Maxi 95 and Our Adventures
Home Cove, AK, 28-Aug-2021 — There was no wind blasting with fury last night. There were gusts into the high teens, I would guess. The anchor swing traced on the tablet was smooth and might have indicated that we dragged some, but perhaps that was just straightening out the chain or the 10% stretch of the nylon rode tracing a lengthening and shortening arc.
Continue reading “The reason we anchored here was to escape the wind”
Home Bay, AK, 27-AUG-2021 — [Flora embroiders, Jennifer reads and I write. The solar panels are producing as much power as I have seen from them. Friends text us through the Iridium-satellite soda straw. Leonard Cohen plays on a pink metallic Macbook.]
Jennifer is much more cautious about weather than in years past. The reasons may be many. This year we are coastal sailing along the rough Kenai Peninsula with less frequent and less secure hiding places. This year Jennifer’s daughter is with us; no matter the age of the child the need to protect never leaves. It has been the longest we have been off Caro Babbo and perhaps Jennifer is more timid because of that. Perhaps because we are both getting older. I wonder, if it is because of the better, more accurate and more scary weather data available: there is generally always one model that predicts doom and gloom, which is why we sit and wait for weather to pass. The models are in agreement that forty-knot winds will come by late this afternoon or tonight. There is some disagreement about whether the winds will pass over us or just south of us, but with forty knots agreed upon, I am quite happy to wait until they pass by.
Eshamy Bay, Eshamy Bay Marine Park, AK, 60° 27.125N 147° 58.393W, 20-aug-2021 — Yesterday, we left Whittier and started our return to Homer. At a trip 1/4 of our normal length, this feels very much like starting the return 1/8 into a normal year’s trip.
We’ve cruised enough times that we have no trouble settling into a routine but there are differences we’ve noticed.
60° 32.825N 148° 09.863W Nellie Juan Cannery, AK 15-AUG-2021 — Caro Babbo is traveling with a crew of three this year. Although I view Caro Babbo as Jennifer and me, having Jennifer’s daughter, Flora, with us has not only been very pleasant, but a great addition.
Even though I’ve known this young woman most of her life, there are two generations between Flora and me. So, there is a difference in how we interact and how much time we each feels appropriate to spend with a family member that great distance of years from us.
Abra Cove, Aialik Glacial Basin AK, 8:00 a.m. on a Saturday 7-AUG-2021 — Jennifer sleeps. We’ll spend the day here. An audio book plays in Flora’s cabin. Sleep comes to Flora with great difficulty and only for short periods of time.
Across the sound, giants grumble in the glacier. The rumbles, which must be down around 40 Hertz, seem to be something we should feel in our ribs instead it is the rumble of distance thunder, of dinosaurs, of giants.
Shelter Cove, Beauty Bay, West Arm of Nuka Sound, Alaska, 5-Aug-2021 — Yesterday was overcast and a mild day. But there was some wind. We motored some 10 or 12 nmi to a lagoon that we wanted to see.
Technically, looking up the definition of a lagoon in the dictionary, it was not a lagoon. By definition one cannot sail into a lagoon because it is blocked off from the ocean by a barrier, typically a natural wall or beach.
Continue reading “Yesterday we sailed, thrice upon a time, and me and MF”
Tonsina Bay, AK, 2-AUG-2021 — It is midday at anchor in a bifurcated cove, alone, the three of us on Caro Babbo. It is an unusual time for Jennifer and I to be anchored in a cove anywhere. We spend most mornings and middays moving from one place to another whenever we are traveling in British Columbia or Alaska. These few days following our departure from Homer have been full days, long days, which like many days here at 59 degrees north in the summer, feel like multiple days, both in their duration and the amount that we experience.
Flora has been, in the months leading to our departure, eager, ambivalent and decidedly against making the trip. In the end, rather than come for a small time she has decided to join us for the entire adventure: 5 weeks. A small trip for us, 1/4 its normal length, and a long time to be on a small boat with your mother and her partner.
