Kevin Morris 
In past years, we went straight from Meyers Chuck to Wrangell, a 50+nm run. This year, we decided to break it up with a stop in Thoms Place. This way, we have a relaxed day leaving Meyers Chuck, and then can make the short hop to Wrangell the following day and have much more time to explore town. And we get an extra night anchored in a beautiful, remote cove! … Read more
The forecast for crossing Dixon Entrance was about as good as it gets. Wind light, building to northwest 5-15 knots in the afternoon and 10-20 knots in the evening. Environment Canada, NOAA, Windy, and Windfinder all basically agreed, too. We’d have a lazy, three foot swell and basically calm winds. This is the longest day of our trip at 64 nautical miles. Given the long day and the possibility of … Read more
We’ve been lucky with the weather so far. We’ve had sun almost every day, sometimes not until the afternoon and occasionally with some rain showers mixed in, but overall it’s been really nice. Yesterday afternoon, clouds moved in, and this morning felt like a typical day on B.C.’s central coast: misty with low clouds clinging to the mountainsides. Since it was too bumpy yesterday afternoon to run the dinghies up … Read more
After a busy day doing chores in Shearwater, we were ready to get back to the fun part of cruising—anchoring in remote, beautiful places! From Shearwater, we headed west out Seaforth Channel towards the ocean, then turned north, transited Reid Passage, and slipped through Perceval Narrows. This is a relatively complicated route, but it avoids the worst of the swells in Milbanke Sound. The south entrance of Reid Passage can … Read more
This is what the Cruising World has been waiting for! FIVE Boats. FIVE Rapids, One Day… and only ONE shot at slack…. Well, not really. But we did have a unique transit! Traveling north of Desolation Sound requires transiting rapids. Slow boats don’t do well in white water, so timing is critical. The most direct route is through Seymour Narrows and then Johnstone Strait, but it’s not well protected and … Read more
We depend heavily on VHF and AIS while cruising the Inside Passage between Puget Sound and Southeast Alaska. Both VHF and AIS are running at all times while we are underway, and a good deal of the time when we are not. We are constantly monitoring traffic, chatting with other vessels, listening to weather broadcasts, and confirming our intentions with traffic we encounter. Aboard Airship, we are generally scanning a … Read more
Two years ago, we replaced Airship’s house batteries with new lithium iron phosphate batteries. And, for those who just want the punchlines, we have two: 1) The performance of our lithium batteries has been fantastic through two full seasons of cruising and over 400 nights living aboard (with a high percentage of those disconnected from shore power). 2) No, we are not worried about our lithium batteries exploding or catching … Read more
It’s difficult to find a high-quality new cruising boat for a reasonable price these days. By and large, the new boats being built are semi-custom – basic configurations with dizzying numbers of custom options that let the customer design exactly the boat of their dreams. Unfortunately, that means enormous amounts of labor to build each boat by hand, almost from scratch – and that means big bucks. Such big bucks, … Read more