So it commenced, an unexpectedly magical trip with a couple of awesome shipmates, a journey that, in retrospect I wasn’t quite prepared for but will cherish forever. Aboard the rock-solid, sweet-sailing Cal 40 Dancing Bear, we set off from Anacortes, Washington, in ­mid-June, northbound for a group of islands off the coast of British Columbia called Haida Gwaii. It’s a remote archipelago about which I knew virtually nothing at the outset, but which is now forever embedded in my being. 

My leg of the journey spanned several hundred miles, winding through the nooks and crannies, currents and majesty that is the Pacific Northwest. It involved a dear old sailing pal and a brand-new one. Looking back, it unfolded in a series of chapters, of self-contained vignettes. And it all started with…

I: Whiskey Night

An hour north of Seattle, in the woodsy sticks where my friend Mark Schrader’s barn and shop serves as headquarters for his construction and fabrication business, I’d arrived just in time for Friday evening’s Whiskey Night, an open-air gathering of like-minded characters who show up to chat and sip. It started during the pandemic days and took on a life of its own. Our voyage was conceived under these notably hazy circumstances.

Mark and I went back a way. We’d first met in the mid-1980s, when he sailed in the second running of the BOC Challenge solo round-the-world race. Later, when he became the event’s race director, I worked for him in the media office. That led to some actual sailing, first aboard his tricked-out Dancing Bear for the 2005 Transpac race from Los Angeles to Honolulu. Then, in 2009-10, I was part of his core crew when he skippered the 64-foot steel cutter Ocean Watch on the Around the Americas expedition, a 28,000-nautical-mile spin around North and South America via the Northwest Passage and Cape Horn to raise awareness of ocean-health issues. 

We’d put a lot of shared miles astern. However, Jenn and Mark Dalton were new friends. Jenn was a Canadian adventurer and kayaker who was a fledgling sailor, and who had just purchased a J/28. Many years ago, Jenn worked at a fishing resort on the island of Langara on Haida Gwaii’s northern flank. On a previous Whiskey Night, someone had unspooled the big pull-down map and plonked a finger there, and the first inkling of an impending plan was hatched. With Jenn’s experience in the islands, Mark reckoned she would make a great crewmate and extended an invitation. 

Mark Schrader, Jenn and I would constitute the crew for the journey’s first half, from Anacortes up inside Vancouver Island to Haida Gwaii’s Daajing Giids. From there, Jenn’s husband, Mark Dalton, and I would swap positions. He’d continue northward to Langara and back to Anacortes on an offshore Pacific Ocean leg, leaving Vancouver Island to port. 

My own contribution to Whiskey Night was to recount various embarrassing sailing moments with my friend Mark. I had loads of material and was more than happy to comply. Then, once the last caps on the bottles were spun back on, it was time to go sailing.

II: Oh, Canada!

After a midday start from Anacortes, the opening 30-nautical-mile stretch of our trip basically involved winding our way through the pristine San Juan islands and into Canadian water. As we motorsailed along the northern shore of Orcas Island, I looked up to see a quartet of eagles lazily wheeling overhead in the thermals. Not for the last time, it struck me that I was no longer back home in Rhode Island. 

We closed in on the well-named Boundary Pass, which serves as the invisible at-sea border of the United States and Canada, and I saw a “big rip currents” note on the chart plotter. I wondered if they had anything to do with the confluence of waters separating mellow Canada from crazy America. Either way, the whirlpools were evident, and the aqua was seriously moving. One instant, with a favorable nudge, we’d zip along at 9 knots. Five minutes later, laboring into it, we’d be hard-pressed to make 5. Go with the flow, indeed. 

As we closed in on our first Canadian port of call at Bedwell Harbour on South Pender Island, Mark hoisted our maple leaf courtesy flag. We came alongside the customs dock, and a friendly fellow offered to take our lines. He asked, “Where are you going?”

“Haida Gwaii,” I replied. 

“Long way, eh?” he said. We were most definitely in Canada.  

Happily, in Jenn we had our very own Canadian ambassador, and she was ecstatic to be back along the British Columbia coastline where she was raised. Her enthusiasm and appreciation for her homeland’s beauty, wildlife and natural resources was contagious. She kept us fed, honest, entertained and informed, but most important, she kept us respectful, mindful and understanding of the places we’d come to see.   

Back at it the next morning, we slipped past a headland of basking seals, then dodged a series of ferries and squalls in equal measure. With regard to the relentless churning of the tides and currents, running these waters, I’d soon learn, was a constant game of Chutes and Ladders. We got it right negotiating turbulent Porlier Pass, the narrows separating Galiano and Valdes islands, and spit out into the Strait of Georgia at a nifty 10.5 knots. Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride had nothing on us. 

III: Slippin’ Past “The Ripper”

After a lovely night in a pretty bay on southern Hornby Island, we were en route to the relatively bustling city of Campbell River. The snowcapped peaks atop Vancouver Island offered stunning visuals, and the sparkling waters of the Strait of Georgia were luminous and flat-calm.

Before long, the lazy start to the day would pivot to something a bit more hectic. 

Campbell River is accessed by a narrow waterway at the start of the Inside Passage known as Discovery Passage—so named by Capt. George Vancouver, the British explorer, after his HMS Discovery. This passage is bordered on its east side by the notorious Cape Mudge, described thusly in our cruising guide: “known for rips and overfalls.” Great. As we approached, we were set hard a good 20 degrees by a smoking opposing current, our speed through the water a miserly 0.9 knots. We trickled toward the opposite shore, were revved back up to 4.5 knots, and then caught a countercurrent, where we rocketed back to 8 blissful knots as we crossed the stripe of 50N, which seemed like a happy portent. 

After a long, sometimes stressful day, it was great not only to tie up at the excellent Discovery Harbour Marina, but also to pay a visit (despite Mark’s totally expected evil eye) to the nearby, equally terrific government-sanctioned cannabis dispensary. Cool temps besides, one can chill out in Canada in more ways than one. 

Perhaps it was the gummy, but the story from the friendly barkeep at a waterfront Campbell River pub, a seasoned local seaman himself, regarding our trip’s next upcoming attraction had me riveted from the get-go. Something about a rocky obstruction called “The Ripper”—a former formidable hazard, apparently to all mariners, until it was blown to absolute smithereens.

Ripple Rock—aka The Ripper—is a cornerstone of local lore, a seamount deposited smack dab in the middle of Seymour Narrows, a messy piece of swirling water in the best of conditions. More than a hundred vessels, and an almost equal number of unfortunate souls, fell prey to Ripple Rock before a demolition team flattened it in 1958 in what still counts as one of the largest non-nuclear explosions on record.

With a few butterflies in our stomachs, we were back underway the next morning. By now, we’d already been exposed to some pretty interesting currents, but we were still astonished at the Tilt-A-Whirl carnival ride through Seymour Narrows. Thankfully, we hit the north-flowing ebb on time, but once we were into the upwelling narrows, grasped by huge sucking holes of water, there wasn’t much to do except hang on and hope for the best. As usual, Dancing Bear handled it all with aplomb. 

Johnstone Strait lay ahead, with a terrifying warning from the cruising guide that the prevailing staunch westerlies funneling down-channel could make for an extremely unsettling passage. But our luck was holding; a rare easterly filled in, and we enjoyed our best sailing so far—a certified downwind romp. The big bowls of snow atop the Vancouver Island peaks, with one spectacular waterfall spilling from the heights, totally enhanced the experience.

We made a sharp right past Ransom Point and tied up at the public dock at Port Neville, at the head of which stood a quiet post office and a welcome sign from the extended Hansen family, who have spent more than a century on this quiet ­backwater and apparently still call it home. 

IV: On the Alert

Morning arrived with a slate-gray sky and a falling thermometer, the first we’d encountered. It provided a helpful reminder that we were still in the Pacific Northwest. We covered the 20-odd miles to Alert Bay in no time flat, and pulled into the little village just in time for the Indigenous Day celebrations. For Mark and me, this was a special place because it was one of the first and most memorable stops during our Around the Americas tour. 

Alert Bay was where we got our initial exposure to the First Nations peoples, the native aboriginal culture who populated this coastline for more than 8,000 years. While now diminished in scope and numbers, they remain true and strong. We paid another visit to the town’s cultural center and were reacquainted with the world of totems and potlatches, as well as the region’s arts and artifacts. When exploring this coastline, it’s imperative to respect the spirits and symbols woven through the woods and waters. To do otherwise is to entirely miss the point. 

On our way to Port Hardy, another 20 miles down the track, a pair of sea lions bid us adieu. As we skirted under Malcolm Island, in rapid succession we saw a whale, a family of sea otters, and a school of porpoises. It was like a bloody aquarium, and a sure sign of many good things to come. 

We pulled into the little harbor at the Quarterdeck Marina, and we exchanged waves with a local fisherman who, totally on cue as he cleaned his catch, blared the recently departed and nationally revered Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” which in every way imaginable seemed totally appropriate. 

We were a week into the voyage, with a couple hundred winding miles behind us and another roughly 140 miles of open water yet to tackle to reach Haida Gwaii. There was certainly no turning back now. 

The radar was on as we poked our way into the fog and out past the islands in Gordon Channel, the sea and sky a seamless amalgamation of gray. But the broader forecast was excellent, with high pressure settling over Haida Gwaii. And when a humpback whale breached behind as we approached Queen Charlotte Sound, it seemed like a fine omen. 

The wind veered west at sunset, and we had a couple of hours of terrific sailing on a close reach, knocking off a fairly solid 8 knots. But we were headed by light northerlies after midnight, and it was a long, cold night. Sunrise, such as it was, occurred around 0530, when we also got our first glance at Moresby Island, the southernmost of the group, some 40 miles ahead.

We peeled off the layers of fleece and foulies as the sun ascended and we closed in, completely alone except for a single triangle of a distant sail against a long backdrop of low-slung green mountains and trees. It would be the last boat we’d see for many days. A trio of humpbacks appeared, and the pungent smell of sea lions wafted down on us from a rocky ledge covered with them.

We motored into a fjord called Carpenter Bay and anchored in 35 feet of water at its head, behind a small patch of rock and trees called Crowell Island. There wasn’t a soul within miles and miles. It felt spiritual. What came to mind was the title of my favorite song by the late, great Warren Zevon: “Splendid Isolation.”

V: Into the Mystic 

Aboard Dancing Bear, Mark had fashioned a pair of nifty wooden slats that covered the cockpit well. When topped by the cushions, these slats turned the space into a quite comfortable bed. I’d slept under the stars every night of the trip. But waking up in Carpenter Bay, its shoreline shrouded in mist, was altogether different. The sheer beauty was one thing, but it was the absolute stillness, the all-encompassing quiet, that was mesmerizing. I’m not a particularly religious chap, but in this sacred place, surrounded by this pure nature, I felt graced by a higher power. 

The silence was broken by an ­echoing thwap, thwap, thwap that sounded somewhat like the report of distant gunfire, which was impossible. We were anchored in the protected confines of the Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site, where hunting and fishing were prohibited. Later that day, on a stroll on nearby Cowell Island, we solved the mystery: There in the distance, a humpback breached the surface and thwapped its tail hard, then did it again and again. It felt like being welcomed to the neighborhood. 

But the best part? We were completely disconnected: no cellphone service, internet, news or social media. No indicted politicians, debt-ceiling woes or missing submersibles. Nothing. Just the magnificence. 

