious came right up to Flyer to check us out.

We beached our dinghy at the small fishing camp — which was completely empty when we arrived aside from a couple of elephant seals — and walked up the hill to the one functioning lighthouse, then further to the abandoned lighthouse on the west end of the island. The landscape is dry, rocky and dramatic with beautiful views over the islands and out to the open ocean. We marveled at being in a place that relatively few people get to visit. We also looked down at our feet a lot to avoid the lethal little cactus pups that seemed to jump off larger plants.

When we got back to the dinghy, one of the generous fisherman we’d met the day before was waiting on the beach for a panga ride home to Isla de Cedros. In Spanish and with gestures, he asked where we’d been and where we were headed, told us that 50 people live in the camp during abalone season, and explained that elephant seals come to San Benito to breed in the winter before migrating to Alaska. He was patient and kind with my halting questions and answers (“How many live in this place?” “We walk to the house of light.”) and obviously enjoyed seeing kids on the island. It was such a pleasure for us to make this small connection, and at the same time, frustrating to feel so limited in our ability to communicate.

Hours later, we were joined in the anchorage by a much less friendly-looking military vessel. We started to feel a little on edge when a skiff with eight men in uniforms carrying uzis approached our boat taking photos, then pulled up alongside us and asked to come aboard. I understood about 20 percent of what they said, but tried to translate the gist for the rest of the family: the San Benito islands are part of a protected area and illegal fishing is enforced by the Navy.

It’s unsettling to be boarded by people carrying machine guns, and especially so when they’re speaking another language. Even after they checked our papers, looked around the boat, and headed back to their ship, I was still unnerved enough to Google: “Is it normal to be boarded by the Navy at San Benito?” (Yes, it is.) Afterwards, we talked a lot about how strange even a normal experience can feel when you don’t understand what’s being said, but also how much you can tell from a person’s demeanor. These men were all professional, but I’ve thought a lot about the one who offered a quiet “¿Con permiso?” before stepping up onto our boat.

After two nights, we left San Benito before sunrise and motored six hours to Isla de Cedros, an island known for salt production and commercial fishing. Despite a permanent population of only 1,000-2,000 people, Cedros sees a lot of marine traffic and has its own Port Captain, so we were required to go ashore to check in.

Walking through town, every person we passed on foot or in a car greeted us. At the Port Captain’s office, a thoughtful employee found chairs for the kids to sit in while we went through paperwork. Another cruising family was invited to dinner at a local’s house when they arrived at a restaurant just after closing. It felt like a small town that happens to have an international sport fishing business. But we also heard that the island has suffered since 2023 when salt sales dropped sharply after the Mexican government bought out Mitsubishi’s shares in the salt export company, ESSA. We noticed empty, run-down buildings in addition to the big, waterfront houses.

Back at the boat, we got hot in the sun, swam to cool off, and monitored Marine Traffic to make sure that the Baja Ha-Ha fleet had cleared out of Bahía Tortugas, our next anchorage.

Bahía Tortugas is a small fishing town on a big bay that is overrun for a couple of days every November when over 150 sailboats arrive on the first stop of the Baja Ha-Ha rally. We’d been warned over and over to stay away from the overpriced fuel at Tortugas, but we couldn’t wait to get there to reunite with our friends on Dark Star. We were also excited to catch some of the boats we’d been playing leap frog with since the Channel Islands: Wasatch, a couple who built their own unconventional sailboat in Twisp, WA; Savory, a French and Canadian family on a steel boat reminiscent of Moitessier’s Joshua; and Hepatica, a young couple from Nanaimo, BC on a Roberts 29 whose friendly calls over the radio in the preceding weeks made us eager to meet them in person.

After six hours of motoring, we turned towards Tortugas at noon, just in time for the kids to log on for school. But their Zoom hosts were nowhere to be found and their Chromebook clocks read 11am. Somehow, we were an hour early. Or wait, had we completely missed class? We checked and double checked. Our phone clocks said noon, but our Google calendar now showed school starting at 1pm. Earlier, I had noticed that the analog clock seemed to be losing time and changed its battery. It took an embarrassingly long time for us to work out that we had crossed the border from Baja California to Baja California Sur and were now in Mountain Time.

