I HATE SHOES

We departed Ketchikan on Tuesday and we just got into Port McNeill in British Columbia. I'm back on Terrapin Flyer  as we make our way down to Seattle over the course of the next week or so. The crew is great again, Alex has excellent friends. This time I am travelling with a former public defender in Palo Alto, CA and his wife who is a professor at Stanford. Great people with great conversation. The food is top notch again as well, with shrimp scampi, curried cous cous with tuna and other great dishes. The series of straits and fjords and the islands between them make up this part of the world, from Glacier Bay down to Washington state, called the inside passages. We deviated from them yesterday to make up for lost time and went outside in the Pacific and came back in on the north side of Vancouver Island. The forecast was calling for seas of 1 meter or less (note the metric system up here, sophisticated) and winds up to 25 knots. Totally doable in a Hylas 49. Except for we...

Last week I was called by the local sailboat rental company that has my name on their list of skippers and they asked me to take a boat out in a corporate charter/regatta. It's not a regatta in the traditional sense of the word, but more of Proctor and Gamble renting out literally 26 high-end sailboats for a "retreat" for their desk monkeys. As the race coordinator was going over the course with the skippers, I struck up a conversation with the guy next to me. He happened to have started in Key West awhile back and I was asking him about schooners down there. He said Newport was the place to be and that his brother worked on one there, as well as being the captain for Dorade  (read that link, its an amazing boat). I was stunned and asked him, "wait a second, are you Green's brother Jesse?? I've used your Port Supply account!" Yes, I was speaking with none other than the brother of the person who was the captain of Aquidneck, lived literally "next ...

San Diego was fun for the summer, but a lack of work and being too far from friends and family is moving me back to the east coast. The southern California sailing community doesn't have the pedigree, reverence, depth or, to be flat honest, know-how and sailing knowledge that I was surrounded by back east, especially Newport. Not to say I didn't grow as a sailor out here; I did my first big blue water ocean crossing as well as my first experiences as a charter boat captain. The plan is to get outta dodge by mid August and either finish the season in Newport/New York or head down to Key West to catch the start of the winter season there. They have half a dozen schooners, another handful of catamarans and (gulp) some parasailing motor boats. I have no qualms driving a motor boat if all other options are exhausted and the price is right. Jazz  is now for sale. She's served me well, providing a place to live at about half the cost of renting in the same areas, and a few day s...

Here is another panoramic picture, created from a series I took of Hanalei Bay, Hawaii. Alaina edited the photo and made the colors look closer to what it really looked like to be there. I spent 6 days here getting Terrapin Flyer  ready for her journey north to Alaska. If you look closely, you can even see a waterfall coming down off of the highest mountain peak in the background, with a sturdy aluminum sloop in the foreground. They also call this the "Jurassic Park" mountain since it was used in the scene in the helicopter in the beginning of the movie. Enjoy! And if anyone wants the high-res 50 MB file, just send me an email.

Well, Tumblr was fun for a bit, but I'm back to using Blogger. I like Google products and Blogger seems to fit what I do more, which is blog text more than pictures, quotes and the like. I decided to keep the "Winchelsea" part of the URL because let's face it, that's what I'm going to name my next boat. I can't really think of a better one with as much personal significance. That's all for now...