Haida Gwaii’s literal translation is “islands of the Haida people.” It consists mainly of two large islands: Graham to the north and Moresby to the south, peppered with hundreds of small surrounding isles, a place where you could spend a lifetime exploring and never see it all. The Haida Nation has existed for 13,000 years, but from the late 1700s until 2010, Haida Gwaii was known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, before a reconciliation act returned the archipelago to its rightful handle. It also has a great nickname, “the Galapagos of the North,” which is pretty darn fitting. 

Jenn said that we should have a theme song for the adventure. She had a pretty good playlist on her smartphone, and as the smell of fried eggs and sizzling bacon wafted up from below, on came the lyrics to a familiar Van Morrison tune: “Let your soul and spirits fly into the mystic.” Bingo. The song seemed to have chosen us. 

Mark made the smart call early to spend the day in Carpenter Bay. Why leave perfection? The weather was sensational. We combed the coast and dived into the sea, and we spied the eagle in the big nest on Crowell as it soared and returned to keep a watchful eye on us, a sentinel, yet another neighbor we were grateful to know.

In the ensuing days, as we meandered north, each stop seemed to come with its own welcoming committee. Anchored behind Harriet Island off the abandoned ­settlement of Jedway, a mama bear and two cubs foraged along the shore. On Hutton Island, as a big westerly whistled down the inlet and a low cloud poured over the hills, a posse of sea otters played alongside while a family of elk grazed in the marsh. In Thurston Harbour on Talunkwan Island, Sitka deer snoozed along the shoreline, and the moving black dots turned out to be raccoons. When we got underway the next morning, the lagoon was pulsing with giant jellyfish, hundreds of them. We could’ve skipped ashore upon them.

We were all enhanced and entranced by the denizens of Haida Gwaii. 

VI: Queen of a City 

As all great voyages do, ours came to the end of the road. It was in the funky little village of Daajing Giids, formerly known as Queen Charlotte City. Despite a population hovering around 1,000 people, it felt like Manhattan after a week in true wilderness. Over the years, I’ve wrapped up many a trip in many an exotic location, but I’m not sure any were as fetching as Daajing Giids. 

A cool dude named Max, boiling crab on the dock, hopped off his little sailboat to take our lines. A huge roar rose up, and up the hill, a raucous crowd attending a Little League baseball game had much to cheer about. Out in the harbor, a half-­dozen cruising boats lay at anchor, including a trio of salty metal yachts and a ketch-rigged Amel Super Maramu. For heaven’s sake, there was an actual tidal grid for bottom jobs erected on the shoreline, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen one of those. The black cod and salmon fillets at the pub around the corner were maybe the tastiest ever.

The next day, with exactly two weeks and 500 miles behind us since leaving Anacortes, I hopped a BC Ferry across the channel to the tiny regional airport at Skidegate for an hourlong flight to Vancouver and onward, back to the Real World. Leaving my mates on Dancing Bear to continue the adventure was bittersweet, to be sure, but I had a little piece of Haida Gwaii with me, an abalone shell I’d pocketed back in Carpenter Bay. And I sure as hell had left a slice of my soul behind. 

It had been something more than a splendid, unforgettable journey. It was mystical.

Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large.

The post Into the Mystic: A Pacific Northwest Adventure appeared first on Cruising World.

I’m no Ernest Shackleton. I live in Hawaii, and I love the warm weather and clear blue waters of the tropics. Having done a little high-latitude sailing, I have to admit that freezing weather is not my favorite. My boat doesn’t even have a heater.

Yet here I was with Tracy, a surfing friend from Hawaii, ripping down Puget Sound at 12 knots under spinnaker, in the dead of winter. I had on about 10 layers, two puffy jackets, gloves, boots and a hat. I also had a huge smile on my face.

This was shaping up to be an ideal adventure, filled with solitude and unexpected experiences. It was also some of the best sailing I’d done on my Jeanneau 509, Kāholo. And it had all started with simple necessity: I had to move the boat to get new canvas.

In 2021, I had sailed ­new-to-me Kāholo 5,000 miles, across the Atlantic and the length of the Caribbean, from Portugal to Panama. While soaking under the torrential rains of Panama, I realized I definitely needed new canvas. Once we got to the Pacific Northwest, I learned that Iverson’s Canvas in Olympia, Washington, had a yearslong waiting list. And its team would not travel to your boat. Like the Soup Nazi in Seinfeld said, “No soup for you!” Unless you were ­prepared to travel.

Olympia is on the South Sound near Tacoma, 80 miles south of my winter berth in La Conner, near the San Juan Islands. Although I managed to secure a spot on Iverson’s busy schedule, the only date its team could do the work was in mid-February, the coldest month of the year.

Well aware of the shifting weather systems in Puget Sound, I stacked things in my favor by leaving plenty of time to choose a weather window. As luck would have it, a high-­pressure system was set to fill in, bringing a favorable, but very cold, northerly wind. To get ready for the next day’s northerlies, Tracy and I made a short sail out to the historic town of Coupeville on Whidbey Island, where we spent time in a warm pub with the colorful local crowd that had replaced the summer tourists. Well-fortified against the cold, we paddled back out to lonesome Kāholo, the only anchor light in the anchorage.

Leaving Coupeville early, we had a serene reach south in calm water, all alone, jibing back and forth across Possession Sound under an asymmetrical spinnaker. It was challenging sailing in shifting winds, amid evergreen-­covered islands down Whidbey, the second-longest island in the United States, after New York’s Long Island.

The wind began to build as we neared the bottom of Whidbey. The helm felt lively. Somewhere around freezing, the wind sent a chill right through me. Adding another puffy jacket at the helm, I was quite comfortable but looked like the Michelin Man.

We blew right past the mooring I’d had in mind for the end of the short winter day, not to mention the alternate destinations I’d marked off in case the weather or the gear failed to cooperate. This was no ordinary sail, and we were having too much fun. We continued south toward Seattle.

Passing the southern tip of Whidbey Island, we sailed into the comparatively open water of Admiralty Inlet. Both the seas and the wind began to build. Now we were reaching at 12 knots with more than 20 knots of apparent wind. This was the upper limit for the spinnaker. The boat was ­handling well, but I could feel the rudder loading up as the boat leapt through the following seas. Rounding up in this wind with the spinnaker would mean taking it down in pieces. Breaking seas to windward alerted me that the wind was still building in the exposed waters of Admiralty Inlet. As the saying goes, any fool can put up a sail, but it takes a sailor to know when to take one down—and I’d ­apparently left it a bit late.

“Tracy!” I called out. “We need to get that spinnaker down. Now!” 

As Tracy hustled forward, I brought the boat downwind to hide the spinnaker behind the main. Tracy tried to douse the sail, but the sock refused to come down. The spinnaker sock lines had become tangled after so many jibes. I managed to balance the boat on a deep reach, with the seas slewing her around and the spinnaker flailing behind the main. I set the autopilot, praying we wouldn’t wrap the sail around the forestay, and jumped forward to help. We managed to untangle the lines while the autopilot miraculously kept us safely off the wind. The sock ­finally slid over the unruly beast and we dropped the sail to the deck with a sigh of relief. After that battle, we were no longer cold. The wind increased to the point to where the working jib was now plenty of sail, and we surfed south to Port Blakely, just across Puget Sound from Seattle on Bainbridge Island.

We arrived as the sun set and the lights of Seattle came alive in a purple sky. We could see the huge marinas of Elliott and Shilshole bays, housing thousands of boats. Yet we were alone, swinging at anchor in a quiet cove at the end of a perfect weekend sailing day. Finally, one other sailboat joined us: a singlehander on his 30-foot Wauquiez. 

With the setting sun, temperatures dipped well below freezing. Luckily, we had thick down comforters on the bunks to keep us warm. In the morning, I found water pooling on the floorboards, something no captain wants to see. Assuming we had a freshwater leak in one of the pressurized lines, I pulled off panels to reveal the hullsides. They were running with water. In freezing temperatures, comparatively warm moist air inside the cabin condenses on the cold hull of the boat “like a cold can of soda on a hot day,” as one sailor described it. I immediately invested in a dehumidifier for use at the dock. The proper solution while underway would, of course, be a diesel heating system. 

The northerlies were still blowing the next day, and we raised the spinnaker again, doing an outside jibe back and forth down serpentine Colvos Passage to Gig Harbor. For an outside jibe, I bring the boat directly downwind, jibe the main to put the boat wing on wing, and then completely release the working spinnaker sheet, letting the spinnaker flag in front of the boat. I then turn the boat through the wind, onto the new tack, and haul in the leeward spinnaker sheet, which is led around the bow on the outside. I can do this singlehanded, and it works like a charm as long as the sheets don’t get snagged on anything. Sadly, they often do, which requires a trip to the foredeck to unsnag them.

Gig Harbor was where we’d planned to meet the team from Iverson’s Canvas. A lively harbor town shadowed by Mount Rainier—with several marinas, a fishing fleet, a strong paddling scene, and lots of maritime history—Gig Harbor was named in the 1800s for Capt. Wilson’s gig, or rowboat, brought into the narrow entrance for shelter. The town is home to Gig Harbor Boat Works, which builds traditional gigs from modern materials.

It was amazing to watch Kyle and Mike, two guys from Iverson’s. They installed custom, large-diameter stainless, and patterned the entire dodger and Bimini top with plastic sheeting, all in a day. They said it would be two weeks for me to receive the dodger and Bimini top, but they were back a day early. The new dodger transformed the cockpit, with better visibility and clear windows. It felt as though I’d been upgraded to an ocean-view home after cowering under an old tent for years. It wasn’t cheap, but it was money well spent.

As luck would have it, sailing north back up Puget Sound was also a downwind run. Southeasterlies are quite common in winter, often associated with the approach of a low-pressure system. This was exactly the case I encountered: An approaching low was sending me 15-knot southeasterlies. I jibed back and forth up the sound, this time singlehanding because Tracy had flown back to Hawaii. Often, I would tangle the sheets on some obstacle on deck or on the anchor, and I’d need to hustle forward to free it. On my last jibe across Admiralty Inlet, on a layline for Port Townsend, I noticed the unmistakable T-shaped mast of a submarine steaming at me en route to the naval yard at Bremerton. Two oceangoing tugs and two US Coast Guard vessels were in escort. Soon, the Coast Guard politely hailed me: “Sailing vessel Kāholo, I see that you are making tracks for Marrowstone Point. We request that you keep as close as you feel safe to the shore. We will be turning right, into your path.” Good thing I was on a layline, with good speed, and didn’t plan another jibe. The consequences of something going wrong were too great.

An old friend, veteran bluewater sailing instructor John Neal with Mahina Expeditions, met me at the dock at Port Townsend. He showed me around the bustling boatyards and introduced me to his favorite sailmaker, Port Townsend Sails, and riggers, Port Townsend Rigging. These are family operations where attention to detail and craftsmanship are the rule. John says that he can get 50,000 to 55,000 miles (two circumnavigations) on a single main and jib built by the craftspeople at Port Townsend Sails, who, by the way, are all women. 

I set out on foot to see the boatyards at Port Townsend, the premier wooden-boat building and repair region on the West Coast. It’s a dynamic place where the next generation of shipwrights learns traditional skills at places such as the Northwest School of Wooden BoatBuilding. I wandered around the yards, amazed at vessels like the 133-foot San Francisco bar pilot cutter Adventuress, built in 1913 and still sailing here. 

Port Townsend is famous for its annual wooden-boat show, but what seems to have escaped worldwide notice is that Kirsten Neuschäfer, the South African sailor who recently became the first woman to win the Golden Globe round-the-world race, sailed a Port Townsend boat: a 36-foot, 1988 fiberglass-hulled version of a traditional 1930s design built by Cape George Marine Works. Her boat was among only three boats to finish the grueling race without pause for repairs, and it survived 235 days at sea around the tempestuous Great Capes—and with Neuschäfer managing to rescue a skipper whose boat had sunk.

