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Raspberry slough*, AK, 14-AUG-2022 — today we need to get through a pass that can have very fast currents and get to Kodiak City before another low pressure system comes through with more wind than Jennifer is happy with.

The problem is the two software programs we use, openCPN and Navionics disagree about when things happen and how much.

Between two and two-thirty this morning the vessels coming up through Whale Pass started coordinating with each other on VHF. About three, I started watching the vessels that broadcast AIS on openCPN.

The final burst of vessels came through around three-thirty. I would have expected that was either slack water (no current in either direction) or the current had started flowing the other way, but it was more than half before they first vessel heading the other way entered the pass.

I could have called to ask about current strengths, but I wanted Jennifer to sleep.

Around 5:30, the coast guard started a dialogue with a vessel in distress.

We can only hear the coast guard. The vessel in distress is too far away for us to hear.

The coast guard: you’re taking on water. Good copy.

How many persons on board and what is your GPS location?

Zero four persons on board. Good copy.

Your taking on water. Good copy.

What is your GPS location?

Understood. You’re taking on water, what is your GPS location.

Then a few seconds of silence.

The coast guard reads back the lat and long. It is four degrees west of us and one degree south.

Good copy.

Do you have personal floatation devices and are all persons wearing personal flotation devices.

I don’t know whether all was calm on the vessel, or whether it was mayhem. At this time I don’t know whether this is a pro forma call to the coast guard or whether the vessel is in danger of sinking.

There are a few more back and forths. The coastie isn’t budging until he gets all the info he needs.

Do you have a phone number?

The coastie responds, good copy, which to me means no. I expect they have a satellite phone, but they are such a hassle that the cost guard agrees not to bother with it.

Finally, the coast guard says his words, and they pan-pan rather that mayday.

Pan-pan pan-pan this is the United States Coast Guard sector Anchorage, United States Coast sector Anchorage. At 13.20 universal coordinated time, 05.20 Alaska daylight time a vessel at coordinates, then he reads them, had reported taking on water with 04 persons on board.

All vessels keep a look out for this vessel and render assistance.

We hear the coast guard speak with one vessel, and after a few moments, the Coast Guard names a second vessel and says you are on site?

Then, good copy.

Then the coast guard asks for a phone number, followed by a few moments of silence and good copy.

Then several more moments followed by the vessel has sank. A few more moments, can you confirm there are zero four persons in the skiff?

After a few more minutes, the official message that ends with all persons have been safely recovered.

_____
*It took days to figure out why Prince’s Raspberry Beret was playing though my mind.
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Geographic Harbor, 58° 06.670N 154° 33.961W , 13-AUG-2022 — Carly Simon’s plaintive song that goes, You say it’s time we moved in together, made a family of our own you and me. That’s the way I always thought it should be, you want marry me. Marry me

I haven’t thought about that song in a long time. It seems a song of regret or resignation for what should be an event of joy.

We’re heading back to Homer. This trip is coming to an end. Jennifer tells me she never wants to do things like this again. She doesn’t want to be afraid anymore.

She wants to get back to PT, plant her orchard and garden and watch things grow. Simon’s song comes to mind.

Next year we’ll spend a few months bringing Caro Babbo back to the pnw, see if we can get a slip at Lee’s Landing and live a quiet retired life.

I find the concept of this difficult in the extreme.

How you gonna keep down on the farm once they’ve seen paree? To quote another song from a different era.

But even I’m not that far off from Jennifer. I surprised Jennifer when I said I wouldn’t mind coming back to Geographic Harbor and staying for a month. Just being here and living in this place.

It’s a difficult thing to sort out. Being alive and pushing whatever boundaries we each feel.

Next year, Jennifer will be the age I was when we made our first trip up the inside passage. It was such an adventure.

_____

Hans and Sylvia showed up yesterday afternoon. They sat out the weather in Hidden Harbor. We’ll learn today how it was.

Yesterday, while out and about, we visited a charter boat. A strange charter boat and a strange interaction. Well, there was nothing too off about it, but… I don’t know.

The vessel is a big old work boat. A hundred feet or so, with a deck full of heavy machinery and a portable building.

