Socially Distanced Buddy Boating in the San Juans

As the upgrades on Airship get closer and closer to being finished (I know, very funny), we’re getting antsier and antsier to be out on the water. Summer’s over and we’ve only spent about 3 days aboard, which in a normal year would be closer to 7 months aboard, so this is quite a change. But this year is different than most, by far. The new Victron lithium batteries and … Read more

Airship, Now With Solar (well, and a few other things)!

Kevin and I finally got to get aboard Airship again last week! Before we talk about our quick cruise, let’s do a little catch-up: With the Alaska and Vancouver Island flotillas cancelled this season, Airship has been having another major round of maintenance and upgrades. You can see the initial round of upgrades from 2018 (when we bought the boat) HERE. This year’s upgrades started back in October at the … Read more

Cruising Down the West Coast in a Nordhavn 55 | Leg 3 | Crescent City to Monterey, CA

According to Rich our magic weather router, it was looking like Monday morning (September 30) would be the optimal time for us to head further south. Unfortunately, Kevin (Morris) had meetings in San Jose to attend staring Monday, so he booked a Sunday flight from Crescent City to San Jose, and the three of us (me, Alison, and Kevin Jeffries) would continue with one less crew member. But with a … Read more

Cruising Down the West Coast in a Nordhavn 55 | Waiting for Weather in Crescent City, CA

Well it appears we’ll have a few days (okay, maybe a week) to kill here in Crescent City due to some weather we’d rather not be out in, so we’ll get to know this town and its surrounds better in the meantime. Day 1: We all happily slept in on our first morning in the marina, but Kevin Jeffries was up (temporarily) to take one of the dogs out and … Read more

Cruising Down the West Coast in a Nordhavn 55 | Leg 2 | Grays Harbor WA to Crescent City CA

Thursday, 4:15 a.m. — Our original plan was to catch the early morning high slack at the Grays Harbor bar, which meant heading out before dark, again. However, in the morning we didn’t get an agreeable bar report (boooo!), so we opted to wait until the midday low slack and went back to bed (yaaaaay!). Thursday, 11:15 a.m. — We left our slip at Westport Marina after a few more … Read more

Cruising Down the West Coast in a Nordhavn 55 | Leg 1 | Neah Bay to Grays Harbor WA

Kevin and I had a few days off in Victoria after our Vancouver Island flotilla ended, so we spent the time relaxing, exploring, eating out, and of course, doing boat projects. We fixed a plumbing leak in the washer/dryer plumbing, worked on getting the boat all dried out with our new dehumidifier, went to the IMAX theater at the museum to see the Great Bear Rainforest movie (which was very … Read more

Airship | Tracy Arm and Ford’s Terror

We had a week off in between flotilla legs, so we invited friends Jake and Patti to fly up from San Diego and join us on a trip down to Tracy Arm and Ford’s Terror, and we buddy-boated with Ralph on Jester while his daughter Sara and her husband David were in town. We left Juneau on the morning of the 26th and headed for Tracy Arm Cove (~42nm south … Read more

Day 9 | Flotilla to Alaska | Blunden Harbour to Fury Cove

Around Cape Caution! When we fell asleep last night, Environment Canada (Central Coast zone) was calling for “wind light” and seas one meter all day. Windy (ECMWF model) was showing this: Forecasts don’t get much better than that, but forecasts aren’t always right. So when we woke up at 4:30 a.m. we checked West Sea Otter buoy, where the wind was gusting to 4 knots and the seas were a … Read more