11 aug 12 sun in the sound

Anchored in South Surprise Cove looking north to the glaciers of College Fjord

july clouds in the sound

We were surprised to find a bit of March lingering in a valley while on our July holiday.

A cozy anchorage between Little Mink and Mink Islands in Port Nellie Juan

wing-on-wing down Passage Canal - the end of our July holiday in the Sound

1 jul 12 nearing the first bend

Unbelievably, it's the first of July already, and my last entry reads to me like the taper before the big event. Here are a few photos of the race that is my Alaska Summer 2012.

We attended the Alaska Botanical Gardens' Gala event.  Paul submitted a cedar Japanese Snow Lantern this year. About two dozen artists included works of many media.  I liked this metal spiral that had been carefully centered over a young plant.

We took Blossom to Whittier mid-month.  The weather was unmatched on Solstice Weekend.  Endless sun and wind for sailing. 

I visited Cordova for the first time this past weekend with two former co-workers.  We had sunny weather the first two days and more typical Prince William Sound weather the last two.  South-central Alaska seems blanketed with lupine this year.  Here is a roadside bouquet down the beach from the lodge where we stayed.

9-11 sep 11 bon voyage PWS

Our final weekend in Prince William Sound brought a little sun, a little sailing, a little hiking, a little rain, a little fog, a little fish, and lots of blueberries. We're already planning next summer's voyages.

This album now shows the highlights of our entire summer sailing Blossom in Prince William Sound:

jul 2011 clear sailing

Our July 2011 week in Prince William Sound was almost the exact opposite weather-wise as the same July week we spent there in 2010. Last year we had one sunny day of weather. This year, we had one rainy afternoon and night.

The itinerary turned out to be much the same. We hadn't intended to anchor in Surprise Cove, but an east wind on our first afternoon out altered our plans. That was the right decision because it was the only real sailing we did all week. We even neared Blossom's hull speed (6.3 knots) on a broad reach into Cochrane Bay.

The next day we motored to Long Bay in Culross Passage. Last year we had the bay to ourselves but we'd heard that the salmon were running and other boats would be there this time. And that was true, though numbers declined each night. Eight boats Saturday, 3 on Sunday, just 2 of us on Monday night. Paul cast for silver, sockeye, chum, and pink salmon at the head of the lagoon and caught a huge pink that fed us dinner and lunch. We assembled our kayaks on the beach and explored the lagoon one day and the bay the next. We also hiked up to the Shrode Lake cabin.

The wind had us changing our float plan again on Tuesday. We had intended to head south out of Culross Passage to visit Port Nellie Juan for the first time. But a strong westerly breeze in Long Bay indicated that the forecast was correct about a decent westerly blowing. So we headed north out of Culross to hit the wind sooner and sail it over to Perry Island, where we hadn't been yet either. We were disappointed to see the wind die as we left the passage.


But we weren't disappointed after an hour-long motor to West Twin Bay. We anchored behind the spit near the head of the bay. The clarity of the water and light and the warm sunny weather made the bay look almost tropical. Paul even jumped into the water before our shower on Wednesday evening. West Twin had the added amenity of few bugs so we were able to spend much time relaxing in the cockpit, sipping cocktails and enjoying the bay, which we had all to ourselves.

Bhikkhu's first kayak trip

To see more photos of this trip and earlier ones this summer in Prince William Sound, click the photo:

Sailing Prince William Sound 2011

17-20 june 11 sunny sound

I couldn't believe I was wearing shorts as we motored into Harriman Fjord. The water is ringed by glaciers whose icebergs are floating everywhere. The first two days of our long weekend were downright hot (by Alaskan standards). Even after the clouds returned, little rain fell and we enjoyed a dry weekend on Blossom. Two downsides to the calm weather -- no sailing and no breeze to knock down the no-see-ums.

Despite the millions of little buggers trying to steer me otherwise, it was an easy time to take Guillame Apollonaire's advice: Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness, and just be happy.

Hobo Bay

Packing B up to the ridge

Blossom anchored at the base of Serpentine Glacier

Paul guides us out of Hummer Bay (where the tse-tses were unrelenting)

4 june 11 upwind in port wells

When I emailed our float plan to my family, my brother in Wisconsin replied "I envy you. We have a high in the upper 50's today with strong winds. It feels chilly; not boating weather." Hah! I said. That's a good day in Prince William Sound. I hoped it would reach 50. It didn't for 3 days, but that's beyond today's blog.

Despite the chill and rain, we hoisted the sails and headed up Port Wells to Esther Passage. Paul was at the helm for most of the sail because the wind held during his 1-hour shift. We have resolved to try to sail any breeze that comes up, so despite the weather, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to make some distance under sail and without the motor.