A 25-foot aluminum landing craft-style skiff was on the starboard hip.

Jennifer and I saw her after we went through a tight passage between a small island and the shore directly west of where we were anchored.

As we approached, two people climbed down from the ship into the skiff: a man and a woman. He was close to my age, she was in her thirties.

They were wearing various cloth and stick-on badges that play to all the fashionable concerns tourists to this part of the world feel they should feel: She had WWF sticker with a panda on it; He wore a jacket with the charter company’s logo.

Behind them on the semi-covered deck a group of men were conversing, some in foul weather gear, others awkwardly getting into it.

The man and the woman stood at the rail of the skiff waiting for us to come alongside. Jennifer asked if she could grab hold of the skiff. They said yes.

They didn’t say anything beyond that. Usually, sailors greet each other with a good day or what vessel are you from, they were quiet.

Jennifer asked who are you? The common response is to tell us about their vessel. Instead, the woman responded with their first names. John and, I think Teresa, Jennifer remembers Laura.

Jennifer asked if they were from the world wildlife fund*, the woman answered, ”I am, he’s not. ”

I asked whether he owned the boat or was the skipper. John responded he worked for the owners of the boat. He said ‘owners of the boat,’ not ‘owners. ‘

We asked whether they were a charter and how many people were onboard: seven guests and four crew. The guests had just flown in on a float plane we’d seen come in. It was an exchange of guests.

The two stayed very close to the rail of the skiff and never turned towards the guests. Very much a barrier between us and the guests. An odd interaction.

The woman asked if we were from the small little sailboat. We said we were.

John started to say something and they had an easy demeanor when they joked about who was the boss.

We spoke with John about bringing the boat down from Homer. I then remembered seeing her in the harbor on the east side.

It had been a very difficult journey dodging bad weather. Making short day hops during intervals between weather systems.

John came across as the real deal and his experience confirmed what we had been seeing. He said something that we know, but which is good to hear. We asked what the weather was actually doing out in the strait. He said he didn’t know. He was away from the strait; he only knew what it was forecasted to do. It was nice to hear it from someone else.

Jennifer and I agreed it was time to go, we’d been there for too many minutes and their guests were all suited up.

When John and the woman climbed out of the skiff, a man in his thirties wearing an ”I love dirt” cap from a landscaping company took their place. He was very eager to speak with us.

He asked about the dinghy. We answered his questions, but we were holding up the guests so we left.

Usually, additional crew will come speak with us at the same time we speak with anyone on a vessel.

After we were a distance away, the skiff came by with the young man driving from the helm station at the stern. The woman was seated in the row immediately in front of him. The remaining seats were filled by the seven guests.

As he passed near us, he slowed and looked behind himself at his wake.

He gets our eternal thanks for that.

I don’t know, it felt a bit like something out of a Bond film. Everything was normal, but our interactions had an odd affect.

_____

Today, we’ll join Hans and Sylvia on their four-person RIB and look at bears and explore. Jennifer and I would also like to visit the sailboat that came in last night. They anchored in the next cove over, quickly and with great confidence from what we could see on AIS.

We’ll learn the name of their boat, which shows as Catharpin Blue.**

Hans and Sylvia have invited us over for dinner. This sometimes affects Jennifer, the boat is so big and ours seems so small after a visit. I don’t want her to become afraid again.

_____

I don’t know what will happen in future years. I’ve never been able to see my future and we have a plan for 2023. 2024 is too far away for me to ever plan, so there is no reason to fret about it now.

A summer in Port Townsend might be a nice thing… And then sailing again?

😉

_____

*Worldwide wrestling federation came to mind, but then I  remembered McMahon lost that trademark battle more than twenty years ago.

**Turns out it is pronounced Cat-harpin Blue. A catharpin is a knot used on square-rigged vessels.

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Geographic Harbor, 58° 06.670N 154° 33.961W 12-AUG-2022 — the wind is still this Friday morning at 8am. The wind disappeared about 9 pm last night and hasn’t been heard from since.

The two Park rangers, Mackenzie and Josh, came by in the late afternoon and hung out for a bit. The wind was gusting then.