Continuing my stroll through Port Townsend on this cold, blustery afternoon, and seeing a small sign advertising “sails and canvas built and repaired” on an old wooden building in the harbor, I ducked into a shop called The Artful Sailor. Engulfed by the smell of tar, hemp and linseed oil, I found Emiliano Marino and Pami-Sue “Salty Sue” Alvarado practicing the ancient art of marlinspike seamanship. The late-afternoon light streaming in through the windows made it look like a scene from an old Dutch painting.

Only in Port Townsend could a sailor encounter a nuclear submarine, see a 1913 schooner and meet a couple practicing traditional marlinspike splicing, all in the same day.

Unfortunately, my luck ran out with the weather, and I sailed the 30 miles up to Deception Pass and to Kāholo’s La Conner slip in full foul-weather gear, in cold, drizzling rain and variable winds. The ending was a bit of a letdown, but overall, this had been an unforgettable voyage, precisely because it had happened in the dead of winter.

Not that I am planning any Shackleton-esque small-boat crossings in the Antarctic, but at least now I understand the beauty of a winter’s sail. Next on the my shopping list? A diesel heater.

Tor Johnson is an award-­winning photographer and writer who has shot 16 covers of CW, so far. He grew up sailing the world with his family.

The post A Winter’s Sail appeared first on Cruising World.

Join us this week on social media as we take off on a digital voyage of the Pacific Northwest with award-winning photographer Tor Johnson. The voyage takes us from the iconic Rainbow Bridge connecting Fidalgo Island and La Conner, Washington, to the far reaches of Vancouver Island. Tor is a frequent CW contributor with an impressive oeuvre that includes seven CW cover shots, along with multiple features and photo spreads.

Join the voyage on Instagram and Facebook, and visit Tor’s gallery at tjhawaii.com.

The post Join Tor Johnson and Cruising World on a Pacific Northwest Adventure appeared first on Cruising World.

Jan Reyers tried to take it in stride when his father started calling him “my deviant son.” After all, his father had sailed until he was almost 70 years old, and Reyers had spent countless years sailing a Columbia 22 on Lake Superior. This was a family that lived by the wind. The mere thought of buying a boat without sails made Reyers, well, a wayward child. 

The thing is, Reyers wasn’t a kid ­anymore. He’d spent years working for 3M, and when he took on a new role with the company in Minnesota, the job required dinners with clients. He wasn’t too keen about that—but, he thought, meeting with clients could be a lot of fun aboard a boat.

There was just one problem. “On a sailboat, that wouldn’t be too ideal,” Reyers says. “That was the first time we chartered in the Pacific Northwest, to see if we could adjust to a stinkpot—uh, I mean, a powerboat.”

The thought process that Reyers went through happens in the minds of countless sailors as they move into middle age. After years of blissfully hoisting sails and rounding buoys, any number of factors can trigger the transition in thinking: a desire to do more long-distance cruising in retirement, back problems that make tacking and jibing a literal pain in the rear, or, as with Reyers, a job change that nudges the lifelong sailor to wander down the docks at the trawler section of the boat show for the first time. 

What many of these sailors soon realize is that they don’t actually have to quit sailing. Instead, they can broaden their idea of boating to include sailing and powerboating alike.

Reyers, trying to suss out his options, started booking trawler charters with companies in the San Juan and Gulf ­islands of the Pacific Northwest. He and his wife tried an Ocean Alexander, and then an Ocean Trader. Along the way, they saw a Tollycraft—a cruising boat that was built in the Pacific Northwest until the 1990s. 

“We liked the design of that and found one back in the Twin Cities,” Reyers says of the 1988 40-foot Tollycraft they ultimately purchased. “For the next eight years, we used the heck out of it on the St. Croix River. That taught us that we could survive with motors.”

Making the Mental Shift

Reyers and his wife soon realized that they enjoyed different types of boating. Reyers still loves to sail—he regularly charters Beneteaus in Lake Superior’s Apostle Islands—but eventually, he outgrew the Tollycraft.

“When it started becoming time for retirement, the entertainment thing was out the window, and I was getting bored with the river,” he says. “We got kind of captured by the thought of Alaska, and we found NW Explorations. We had seen their fleet once when we were out there, and we were really impressed with it. When we saw that they had the flotilla in Alaska, we thought it might be a good way to go cruising without buying another boat.”

NW Explorations, founded in 2004, is a charter, sales and service company based in Bellingham, Washington. Its fleet is exclusively trawlers, and it regularly offers flotilla charters in destinations such as Desolation Sound and Alaska. The charter boats can be booked with or without captains, and the flotillas always include a lead boat with a US Coast Guard-licensed captain, a marine mechanic and a naturalist to help everyone.

The flotillas visit some of the most stunning destinations for scenery and wildlife in US and Canadian waters. In Desolation Sound, boaters cruise beneath 7,000-foot-tall peaks. Boaters on the Princess Louisa flotilla typically see wildlife ranging from grizzly bears to eagles. The Alaska flotilla’s sights include orca and humpback whales, hot springs, glaciers, fjords, and more.

“We have definitely found over the years that the trawlers we have here are a good transition boat for sailors,” says Emmelina Mojica, charter manager at NW Explorations. “They just go slow and enjoy the ride. And especially with the Grand Banks boats, there is really good visibility from the helm. You feel connected with the water, as sailors do.” 

The company recommends that sailors take about three hours of boat-maneuvering lessons to adjust from single-engine maneuvering to handling a twin-screw vessel. 

“Once they do that, we find that they are really very comfortable; it actually ends up being easier than what they’re used to,” Mojica says. “It just takes a little bit of time for them to get used to it.”

That’s exactly the experience Reyers had in 2015, when he and his wife chartered a Grand Banks 42 for a flotilla cruise in Alaska. They liked it so much that they did another one, on a Grand Banks 46, in 2017, with an extra stateroom for their son and daughter-in-law to join them.

“It’s a very different experience from sailing,” he says. “Out there, you are going to be motoring anyway if you want to go up the channels to get to the fjords and glaciers. I’ve always been a guy who likes to go explore and weasel into places that are hard to get to. That was one reason we wanted to go to Alaska, just to go into gunkholes and get from one point to another in a reasonable period of time without having to rely on the wind. It’s better for that.”

John McColloch has found the same thing to be true. He’s a lifelong sailor who started out on Penguins when he was 8 years old (learning that he could sail those boats backward hooked him for life). He went on to own a Sonar class one-design, a 28-foot Alerion Express sloop, a J/42, a J/105 and his current sailboat, another 28-foot Alerion Express sloop.

But today, he is also a powerboat owner. His interest in owning multiple kinds of boats took serious hold in 2004, when he bought a 2001 Offshore 48 Sedan.

“Why did I go to the dark side? Because you can do things you can’t do in a sailboat,” McColloch says. “It’s not a speed issue; it’s the reliability-of-being-­able-to-move issue. I don’t know how many times I took the J/42 up to Maine, cleared the Cape Cod Canal, and never unfurled a sail. It takes a long time where you need to go, and a lot of times, there’s no wind. It doesn’t mean I’m not a sailor.”

The Broader Boating Life

One thing McColloch and his wife were able to do on the Offshore 48 was a route called the Down East Circle. They started in Newport, Rhode Island, and made their way up New York’s Hudson River to the Erie and Oswego Canal System, then over to Lake Ontario, then down the St. Lawrence River to the Bras d’Or Lakes, and then down the Nova Scotia and Maine coastlines. Some 2,500 miles later, they were back in Newport.

“We did that over two summers on the Offshore. It was a phenomenal trip,” McColloch says. 

Wanting to do certain types of cruising more easily is why today, in addition to his Alerion sloop that he keeps in Rhode Island, McColloch also owns a 55-foot Fleming pilothouse trawler that he keeps at the NW Exploration docks. He uses that boat not only for his own cruising in the Pacific Northwest, but also to lead group cruises with fellow members of the New York Yacht Club, as well as friends from the Seattle Yacht Club, of which he is also a member.

McColloch says he has a particularly strong memory of a fellow New York Yacht Club member who chartered a 36-foot Grand Banks and had a similar epiphany about different ways to enjoy the water. 

“We were sitting there at one of the stops, which was the private home of a member of the Seattle Yacht Club,” McColloch says. “It was 78 or 80 degrees without a cloud in the sky, and I asked him if he was having a good time. He said: ‘It’s warm and sunny, no bugs, no fog, and a lot of fun people. What’s not to like?’”

Some participants in those cruises are trying trawlers for the first time, he says, but they’re all sailors at heart.

“We all love boats,” he says. “That’s the central theme. It’s going out and finding another way to enjoy yachting and cruising with people who are like-minded.”

Reyers says that even his father has come to understand. He gave up sailing after a day when Reyers’ mother went overboard and landed between the boat and the dock on Lake Superior. “He tried to pull her out and couldn’t. He had to hook a halyard to her and winch it and pull her up,” Reyers says. “The boat was up for sale the next week. At some point, you just don’t have the energy and strength anymore.”

And all of the sudden, what Reyers was doing—messing around on trawlers in addition to sailboats—made more sense. Today, he’s planning two different charters: one aboard a Hunter 36 in the Apostle Islands, and the other in Desolation Sound aboard a 46-foot DeFever pilothouse trawler. 

For Reyers, it’s all quite simple. “I always want to be able to boat,” he says. “I don’t want to quit.”

Upcoming NW Explorations Flotillas

Want to give a trawler a try as part of a flotilla charter? NW explorations has several in the planning stages, with most charterers looking ahead to at least 2023. “Most people who do these flotillas plan at least a year in advance, if not more,” says Emmelina Mojica, the charter manager at NW Explorations. The company offers three flotillas each year. The first is a 10-day trip to Princess Louisa Inlet on the British Columbia coast. The second is a two-week trip during the last week of September and first week of October to Desolation Sound. The third is an Alaska flotilla that runs from May through the end of August, with various legs. “There are six or seven legs that we offer, and they run from two to three weeks long. People can drop in and do a two-week segment,” Mojica says. “We have one client this year who has sailed around the world and they’re doing four of the legs, but most people do one leg.”

NW Yacht Group

In August 2021, NW Explorations merged with Cooper Boating, which has a charter fleet of sailboats, powerboats and catamarans in Canada, and is a Transport Canada Recreational Boating school. Both brands are now operating under the banner of NW Yacht Group with four locations: Vancouver, Sidney and Powell River, Canada; and Bellingham, Washington. § “Both now have a larger charter pool to draw from, with access to all four locations, and in-house maintenance, repairs and detailing,” the ­companies announced. “With a broader range of services and efficiencies in how we operate, we intend to establish a leadership position in our industry.”

The post Wisdom for the Ages appeared first on Cruising World.

Of all the ways I have traveled, I love my sailboat the best. A wanderer since childhood, I have climbed glaciers with a heavy pack, forded African rivers by motorcycle, and ­landed on remote fjords by floatplane. None of it compares with cruising. I am certain there is no better way to encounter the world than by boat.

I’ve discovered that my humble craft has an alchemical quality, a certain trick of distilling the places, weather, events, people, and, yes, the scares and repairs too, into an extraordinarily pure essence, a rare and wonderful possession for life. This treasure can only be earned, never purchased, and cannot be lost or stolen. A few words are enough to conjure it all. 