It was nearing dusk by the time school ended, so we rushed into shore for tacos. Almost immediately, we had the impression that we were seeing a place in the wake of an invasion — and not just because the ruins of the old abalone cannery are the first thing you see when arriving by dinghy. The restaurant was out of everything except sad beef tacos and the only produce left in the grocery store was bruised or moldy. Walking through town in near dark, we practically jumped out of our skin each time a dog lunged from behind a fence, barking wildly.

Heading back to the boat, we had to launch the dinghy through surf in the dark. It was chaotic and wet. We argued about which of the many anchor lights in the bay was Flyer’s. Even after we were on board, panic continued to rise when Steve went to open the companionway door and the key broke off in the lock. The kids managed to wiggle through a hatch and eventually opened the door from the inside, but nerves were high and spirits were low. The most optimistic among us were starting to worry: Is this what the rest of Baja is going to be like?

In the morning, we watched Dark Star and Hepatica haul up anchor and move east in the bay, and we decided to follow. It turns out that a one mile move was all it took to swing our mixed feelings hard toward the positive.

Looking back toward town, we couldn’t help but laugh at the pangas absolutely swarmed by pelicans.

And then the dolphins arrived! Hundreds of dolphins — including babies — swam around us at our new anchorage. When we took the dinghy into the beach, the dolphins joined us. One morning, James woke up to the sound of dolphin chatter, looked out his window, and saw a dolphin swimming past only a few feet away. Now we asked ourselves: Is this what the rest of Baja is going to be like?!

The beach at Bahía Tortugas made for good long walks and there was just enough double over-ankle swell for the kids to surf before and after school. Even town looked better with a little perspective, and just three days after arriving we found that the grocery store had been restocked with fresh apples and — be still my heart — romaine lettuce!

The night before we left, heading further south to some of Baja’s famous surf spots, Alex and Laura of Hepatica joined the Dark Star crew for drinks on Flyer. We didn’t know it then, but this group would become the heart of the cruising community that made our holiday season in Baja so memorable. Of all the pleasures ahead — surreally beautiful sunsets, perfect downwind sailing, epic wingfoiling sessions, beach-side shrimp tacos — these friendships were the real gift.

We really let this blog languish while we spent a couple happy months sailing 775 miles down the west coast of Baja, around the tip of the peninsula into the Sea of Cortez, north 200 miles to Agua Verde for Christmas, and south again to La Paz. We’ll try our best to catch up to the present, but we’re starting way back in October with our arrival in Mexico. Looking back now, I think of this little slice of time as post-Amazon delivery, pre-Duolingo.

In the run up to Halloween, no amount of California surf could offset the kids’ disappointment at missing one of our most enduring Seattle traditions: eating zombie meatloaf, hitting the all the highlights on the Phinney Ridge trick-or-treat circuit, then spending hours sorting candy on the Millikan’s floor while negotiating NAFTA-level trade deals.

We couldn’t have our traditional Halloween, but realized that we could have Día de los Muertos in Mexico. So, we left San Diego at 6:30am on October 31 and arrived at our slip at Ensenada Cruiseport Village at 4:50pm. Fifteen minutes later, we found ourselves at the marina’s costume-optional potluck, eating deviled eggs with a Viking named Sven and his dog, Jenny.

It was immediately clear that we’d booked a slip in an especially warm and helpful community of long-term expats and fellow itinerants. Scott (one boat over) was in Ensenada for a couple of months for boat repairs. He caught our docklines and quickly realized that he knew our friends on SV Kuaka from their time cruising in Tonga. Sven (across the dock) has been moored in Ensenada for years. He piled our mountain of dirty laundry into his bike trailer and pedaled it over to the marina laundromat. Jelle (midway down the dock) told us where to find diesel since the only fuel dock in town was out, and lent us a few extra jerry jugs to take to the local BP station. Mike (on the big fishing boat near the dock ramp) lent us his car so we wouldn’t have to carry 175L of diesel the 2.2 km back to the marina, and gave us a giant bag of just-caught fish. Octavio (in the marina office), managed all of our paperwork and transportation to the Port Captain’s office where we officially cleared into Mexico on November 1.