They wouldn’t tie up and come aboard. Instead, Josh first held onto the starboard side of Caro Babbo’s cockpit, then onto our Portland Pudgy, Hilary Hoffmann, which was tied up behind us.

We talked about whether it was windy outside in the strait and in other places in the park.

Josh told us that two coves down, where the park ranger cabin is, it was too windy Thursday to put their boat in the water. Commercial fishing vessels were all bunched up in the outer bays getting out of the weather.

It was never that bad here where Jennifer chose to anchor, though I didn’t tell Josh that. Unbidden, he offered that this was the best place to anchor for this weather.

Today, Friday, according to Josh and Jennifer, things should start to subside. This morning, all is silent here, without a ripple on the water.

During the night, we once again heard on VHF channel 16 fishing boats coordinating their movements as they pass near each other. They are on the move again.

I’ll subscribe to Jennifer’s theory that the valleys and other topology can absorb certain amounts of wind, then it overflows tumbling down with force like a breached dam.

_____

We have some bananas we need to use, so I’ll make some sweet banana muffins, closer to cupcakes because I’m in that mood and we have an excess of eggs I want to use.

There is a banana souffle I make that only uses eggs, sugar and bananas. Perhaps I’ll make that for dessert tonight.

Tomorrow or Sunday we’ll move across the strait to Kodiak and continue our move back to Homer.

This hasn’t been the trip of years past when the weather was something we shrugged and waited out. Despite there being more weather and as an average more severe, it is us who have changed.

We are more practiced, more experienced, and have a now tougher boat, but we’ve let this rattle us, or we’ve let our fears infect each other.

I’m not pleased with this. I’ve had mastery of these things, where the thrill is mastering the adversity. Instead, we’ve let it emotionally cow us. It never has before.

There are no decisions I can think of that we would have made differently, but our view of them has changed.

Perhaps, I am not showing the leadership I should.

It is heavily overcast. All is silent.

It is a minus three foot tide*. The beauty is exquisite.

The context we bring to situations is everything.

Thank you for staying with us across the years.

_____

* A minus three foot tide is when the low tide is the feet lower than mean low tide.

In the picture, you can see the flats and land that is normally not exposed.

Yesterday, was a minus four foot tide. The water between the island and the land in our cove disappeared. A brown bear walked out to the island and was snuffling around.

There are is a tour company that has a 30 metre boat about a mile and change from us. They brought a couple of skiffs over.

We wave, they wave back.

I’m pleased and I guess proud that we get to do this trip this way.
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Geographic Harbor, 58° 06.633 N 154° 34.032 W, 10-AUG-2022 — When I was learning how to keep bees, one of the veteran beekeepers talked about books to buy and followed with this warning: the bees haven’t read the books.

Jennifer and I are in an inlet waiting out the northeaster that every fishing boat we spoke to warned us about.

According to every weather model the wind will be from the northeast. We’ve chosen an inlet where we should be protected from that wind, and if wind does come we will drag into deeper water and out into the channel as long as the wind comes from any manner of east or north.

But, the wind since yesterday has come from every direction except south, even from due west.

See the attached screen shot.

Until about and hour ago, the wind was calm with gusts to fifteen knots every ten minutes or so.

In the last hour, the gusts have been predominently from the east, rather that northeast. The northeast is blocked by the very tall hill near us. The gusts are reaching 38 knots.

The weather prediction says gusting to 25 knots.

The major factors are topology and the goodness of anchors.

The hills, mountains and valleys both block and funnel the wind.

We don’t understand why at this anchorage and others, the wind is completely still with intermittent gusts of up to 30-something knots. Our experience tells us that the wind out in the more open water, or even the channel running north to the head of the bay, is constant with gusts.

In this anchorage, we only get the gusts.

Jennifer feels it is some sort of threshold effect. The topology will block the wind until a certain volume or speed of wind floods over the top of the blocking ridge, tumbling over in a great gusting deluge.

That does sound plausible.

I’ve wondered if the wind varies in direction and periodically passes through the labyrinth of hills and valleys to get to us.

Jennifer’s theory feels more likely, but I don’t know. If you know, or have any ideas please comment or email us.