“Did you go up the Rio Dulce?” another sailor might ask, and we are instantly in Guatemala. We feel the alertness and unease of anchoring off Livingston, an unpredictable frontier town, waiting for the tide to rise high enough to bump and scrape our keel over the river bar. We know the sense of wonder around every bend in that lush and mighty river canyon. We’ve seen a man from another century approach in his dugout canoe and ask if we might help charge his cellphone. 

When I began roaming on my own boat, the 36-foot Beneteau Liberte, a salty friend put it best: “Right now, all you see is charts,” he said, “but sailing will turn every one of those places into a story.”

Today, I still have the crude map I drew for myself before I began cruising. It was mere wishful thinking. I didn’t even have a boat. Still office-bound, I sat through many meetings where the clients probably thought I was taking diligent notes. Instead, I was tracing and retracing my dream route, making lists of gear and ports of call, my head already out to sea. 

My anticipatory dotted line led from Bellingham, Washington, to Cuba and on to the Bahamas, a course I did indeed follow with my wife, Rebecca, during 10 incredible seasons. Today, every one of those dots puts a massive grin on my face. 

First there was Vancouver Island, which Liberte circumnavigated counterclockwise in 2009 as a shakedown cruise. I went in March, April and May, with three buddies as crew. It was definitely early season. The lads and I wore our fuzzy caps most of the way and kept a close ear on Environment Canada’s weather forecasts. The payoff for this gamble was clear skies, consistent wind, no fog and no bugs. I remember running tidal narrows, feeling our way into stunning anchorages we had all to ourselves, and flying the spinnaker up Queen Charlotte Strait on a rare and glorious easterly. I remember rounding notorious Cape Scott under sail alone, tacking furiously against a foul current, and then shooting down the coast once we rounded. As we came into Quatsino Sound that evening, a family of bears was feeding along the water’s edge at low tide, scarcely giving us a glance as we crept past, wing on wing, riding every remaining zephyr. The boys and I didn’t want to start the engine and break that spell, so we simply coasted to the dock at Winter Harbour.

There was one big blow, with hurricane-force winds ripping down Brooks Peninsula, but my crew and I were safely tucked into shelter, playing pool at the Royal Canadian Legion, Branch 180, in Port Alice, where they deemed us local celebrities (“You’re the guys with the big blue sail!”) and would never let us buy our own drinks.

At Nootka Sound, we met Mark and Joanne Tiglmann, some of the last remaining lightkeepers in North America. They told us that we were the first boat to round the island that year. In Tofino, we waited until all the day-trippers had gone, and then we hiked through the rainforest to the best hot springs I’ve ever found. We saw wolf tracks on the beach. I watched three ravens steal baitfish from a charter fishing boat. They were nimble grifters, with one bird on high lookout, one perched on the rail, and one helping itself to the bait. Then they would rotate so that the next bird got its share. They spoke in murmurs so as not to tip off the seagulls.

I saw all that, and so much more, with my own eyes, felt it with every bit of my senses. All of it made possible only by running away on our own boat, by being intimidated, overwhelmed, sleepless, but always there. 

Cape Mendocino will always be that place where I underestimated the weather and paid the price all night long, running hard in big seas in the dark, waiting for something to break. At dawn, a pod of spinning dolphins told us that we would be OK.

I remember humpback whales breathing. I remember crossing under the Golden Gate Bridge, the pea soup clearing just enough to see the legendary span above, high-fives all round. I remember the sound of sea lions all night long on Pier 39. My crew and I rang the bell for admittance to the Dolphin Club, where we took the ceremonial plunge into chilly San Francisco Bay, and then felt the blood return in the sauna amid the banter of bums, poets and billionaires.

On Catalina Island, we hungry sailors tried our best to get into a private buffet line and got busted by the host. Later, he brought us three plates of food, with all the filet mignon, lobster and mashed potatoes we had coveted earlier. “At least you guys weren’t jerks about it,” he said. “There’s plenty. Eat up.” He was a top-selling yacht broker. As we devoured his food, he let us in on a trade secret: Moor the prospective buyer’s boat next to an even bigger boat. “They can’t stand the other guy being higher than they are,” he said.

To the uninitiated eye, the Baja peninsula looks like a whole lot of nothing. But that stretch of rock and sand is filled with hidden delights. My fellow cruisers and I can point out where the whales come right up to your dinghy at Bahia Magdalena. We can show you Los Frailes, where we took our first luxurious swim off the back of Liberte. We can guide you to Los Islotes and its frisky sea lions.

Not far from Isla San Francisco, one memorable day, I went overboard to rescue Samantha, our Jack Russell terrier, and suddenly needed rescuing myself. All these years later, I can still feel the intensity of that moment when Rebecca hauled the dog and me safely back onto Liberte, the huge adrenaline buzz and those first sweet deep breaths of air.

In the little fishing village of Agua Verde, people came out of their homes to wish us good morning. The dirt streets were swept and tidied, and the whole place was as neat as a pin. The headlines were filled with swine flu and travel warnings. Rebecca asked, “Why aren’t the news crews here instead?” The village Romeo, a black dog named Osso, took a shine to Samantha and trotted along, and when we kayaked back to Liberte, Osso swam after us for a long way, every bit the lovestruck village lad pining for a passing sailor girl. 

All along the Baja, I can show you where to find waterfalls in the desert, orange groves, and tiny mountain towns with their churches and horseback festivals. I know which vendor in Santa Rosalia has the best hot dogs.

As I dream backward now, the entire thing looks like those place mats of the West that I loved as a kid at breakfast diners. They were filled with routes that could take you anywhere, with miniature drawings of each marvel: redwoods, rivers, volcanoes and Sasquatch.

I was also obsessed with space as a boy, and even though I don’t expect to blast off with Elon Musk in this lifetime, I realize that my cruising boat has become a longed-for spacecraft. I have flown through stars. I have touched down on strange new worlds and climbed through primeval plants and mysterious stones, my faithful rocket ship waiting for me down there in the bay. 

In Acapulco, with warnings about violence ashore, we easily could have chosen to sail on by. Instead, we entered the bay, and I will always remember our anniversary night, snuggled up with Rebecca on Liberte’s rail, watching all the city lights come on around us, a sparkling bowl of diamonds. 

Zihuatanejo was the dinghy concierge, the huge outdoor market, and my day of surfing with two locals who carried their boards old-school on top of their Volkswagen Beetle, with towels for a roof rack and ropes lashed through the windows. It was where we helped rescue a boat that dragged anchor, which then proceeded to try to anchor in exactly the same place again (directly upwind of us!). Alan on motor trawler Beverly J, with an entire workshop on his aft deck, expertly crafted another metal pin for the one that had broken on Liberte’s autohelm. Thank you, Alan; thank you, buddy boats; and thank you, locals who helped us all along our way, most of whom we will never meet again.

We had read about the Gulf of Tehuantepec, and anticipated and dreaded it in equal measure, but nothing could prepare us for actually being in that place. There’s no way we could anticipate that, instead of spindrift fury, it could be mirror-calm. And that, on Rebecca’s birthday, she could dive into that infinite blue with dolphins so curious about us, we were certain that they had never seen another human.

As I consider our route, I still know the harbors and hazards by heart. I can still point, more or less, to the spot where I hit an unlit panga. It was dense-black in the early morning. Liberte had a nice head of steam, sailing upwind with full sails in that fragrant offshore night wind, so perfectly balanced that she was steering herself without the autopilot. At first impact, I thought we’d hit a log, which is not uncommon near these river estuaries. But when I aimed my spotlight behind the boat, two men looked back at me with wide eyes. My guess is they’d been fast asleep. Out of nowhere, I’d hit them hard, hooked their anchor line, and was now towing them. I had a sharp knife in hand but resisted the urge to cut their only line. I luffed sails, untangled our boats, and made sure that the guys were OK, apologizing profusely in my best broken Spanish.

Never did I ever expect to intentionally put my boat into a surf break. That is the stuff of a sailor’s nightmares. But along El Salvador’s coast, Rebecca and I did exactly that to get to the anchorage. We waited our turn, put Samantha below, cleared the deck, locked the hatch boards, and made sure that the engine would hit max revs. The previous day, a boat had come in slow, gone sideways on a wave, and been pooped and flooded. Our guide on his personal watercraft raised his hand and signaled us forward. Rebecca steered while I redlined the Yanmar. We surfed one, two, three quite-sizable breaking waves, and then we were through and into the flat lagoon. Rebecca grinned and said, “Let’s do it again!” 

Vast, unpredictable and a long way from anywhere, the Golfo de Fonseca is where I did my customary engine check and discovered a bilge full of oil beneath my faithful Yanmar, in the most remote place we’d been so far. All cruisers know that feeling. And they know the improvisation it takes to keep going without the right parts. Rebecca created a tray from aluminum foil to catch the oil, and every few hours of motoring, we’d pour all that oil right back into the engine again. We did a lot of miles that way. 

We had heard tall tales of the Papagayo winds, and one day, there they were, howling, as advertised. Liberte flew down the Nicaraguan coastline, a triple reef in her main. It was uncanny, sailing in 40 knot winds in absolutely flat water while being sandblasted from shore. In Bahia Santa Elena, at the north end of Costa Rica, we hunkered down for several days waiting for those gusts to dial down, just a little.

In Costa Rica, while other cruisers complained of their ­clearing-in woes—including surf landing while trying to keep ­documents dry, catching a local bus, and waiting around for hours
—I took the easy way out. I found myself squired around by an extraordinarily beautiful agent. At every stop in ­officialdom, the bureaucrats, obviously eating out of the palm of her hand, waved us through cheerily. It was the best clearing-in experience ever, and it was also the most expensive. That invoice was shocking.

Costa Rica was monkeys stealing our breakfast. Rebecca and I swam in waterfalls and went skinny-dipping off Liberte into the warmest water, the bioluminescence so powerful that it outlined our entire bodies as we moved—an utterly hallucinogenic encounter yet with an entirely clear head. 

Panama was astounding: a land of tall shiny buildings, riverbank tribes, and the bucket-list adventure of navigating the Panama Canal in our very own boat. As they rafted us together with two buddy boats, I looked over at our friend Steve in the middle boat as the first locks opened. “You feeling OK?” I asked. “You bet!” he said. “I’ve got the world’s biggest fenders, one on each side.” 

We cruised the San Blas Islands for six enchanted off-the-grid weeks. We anchored at Bug Island and fed our organic waste to the island pig. We were guests in a Guna Yala village when we smelled smoke and heard screams. Within a few minutes, the village was on fire, the flames jumping easily from wood hut to hut. We picked people out of the water. There were no lives lost, but more than half the village was burned to the ground, most likely from a cooking fire gone out of control.

We went back the next day, the ruins still smoking, and donated all the items we could muster. The villagers saw us coming and broke into a wailing, chanting choir of welcome, the memory of which still sends chills up my spine. We watched them test the fins and masks they needed for fishing, and try on our clothes. Within minutes, they had strung their new blue tarp overhead for shade and were stirring something inside the big crab pot.

All my life, I will remember these things. I will recall anchoring up Panama’s Chagres River, listening to the howler monkeys and other creatures we could not identify, the jungle coming alive at night all around our solitary boat. Sometimes these thrills come at a cost. I somehow scratched my eye. In the jungle and in that climate, infection happened quickly. By the time we reached the fabled island of Escudo de Veraguas, I was in bad shape and there was no time to search for those pygmy three-toed sloths. From Bocas del Toro, I flew to the Johns Hopkins hospital in Panama City so that a medical team could save my eye.

The next season, after the boat summered in Guatemala’s Rio Dulce, we enjoyed Placencia immensely and explored the outer atolls of Belize at a leisurely pace. Half Moon Caye, shared only with our buddy boat, was wild and alive with creatures above and below the sea. Our land-traveling friends had raved about Ambergris Caye, but we found that we preferred the peace of quieter spaces. By cruising in our own boat, we had become immeasurably spoiled.