Once we checked into Mexico and hoisted our courtesy flag, it was time for tacos. We’re pretty sure we found the best ones in Baja at Tacos Fenix.

Walking through the streets of Ensenada, we felt — if not shock — a definite cultural shift. The language barrier was obvious. My rusty, thirty-year-old Spanish was enough to order shrimp tacos, but nowhere near enough to really communicate. Steve may not speak Spanish, but he’s spent enough time traveling to be comfortable with discomfort. The kids, though, are pretty new to feeling foreign. Paul joked about singing one of the Spanish greetings he’d learned in school, but felt annoyed that he couldn’t even read the signs. James, meanwhile, only needed a few seconds to figure out how to use his phone camera to translate everything we saw.

Aside from language, Ensenada felt different in ways that were harder to simplify. We bought delicious multigrain bread from a fancy bakery and coffee beans from a cute cafe in one of the historic winery buildings on Plaza Santo Tomás. We also walked on dusty, dirt roads and saw stray dogs in the grocery store parking lot. Locals were gracious and encouraging when we spoke Spanish like toddlers, and persistent when we passed by their tourist-trap restaurants. While the cruise ships are in town, the waterfront and neighboring streets teem with people buying and selling: boat trips, blankets, leather goods, silver jewelry, tchotkes, and tequila. We liked to imagine we were a different sort of tourist, but we ate churros just like everyone else.

Some things felt familiar. As 3rd-5th graders at UCDS, James and Paul celebrated Día de Los Muertos by learning about a loved one who had died and creating a remembrance for the school’s community ofrenda (altar). Walking around the city, we passed little ofrendas in shop parking lots and large ones at the city’s Center for the Arts, and especially loved the one in our marina’s office honoring the Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne.

After a few days and a few grocery store runs, we were ready to move on, but not before taking a DiDi (Mexican Uber) to the closest beach.

The 200 nm trip from Ensenada to our next anchorage at Islas San Benito required two overnights and — finally! — some serious sailing. And, as always, maintenance.

We’ll always remember the three happy weeks we spent between Santa Barbara and the Channel Islands as The Mariners Post Season. We’re fair weather baseball fans at best, but watched every game of the 2025 ALDS and ALCS from loud sports bars, quiet one-boat anchorages and, at least once, from the middle of Santa Barbara Channel. Based on the enthusiasm of Seattleites on boats, we could only imagine the energy at home.

The locals, meanwhile, confirmed what we suspected: we had lucked into an unusually long period of beautiful weather in the islands. Spending calm, sunny days in these wild places with the wonderful company of a couple of buddy boats felt like a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Even a burst water maker hose and soaked mattresses couldn’t bring us down.

We really, really loved the Channel Islands. So much so, that we started to leave, changed our minds, and turned back a couple of times — hence our Etch-a-Sketch course.

This is just some of what kept us coming back:

One of the endemic species that exists only in the Channel Islands is the house cat-sized island fox. They’re completely unbothered by humans with cameras when fig trees are in season. We felt sure we could fit one into a backpack, but less sure that Pelle would welcome a new crew member.

Snorkeling in a kelp forest is awesome! The kelp here grows 10 to 100 feet tall and sways with the surging waves. We saw rays and bright orange garibaldi, but mainly just enjoyed swimming around in our new snorkel gear.

At several anchorages, we heard strange crackling sounds underwater, and even through the hull of the boat, as if the water had been filled with Rice Krispies. After some Googling, we learned that it was little pistol shrimp whose snapping claws create cavitation bubbles that collapse and send out shockwaves louder than gunshots.

We anchored by ourselves at Coches Prietos, a tiny cove on the south side of Santa Cruz Island. According to Captain Dan, the Channel Islands cruising expert, this spot can hold up to seven boats in the summer months — we couldn’t imagine how! But we did run across some fisherman who sold us our first lobster right out of the pot.