Our anchor fascinates me. Ever since Jennifer’s fears made me give more thought to the seeming impossibility of a half-inch string of nylon holding a ten or eleven thousand pound boaat in forty knots of wind, I marvel at the less than two square foot triangle of metal that is at the other end of the half-inch thread.

The design is such that the more force on the anchor the further the anchor digs in. I see the effects of this whenever I raise the anchor.*

That string and that piece of metal hold in these gusts that swing 180 degrees.

The bottom here is quite dense and hard. Once dug in the anchor is tenacious.

Yesterday, the anchor needed to be reset. The wind and tide, rather than swinging 90 degrees side to side for 180 total, just reversed direction traveling over the anchor levering it out of the mud. In this hard bottom, the anchor did not reset well.

We reset the anchor by raising it, replacing it, and pulling hard against it using Caro Babbo’s engine (backing down on it).

(We then decided we did not like the new location, raised it again, and then set it again, where it is now.)

I pulled up the anchor three times yesterday. My arms, back and legs get strong doing this. I suppose my abs must be strong as well.

This morning we dinghied to the next cove over thinking, perhaps, it would be better for this weather.

In more limited winds that kept to the north or northeast it might have been better. The swing in that cove was limited to a very specific place and given the breadth of wind direction we have been seeing, we feel we are in the best place.

This still leaves the question of where Hans and Sylvia are.

We expected them to arrive yesterday, but we have not seen them. We’ve called on VHF and sent emails with no response. Their AIS isn’t working well, so we can’t see them that way.

Jennifer suspects they went to a place called Hidden Harbor. It is a very nice place with a tight entry. We there in 2020. It might be a great place for these winds, but a valley leading eastward might, instead, funnel the winds.

Such a different year. In 2020, the weather was calm winds and sunshine, mostly. We did hide from weather more than once.

Hans and Sylvia are due to join us when the weather clears, this weekend, perhaps. But Jennifer tells me we may be here until Tuesday. I should start cooking fun things with this time to ourselves indoors. (Did I mention it is raining all the time?)

Given we would be here this many days, we took the dinghy off the foredeck. This makes the dinghy really accessible and allows light into the forepeak cabin. It is very nice.

It also means we can light our Newport diesel furnace. Hurray. It puts out huge amounts of dry heat, uses very little electricity as compared to the Webasto forced air unit and I believe (and hope) less diesel fuel.

The Newport requires a chimney that sticks out of the deck where we store the dinghy. The chimney needs to be assembled and is about three feet tall. In gusts of thirty knots we were afraid the chimney would be blown off the deck, so I taped the two joints with duct tape. The bottom of the chimney is only warm to the touch, the top joint is hot enough to discolor the tape.

We did try the furnace with the top fitting directly on the deck. The wind outside just blew out the flame and forced smoke into the cabin.

It was nice to be that warm. I need to be that warm occasionally: we shed our sweaters and long johns… Such decadence.

_____

It’s nighttime now. The winds have been completely erratic coming from every direction on the compass. The new forecast has the windy weather and large waves lasting longer than the previous forecast.

Last night the wind lay down completely around midnight. I’m hoping the same will be true tonight. The gusts have been fewer, farther between, and generally less powerful. As it was this morning, between gusts the wind is almost still.

Here’s to a quiet night, a good night’s sleep, a good anchor, and good holding.

_____

The next morning: the only important news is that the anchor held.

Until about 02:30, the wind blew consistently at 25 knots, with gusts to 30. Then, returned to no wind with gusts from all points of the compass.

The sky is dark, the Newport uses more diesel than expected.

We may watch a video together. Or read a book to each other.

* If you search our blog, using the search tool, you can find pictures and more about our Rocna anchor.
Find our location at Carobabbo.com along with blog posts

55° 22’N 160° 15′ W, 2-AUG-2022 — This year moving around the Aleutians is like a boxing match, or gorilla warfare, or maybe a game of cat mouse with the weather.

It’s clear that the summer of 2020 was an unusually good summer. The opinions are mixed as to whether this year is a normal summer or a less pleasant than normal summer.