The thing I love most about my boat, and some days hate, is that it always brings me into direct and undeniable contact with the world. I challenge you to come up with a better way to eat, sleep and move within the natural rhythms. 

In control of our own boat, we cruisers have what writer Tim Kreider describes so well (although he is talking about traveling by train) as “the ideal living situation…constant change within a framework of structure…the cozy in-betweenness of it, being suspended between destinations, temporarily exempt from the relentless press of time.”

My map always led to Cuba, where X marked the spot of my unending intrigue. As Americans on a US-flagged vessel, we were presented with a tough proposition. But in 2016, my dream came true when we signed up for the Conch Republic Cup. Instead of import and export regulations and travel bans, we were now participating in a goodwill event between nations, and Liberte was a piece of athletic equipment. With the all-important US Coast Guard CG-3300 form in hand, giving us permission to cruise to Cuba and return to the United States without penalty, we made the voyage. I’ve long been fascinated with Ernest Hemingway, and so to follow in his wake from Key West, Florida, to Havana across the Gulf Stream, in my own craft, was a special treat. Liberte even won a racing trophy for one epic stage: the Cuba Coast Challenge. If thieves ever decide to break into my house, they can have the few other possessions I own. Just leave that simple, sheet-metal Cuba trophy on my shelf, please.

And who does not dream of cruising to a place like the Bahamas, where we roamed for three fine seasons? Every spring, Rebecca and I would return to Indiantown, Florida, put Liberte on the hard, and fly home to earn what Jimmy Buffett calls “fun tickets.” Every fall, we’d splash and dash across the Gulf Stream. When I look at those Bahamas charts, I still remember watching intently, often impatiently, for favorable conditions to cross. I remember seeking shelter from those cold, blustery northers. I remember the Exumas rolling by, dreamlike, and the entertaining anchorage at Staniel Cay. In the Bahamas, we flew the spinnaker in wind and flat, warm water: a sailor’s nirvana. We watched curious rays and sharks under our paddleboards at Manjack Cay. We paddled the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, snorkeled the sunken drug-smuggling airplane at Norman’s Cay, and ran Liberte gingerly through the notorious Whale Cut Passage into our beloved northern Abacos. I remember sipping Goombay Smashes on Green Turtle Cay, perfectly in the moment and thoroughly on island time. 

In the town of New Plymouth, population 400, was a small customs office where I filled out forms in triplicate while an evangelist preached at high volume from the TV set. A Bahamian cut my hair in his living room and told me about his ancestors, the Loyalists who had fled there after the American Revolution. “Where are you going next?” he asked. “Back to the States,” I said. “You be careful there!” he admonished. Cruising is always a chance to flip the script and see things from the other side.

In every place we visited, we found what you might at first be tempted to call pluses and minuses. It’s easy to chase the mirage of the best place, even the perfect place. But as the world unfolds further beneath your keel, you realize that’s a faulty point of view. Any place you take your boat can be heaven or hell. It is entirely up to you.

True exploration means embracing and relishing it all, and always finding that cruising magic in the moment, even if the ­no-see-ums are chewing you to pieces, the norther lasts for days, and you’ve blown your whole budget on just one provisioning run at that shockingly expensive island store.

Every challenge offers a chance to open a little wider, to be curious instead of fearful, to invalidate your favorite biases. Do that and you will always have a good time, no matter where your own dotted line may lead. 

I still have my little hand-drawn map. By now, I know exactly where it leads and why. To other sailors on the fence, I would repeat Joshua Slocum’s advice: “I would say go.”

Cruising has a value that defies ordinary calculations. In deciding where to cruise, or whether to cruise at all, it would be a big mistake to analyze only nautical miles, engine hours and clearing-in fees, to pore over projections as if sailing were some kind of a business venture. How much does it take to cruise? As much as you have. Wherever I go, people tell me that “boat” stands for “break out another thousand.”

Fair enough. But the cruising sailor knows that’s not the whole story. There’s another acronym for boat that Rebecca and I have adopted during our travels in Liberte, one that feels much closer to the truth. For anyone who has cast off the lines, followed those dots, and found themselves wealthy beyond belief in anchorages, stories and friends, boat really stands for “best of all times.”

It stands for shooting stars on watch, sunrise at sea, and new islands off the bow. A world more vast, astonishing and splendid than seems possible. 

So grab that chart, draw an X on some destinations, then sail there. When you do, I promise that those little X’s will come wonderfully alive with stories all your own.

David Kilmer runs a private sailing yacht and wrote A Peril to Myself and Others: My Quest to Become a Captain.

The post Exploring By Sailboat, From Washington State to the Bahamas appeared first on Cruising World.

When the Northern Hemisphere calendar officially flipped from spring to summer earlier this week, we caught up with a few CW contributors and asked them where they were headed this season. Where will the wind take you this summer?

Ann and Tom Hoffner plan to cruise their Sabre 30 Ora Kali from Down East Maine to Campobello Island and Passamaquoddy Bay just across the border in New Brunswick, Canada, while David Kilmer’s summer waters are the lakes and islands of the Pacific Northwest. Kilmer runs the 60-foot daysailer Sizzler on Lake Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and regularly races and cruises on Lake Pend Oreille and in the San Juan Islands.

After a season in the Bahamas, Amy and David Alton sailed their Fountaine Pajot 44 Starry Horizons north to Rhode Island. With an eight-year circumnavigation behind them, Starry is ready for a refit. New sails, more solar and a few creature comforts are on the work list. 

“This summer I hope to circumnavigate Vancouver Island on our Jeanneau 509 Kāholo,” said sailor, writer and professional photographer Tor Johnson. “We did that a few years back, and visited some incredible places, particularly on the West Coast. These are places only accessible by boat, full of hidden coves and deep fjords, interesting settlements and abundant wildlife. A cruiser with a modicum of knowledge can catch all the seafood he can eat nearly any day. It’s a cruiser’s paradise.”

John and Tadji Kretschmer have a mix of serious sail training passages and (slightly more) laid-back cruising planned aboard their Kaufman 47 bluewater performance cruiser Quetzal this summer. 

“The late-May, early-June training passage took us from Bermuda to Luneburg, Nova Scotia,” John said. “Next, Tadji and I and a few good friends will make our way through Bra d’Or Lake and onto Newfoundland. The south coast of Newfoundland makes the list of my favorite places. 

“The July sail training passage will be challenging. After visiting the Viking site on the north shore of Newfoundland, we will sail up the wild Labrador coast.”

From there, Quetzal will cross the Labrador Strait to Southern Greenland. “Hopefully—depending on ice—we’ll head through Prince Christian Sund, a stunning fjord that bypasses Cap Farvel, and into the Denmark Strait,” John said. The passage ends in Reykjavik, Iceland, where John and Tadji will enjoy some cruising before the August sail training, a passage that will take Quetzal to the Faroe Islands, the Shetlands and Norway. 

“We’ll have a month of exploring Norway before making our way to Gothenburg, Sweden, where the next passage begins,” John said. “This late-summer leg will take us down the North Sea to Denmark, where we will stop at the island of Marstal, the setting of one of my favorite books, We the Drowned, and through the Kiel Canal. After a stop in the Frisian Islands (part of the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark), we’ll carry on to Southampton, United Kingdom, concluding a very busy and super exciting summer of sailing.”

Behan and Jamie Gifford, of the Stevens 47 Totem, recently took delivery of their long-awaited new diesel engine at the Cabrales Boatyard in Baja, Mexico. Unfortunately, hurricane season arrived before the Beta 70, making it too late to head for the South Pacific this year.

“That’s okay,” said Behan. “We’ve taken on a host of optional boat improvements while waiting, making the most of having the nexus of a solid shipyard with affordable skilled labor in Mexico, with access to goods from the US. The border is only a 45-minute drive from this northern Sea of Cortez port.” 

For now, the Gifford crew is thumb wrestling over whether to head south or west. Either way, they’re looking forward to putting miles under the keel of a much shinier Totem. The postponed departure also afforded the Giffords the opportunity to attend the college graduation of their boat-schooled son (and circumnavigator), Niall. Some challenges are blessings in disguise. 

Fair winds, and drop an email to editor@crusingworld.com and let us know where your sailing plans take you this summer.

The post Where Will the Wind Take You This Summer? appeared first on Cruising World.

Recently I have observed my husband, Matt, at various times of the day and evening, sitting with a half-smile on his lips and a twinkle in his eye, betraying an inner glee. I know during these times that he is thinking about what I have come to call, simply, “The Hull.” Matt has taken offense to that term, deeming it “soulless.” Fair enough—it’s not just any hull, but one with a storied past and, hopefully, a storied future as well. For we are in the midst of refitting the late, great American solo sailor Mike Plant’s round-the-world racer, Duracell, for extended cruising. But before we get into that sailing story, let me tell you ours. 

To do that, let’s return to 2014, to a crisp fall evening during one of our first dates. We were walking on a moonlit beach here in Washington’s Puget Sound when Matt told me that one day he was going to cruise around the Pacific. He didn’t say it was a dream or that he hoped to do this one day: He stated it as a fact. And he said it in his unassuming, no fanfare, no drumrolls (he leaves that to me) sort of way. He asked whether such an ­adventure might appeal to me. I didn’t respond right away because I knew this was a serious question and that my answer could have big implications for my life. So I gave it a few long seconds and then I replied, with confidence, “Yes.”

Fast-forward to spring 2017. I was teaching middle school science in Seattle, and Matt was running Kolga Boatworks, his boat-repair business. We were living aboard Louise, a unique 40-foot homebuilt monohull from the 1970s that we adored, on the Ballard Shipping Canal. We were preparing for our Pacific cruise. We’d saved our money, Louise was ready to sail offshore, and we’d put our respective jobs and lives on hold. Our parents had slowly been persuaded that what we were about to do—with careful, trustworthy Matt as captain—was safer than driving on I-5.

We pushed off from Shilshole Marina in Seattle on August 10 of that year. As Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” filled our hearts with butterflies, our first day of sailing was gorgeous: The wind pushed us gently but persistently toward the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the great Pacific Ocean beyond.

The cruise that followed was everything we expected it would be: magical, challenging, uncomfortable, eye-opening, educational, nausea-inducing, at times maddening and, ultimately, life-changing. Here are a few snapshots of our two years at sea, based on journal entries from various anchorages or underway, as we sailed from Seattle down the west coast of North America; into the Sea of Cortez; across the Pacific to the Marquesas, the Tuamotus, Tahiti and Bora Bora; north to Hawaii; and back home to Washington.

Smuggler’s Cove, Channel Islands

October 15, 2017: Smugglers Cove on California’s Santa Cruz Island is a shallow bay with clear, Mediterranean waters and a long beach. After anchoring Louise as close to the cliffs as possible to try to get some protection from the ­rolling swell, we decided to go ashore and explore. We were a little nervous because big rollers were coming in and ­breaking a little beyond the anchorage and ­pummeling the beach. But we discussed our strategy for a dry landing using our inflatable paddleboards.  

Matt explained that the waves come in sets, and if you wait out a set of big waves, there will be a short lull. During that lull, you position yourself between two gently rolling waves, then paddle, paddle, paddle fast enough so that the one behind you doesn’t break over you. With confidence, we put on our hiking boots, cinched on our wide-brimmed cruiser hats, got on our paddleboards, and headed toward the beach. Matt positioned himself just before the big rollers began to break. 

