We saw our first black bear of the 2017 summer on the shore of Wrangell Narrows as we passed through on our way to Petersburg, Alaska. So I decided to make the American Black Bear the subject of Critter Post No. 2. (For those of you who didn’t see Critter Post 1, the inspiration for this series came from fellow blogger, sailor, and birder who writes a regular Bird Photography Challenge post on her site s/v Take It Easy.) Continue reading
Category Archives: British Columbia
Back to Alaska
Sailors in the Pacific Northwest often say that you can cruise this region your whole life and never see it all. It seems like we’ve caught the bug because we’re on our way north again with the return of spring and sailing season. 
Magazine articles update
I’ve been thrilled to have a lot of articles published in sailing magazines this winter. For those of you who are interested, here’s a quick recap:
- Out right now in Ocean Navigator March/April 2017 is “Sail Fast! Aleutian Islands to Juan de Fuca Strait in Seven Weeks”, about our summer 2016 voyage. Despite having a schedule to meet and thus having to move faster than we would have liked, it was a great cruise and we managed to pack in the spots we most wished to see.
- For those of you who are Cruising Club of America members, the same piece will be coming out in this year’s Voyages.
- I’m also honored to be the newest member of the editorial team for Voyages – I had a lot of fun creating the maps for each article this year.
- And I was honored to be one of the judges for this year’s Chuck Husick Technology Award, presented by Ocean Navigator to an innovative technology product in the boating market. It was a hard choice among all the great nominees, but the you can read about the final winner here.
- Cruising World just posted Episode 2 of our Arctic Voyage video series! It’ll be up on YouTube soon. 🙂
- In the January/February issue, Cruising World published my piece “Alaska’s Wild Coast” about our 2014 cruise along the Alaska Peninsula the ‘wrong’ direction – from east to west – and now it’s online here.
- Sailing magazine published my article “Captain Cook’s Paradise: New Zealand’s Bay of Islands” in the January issue – unfortunately it’s not yet online.
Dolphin seen from the dinghy in New Zealand
- Across the Pond, Sailing Today ran my “Introduction to High Latitude Outfitting” in their February issue whose theme was the cold northern climes.
- Also in Britain, last but not least!, Water Craft ran my story about the Steamboat Liberty Belle as their lead feature, along with a cover shot!
As always, a big thank-you to all my readers and hope you enjoy these pieces!
Inside Channels to Open Ocean: Ketchikan, Alaska to Juan de Fuca Strait, Washington, August 2016
Brown bear fishing for salmon, Southeast Alaska
Our last post ended in Southeast Alaska, where we’d encountered a whole range of sailing conditions, revisited places we’d enjoyed in 2014, and discovered new places including a river where both black and brown bears fished for salmon.
Upon leaving the touristic town of Ketchikan, we once again entered deserted channels between forested islands. Our last stop in Alaska was a little cove just a mile or two north of the Canadian border, and then we set off to Prince Rupert to clear Customs into Canada.
New pages on Gone Floatabout
Hi everyone,
We’ve been doing a little renovation to Gone Floatabout and added some new pages. Finally the Arctic Voyage tab now has a full account of the voyage, from our first shakedown cruise in British Columbia in 2013 to our rounding of Point Barrow and return to the Aleutians this past summer. If you’re really ambitious and or really bored, all the posts are in order now on the 2014: Alaska page and the 2015: Arctic page 🙂
Much more exciting is that we finally did something about the Photography page! It’s now under the new Media tab and has three extensive galleries: Wildlife, Nature, and Adventure & People. We had a lot of fun putting that together, so hope you enjoy it!
Finally, sorry for the last post that got sent out – it was a snafu that happened when we were editing our home page.
Hope everyone enjoys floating about the revamped site 🙂
Cheers,
Ellen & Seth
Please vote for my photo in Sailing Today 2015 Awards!
I’m super excited to have been nominated for Best Cruising Photograph in the Sailing Today magazine 2015 Awards! I’d really appreciate your vote at http://www.sailingtoday.co.uk/awards2015/ You can vote anytime until August 23 and you get entered for a chance to win a sailing holiday in Greece. My photos is “Laughing Lines” http://www.sailingtoday.co.uk/the-sailing-today-awards-2015-photo-of-the-year/ And if you’d like to pass this on, please do!!
Thanks so much!! Really appreciate your support!!
2014 Alaska Voyage Recap
We’re back on Celeste in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, so stay tuned for updates! We’ve been pretty busy so haven’t prioritized the blog but we’ll try and catch up a bit before we set sail. In the meantime, here’s a good recap of our 2014 voyage on ZEAL Optic’s blog! They’ve chosen some of our favorite photographs, too 🙂
As the editors on OCH say, masthead spinnakers aren’t often seen on the Alaska Peninsula!!
A similar recap for Off Center Harbor.com members is up now too! Again, we love the photos they chose! Continue reading
