Airship

Day 5 | 2024 Flotilla to Alaska | Shoal Bay to Mound Island

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Environment Canada’s forecast for Johnstone Strait today was a gale warning, with expected winds 20-30kts this afternoon. But Windy showed conditions that looked much more friendly. Johnstone is not an area where we typically can rely on Windy conditions, due to the variety of terrain and other mysterious things — this is when actual reported conditions are best when you can get them. Fanny Island showed 15-18kts for our whole … Read more

Day 4 | 2024 Flotilla to Alaska | Kanish Bay to Shoal Bay

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The weather is very much not cooperating with our original plan for this week, so we’re making changes on the fly. Today, we were up early for a short 16nm cruise from Kanish Bay to Shoal Bay, at the top of East Thurlow Island. Shoal Bay is a great stop, with expansive views up Phillips Arm when it’s clear, and the charming Shoal Bay Cottage grounds to explore on shore. … Read more

Day 3 | 2024 Flotilla to Alaska | Tribune Bay to Kanish Bay

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Today was another long day — from Tribune Bay north to Kanish Bay (58nm). The only tricky part was that we needed to time our departure from Tribune Bay to we would arrive 6.5 hours later for slack at Seymour Narrows, which today was 3:46pm. We had a little current with us today, increasing as we approached Cape Mudge and Campbell River, and we transited the narrows about 15 minutes … Read more

Day 2 | 2024 Flotilla to Alaska | Ganges to Tribune Bay

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We departed Ganges Marina this morning around 9:30am for today’s (long) cruise up to Tribune Bay (68nm). Another gorgeous weather day! Love the shot Missie (from Selene Melissa Lynn) got of this creative use of umbrella-as-sail: And also this shot of Airship with a float plane taking off in front: We were aiming to arrive at Dodd Narrows 15-30 minutes before the 1:33pm slack, but we arrived a bit later … Read more

Day 1 | 2024 Flotilla to Alaska | Prevost Harbor to Ganges BC

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Nice and easy 15nm cruise from Prevost Harbor on Stuart Island to Ganges Harbour on Saltspring Island. Everyone was pretty happy this morning after that amazing show of lights last night. The forecast for tonight is also good, so maybe we’ll be up late again tonight! The weather has been beautiful! We spent the day exploring town, provisioning with fresh produce (for the next 8-10 days or so) and relaxing … Read more

Day 0 | 2024 Flotilla to Alaska | A Spectacular Northern Lights Show at Prevost Harbor

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We’re headed north again for another adventure up the Inside Passage to Alaska! We met two boats from this year’s group in Prevost Harbor at Stuart Island, and had a nice meetup on Airship to discuss tomorrow into Canada, and the overall plan. This is going to be a really fun group!! We will meet up with our third boat in Ganges today (Mike and his brother Garry on a … Read more

Airship | And Just Like That, We’re Home!

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We got an email from the current owners of the Nordic Tug 24 Snowdrop (previously known as Airship), telling us (1) that they saw (current) Airship in Long Harbour on their evening walk, then (2) that they looked at the blog and learned that we’d already found Snowdrop! They invited us to come by in the morning to see our previous boat and meet in person, so we accepted! We’d … Read more

Airship | Long Harbour on Saltspring Island

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We left Hammond Bay around 11am and aimed south for Dodd Narrows to arrive near slack (12:25pm). About 40 minutes before slack we began hearing boats making sécurité calls announcing their transit through the very narrow Dodd Narrows. A couple southbound sailboats went through (current was pushing south until slack), and at that time a log barge made a call letting other vessels know they were a “too wide” log … Read more