Cover Photo Series: Alone at Fatu Hiva

La Baie des Vierges – Hanavave in Marquesan – is probably the most iconic anchorage in all of the South Pacific. Certainly it has an outsized importance to small boat sailors on their way across this vast ocean. It seems to epitomize the remote, exotic, tropical idyll that so many people envision when then dream of a Pacific sailing voyage.

Tucked into the northwest corner of Fatu Hiva – the least accessible of the inhabited Marquesan Islands – Hanavave is a secluded bay backed by mountains coated in deep green tropical vegetation. Coconut palms fringe the shoreline, and giant basalt pillars give the cove a magnificence that separates it from the already stunningly beautiful bays elsewhere in the Marquesas.

Ashore the people who make this place their home are – in my experience – friendly, welcoming, and kind. As you walk inland, the smell of tropical earth after the rain overwhelms you, as do the luxuriant leaves of bananas and banyans, and the brilliant colors of the hibiscus blossoms. Back in the village, fresh, juicy tropical fruit can be found for sale or barter, a particularly welcome treat for sailors who’ve just spent a month out of sight of land.

So it’s no wonder that this bay has become immensely popular with ocean sailors, and that often there are upwards of 30 boats anchored in this small spot. While it’s hardly a bad thing to share an anchorage with like-minded souls taking in a very special place and experience, it’s also human to yearn to have such a place to oneself. And so I consider myself incredibly lucky to have experienced just that. With my boat all alone anchored beneath those iconic basalt pillars, I took my little dinghy out into the golden sunset light and shot photo after photo, trying to capture this precious moment. Of course the photos don’t do justice to my memory – they never do – but they do help to conjure up that feeling yet again, and to share it with others. Which is why I was so excited when Ocean Navigator wanted to share that magic, too, by placing my photo on their cover.

A bone in her teeth (cover photo series)

Another Flying Fish cover, to follow on my last post.

I love this one; it’s probably one of my favorites. I love the speed that’s so evident in the boiling white water along the leeward rail, the driving power of the wind in the bellying headsails, and the promise of many more miles to go towards the horizon, empty of anything but the whitecapped seas.

Every boat is different, but Celeste does best in a stiff quartering tailwind. She beats to windward well, thanks to her narrow beam, fin keel, and large sail area for her displacement, but she thrives on a broad reach. In 20 knots and above, you can really feel the power of her driving forward through the water. And you can feel her stabilizing under you – her motion flattens out under the power of the wind and her speed through the water. With new standing rigging and strong sails – so that the strain on the boat is less worrying – I could be content to drive along like this for a month or more. Unfortunately this spectacular passage lasted only about a week, but it was a great week. And yes, she had new standing rigging at the time!

(This passage was Cape Flattery, WA to San Francisco, CA, October 2017.)

Cover Photo Series: Arctic Ice

Flying Fish is the biannual journal of the Ocean Cruising Club, an international organization of ocean sailors, based in the UK. It’s a wonderful group of people, self-described (on the OCC website) as sharing a “combination of accomplishment, experience, idealism, eccentricity, generosity and humility.”

I’ve contributed frequently to the journal since we joined the OCC and we’ve been honored to have our photographs on the covers of three issues.

This photograph is from a memorable day: the day we reached the polar pack ice in the Arctic Ocean. It was an eerily calm day, the sea glassy, with only the smallest ripples from the smallest zephyrs to ruffle the water’s surface. After weeks of gale-force wind, it felt as if the world was holding its breath. (As indeed it was: the gales began again the following day.)

Continue reading “Cover Photo Series: Arctic Ice”

Cover Photo Series

Here’s the start of a little series on the backstories behind a few of the photos I’ve had published on the covers of magazines.

This one here was the cover shot for (obviously!) Pacific Yachting magazine, published in Vancouver, British Columbia. My article about the passage to the Aleutian Islands was the main feature in this issue, and this image of Celeste on a rare gorgeous day there led it off. I think what I like most about this photo is the juxtaposition between the rugged terrain and the idyllic sailing conditions. There’s the blue sky and blue sea, just barely rippled, and Celeste gliding along under her asymmetrical spinnaker. And then there’s the shear rock of the mountain peak rearing up from the brilliantly white ice of the glacier. This area, the volcanic chain of the Alaska Peninsula, that terminates in the Aleutian Islands, is a wilderness of harsh, volatile weather, and with perhaps more bears than humans. We certainly saw more bears than people when we sailed there. And we certainly had our fair share of whipping winds and spray, rain and fog, and williwaws – katabatic winds accelerating down the mountain slopes. So a day like this one, when the sun was shining and the wind perfect for the spinnaker, was a very special treat.

Continue reading “Cover Photo Series”

A Favorite Photograph: Alaskan Brown Bears

Back to the stories behind some favorite images!

It’s probably obvious why I love this Alaska image: grizzly bears are so closely associated with the North American wilderness, and Alaska in particular. But brown bears fishing for salmon are almost an Alaska cliché, so in our time in the Great Land we wanted to capture images that were interesting photographically as well as for their impressive animal subject.

(Quick note: brown bears and grizzly bears are the same animal. These bears are called “grizzly” in the interior of the continent but are called “brown” on the coast. Kodiak bears are actually also brown bears, who happen to live on Kodiak Island.)

