SV Darwind

Yesterday, Day 26, I spent in Wrangell alone, and I whiled away the day doing laundry, reading, cooking (I didn’t burn anything!!), and catching up on sleep. The most interesting thing I did all that day was to rig a line for the third reef in the main. I even wrote a little for the blog, on which I am seriously falling behind, but couldn’t find any wifi to post anything, and after a very boring day, I retired to my faithful boat, ready for my first day of singlehanded sailing on the Darwind .             That brings us to today, the day of my very first singlehanded passage of any significance or length. And just for the record, it was great. Contrary to the boredom of yesterday, I woke up full of energy and set about getting ready to leave. Because I was going out alone today, I was extra careful about getting everything absolutely ready and stowed, because there would be nobody to go get do something that I forgot once we were underway. (“we” as in Darwind a

Today I am writing this post from my house in Anchorage, having been on the boat for a month and a half and having sailed over 1,000nm to Yacutat, (I know, I'm way behind on the posts) I have finally been forced ashore by that accursed bane of sailors: headwinds. So far, on the inside passage, the wind hasn't really affected me, as it is almost always light and variable anyway, but crossing the gulf in quite another cup of tea. The prevailing winds are from the west, and combined with the pacific ocean rollers coming in from the south, both wind and seas can conspire to make any west-bound sailor's life a misery. My dad and I were lucky to catch the tail end of a favorable low pressure to get  to Yacutat, but even then we ended up with one day of beating in which we made only 30nm towards Yacutat in 24 hours. So now, with the boat deserted and silent for the first time in 45 days, I'm back in Anchorage, enjoying the luxuries of shore life while waiting for another weath

Due to the scarcity of high-speed internet in Northern BC and Southeast Alaska, I haven't been able to upload any photos. That is about to change. Day 17 Morris Bay, after a hard day's sailing Sunset at Morris Bay - Red sky at night, sailor's delight Leaving misty Kiltik Cove Fun sailing Rail in the water!! Day 18 Klemtu Fuel Dock, before the rain In full foul weather gear during the height of the rain Day 19 Algae growth in the water Approaching Hartley Bay Graham Reach Day 20 On watch - reading The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins on evolution through natural selection (either very ironic or suiting, however you want to look at it, on a boat named Darwind ) Day 20 Wing and wing with the big genoa poled out with the boathook Bringing down the Canadian courtesy flag as we cross the border under very similar conditions that we crossed into Canada - No wind and overcast Day 21 Welcome P

After a good nights sleep, we once again woke up at 6:00 and got underway just a few minutes after the fisherman who had shared our anchorage last night. Everything went pretty smoothly in the morning, by this time I had settled back into sailing-time and was used to getting up early, and later when I was pulling up all that 200 feet of scope, I really woke up. Especially since we were in well over 40 feet of water, so when I got to the chain I was pulling up all 40 feet of 3/8 inch chain, and the 7.5kg anchor on top of all that. At least when we are in 30 feet I’m never pulling up everything at once. After getting the anchor aboard, we got underway at 7:00am, headed for a medium-distance run up to Wrangell, but we needed to time it just right because there were some tricky narrows about halfway there that I wanted to hit at slack. For the first few miles up to the entrance to the narrows it was flat calm with some light, intermittent drizzle that we motored th

After yesterday’s late start and fun day, Jason and I woke up at 5:00am, after a good night’s sleep. However, due to Jason’s excessive height, I had spent the night in the V-berth for the first time, and though it was a bit smaller than my settee berth, I did appreciate that it was a bit darker. In fact, I was so unused to being in a room at all darker than outside, I had to do a double take when my alarm went off, as I thought I must have set it an hour early. Anyhow, we slipped the dock lines an hour before schedule at 7:00am because we had set our alarms too early and were already awake and ready to go. Our destination at that time was Meyer’s Chuck, where the chart advertised sticky buns available at the dock in the mornings. As soon as we were outside of Clover Passage and into the more open waters of Behm Canal and Clarence Strait, it became apparent that our beautiful following wind of yesterday had deserted us along with the sun, to be replaced with this

Today I had the luxury of getting up whenever I felt like, but it turns out that my body got so acclimated to waking up at 4:00am that I ended waking up at 8:00am, still late, but nowhere near where I would be waking up on a summer day back home. Once I woke, up I discovered that dad had already gone to get some more hardware for a little side project he was working on, and soon both he and Jason returned. Now, I did another thing that I have never done alone before, which was to re-provision. That’s not technically true, Jason came with me, but he was there mostly to carry the jerry jugs when we filled up gas. We walked don the surprisingly sunny streets of Ketchikan, with giant backpack full of empty jerry jugs on my back, and noted that the wind was blowing pretty good from the Southwest, which was unexpected as it was supposed to be from the north today and going west tomorrow. Anyway, we got to Costco, bought some meat, dry goods, a can of beans, and some a