S/V Adventurer

We are now cruising through the Broughton Archipelago. This is real wilderness. No cities, towns, roads, or cars. There is an occasional marina where boaters can gather if they need to be around people and muster up moral support, but beyond that, we are on our own. All of the marinas have “stores” which carry a few sad looking vegetables, cans of chili, and some other various things that can sit on a shelf for years. We have had quite a few anchorages all to ourselves. Not a soul around. We sometimes hear howling wolves at night and sometimes we hear nothing...and I mean nothing. No cars driving by, no horns, no hustle and bustle. The only sound that can be heard for miles is Brenda's snoring at night. All the way up here, we have shared anchorages with lots of other boaters. Sometimes we were packed in like sardines. Sometimes we were so packed in that we felt like we could walk to shore stepping from boat to boat to boat. Not the case anymore. Yesterday we sa...

After our short stay in the Octopus Islands, we decided that it was time to put some miles under us. We have been making relatively short hops all the way up here and we have realized that we really haven't gone very far (we actually realized this a long time ago and have given up on trying to get to Alaska this year). We are starting to understand the fact that there is no way that we are going to be able to see everything that there is to see up here. There are really years worth of exploring to be had in the Northwest and we aren't planning on taking years in the Northwest to explore, so we decided to pick a handful of places that we really want to see on this trip and make an effort to see them. The first step is to cover some ground. Off we go. From the Octopus Islands we picked a path that would take us to the Broughton Archipelago via Johnstone Strait. Johnstone Strait is another long body of water that can be extremely challenging. The typical weather patt...

We are now back on our own. We had a great time cruising around with our good friends Dan, Christi, and Grant but alas, it had to come to an end. We have places to go. We ended up spending almost 2 weeks with them and were really grateful to have been able to get that much time with some great friends and tour guides (and really, I was mostly just grateful for the gift they brought us...a months supply of Cheez-its!!! Woo Hoo!!!) We will miss them and we will cherish the Cheez-its. There is a different dynamic between Brenda and myself when we are on our own. We become much more in tune with each other and our adventure. Don't get me wrong, we loved having Dan and Christi show us around, but it is a different feeling to be exploring all of this without input from someone who has already been here. It becomes a little bit more exciting, a little bit more scary, and a little bit more “ours”. I had become pretty complacent in what we were doing every day. It was kind...

This day started like any other...with coffee...Brenda saying “let's go for a walk”....me saying “do I have to?”...then us going for a walk. The only difference being that when we got in the dinghy to head to shore to go for our big long walk, another boater stops us in our dinghy as we are halfway to shore and says “are you guys in the boat that got hit by that power boat last night?” We say “I don't think so”. They say “that's your boat right there isn't it?” Then I say “yes, that's it...have you ever seen a racing boat before?” (that is my favorite line...something about our boat being a racing boat...Brenda is tired of it...I still think it's funny every time I say it...she just rolls her eyes...it is a racing boat...as long as the boat I am racing is really slow...if they are faster than us then we obviously weren't racing) Then they say “well, that's definitely the boat that got hit by that power boat that zoomed out of here last night”. ...

We haven't been able to find a very fast wifi connection for a while and this place is no different.  We are however going to be staying here overnight so I am letting each picture take it's own sweet time to load (each one takes about 2 hours...we'll see how patient I am).  We are currently at a place called Gorge Harbor Marina.  It's more of a resort type place than we are used to with beautiful manicured landscaping, a great restaurant, pool and hot tub, and you guessed it...wifi (the real reason we are here).  Actually they have yoga in the mornings overlooking the bay and Brenda wanted to join in...so here we are at a resort.  Kind of nice for a change.  We have spent the last week with our good friends who sailed up from Seattle, Dan and Christy, and have been having a great time.  They have sailed up here numerous times and have explored just about every nook and cranny so it was really fun to have some tour guides show us the ropes on some of...

I have mostly been writing about either what we have been doing or our experiences. Today I am going to write about my wife. I have said this before and I am going to say it again...I love her dearly and she is amazing and I am lucky to have her. Because that has been said, I can tell you that she is slightly neurotic...in a good way...sort of. We have had a relatively bug free experience since we left Seattle (other than Hope Island where it was like a breading ground for every type of annoying insect known to man). It seems that the farther north we have gotten, the more the bugs are prevalent...and the larger they have become. We have seen some of the largest biting flies and mosquitoes that I have ever seen. Brenda has endearingly named the mosquitoes “the little bastards”. We actually saw a large mosquito take off with a small goat and devour it in mid flight. The eagles here are scared of the mosquitoes and so am I. The problem I have is that the mosquitoes love ...

Every year at Shilshole (where we were living in Seattle), there is a mass exodus of boats headed for distant shores. We would wave as the boats and the crew departed and we would say “that will be us someday”. It was always bitter sweet to see our friends and neighbors leave us behind because we knew that we would probably never see these people again, but also we knew that they would be having a great adventure. So here we are...it's our turn and we are on our great adventure. Before we left Seattle, I would regularly get comments from friends or acquaintances that would tell us we were going to be doing something pretty incredible. Since we have left, I still get emails from friends who tell me that they think this is pretty amazing and they can't believe we have actually pulled it off. We run into people up here who tell us that they could never imagine doing what we are doing and that we have accomplished something great, even if we have only been gone for 6 w...

We haven't been able to find a fast enough internet connection to upload photos for a while now, but when we do find that speed, we have an incredible slide show to present to you that will rival your aunt Mabel's trip to North Dakota. Until then, all you get is my rambling. We are now in Desolation Sound and it's only taken us 5 ½ weeks to get here. Most of our sailing friends take between 5 to 7 days to get here from Seattle. They do however skip everything in the middle and just blast on up. We have stopped at every place along the way that either made sense on a map and still put us in a northbound direction, or was interesting enough to force us out of our way on a detour. Total tally as of July 7 th was 31 places explored. We have changed our earlier list from islands explored to places explored because we have sometimes explored different towns on the same island, or we have been on the mainland British Columbia side of things and that is no island, or w...

I have a big anchor (I bet you say that to all the ladies)...for real, I have a big anchor (that's what she said)...I'm serious, I have a big anchor (I could keep going but that's probably enough). It's a big anchor. It looks like a set of horns hanging off our boat kind of like an old Cadillac with the bull horns on the front. I've been told by some men that they have anchor envy. I've been told by others that it's too big. I think it's just right. I call it a sleeping pill (I can't take credit for that term...I've heard it said by a guy with a bigger anchor than mine...say it ain’t so!). It's been called a sleeping pill because when it's down on the bottom it sticks like glue and I can sleep through anything mother nature sends our way...which means I don't have to worry about it dragging in a big blow and us ending up on the rocks. I am telling you this because it has been windy since we left the San Juan Islands a few...

There are a few things that have been on my “bucket list” for more years than I care to admit. Almost all of my list has to do with the great outdoors. I love mother nature and she loves me. About 18 years ago, right after I bought my first sailboat, I read a little article in a sailing magazine that described the Princess Louisa Inlet. I knew that I had to see this place and it has been sitting patiently on my list since then. Well, I finally made it and it is spectacular! It took us about 8 hours completely out of our way to get to Princess Luisa Inlet from Pender Harbour, which means that we are out in the middle of nowhere. What do we do when we are sitting at home for about 8 hours on a lazy Sunday morning? Probably the same thing as you...coffee, breakfast, laundry, putter around the house...only for us, while we are doing our laundry, we just so happen to be meandering past some of the most beautiful scenery on earth...and we catch a fish for dinner. This place...