We spent a couple of days in Pelican Bay where, in 1910, a sea captain built a camp large enough to accommodate silent film crews and, later during Prohibition, an illicit distillery. We put the Merlin bird ID app to good use here. Aside from the requisite pelicans, the rock walls echoed with the distinctive calls of oystercatchers. Finding himself in a beautiful place, Steve got to work servicing all the winches. When we pulled up our anchor chain, it was absolutely covered with orange spiny brittle stars.

We were able to stretch our legs in some beautiful places — hiking on National Parks Service trails when we could and bushwhacking in the trail-less places. We saw tons of fox and bird skeletons, but thankfully only one desiccated eel head.

Painted Cave on the north side of Santa Cruz Island is the twelfth largest sea cave in the world, a fact that reminded me a little of the World’s Largest Burl in Port McNeill, BC. But this cave is so much more impressive than the burl! There’s no anchorage nearby, so the best way to visit is to gather friends onto one boat, leave half the crew idling in the boat outside the cave, and send the rest in a dinghy to the cave with a strong flashlight. The entrance is 130 feet tall, but the ceiling quickly lowers — and feels dangerously low if you happen to be inside on a calm day when a few rogue waves surge into the cave, ricochet loudly off the cave walls, and cause your children to yell, “DAD! Stop taking a video and focus!”

Often at the moment we felt furthest from civilization, we were reminded that we were actually less than 85mi from LAX. Passing from Santa Rosa to Santa Cruz Islands, we heard a shocking bang and quickly checked to make sure we hadn’t hit something. Later, our anchorage neighbors confirmed that it was a SpaceX launch from nearby Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Another day, we were playing on a beach that glittered with abalone shell fragments left by Chumash people thousands of years before, when two menacing-looking grey military boats pulled into the cove and circled slowly before tearing off to the east. We wondered if it was coincidental that this was the same day the Vice President and Secretary of Defense were speaking to the Marine Corps at Camp Pendleton.

But really, the true highlight, was the beach at Forney Cove — the place where we finally slowed down the pace, realized we had nowhere to be, and just hung out. The kids spent hours upon hours getting absolutely hammered by waves. Steve and I sat in CrazyCreeks and read about Richard Henry Dana and Bernard Moitissier. We gathered shells and accidentally left behind a pair of crocs which we rediscovered a week later, completely untouched. We had happy hours with anchorage buddies who shared ginger beers and homemade baguettes. We felt like we were doing exactly what we set out to do — not much really, in a very pretty place.

I appreciate a little subjectivity in cruising guidebooks, so I love the Dreamspeaker series which includes hand-drawn charts of most of the anchorages in the Salish Sea with notes on where to find rope swings and blackberry bushes. Now that we’re outside Dreamspeaker territory, I find myself Googling “favorite anchorage [our current location].” Of course, any anchorage is only as good as the weather you have there. At Yellowbanks, we had it all.

We’d been circumnavigating Santa Cruz Island in the Channel Islands for a few days and knew a strong northwesterly was approaching. We decided to ride it out at Yellowbanks, an anchorage on the southeast end of the island with a sandy bottom and good holding.

The Friday we arrived was perfectly warm and calm. We were swimming almost before the anchor was set, no wetsuits needed. We spent the afternoon with Kevin (a different Kevin!) and Melissa of Dark Star, joking about the crazy winds that never materialized and the boats that arrived after us and anchored awkwardly close. They told us about a night they spent in Echo Bay on Sucia Island when a rare thunderstorm rolled in after dark, half of the 50 plus boats in the bay dragged anchor, and frantic yelling rang out through the night. We remembered a 4th of July we spent in the very same spot during the early days of COVID when the only sound that broke the perfect calm was a lone trumpet playing America the Beautiful at dusk. Which experience would we have tonight?