He turned around and gave me a look that said, “Watch carefully what I do.” He waited for the lull. It came. He paddled and paddled. I felt an especially large roller move under my board. The lull was over. Matt glanced back to see a big wave break right over him. I watched his board flip, his hat float to the beach and, a second later, a drenched Matt emerge from the ocean, ready to explore. He looked back at me and shrugged. I gave him a look that said: “Now you watch this. I’ll show you.”  

I was determined. I looked behind me; the ocean was flat. Now was the moment. Go. Paddle. I was riding high and dry. My impeccable timing resulted in a gentle wave breaking after it passed under my board. Perfect. I picked up some speed and surfed on in, graceful and dignified, a natural. Not a drop of water on my hiking boots. Matt watched from the beach in awe. I couldn’t wait to explain my strategy. But then the water slid under me a little faster, and the nose of my board started to drive down into the water. I was still going to succeed. No squishy hiking boots for me. Then I too was in the water, tumbling under the wave. Dammit. I resurfaced in time to see my hat make it to the beach before me. Oh well. Once deposited onto the Channel Islands, it was a wonderful place to explore. Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz and Catalina islands delighted us with their canyons, secluded beaches and windswept cliffs. The adventure had begun.

Bahia Santa Maria to Cabo San Lucas

November 11, 2017: As I sat in my belowdecks nook typing, Matt leaned in from the cockpit and said: “I sure hope this weather keeps up all the way to Cabo. That’d be so awesome.” The sailing was, indeed, currently awesome. Sliding down the coast of Mexico, we had 10 to 12 knots of northerly breeze, filling our spinnaker consistently with the gentle waves right on our stern. There was a shh-shh-shh of the water trickling off the hull and a lovely little skimming motion of the boat down the waves as they passed under us. 

I’d been reading about Zen Buddhism and experimenting with meditation. I’d concluded that sailing your home around the ocean is a natural way to practice the teachings of Buddhism. I looked up at Matt and replied: “The present moment is perfect; however, since everything, including the wind, is impermanent, we mustn’t get attached. Ah, yes, the wind and the waves are constantly changing, like life, and we have to move with the change, not against it. Indeed, we must search for the stillness, the calm, deep within us that stays peaceful no matter how our external situations change; much like how if you go a little under the surface of the ocean, the water is calm.” At which point, he closed and locked the hatch. 

I’m kidding: I didn’t say this out loud, but I did think something along those lines and tried to persuade myself of its truth. I, much more than Matt, get frustrated by the constantly changing state of the ocean. Of course, if the weather is taking us to our destination and the sea is relatively calm, I’m as happy as a clam. But if we then lose our wind and have to “fire up the ol’ donkey,” or get a header, or if the waves built up and made for a miserable ride (as it always does eventually), I tended to let out audible groans and sighs, with a general feeling of being smote by the ocean. Sometimes I complained out loud to myself, and we sailed, or more likely, motored on. I’d recently realized that since this will undoubtedly continue to be our reality for the next two years when traveling to our next highly anticipated anchorage, I should probably figure out a way to deal with it more gracefully (for my benefit and, equally, Matt’s) when the weather changes. As it always, always does. 

Huahine, French Polynesia

November 3, 2018: After spending eight months in French Polynesia, we’d started to get a feel for this really special place. Here is what the shimmering surface of French Polynesia looked like: lush islands dripping with bananas, coconuts, soursop, cedar apples, mangoes, pineapples, cocoa, and fruits we had never heard of before; turquoise lagoons filled with imaginatively colored fish, warm waves that gently lap soft white-sand beaches; a hundred shades of green that blanket the steep mountains and jagged basalt spires that pierce the pale sky. At night, the Milky Way scatters in full splendor across the black expanse while the sweet smell of white gardenias lingers in the warm dark air. 

The beauty of the islands was reflected in the people. The older women here had a twinkle in their eyes like light reflecting off ripples in the water; they stand close to you and smile and press mangoes into your hands. Men frequently carry around their babies, cooing at them (this society loves their babies and seems to view them as gifts to the larger community rather than the property of nuclear families), and women seem empowered. They are authentic, confident, fully and naturally themselves, somehow. They laugh a deep, unrestrained belly laugh when they are with each other, standing in circles waist-high in the warm water. Outside Papeete, in the small villages, there are no movie theaters, no big-box stores, no places to buy the latest shoes in fashion, no billboards telling you what you need to buy to be cool. In the afternoons, families gather at the water’s edge. They spend time together on porches. They sing out “Io orana!” as you walk by. No one is ever in any kind of hurry. The ancient Polynesian names of the islands, such as Matairea, translates to “joyful breeze,” and the 21st century Polynesians seem connected to their past and the people from whom they descended. They bury their relatives in graves in front of their homes, adorn them with flowers, and have picnics on top of the graves.

Lihue, Hawaii

July 19, 2019: It was hard to believe it had been almost two years since we pushed off the dock at Shilshole and began our journey through the Pacific. We’d sailed and motored 13,000 nautical miles, visited 135 anchorages and 30 islands, and experienced less-measurable things too. There was nothing definitive about the end of the trip; it was more of a gradual ending that merged into new beginnings at the same time. That said, the 19th of July was momentous. I decided to fly home, and a friend of Matt’s flew in to replace me for the final passage. As we walked to the airport, it felt like there was so much to say, but we had no idea exactly what, so we ended up walking mostly in silence. 

The end of the voyage didn’t really feel like a hard and final conclusion because the cruise had fundamentally changed how we wanted to structure our lives. It set us on a path. We’d started to reflect a little, here and there, about how the previous two years had changed us. We can, and should, live our lives according to our own rules and dreams, and if those happen to go against the societal grain, so be it. 

We dreamed and schemed of a future in which we lived on a self-sufficient boat, powered by solar, wind and hydro, that Matt had built. We wanted to work for ourselves and try to find a good balance between our vocations and everything else life has to offer. We wanted to live minimally and frugally so that we could afford more free time. We wanted to be able to pull up our anchor and go exploring anytime. All of British Columbia and Alaska lay to the north, and Oregon and the rest of the planet to the south. We both were full of aspirations and dreams, and the conviction to make this vision a reality, though our dear friend Salty might read all this and with a roll of his eyes say, as he has said before, “Such bums!” Maybe he’s right.

Throughout our cruise, Matt became increasingly interested in the features of a good cruising boat. Many hours were spent sitting in our cockpit in anchorages around the Pacific, scrutinizing other boats. He read all of Steve Dashew’s books. He became intrigued by Open 60s, offshore racers that have evolved over the past few decades in round-the-world races such as the BOC Challenge and the Vendée Globe. He started sketching designs. He dreamed about all the ways he would create an ideal cruising boat if he had the opportunity.

Olympic Peninsula, Washington

January 2022: Which brings us to the present. We’ve sold Louise and bought a small house in the woods in Washington, and Duracell is now ours, parked right outside our home (see the photo below). How she came to be ours is a story in its own right.

Designed by Rodger Martin (who passed away in May 2021), Duracell was built by Mike Plant back in the mid-1980s and named after the battery manufacturer that sponsored the boat. Afterward, Plant circled the globe aboard her twice, setting the American record for a solo circumnavigation during the 1989 Vendée Globe, a dramatic story that’s well-told in the documentary Coyote: The Mike Plant Story (available on Amazon Prime and other streaming services). 

Thirty years ago, Plant sold the boat to a sailor from Seattle named John Oman, who renamed her Northwest Spirit and sailed her to victory in the Pan Pacific Race across the Pacific to Japan. He next set off on a solo, nonstop circumnavigation of the planet that came to a halt somewhere near the equator after a collision with a cargo ship. Northwest Spirit was dismasted, but the hull didn’t sustain much damage because the bowsprit took most of the blow. The cargo-ship captain offered him a ride, but Oman opted to motor to Turtle Bay in Baja California, where he refueled and carried on to San Diego, where he loaded the boat on a trailer and drove it to Seattle, where he put it in his front yard.

That was in 1992. 

In 2019, just a few weeks after we arrived home from our Pacific voyage, Matt was scrolling through a local sailing forum when he saw a new post from Oman:

“I bought Mike’s Duracell from him as he was building his next boat, Coyote. My plan was to do my own nonracing, solo, nonstop circumnavigation. After bringing her to Seattle (through the Panama Canal) and winning the Pan Pacific Race, I brought her solo back from Japan as a shakedown. My circumnavigation was cut short by losing the top 50 feet of the mast in a collision with a freighter. Putting her on the hard next to my home, it was my intention to put her back together and return to sailing. Shore life got in the way with business and family obligations, and now age and health issues. I no longer have the means to chase that dream. So what now? I love that boat. I can’t imagine a more easily handled, seakindly, safe, proven, shorthanded boat capable of sailing anywhere on Earth. So a refit for a solo circumnavigator? Or shorthanded go anywhere?”

Immediately the wheels began turning in Matt’s head. I got a text from him that simply said, “I found our next boat.” 

The pandemic delayed everything, but during that time, we got to know Oman, and worked hard to earn his trust and prove that we were worthy of this special refit project. Almost two years after his original post, Oman generously decided to release the boat to us.

But why this boat? Matt says that it’s the most solid, safest, best-built, fastest hull out there: a very special shell that we can turn into a comfortable home. Before the pandemic, he traveled to Rhode Island, where Duracell was built, and was thrilled to meet Rodger Martin, who graciously gave him copies of the original drawings. Armed with those, the refit is now well underway.

Former science teacher Janneke Petersen and her husband, Matt—a seasoned sailor who was part of the winning crew in the inaugural Race to Alaska in 2017—are well into their ambitious refit, which they’re chronicling on their YouTube channel, The Duracell Project. Also look for more updates in future issues of CW.

Mike Plant’s Famous Duracell

Before he was tragically lost at sea in 1992, solo sailor Mike Plant twice circled the globe aboard his Open 60, Duracell. His most memorable voyage came during the 1989 Vendée Globe. Midway through the race, deep in the Southern Ocean, Plant was forced to ­anchor in the remote Kerguelen Islands to address rigging problems. Though he ­completed the repairs himself, he did accept brief assistance from a team of New Zealand meteorologists when Duracell dragged anchor.

Though the Kiwis told Plant they’d be sworn to secrecy, he radioed race headquarters that he’d had help: an automatic disqualification. But Plant finished the course by sailing alone back to France, where he was greeted with a hero’s welcome and set the American record for a singlehanded circumnavigation of 134 days. He disappeared aboard his next boat, Coyote, en route to the 1992 running of the Vendée race. —Herb McCormick

The post From Offshore Racer to Performance Cruiser appeared first on Cruising World.

Ticktocking the inboard from forward to reverse, Rob quickly pivoted the 43-foot Jeanneau in the 50-foot-wide fairway to avoid clipping an incoming cabin cruiser. I stood on the bow of Illumine with a fender, heart racing as we barely cleared the stern of a shiny Beneteau in its slip. I could practically high-five the couple loading groceries into its cockpit. As Rob and I anxiously called instructions to each other across the deck, I hoped that the stressful beginning to our charter in the San Juan Islands wouldn’t set the tone for the rest of the week.

Mike Houston, co-owner of San Juan Sailing in Bellingham, Washington, gave a relieved thumbs-up from the dock as Rob cleared the obstacles and turned Illumine into the channel to Bellingham Bay. I was grateful that Mike had politely insisted on giving us a 30-minute maneuvering lesson before we left. And I was even more grateful that Rob had drawn the short straw and agreed to be at the helm in the marina’s tight quarters.

“Well, that’s not the least stressful thing I’ve ever done,” my husband admitted. “Nothing like learning a new boat with a big audience.”