Eventually the wind died down and we furled the sails and started the motor. Minutes later, a pod of dall porpoises started swimming alongside us, and then crossing in front of us. Technically I think it was my shift at the helm, but I grabbed my camera and scooted up to the mast to photograph their antics. They are very hard to photograph, but you can see two in this photo - one on either side of the furled jib.

And while we were out in the rain, Bhikkhu was doing what all good first mates do, especially when the boat has two captains - he was checking the charts and guide and keeping us on course.

23 may 11 prince william sound

Another season in Prince William Sound has begun. We hauled Blossom to Whittier on a Saturday. We spent the afternoon getting the mast raised, rigging sails, installing the bimini, and moving everything back in. By the time we launched, it was evening and we still had some shoreside duties left to do so we decided to stay in the harbor overnight. One task was to remedy a dumb mistake that we won't likely make again (hopefully). When they raised the mast, we didn't check the location of all the halyards and missed that the end of the jib halyard was at the top of the furler. Late Saturday night, when the tide was low, we motored over to a pier where Paul could climb up a ladder and reach the halyard.

On Sunday morning we inflated the dinghy, paid our fees to the harbor master, and finished rigging the sails. We motored in the rain and calm out to Surprise Cove for a night. A rare treat to share the cove with only one other boat. On Monday morning the sky was clearing as we hiked up to North Lake. By the time we headed back to Whittier in the afternoon, it was balmy by PWS standards.

Not a long or far trip, but a good shakedown cruise to work out the kinks in Blossom and us.

19 jan 11 booking blossom

On Wednesday I thought it was just another spam comment on the blog, but something caught my brain as I scanned the message. Then I really read it. A graphic artist wanted to use a photo from my July Blossom post for the cover of a kid's book, written by a kid and his dad. They are self-publishing the story. I'm glad that they have an image of a sailboat off an island in Maine for a book about the same. I look forward to reading it.

19 sep 10 end of summer

The last month has been a busy time of playing with family, harvesting the garden, and enjoying the best weather we've had in months. Here are some photos from the last few weeks. I hope to get through the backlog soon.

Paul, my dad, and I bicycled from Indian to Girdwood and most of the way back on one dry day during my parents' visit. My stepmom Kay drove the support wagon, babysat the pup, and met us in Girdwood for lunch.

We skipped two weekends in Prince William Sound because of forecast downpours and small craft advisories. Then came the weekend after Labor Day ....

Airing out the sails at anchor in Pirate Cove, with College Fjord as the backdrop.

Blossom anchored in Bettles Bay Lagoon. We found a ridge full of blueberries above the lagoon.

We enjoyed a couple of hikes "in the heather" above Port Wells.

11 aug 10 soggy zen

I feel like I haven't done anything but whine about the weather since we returned from a soggy week in Prince William Sound to the soggy summer in Anchorage on Saturday evening.* So I won't dwell on the dominant weather that we had in the Sound last week.

I'm trying to focus on how this is the first summer in a long time that I actually sit around reading. Earlier this summer I complained to a friend back East about the flurry of summer reading lists that pop up everywhere in June and how Alaskans were too busy making the most of every minute of sunshine to sit around reading. Winter is for reading. My remarks were possibly a bit insensitive because she was laid up with a broken ankle. I hoped that she was enjoying the opportunity to read and relax during the warm days. I wanted to know what she was reading for my own winter book list.

Then came our time in Prince William Sound - a week last month and a week this month. The weather was less than inspiring for exploring by either boat or foot most of the time, but perfect for snuggling in with a hot beverage and a good novel. This approach to a vacation, unusual for me, certainly leads to a relaxed state.

Paul commented on how the week had a Zen quality -- from the quiet mornings of reading (including a book on Zen) and doing Sudoku and crosswords to the chance to mindfully carry out chores and meal preparations. Even the landscape looked like an Asian painting with mists defining successive ridges and mountains.

Once again it seems that the trick is to bring that calm, relaxed state of the retreat back to the everyday world.

* And it's official - the National Weather Service says that we're setting records for cool, wet, and cloudy. And it has rained every day since this article was in the paper.

** I've added some more photos with captions to the gallery.

july 2010 blossom

In September 1998 Paul and I sailed together for the first time; it was the first time Paul had ever sailed. We went to Maine to visit my brother Ron. Our plan had been to rent kayaks and paddle part of the Maine Island Trail. We had rented a shelter on Isle of Haute in Acadia National Park for a few nights. But because Ron hadn't kayaked before, no one would rent to us. Ron, who is a boat designer, was working for a boat builder at the time, and his boss offered to loan us an open wooden sail boat that he had built. We'd still be camping every night, and if the wind didn't blow, the boat was fitted with oars. His daughter had named the little blue boat Blossom.