By Saturday morning, we could finally see white caps to the south, but couldn’t feel much in our cozy anchorage. The remote cliffs of Anacapa Island beckoned. We hailed Dark Star on the VHF to see if they wanted to join for a day sail. Kevin, a pilot, sounds pretty professional on a radio, but his natural enthusiasm comes through: “Copy Flyer. I don’t think I need to check with the rest of my crew. We’re in!” Before long, Kevin and Melissa arrived together on a single paddleboard.

We didn’t get far before we felt the wind, 20-25kts and building. And more westerly than expected. It looked like we weren’t going to make it around Anacapa after all, but we got far enough to say we’d seen through its iconic rock arch. It was a rough ride, and even more so when we turned back into the wind to beat our way home. The adults, who had knowingly enlisted in this jaunt, laughed through it. James, who had no say in the matter, emerged from his cabin wearing seasickness wristbands, curled up miserably in the cockpit, and delivered his catchphrase: “This is NOT a vacation.”

By the time we got back to the anchorage, we were in a full fledged gale and every boat other than Dark Star (unoccupied, but looking solid) had fled the scene. Wind gusted down the famed yellow banks at 40kts — no need to back up on the anchor to set it — and whipped sea spray into the air like smoke on the water. The sounds were incredible. There was no chance of getting Kevin and Melissa back to their boat until things calmed down.

Steve predicted that the katabatic winds charging down the hills would die around sunset. We laughed pretty hard when they seemed to pick up after 6pm. By the time the cops showed up (actually the flashing lights of TowBoatUS securing a boat with torn sails to a nearby mooring ball), the three-hour tour had become a slumber party.

Steve and I found this turn of events delightful. We had plenty of food and drink to share — though only half a green cabbage left as far as vegetables go — and were happy to lower our salon table to bed height. Kevin and Melissa, an emergency vet, could have entertained us for days with stories of “dead” turtles come back to life and back woods plane crashes caused by full bladders. But the kids, who have a sixth sense for parental distraction and a Starlink signal, holed up in their own cabins to be entertained by screens.

The next morning, we woke up to a completely different anchorage: calm and sunny. Kevin greeted Steve with a “Morning, Dad!” and paddled back to Dark Star to grab their dinghy. We checked out the forecast, decided to stay put, and headed out in our dinghy with wetsuits and snorkeling gear. We puttered around and debated the best spot to drop in: good visibility here, but close to waves breaking against the rocks; a little milky there, but nice kelp. The further we got from Flyer, the more forcefully Paul pleaded to go back: “I hate when kelp touches me!” Totally unable to reach consensus, we rode back to Flyer and grumbled while unloading all the gear from dinghy again. Paul, now exuberant, talked Steve into rigging up a spinnaker pole rope swing and then talked the rest of us into swimming too.

That night, the seas picked up shortly after we got into bed. Unlike the previous night, when the gale pushed us in one direction, these waves seemed to came from everywhere. From our bunk in the bow — the farthest end of the boat seesaw — it felt like trying to sleep in the Jurassic Park ride at Disney Land. For hours and hours, Steve and I tossed and turned. We were still fully awake (and grumpy) at 5:30, when James came forward to use the head. “Oh wow,” he said, “it feels so NICE up here!” 

As soon as it was light, we pulled up our anchor and made a break for it, but not before taking a picture of a perfect sunrise over Anacapa. We felt like we’d experienced the extremes of Yellowbanks over the course of a few nights, but we shouldn’t have been surprised. The Channel Islands are known for dramatic weather, and I guess our family is too. 

At any given time, the four of us are likely to be living four completely different experiences on the same 44’ boat. One of us may be contentedly trimming the sails while another is cursing every damn thing that fell out of the refrigerator again. One is asking his online English teacher about her other students while another suffers a bout of FOMO as the friend group text chain blows up. One is joyfully playing online with a cousin while another complains about the kids playing Minecraft when there’s a literal National Park outside. One is curled up whispering sweet nothings to the cat while another sees an open hatch and despairs that we’ve really lost her this time.

I try to notice then, when by some alchemy, the four of us find ourselves in sync, making up songs about Pelle over dinner and gleefully vacuuming flies right out of the air while anchored at a particularly beautiful anchorage. One we’ll probably add to our list of favorites.