We both relaxed once we put the sails up. The wind was a perfect 15 knots, the late August sun glinting off frothy whitecaps. Illumine settled into a close reach like it was her favorite pair of slippers, slicing smoothly south at 8 knots. She was the most comfortable monohull we’d ever sailed, a beamy and well-cared-for delight above- and belowdecks.

Our son, Talon, one week into 6 years old, stood on the bow with me watching for porpoises, while his 2-year-old sister, Lyra, napped in one of the stern berths. “It looks just like sailing on Flathead Lake,” he noted.

He was right: We’d driven 10 hours from our home in western Montana to arrive in similar scenery. Douglas firs and yellow grasses adorned the mountainous islands, which were layered like turtlebacks atop the gray-blue sound. A seal’s whiskered nose broke the surface to starboard. “We definitely don’t have those in Montana,” I told Talon.

An archipelago in northwestern Washington state, the San Juan Islands lie in the rain shadow of Vancouver Island. This makes their climate drier and sunnier than the temperate rainforest in the Seattle area, making them a favorite Pacific Northwest cruising ground. A few years prior, our family had taken the ferry to the southern San Juans, where we camped on Lopez, Shaw and Orcas. We were excited to check out the more remote and undeveloped northern islands, which are accessible only by private boat. Chartering with San Juan Sailing out of Bellingham made the most sense—economically and geographically—for exploring these islands’ old-growth forests, fossil-filled cliffs and moss-lined hiking trails.

A few hours later, I was at the helm as we scouted anchoring options off Cypress Island. We dropped the hook in a deserted nook around the corner from Eagle Harbor, where two-dozen boats were already moored. Just after we secured a stern line around a tree onshore to keep us from pivoting with the notoriously strong tidal currents, our friends Mark and Katie and their 4-year-old son sailed into sight. Bellingham locals, they’d decided to buddy-boat with us for the weekend in their 25-foot Bayfield, Madrona. They nestled in enviously close to shore with a 3-foot shoal draft.

Rob lowered the 15-horsepower outboard onto Illumine’s ­dinghy so we could visit Cone Islands State Park, a quartet of tiny isles a few hundred yards away. One of our family’s favorite parts of cruising is joyriding around in the dinghy to explore. Katie and Mark, on the other hand, adore traveling without engines and opted for muscle power to row their wooden dinghy across to meet us.

The kids and dads poked at anemones in the tide pools while Katie and I basked in the sun like sea lions, happy to have the finger cove to ourselves.

“Should we skinny-dip?” I asked her, half-joking. But I should have known the answer: Katie and I had sailed together on a half-dozen sailboats in just as many countries, and she was always game for adventure.

“Heck yeah!” Katie said with a grin, shucking off her jeans and T-shirt. We splashed into the cold Pacific, our happy hoots bringing the children running.

The next morning, we set out for a hike on Cypress Island. Armed with copious snacks and a couple of field guides, we meandered through salal bushes and madrona trees, stepping over dozens of slugs as we climbed to the top of Eagle Cliff. The kids built rock cairns and ate peanut-butter sandwiches while the adults took in the sweeping views of Rosario Strait 750 feet below us. The white wakes of ferries and yachts looked like icing on a blue cake.

During a shared dinner of sausage ravioli that night in Illumine’s cockpit, we perused the charts with our friends. We decided to head for Clark Island—a 55-acre marine park with a long sandy beach—right after breakfast the next morning and crossed our fingers that one of the nine mooring buoys would be open if we arrived early.

We were in luck. After a two-hour sail in light winds (and only one terrifying moment when a freighter steaming at 14 knots turned toward us in the strait), Illumine and Madrona both picked up balls as two other boats were leaving. Talon and Lyra were so excited to see the new island that they climbed into the dinghy immediately, shoes in hand.

“Beaches make the best playgrounds,” Talon told us. “So hurry up, OK?”

The west side of Clark Island did not disappoint—its half-mile crescent of white sand felt like we were in California rather than a stone’s throw from Canada. The kids wrestled and rolled on the beach, built complicated castles, and chased garter snakes under driftwood piles. The adults cataloged the birds, took turns splashing into the water, and watched an otter eat several fish in the shallows. That evening, we headed back to the beach for a bonfire. The sunset painted the sea pink as we polished off our fire-roasted hot dogs and corn on the cob.

Madrona returned to Bellingham the next morning while we continued northwest. The wind was on our nose again (which Katie and Mark had informed us was the norm around Bellingham, no matter which direction you chose to sail). After two hours, Sucia Island’s Echo Bay came into view, a popular anchorage because of its splendid views of Mount Baker, the towering snow-covered volcano that dominates the skyline. I counted close to 70 boats packed into the U-shaped bay.

Put off by the crowds, we tucked around Matia Island instead. Back at the docks, Mike Houston had told us that it would be “highly unlikely” we’d be able to snag one of the two mooring buoys or few dock spaces in Matia’s Rolfe Cove, but to “definitely try because the island is spectacular.” Part of the San Juan Islands National Wildlife Refuge, Matia is home to one of the last intact old-growth forests in the San Juans.

We were thrilled to find both balls available—until we realized they were vacant because the swell coming into the cove was nauseating. The forecast showed the wind clocking south in the evening and calming considerably. So we hurriedly packed for a hike, fingers crossed that the boat would feel less like a roller coaster upon our return.

The 1-mile trail around the island felt like a fairy land. We wandered in awe through waist-high ferns, watching eagles and great blue herons dive into the green water beyond the forest. Sunlight filtered through the lacy needles of ancient cedars and dappled the kids’ blond hair.

“You have to do the limbo to look up at these trees,” our son said, arched over backward. He and his sister ran to a burn-scarred cedar, its trunk wider than a pickup, then stood together in the hollow V at its base. “Mom, we could practically live in here!”

Back on the boat, the swell had receded. I started dinner while Rob gave in to the kids’ pleas and took them back to shore to play with an inflatable beach ball. Their giggles echoed across the cove as they chased each other across the pebbled beach.

I let the chicken-and-rice dish simmer on the gimbaled stove, then took my beer to the cockpit to enjoy the sunset and rare solitude. Illumine was framed by sandstone cliffs on both sides, their hollows reflected on the smooth water. These rocks harbor fossils, and I searched for the feathery imprints of palm trees from a bygone era.

I was grateful that we were flexible on our charter, letting wind and whim dictate our destinations. If we’d planned out each stop, we might have missed the magic of Matia or the sand playground on Clark. While I reviewed charts and my charter packet before we arrived in the San Juans, I hadn’t read a single cruising guide. For me, the beauty of cruising is the constant discovery: catching a wind line just around the point; seeing the wake of a whale and chasing its spout; watching a seal slide through a bay at night, trailing phosphorescent fireworks. I prefer the giddy excitement of not knowing exactly what we might find, rather than following well-trodden routes to “must-see” destinations.

The next morning, we motored over to Sucia Island, our sails no match for the swirling tidal rip currents in light wind. We side-stepped the busy scene in Echo Bay and instead found a mooring in Snoring Bay, a skinny inlet on the south shore. We settled Illumine between a small sloop from Portland and a tiny wooden tug with a dog barking on the bow.

We hiked Sucia’s network of trails most of the day, finding sea stars and rock climbing along the way. Before dinner, we took the dinghy across the wide expanse of Echo Bay. We surprised a pair of enormous Steller sea lions as we zipped around the ­northwestern point. They bellowed angrily at the intrusion, ­hefting their intimidating bulk off the rocks. Motoring away quickly to calm them down, we noticed a rock spit a half-mile away with dozens more of the blond mammals. Talon was thrilled, demanding that we watch (from a safe distance) as two massive males fought over a harem of lady lions.

We didn’t leave Sucia until late afternoon the following day, eking out the last bit of sun and cedar from our vacation. San Juan Sailing had requested that we anchor close to Bellingham Bay on the last night so we could be back at the dock by 10 a.m. without risking navigating the soupy fog that often blankets Rosario Strait. We motorsailed toward Inati Bay on Lummi Island, which Mike Houston had recommended, “as long as you don’t mind the rigmarole of setting a stern tie.”

The sun had just slipped over the horizon as we pulled into Inati, a narrow hook into Lummi’s steep, verdant hillside. Four boats had already set anchor, three of them with stern ties. Only one slot was still open for anchoring—a little close to the rocks for my normal comfort level but plenty safe if we tied to shore. Rob and I set the anchor seamlessly, proud of our teamwork…but then promptly flubbed our success when Rob ejected his brand-new iPhone into the ocean as he stepped into the dinghy.

He stared incredulously down into the murky sea. The depth meter read 21 feet. The water temperature read 58 degrees. “I cannot believe I just did that,” he said.

I could tell he was itching to dive in after his phone, but with both kids bickering in the cockpit and Illumine swinging toward the rocks, I convinced him to set the stern line first. Once the boat was secured, Rob suited up in his spearfishing wetsuit in record time, happy he’d remembered to pack a dive light.

While I whipped up some dinner, Talon narrated his dad’s progress: “He just went down again. I think that’s his 10th dive!”

But he didn’t need to tell me when Rob found the phone. My husband’s “woo-hoo!” echoed loudly off the walls, eliciting applause from folks on neighboring boats who were on deck enjoying the twilight. And the phone (in a waterproof case) still worked.

Rob grinned under his neoprene mask. “It wouldn’t be as memorable if the whole week went smoothly, right?”

After ramen noodles all around and bedtime stories for the kids, Rob and I sat back in the cockpit with a beer. We reflected on our week in the San Juans and both agreed: The minor mishaps made the highlights that much brighter.

Brianna Randall is a writer based in Missoula, Montana. She and her family explore mountain lakes on a Catalina 22 during the summer, and escape the winter to live aboard a shared Jaguar 36 in the Bahamas.

Chartering Information

When to Go: The weather in the San Juan Islands is generally mild year-round. The sailing season is from May to October, when the winds are mostly moderate, from 6 to 18 knots. Summer temperatures are ­typically in the low to mid 70s.

Cruising Guides: Before you go, consider taking a look at: San Juan Islands: A Boater’s Guidebook; 2nd edition, by Shawn Breeding and Heather Bansmer, and Waggoner Cruising Guide 2021 by Fine Edge Publishing.

Charter Companies: A number of charter options exist in the region for bareboat and crewed, power and sail.

The post San Juan Islands Sojourn appeared first on Cruising World.

Sailing is an activity steeped in the past. Who has not cruised by an old wharf or a crumbling pier and wondered what was there before? Or encountered a vintage vessel and imagined its glory days? Sailors are confronted with history and tradition at every tack and jibe. Recognizing this point, in 2019, Congress created the first National Heritage Area dedicated solely to maritime themes. It includes 3,000 miles of shoreline along the Pacific Coast and the Salish Sea, encompassing Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the Strait of Georgia. This place, where inlets wind through mountains and forests of cedar and Douglas fir, combines the natural and the cultural to form distinctive communities that have been connected by water for centuries.

The Maritime Washington NHA features many types of historic resources: buildings, lighthouses, boats, wharves, marinas, yacht clubs, museums and even events such as festivals. It celebrates the canoe cultures of the region’s Indigenous peoples in their past and current forms, recognizing their continued presence, as well as the age of exploration by tall ships and the development of marine industries along saltwater highways. The NHA also honors the growth of recreational boating and its role in local economic and social activity.