Ron and Paul did row quite a bit but we also sailed. Somehow Ron anchored Blossom off-shore each night and got us and the camping gear to the islands without a dinghy. The weather was mostly good, we ate fresh mussels, hiked on Isle of Haute, and had a great time. Not only did Paul get the sailing bug that week, but we bought two folding kayaks and found out that the National Park Service wanted to send him to Alaska to work for Katmai and Lake Clark National Parks. Our lives were changed forever in the span of a few days.

Our Jeanneau Tonic 23 is much more modern in design than that little wooden gaffrig sailboat, but those happy memories and maybe the blue bottom hull of our boat have caused us to call our sailboat Blossom almost from the time we bought her. We haven't told anyone, but that's the name we've been leaning toward. And we've finally toasted her with Paul's homemade mead (the last bottle from our wedding 16 years ago!) and made it official -- here's Blossom II.
Our Blossom with all the wet gear hanging out on the first sunny day

July was the first real sailing and gunkholing month on our Blossom. Over a long Fourth of July weekend, we anchored in Surprise Cove, hiked on a state park trail, and finally saw Blackstone Bay. We've kayaked in Prince William Sound many times and have never seen whales. We probably saw a dozen humpbacks in Cochrane and Blackstone Bays that weekend. We scooted back into Whittier for a night in the harbor when a small craft advisory was forecast for our last day. Sleeping at dock and maneuvering about the harbor the next day in sustained 14 mph winds with 40 mph gusts were excellent boat handling practice!

On the 17th we drove to Whittier with food, libations, books, and other supplies for a week's sojourn. We spent another night at Surprise Cove and then two rainy nights tucked back into Three Finger Cove. Two harbor seals had greeted us there. On the first night, I was awake in the middle of the night and heard an odd bubbling sound water off the bow. I jumped out, grabbed the binoculars, and peered out into the dark. I could just see some tremendous splashing near the shore. In the morning and all the next day, the seals were gone. I feared that orcas had attacked them. When we left the cove the next day, dozens of seals were hauled out on rocks near the cove entrance. I hope that our seals were just visiting with the family.

We left Three Finger Cove and spent the afternoon motoring up out of Cochrane Bay and down Culross Passage to within a couple of miles of where we had started that day. The sun came out for the first time in four days while we were anchored in Long Bay. We hung all the wet towels and rain gear on the boom, back stay, and life lines. Paul hoisted a sun shower from the main halyard and we bathed in the cockpit.

Clean and dry, we sailed out of Long Bay and then down Culross Passage to Picturesque Cove for a night. The next day we motored through the gap between Culross Island and Applegate Island and then up the east side of Culross. We had hoped for a little wind from the greater Sound for sailing that day, but the north breeze wasn't enough to be worth tacking back and forth up wind. We tried to visit Lake Bay that day but the commercial fishermen had it blocked off to catch pinks returning to the hatchery. So we returned to the north end of Culross Passage and anchored in Carrs Cove.


The wind and sun returned on Friday and we sailed out of Culross Passage and north into Port Wells. For an hour we just enjoyed the east wind on a broad reach toward the glaciers. Late in the afternoon we anchored in Ziegler Cove in the state marine park of that name. The swells in the cove rocked us to sleep after we explored the long gravel beach and boggy uplands separating the cove from Port Wells. On Saturday, those same east winds pushed us back to Whittier. With the whisker pole holding the jib out, we hit our fastest speed yet, under sail or motor, of 7 knots.

To see more photos of our Prince William Sound trips, click Play or the photo itself:

17 jul 10 becoming a crew

The 'somewhat weekly' has moved into summer schedule of 'somewhat monthly.' We are headed to Prince William Sound for more wilderness and sailing fun.

When we were deciding whether or not to buy the boat, the former owner gave a little speech about how sailing and boating had transformed his family: we used to be just a family, now we're a crew. We sometimes joke about that little speech -- you really could almost hear the music cued behind it. Yet the sailboat does seem to be bringing a new level of cooperation to our marriage.

So co-captains Paul and Corinne with first mate Gilligan (B's boat name) are off to keep honing our crew skills.

21 jun 10 sailing into solstice

Light wind sailing in Prince William Sound

With the end of June only a few days away, I start to feel like the summer is slipping away. I try to remind myself to live in the moment, but it's so difficult not to pace this season in Alaska by its number of weekends (14 with Memorial and Labor Day). This is the 5th weekend (and it's rainy and gray). If we're lucky, we get a few warm weekends in May and September to stretch the summer vibe. I also usually mark the summer's passage by the number of camping and kayaking trips. This summer, it's the number of sailing trips. And due to boat repairs, family reunions, work, and more boat repairs, we've only had the boat in the water one weekend so far this season.

Thinking about what we did that weekend (4 days over Solstice), I realize that we are making progress. Our goals for the sailboat this summer are threefold -- get to know it, fix the problems it has (sometimes these seem to be multiplying), and get more comfortable with boat handling. We're doing pretty well with all three despite the limited time on the boat.