We move when the weather is good, and sit tight when it is bad, which has been about 50/50.

We arrived in Sandpoint Saturday night. The Marina was desolate with 5% of the available space in use. Jennifer parked us in the back on the transient dock where it makes a 40 degree turn. We tucked in in front of the dive / research vessel… With our bow facing the entrance of the harbor. The wind would be on our nose when it came up, and with any luck we would be hidden from it by the larger ship.

Within a few hours I thought I heard someone call my name, which was absurd since I doubted anybody there knew my name, and there were so few people that it made no sense.

Jennifer stood up and said that is Hans and Sylvia, who are the owners of Alumni, the 60 ft aluminum sloop.

We popped our heads out of the cabin and sure enough there they were. Sylvia called to us that they need helping docking. We had docked them in Dutch Harbor, and now we would once more do it again.

Hans spun the boat around so that it would be behind us about pointing in the right direction. Sylvia walked along the side of the vessel with a coil of brown braided line that she wanted to throw to me. Between the bow thruster and for and aft jockeying Hans brought Alumni closer to the dock. Sylvia tossed me the line.

The line in front of a midships cleat with one end on a large electronic winch and the other ever tied to the rail on the dock, as alumni moved forward the line pulls the entire vessel in parallel to the dock. Hans uses the winch to make any adjustments.

Sylvia tossed another few lines to Jennifer and me to make fast. We spoke for a few minutes and then Hans and Sylvia finished placing their actual dock lines while Jennifer and I went back to Caro Babbo.

The next afternoon, Saturday, one of the larger fishing vessels arrived. We spoke to one of the young crew who said that a season would be closing at 6:00 p.m. that night. They had decided to come in a bit early but that the rest of the boats would be trailing in. By the next morning the Marina and the transient dock was full.

This time, we didn’t head into San Point, we stayed on the dock and socialized with the fisherman. We were surprised that some of them knew us and could tell us where we had been on this trip. They recognized the boat, sometimes they recognized us, and I assume they also saw us on AIS.

It was a lovely few days.

We set up the enclosure that Josh and Homer made for us. We hadn’t put it up when there was any wind because we weren’t certain how it would deal with that wind. The construction is like a modern tent with fiberglass poles formed into arches that stretch the material into a dome.

Josh knows his stuff; he builds canvas structures for use up here in Alaska and his knowledge about where to put external support straps doesn’t seem like much until the wind starts to blow.

Suddenly, we had a new room on Caro Babbo. In the morning when the cockpit is normally wet from the falling dew it was a dry room. We read in that room though the weather outside was not very pleasant, we ate dinner in that room and we worked in that room. It was wonderful.

Although the boats were in because it was the end of the season – – there are many seasons throughout the year – – none of the boats left for their home port. They saw the weather coming that we saw.

As Andrew and Morgan on one of the large fishing boats told us, their captain decided, why should we beat ourselves to death getting to know when we can just wait here a day and leave tomorrow when the weather will be very nice.

Our thoughts exactly. Today we are starting at 36 hour trip that will take us 180 miles to Port Wrangel, where we will again wait out whether. I was hoping to sail, but both Jennifer and Hans told me no it will most likely be a 36-hour motor. And so now 2 and 1/2 hours into our trip we motor.

Jennifer altered our course to take us through the gap between these islands. If you look up our lat and long, you’ll see where we are. She correctly figured that the ebbing current would speed up through these islands and give us an extra knot or so of speed for a few hours. It is the venturi effect, but Jennifer wouldn’t use that term.

The current marker said the current would be against us at half a knot, but as we left the harbor we found it was one and a half knots. When we are traveling that much slower than we expect to there is always the worry that we have picked up something on the propeller. The easiest way to diagnose it is to turn 180° and see if instead we pick up that speed. We should have been traveling about five knots, we were traveling 3.5, so when we turn around we should be traveling at 6 1/2, and we were.

In keeping with a custom that fisherman are fairly strict about, we were given the fillets from a sockeye salmon.

The boat across the dock from us who had had his crew quit spoke to us for a while. And then in a positive conversation said, my gosh I don’t have a fish to give you. We hadn’t ever considered that this was part of the etiquette.

