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
Today’s cruise from Pender Harbour to Squirrel Cove was about 48nm. A longish cruise, but the conditions were perfect — calm water and just the slightest breeze. A long but uneventful cruise is nice sometimes, especially when we have internet! We took advantage of the calm cruise to catch up on blog posts and some other flotilla business. (New flotilla t-shirts for 2018!) Cassidy (Nordhavn 40) and Rhapsody (Ranger Tug … Read more
The Strait of Georgia is the first “gate” on our way to Alaska. It’s only a few hours across, but if it’s windy it can be a miserable few hours. We look at a bunch of different forecasts before crossing any of the gates. Most of the time, the forecasts are pretty much in agreement. The trends are the same and predicted wind velocities are similar. For the Strait of … Read more
The beautiful weather continues! We awoke this morning to bright sunshine and our group was so excited to get going that we left Roche Harbor by 8:00 a.m. — an hour earlier than originally scheduled. All but one of us has Nexus (the trusted traveler program that lets us clear Canadian customs by phone most of the time), so one boat had to stop and clear customs at Pender Harbour … 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
Boating is for men. I know. Not the first sentence you expected from me, was it? But hang in there and we’ll have a fun little ride. I started boating for real, with my own boat, in 2014 (in my 40s), but I grew up around sailboats and sailing. My grandfather had a sailboat. Our family friend Conrad had a sailboat. My mom had a sailboat. I spent a lot … 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
Did you miss our seminars at the Seattle Boat Show earlier this year? Well we’re giving you another chance to catch up with us…we’ll be at TrawlerFest 2018 in Bremerton, Washington, just days before we take off with our 2018 Flotilla to Alaska! Trawlerfest runs from May 1 through May 5th, and we’ll be giving three 2-hour seminars on May 1st and 2nd. Seminars will be held at the Kitsap Conference … Read more