The first two goals go hand-in-hand and are the most frustrating. Seems the more we get to know the boat, the more we find things that need to be repaired. The bilge is very clean now that we've discovered the windows leak, the water tank leaks (especially if the mystery O-ring is fitted into the hose), and two stanchion bases leak. Thankfully, Paul is very good at repairing just about anything and has a good supply of tools and hardware on board. (Though sometimes those things are on board to fix the problem we found the weekend before.) In addition to those leaks, in the last two weeks, we've had problems with the motor, the windlass (just the power option), and the trailer hitch. At this point, (knock on fiberglass), it doesn't seem like there's much left to be broken. Paul already re-wired and re-plumbed it.

In the third goal - the most fun - we both became much more comfortable motoring around the harbor, docking, and launching/taking out. We anchored for the first time for snacks and a shore walk in Shotgun Cove, about 7 miles out of Whittier. We used commercial and shrimp buoys at the mouth of the cove to practice handling and to get a better feel for how tight a radius the boat turns in all directions. We are relieved to find that dropping the rudder more than a foot actually gives us reverse to starboard (we don't know how the previous owners did it with the rudder raised to the trailering position even in the water).

I could whine more about broken things but it's probably wiser to remember how beautiful the weekend was, how peaceful it was sailing in Passage Canal, how quiet Shotgun Cove was on a Sunday evening, how nice the various people we met in the harbor were, and how much we like being on the boat.

our first anchorage -- Shotgun Cove

Click here to see more sailing photos

27 may 10 spring cleaning

clean, shiny sailboat (attached to the very dirty truck) ready to motor from our street to Whittier


little dog fresh (soggy?) from a bath

Jeanneau Tonic 23

fall 09 highlight #2 moored at thumb cove

September was our first month with a sailboat. Labor Day weekend was warm and sunny, perfect for swabbing decks, rigging sails, and getting to know the boat. We even sailed a little in Resurrection Bay that first weekend.

The weekend after Labor Day, however, was the first taste of why we bought the boat. Harbor life has its conveniences and entertainments, but cruising from bay to bay is what we want to do. That weekend, we got to one bay for one night.

The weather was typical Alaska coastal fall - rainy and cool. At night it was pitch black. When we rowed to shore to walk Bhikkhu around 10:00 pm, we wouldn't have been able to see the boat if we hadn't left a light on in the cabin (the anchor light wasn't working). In the morning we woke to a thick fog and heavy rain. Not ideal conditions but we didn't care. We were moored in Thumb Cove in our very own sailboat.

we all sleep well on the sailboat

13 sep 09 thumb cove, different boat

We went to Thumb Cove for the second time this summer. Instead of paddling kayaks out or getting a water taxi, we motored our sailboat south from Seward. Saturday was rainy and still, so no sailing. We putzed along at 6 knots, one of the few boats out in the post-Labor Day era. We tied up to a buoy half-way down the cove. Our 24 hours in the cove included several walks along the beach, a long night of sleep, and a relaxing morning reading and talking sailboats while sipping buckets of strong coffee.

The fog lifted and the rain finally broke around noon on Sunday. A light southerly breeze picked up and we cast off from the buoy. We sailed most of the way back to Seward, until the wind lessened near the head of the bay. If we hadn't needed to pull the boat out of the water and drive back to Anchorage, we would have pushed that little breeze as far as we could. Much of the allure of sailing is taking things slower.

12 sep 2009 starter summer

Happy sailors on an unbelievable September day on Resurrection Bay

This has been a summer of firsts for us -- first dog -- and last week we purchased our first sailboat. Like the dog, I think we still can't believe we did this. Like the dog, we're wondering how this happened. Like the dog, the boat just seemed to be the right one.

And thankfully, B does seem to like the boat. But as Paul says, " when you sleep all day, how can you not like something that is two-thirds bed?"

The boat: a 1988 Jeanneau Tonic 23, which means it's roughly 23 feet long at some point. So it's not what you'd call a yacht. This is probably not what Ted Kennedy sailed. Well, maybe when he was 10.

We were attracted to the fact that the interior has wood finishes, a small gallery, a functioning head (that's a toilet for you non-sailors), and the boat can be trailered. It seemed mighty small last weekend as we loaded gear on board -- kitchenware for the galley, tools for repairs, bedding for our berth, clothes for the weekend, a full bag of books about sailing and sailboats, and food for 3 days. Eventually, we found room for most of it and could see how we are going to be very comfortable on this little boat.

Where will we go? Hopefully some exploring of Resurrection Bay yet this summer (that's where the boat was located). Maybe to Prince William Sound next summer. Who knows?

The name? We want to change it (can't write it down according to boating myth). Any ideas? Luna Sea seems to be a popular one at the Seward harbor. Wonder why?

Paul in the cockpit of our little boat with a much larger boat on the other side of the dock.