Yesterday afternoon as we were walking on to the dock A man carrying several bags of salmon, after passing us, turn around and call to us would you like a fish?

He’s the man who gave us the fillet sockeye.

We have to eat and otherwise prepare that fish.

This morning while Jennifer was still asleep I started a bread pudding from a half a loaf of increasingly stale bread.

In a while I’ll make some of the fillet into gravlaks, some of it I’ll make tonight with pasta and a white sauce from some fresh whole milk we have, and possibly, I’ll take some of the grav locks chop it finely with some raw salmon and make some salmon tartar. I’m not sure this is anything Jennifer will eat.

We’ll also have some of the salmon either poached, or placed skin down on in a frying pan until the skin is crispy and the salmon is cooked all the way through. That is both Jennifer and my favorite way to make salmon.

Agrapina, 200 NM from Sand Point, 6-Aug-2022 — A thirty-six hour overnight to Port Wrangel, two nights there, then weather takes us here. Port Wrangel is good for wind in one direction, Agrapina is good for weather from another.

We sailed twelve of the thirty-six hours, even reefing at one point, then the wind died.

Port Wrangel is the only anchorage we’ve been in that is the close, small and protected place to anchor that we think of when we envision a place for the night… Protected from all winds and waves where there is little indication what the weather is ‘outside.’

The weather in Agrapina was predicted to be mild. Instead, the wind was stayed between 15 and 30 knots kicking up small white caps.

Hans told us that if the wind got to thirty knots he and Sylvia would head out into open water on the sixty-foot Alumni. They feel there is not enough drag room in here for them.

Jennifer was spooked and spent today measuring the wind speed. The bottom here is good holding and we have anchored in much worse conditions with no problems, and so it has been here.

The diagram shows a very consistent swing arc in wind varying from 7 to 28 knots.

The day has been pretty with blue skies. This morning was calm and warm, with the temperature rising as the winds rose.

Yesterday, we spotted 11 brown bears at the stream that feeds into the head of the bay. Confused salmon jump from the water near where we are anchored.

Tomorrow, we move 60nm to Big Alinchak Bay, a good portion of the way to Geographic Harbor. It also provides protection from the South West winds that will take us there.

We’ll eat something small, get up before six and be gone with the sunrise.

With luck, the wind will still overnight as we’ll have a calm start to building wind.

Sailing to Port Wrangell, Hans took this picture of us.

I don’t know if we’ll ever come back. Here there is no expectation of seeing another pleasure vessel. A Caribou (?) on the beach didn’t run from us, just calmly stared. River otters were openly curious and harbor seals followed us upstream in cloudy river water thrashing wildly when they rose too close to the dinghy.

Jennifer tells me we may stay in Geographic for close to a week waiting for weather. Unlike last year when a high-pressure zone stayed put for a while giving us calm, sunny weather, this year we will continue to be weather vagabonds, but within Geographic Harbor moving from anchorage to anchorage to hide from wind and waves.

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Sand Point, AK, 30-JUL-2022 – We’re back in Sand Point. Jennifer wants to wait here while weather passes.

It is a different Sand Point than a month ago. The marina is empty. Less than 5% of the slips have boats. The transient dock, which is a thousand feet of dock space, has us and another non-fishing vessel and no one else.

It hasn’t been the trip Jennifer had planned. The weather hasn’t cooperated, it is true, but more importantly Jennifer hasn’t been unable to conquer her fears.

It took us only two weeks to get to Sand Point on the way down; Jennifer has left us a month to get pack to Homer. Jennifer makes our plans, she decides where we will go and how long we will stay someplace. She decides the overnight trips and where where we wait out weather. This year her fears have not been put aside, they have conquered her.

The goal was to get down to Samalga Pass where we entered the Aleutians and the push a bit west down the chain. Samalga Pass is 176 nautical miles past Dutch, the terminus of our trip this year.

The weather has been much worse this year. Days of sunshine have been few and far between, but it has been different. What has been different? Many things.