Read More: Exploring the Salish Sea

These forces contributed to the development of the nation and continue to shape life on the Salish Sea. According to Allyson Brooks, Washington state historic preservation officer, the East Coast has long been recognized for its whaling and fishing past, but the Pacific Northwest’s maritime history has not received as much attention from national heritage and preservation efforts—until now. “This is a wonderful way to highlight our role in maritime history,” she explains. Chris Moore, executive director of the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation, which manages the new NHA, agrees. According to him, the fact that Congress established this new heritage area “is a validation of our very rich maritime culture” and its national significance.

What does this mean for cruisers? During the next several years, the NHA will publicize and promote the seafaring stories of the Salish Sea, making them more accessible to the public through interpretation, education and outreach. Future projects could include waterfront signage, itineraries for water-based trails, and support and expansion of programs that link maritime communities with their history. “For people who enjoy the water,” Moore predicts, “the heritage area will enhance their experience.” Sailors will come away with a stronger sense of place and a connection to the unique waterways of the Pacific Northwest.

The post Maritime Heritage in the Salish Sea appeared first on Cruising World.

Remember the good old days, when all you talked about was going out on charter, or taking sailing lessons so you were qualified to do so? Now, like just about everything else in a pandemic era, the times have demanded new labels for recreational sailing and instruction.

Staff at Club Nautique on San Francisco Bay, like many others in the industry, immediately heeded the call: Socially Acceptable Independent Leisure (SAIL) became their go-to slogan. “We offered a basic keelboat and basic cruising package of instruction to families,” says Don Durant, chief executive officer. “We’d tried it a few years ago with no success, but in 2020 the timing was right. It’s been extremely rewarding, and the families love it.”

Slogans aside, Marcus Abbott, general manager of Anacortes Yacht Charters in Washington state, sums up current affairs this way: “People want to get out on the water. This pandemic has ended up being good for business.” By any name you call it—staycationing, quaranteaming, family adventuring, safe social bubbling, notching another checkmark on the bucket list—sailing in America is booming again.

RELATED: Buying a Charter Sailboat

After a bleak spring 2020 of lockdown due to COVID-19, sailing schools and chartering outlets across the country are enjoying a silver lining from customers venturing mostly closer to home. Instead of flying to the Greek isles, they’re driving to the Great Lakes. And to coastal towns in established sailing regions, from New England to the Chesapeake and Florida on the East Coast; from the Pacific Northwest down through the Mexican border on the West Coast.

Record numbers are joining sailing clubs, signing up for coursework offered by US Sailing and the American Sailing Association teaching affiliates, taking crewed charters if they’re nonsailors, or booking bareboat charters and buying boats if they are. Companies have scurried to hire instructors and skippers, add to new- and used-boat inventories for sales and charter, create standby lists for classes, and lengthen sailing seasons for clients who just want to get away—for a day, overnight, a few days, or a week or two.

This crop of new participants and old salts has much to look forward to as they fulfill their dreams and discover—or rediscover—remote anchorages, stunning scenery and pleasant weather in their beautiful backyards on the water.

Two Steps Back, Leaps Forward

Before the phones rang off the hook and the emails poured in, companies and schools had to adopt cleaning and safety protocols for workers and vacation sailors. It was anything but easy, yet in the end, they report that the efforts paid off, and clients, via their wallets and feedback, support the changes.

What transpired at Great Lakes Sailing Company and ASA school in Traverse City, Michigan, is a vivid example: “In May, we were frustrated that we couldn’t open our industry even with strict safety standards in place,” says company president Dave Conrad.

Great Lakes Sailing, which had developed its own guidelines with help from a medical doctor with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID-19 Task Force, wound up getting involved with the Michigan Boating Industries Association and state senators to create industrywide standards. “It was one of those situations where we realized that the governor’s office was overwhelmed with trying to develop guidelines for every industry to safely reopen,” Conrad says. “It really shows what good can happen when people stop complaining and get involved.”

The changes ushered in include digital practices that will likely have staying power for clients and ­students who seek to explore the freshwater paradise of northern Michigan in 2021: “We changed our charter briefings so clients could better familiarize themselves with the boat before arriving,” Conrad says. “They receive digital information on where every mechanical and safety component is on the boat, and we digitized our chart briefings.

“We found that the client was arriving already familiar with the boat, and we could do a majority of the mechanical, systems and chart briefings in the open air of the cockpit. We’ll keep these procedures in place because it’s not only a timesaver for us and the client—it doesn’t skimp on the process. The client is actually better-informed.”

Not only are clients better-informed by the time they show up at the base, but their “asks” reflect pandemic-inspired trends. Those who shun dockage and restaurants are asking for dinghies and grills. Some clients, especially those coming by car, want the sleep-aboard service the night before the charter starts. “For the most part, people are driving to our base,” says Susan Restauri, charter manager with Cruise Annapolis and the Waypoints network in Maryland. “I get more inquiries out of Washington, D.C., than I’ve ever gotten before.”

Aside from experienced sailors booking charters a week or longer, the newbies are jumping aboard quickly. “Many of the new charter clients don’t even know what a monohull is,” Restauri says. “So the key is matching them with the size boat that would meet their party size and allow accommodations for a skipper. They would also reduce their group size just to get whatever boat is available.”

Other types of clients are also driving the activity. “We’ve had birthdays, daysails, bachelorette parties and a wedding,” Restauri says. “In 2020, family is what it’s all about.”

Families are definitely evident on the instruction side of the equation—similar to what worked for Club Nautique. Here’s what’s in demand at Offshore Sailing School in Florida: “We are doing more private courses—just for a couple who want to learn together without any other strangers aboard except the instructor, and for families who live together back home,” says Doris Colgate, president. Singles are also welcome, with one cabin going to the instructor and a maximum of three cabins filled by others, whether singles or couples.

“It turned out to be a family adventure rather than just a sailing course,” Julien Grascoeur says of his family’s experience with Club Nautique. “Once COVID-19 is under control, we’ll start expanding our horizons and see where the wind brings us. Isn’t that what sailing is all about, after all?”

As crewed charter client Maureen Fox sees it: “We always wanted to go sailing and have talked about it for decades. The pandemic pushed us to do it. It was time to check this off the bucket list.”

Fox, her husband, and another couple hired a captain and spent the Labor Day holiday sailing Chesapeake Bay with Cruise Annapolis. The weekend trip included an overnight off the town of St. Michaels, Maryland. “The best part of the trip was being back on the boat,” Fox says. “We grilled off the stern, and I was surprised at how easy that was. We watched the sunset and the moonrise. It was so beautiful and quiet. We couldn’t get over the silence. This was a very different experience for us—sailing is really relaxing. We’d do it again.”

Book It!

If there’s any tip for American vacation sailors, it’s this one: Book your charter now, whether near or far. A number of factors contribute to this advice from companies and schools. In the face of the pandemic, companies adjusted policies, usually giving clients a year grace period to rebook, so 2021 is filling up already. Others have offered partial or full refunds.

Read the fine print of your contract and know exactly what you’re paying for, as well as rebooking and reimbursement limits. Stay up to date with quickly changing travel-refund policies offered through credit-card companies and insurance agencies. Cancel for Any Reason policies, or CFAR, which are receiving attention now, carry stiff premiums but eradicate most risk up to 48 hours before scheduled departure.

The Moorings created a Travel with Confidence program, accessible through its website, to educate clients about safety measures, base reopening ­schedules, and refund and rebooking policies. “We’ve been extremely flexible the whole time,” says Josie Tucci, vice president of sales and marketing for Travelopia, owner of the Moorings. “A lot of ­customers are booking into 2021, and availability is limited due to rebooking. With all the policies in place, go ahead, get your vacation booked. Flexibility is key, so don’t wait too long. You can always postpone and change.”

While its partnership with Sailing Florida in St. Petersburg opened up a domestic tropical option for Moorings clients, US customers are still planning getaways in popular and as-yet-off-limits ­destinations such as the British Virgin Islands and other Caribbean locations, as well as in the Bahamas. “There is so much pent-up demand for chartering and travel in general, it doesn’t even matter which Caribbean destination opens up,” says Ian Pedersen, marketing manager at the Moorings. “People gravitate to what is open first. Lack of demand is not a concern for next year; sailors will go, one way or another.”

Funneling some of those bookings are the r­­ecord-breaking numbers of sailing-school students working toward bareboat certification. “When you look at what our clients write, as far as their plans go, nearly all intended to bareboat-charter in no more than two years from the time they graduated,” says Colgate, of Offshore. “Most, within the year.”

Destinations 2021

While Offshore has a full slate of Colgate Sailing Adventures Flotilla Cruises planned into 2021, Dream Yacht Charter is working to keep clients satisfied with expanded domestic and international locations.

In 2019-2020, Dream added to its 60 global ­destinations by taking on partners Navtours and Virgin Islands Yacht Charters. The expanded US footprint includes bases in Burlington, Vermont; Newport, Rhode Island; Annapolis, Maryland; Key West, Key Largo, and Miami, Florida; and St. Thomas in the United States Virgin Islands. Navtours and Dream are also partners at a base in Nassau, Bahamas. “The breadth of our company’s destination portfolio is critical to accommodate rescheduled bookings,” says Dan Lockyer, Dream vice president of global tourism. “Flexibility and clear rescheduling options are going to be key for customers unable to travel as planned due to COVID-19 disruption. We recently surveyed our customers and found continued demand for US-based sailing in 2021, plus much interest in the Caribbean and Bahamas.”

Access to the USVI has definitely helped with demand. “With the BVI being closed, we have definitely had some converts to sailing in the USVI waters,” says Kristi Query of Virgin Islands Yacht Charters. “The US Virgin Islands have always been used as a jumping-off point for the BVI, and charterers rarely take the time to explore here. So many of our guests have come back to the base so excited about their charters, asking, ‘Why have we not done this before?’”

While some companies hint at additional US base openings, like Dream, West Coast Multihulls is ­reaping the benefits of just doing it. ­With its ­headquarters in San Diego, the company recently expanded its Sea of Cortez operations, accessible by car or a two-hour flight from Los Angeles. Options include crewed and bareboat catamaran charters in San Diego and from the Baja California peninsula in Mexico. Bases at Marina Puerto Escondido in Loreto, as well as the new site at Marina Palmira in La Paz, offer Fountaine Pajot and Leopard sailing catamarans. The company also teaches ASA sailing lessons in all locations, specializing in catamaran certifications.

While the three locations have peak seasons, all West Coast Multihulls bases can offer charter and instruction year-round. Custom trips themed around blue whale and gray whale migration ­seasons, ­swimming with whale sharks, surfing, spring wildflower blooming, diving, yoga, and health and wellness spa treatments are available.

For those with a hankering to head offshore from the East Coast, Cruise Abaco offers multiple dates for a 160-nautical-mile Gulf Stream crossing with a licensed captain from Port Canaveral, Florida, to Abaco, Bahamas. ASA instruction and certification on the passage are also available. Dates in November and December 2020 as well as June 2021 are available.

Sorting through the options, it’s important to keep an open mind to the possibilities of SAIL. “We’ve ­experienced one of the best charter seasons we’ve had in over 15 years,” says Cindy Kalow, owner of Superior Charters in Bayfield, Wisconsin. “Our sailing-certification school has trained twice as many people as the previous year, and we’ve experienced a significant number of new customers as they travel from all over the Midwest to come sailing in the Apostle Islands.

“It’s hard to predict what 2021 will bring. Because we are pretty remote—four hours from the nearest major metropolitan area and major airport—we’ve always struggled with getting people to come here. Yet, in summer 2020, a number of new customers returned to sail a second or even third time. Once we get people to experience true wilderness cruising in the Apostle Islands, they want to come back!”

Elaine Lembo is a CW editor at large.

The post Charter Sailing in North America appeared first on Cruising World.