Writing and Photography of wild lands and seas
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.)
Today is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day! To celebrate, I thought I’d share some photos of the flowers that are blooming here this spring. I’m so grateful to be able to see such beauty everyday. (And I’m also very proud of our orchids!)
Here is a great article about this year’s Cruising Club of America awards.
I already mentioned Jean-Luc Van Den Heede‘s incredible achievements in an earlier post, but I thought my readers would also enjoy hearing about the other awardees. The French solo sailor Guirec Soudée is the winner of this year’s Young Voyager Award, and the Rod Stephens Seamanship Trophy this year is being awarded to another young sailor, the 32-year-old Irish singlehander Gregor McGuckin, Van Den Heede’s fellow competitor in the 2018 Golden Globe Race. You can read all about these amazing sailors in the article I linked to above. They’re soon to converge on New York for the awards dinner – I wish I could be there too this year to honor all of them! Congratulations! 🙂
I thought my readers might enjoy the press release about the remarkable sailing achievements of Jean-Luc Van Den Heede, this year’s recipient of the Cruising Club of America’s highest honor, the Blue Water Medal. (I ghost-wrote the release 😉)
Now that a little time has passed since SAIL magazine published our “Starry Night” photo as their double-page spread opener in July, I wanted to share the photo here – it’s one of my all-time favorites 🙂
We recently created a video for BoKoa Farms and Forest, an off-grid farm on slopes of Mauna Kea on the island of Hawai’i. They practice restorative forestry, reducing invasive plant species and propagating native and endemic ones. Specifically, they remove strawberry guava and chip it, creating a great product for use in grilling and smoking: the wood chips impart a really nice flavor to all kinds of meat and veggies. In the cleared land, they propagate Koa seedlings, reforesting the land with these beautiful native trees. It’s a great cause and a creative way of addressing a problem that exists throughout the Hawaiian islands.
The video tells this story, along with an explanation on how to use the wood chips in your grill.
Another bird-nerd critter post! I have a soft spots for goofy-looking birds and they don’t get much goofier than auklets. On our sail to the Arctic, Seth and I spent several days on St Paul island in the central Bering Sea, binoculars and cameras trained on cliffs full of nesting auklets. It was a toss-up for my favorite, but the Least Auklet was certainly a contender.Continue reading “Critter Post 6: Least Auklet”
All my critter posts so far have focused on mammals, but we see so many interesting birds while sailing that I thought it was time for an avian critter post. We were lucky enough to see a snowy owl on the tundra of Alaska’s North Slope. We watched him for hours as he swept low over the tundra and perched on whalebones. Since it was summer in the Arctic, he was hunting in full daylight (even though it was close on midnight), and the low angle of the sun made for lovely light for photography.Continue reading “Critter Post 5: Snowy Owl”
Sailing south through the Alaska Panhandle, we spotted our first American mink, the animal I’ve decided to make the subject of my fourth Critter Post.
Basic Facts:Continue reading “Critter Post 4: American Mink”
Despite a paucity of images, I’ve decided to write about the caribou for Critter Post 3. Caribou are an integral part of life in the Arctic and we were lucky enough to see one on the shore of the Beaufort Sea on Alaska’s North Slope – quite the sight, the lone antlered creature on the vast tundra. He was too far away to photograph, so for Critter Post 3 I’m using a couple of images taken on our trip to Denali National Park.Continue reading “Critter Post 3: Caribou”
I’ve 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 “Critter Post 2: American Black Bear”
As many of you know, the wildlife we see on our voyages is one the big highlights of sailing for us. So I’ve decided to try out a few posts exclusively about critters. This is mostly inspired by fellow birder, sailor, and blogger Chris of s/v Take It Easy, who writes informative posts about bird species that she sees, accompanied by her excellent photos. After spending a recent afternoon watching sea lions on a navigation marker outside a town in Alaska (see photo above), I’ve decided to make the subject of my first Critter Post the Steller Sea Lion.
Gone Floatabout