I like this image for a lot of reasons. First, of course, is that it brings back great memories of the week or so that we spent in this particular spot – a nearly land-locked bay on the remote Alaska Peninsula – watching these brown bears fattening up for their winter hibernation. All of the bears in the bay had distinct personalities and it wasn’t long before we could tell them apart by both appearance and behavior. Some were rambunctious juveniles, some were protective mothers, some were alpha males, and others just minded their own business and got on with the fishing.

Continue reading “A Favorite Photograph: Alaskan Brown Bears”

Worldwide Classic Boat Show

Some of you might know that I’m a writer for Off Center Harbor, a site dedicated to classic boats and do-it-yourself boat-building and adventuring. Since few if any of the wooden and classic boat festivals happened in person last year, Off Center Harbor has put together an online Worldwide Classic Boat Show. They’ve collected over 600 classic boats to showcase, everything from a lovely varnished launch on Italy’s Lake Como to racing yachts to canoes. Celeste is one of them 🙂 If you’re interested, “tickets” cost $5 and the show lasts until March 7th.

A Favorite Photograph: King Crab Traps

This is another Alaska image we both like. Here, it’s spring in the Aleutian Islands, the off-season for the King crab fishery. As many of you may know from the TV series “Deadliest Catch”, the King crab fishery is a tough business, conducted in fall and winter when strong storms can pummel the Aleutians and kick up big waves in the shallow Bering Sea. What I didn’t realize until we sailed to Dutch Harbor was that the king crab traps themselves are huge: wrestling one of these things onto the deck of a fishing boat would be difficult enough without a winter storm, even with hydraulic or electric winches. I like this image because it juxtaposes the serene beauty of a rare calm and sunny spring day in the beautiful Aleutians with the toughness of living and working there. (Me standing by the traps provides a nice sense of scale.)

A Favorite Photograph: St Elias Range

I’ve transitioned away from keeping a sailing blog, but hope to write occasional posts, so here’s the start of a little series of the stories behind some of our favorite images.

This is one of my favorite images from our voyages in Alaska because it captures so well so much of what I love about the Great Land. There are the jaw-droppingly huge and beautiful snow-capped mountains, the wilderness of coniferous forest, a calm ocean at dawn, and a hardy little fishing boat heading out to make a living from the sea.

It was autumn when we were moored in this incredible corner of the world, at the edge of the Wrangell-St Elias National Park. When I look at this photo, I can almost feel the cold morning air nipping my nose and condensing my breath as I stood on the dock savoring this view.

It was the first time we’d seen the mountains at all since we had sailed into this bay: it had been raining and blowing a gale for almost two weeks. Then, on this morning, the wind lay down and the clouds lifted to reveal the St Elias range, which includes the second highest peak in America. The contrast of the calm, the silence, and the clearing skies after all the wind and rain of the prolonged storm was stark, and most welcome. Alaska is often like that: the wilderness and the weather can be harsh, but so very worth the effort.

Ocean Cruising Club Lockdown Lectures

To keep our spirits up during the pandemic, the commodore of the Ocean Cruising Club had the wonderful idea to organize a series of Lockdown Lectures. The OCC is full of adventuresome and accomplished sailors with fascinating stories – there’s no clubhouse, just a great group of people. I’ve really enjoyed all the Lockdown Lectures, from Steve Brown’s talk on his 2018 Antarctica voyage to Clive Woodman’s tale of skiing the whole length of Norway and sailing back in his little 19-foot Cornish Shrimper! Randall Reeves took us vicariously on his “Figure 8 Voyage”, solo around the Southern Ocean and then around the Americas, almost entirely nonstop; Pam Wall took us family cruising the Bahamas; and Bob Comlay took us back to the days of the renowned sailor, mountaineer, and author Bill Tilman – he sailed with Tilman on some of his last trips. It was a wonderful escape to “attend” these talks virtually during the lockdown.

And I was very honored when Simon (the commodore) asked me to give one, too. I must admit it was a little strange to give a talk to a screen instead of a room full of people! I gather that almost all the presenters felt the same way, but it was a lot of fun and I especially enjoyed the Q&A at the end. My talk was on French Polynesia: I tried to give a sense of the culture and great beauty – both below and above the water – of the Marquesas and Tuamotu archipelagos.

Here is a link to all the talks – they were recorded so anyone can watch them. They’re all wonderful! And here’s the Vimeo link to mine on the South Pacific. Here are a few of my favorite photos from that part of the world:

Polynesia’s beautiful underwater world

I recently made another a little reel, which I hope gives a bit of a sense of the gorgeous underwater world and incredible marine life of French Polynesia in the South Pacific. We both love the diving and snorkeling there, whether its with the big critters – manta rays, dolphins, sharks – or the colorful reef fish, splendid coral, or the shoals of barracuda and jacks. Hope you enjoy the short film! (The diver in all the footage is a guy named Alexis, the organizer of a little dive club in the Tuamotus.)

(Click on the 4 arrows in the bottom right to make the video full screen.)

Alaska Reel

Here’s a short video I’ve been working on recently, of the beauty of Alaska. I picked some of my favorite footage of wildlife, scenery, and sailing from summers there aboard CELESTE. Hope you enjoy it! (I’ve embedded it from Vimeo because I kind of prefer it, although I’ve also uploaded the video to YouTube. If you’d like to watch it full screen, click the on the four little arrows just to the left of the Vimeo link in the bottom right.)