We are older, perhaps it is just age. I find that as I age, the time I have left becomes more precious. For me, I want to be certain I am doing something that I am proud of. Sailing, traveling, writing, and above all, being with Jennifer.

Perhaps it is only aging.

I see it as a combination of things: We were away from Caro Babbo for nine and half months between pulling her out in September 2020 and returning in 2021. We spent only five weeks aboard.

We all define ourselves in many ways. I began to define myself as a sailor, and while Jennifer never did, we defined ourselves as living close to half time aboard a boat. Those threads to that self definition began to fray; there are less of them now.

Jennifer has been reading the Caro Babbo log from 2020 when we sailed from Hawaii and then up the chain. She confided her fears there. She tells me reading it has been a bad thing to do. It compounds the fears she has.

There are also meta fears. Jennifer is feeling shame that she can’t overcome her fears and this is the worst of all.

I see a bunch of things as different this year: – We have spent more time in towns at docks than we have away from them. We are around people and we have been in daily communications with the outside world, something we never do. It means that we haven’t built the world that is the two of us: the micro-culture that is John and Jennifer alone, sailing, visiting new places and being self reliant.

– We don’t live alone anymore in Port Townsend. We live with two women who are having a hard time achieving success in the world. They have each moved in with us while they separately regroup. They are not being successful – I’m sure each will be – but I wonder if that lack of success sets standard of success to be expected. *

– We have been traveling in the company of much bigger boats. Generally, when we meet sailors they are sailing on boats that are not terribly larger than ours, always less than forty feet. Even the large the Amels that we meet, which are over fifty feet, are eighties designs: they have the same proportions we do. Alumni, owned by Hans and Sylvia, and Inook, owned by Laurent, are late 201x boats. The proportions are huge. There are 60 feet and forty-six feet respectively, but sailboats from that time carry the widest part of their beam aft, and they are easily twice as tall above the water line as boats from the 80s; they dwarf their length counterparts.

From ashore in Dora Harbor, Caro Babbo looked like a child’s scale model trailed out behind Alumni.

– For the first time, Jennifer’s fears have rubbed off on me. This never happens. Yesterday I realized it and hope I have broken free. It showed in that I would shy away from sailing, motoring instead.

Jennifer has focused on her fear that something will happen to me when I am working on the deck. [I am tethered to a ¼” dyneema jack line, encased in tubular nylon webbing.]

I don’t know what support Jennifer gets from the outside for these ventures. A very dear friend abraded me once for picking these journeys and forcing Jennifer to go on them, when I neither pick the destinations, nor the schedule.

As a man, the world supports and applauds what we do. My male friends are frankly slack-jawed that such a woman as Jennifer even exists in the world. Do Jennifer’s friends instead see this as foolhardy recklessness at the hands of a man that will bring her to an icy death? –

And death has been coming closer. In 2020, our friend Greg James died when he fell off his boat while preparing to enter a harbor in Australia after single handing from the Marshall Islands.

On this trip, a deckhand told Jennifer and me the harrowing story of being one of two survivors of a fishing boat that went down. He held his captain in his arms as the captain died from hypothermia.

And we learned that a sailing friend lost his crew off his 20-something-foot sailboat off the coast of Greenland some years ago. (There is a fourth incident that escapes me at this moment.)

So, yes, death is closer than it has been.†

Yesterday, we moved from Dolgoi Island to Sand Point. The wind, though predicted to be calm, blew at 10-15 knots all night; Jennifer was terrified that we might drag. She was worried that the bottom might be weeds and that anchor would not reset when the wind or tide changed. We have anchored in winds of 40+ knots on multiple occasions. The anchor holds fine. [Because the pressure of the wind acts upon the area it is pressing against, each time the speed of the wind doubles, the pressure goes four-fold, so 40 knots is 16 times more pressures on Caro Babbo and her anchor tackle than ten knots.] So the fear is unfounded, and that is the problem, dealing with a fear that we know is unfounded. The fear did rub off on me.

Suddenly, as if a shade had been lifted from my eyes, I saw my half-inch nylon anchor rode as a mere thread attaching us to our anchor, when everyone else uses chain – never mind that the nylon line is stronger than the 5/16-inch chain that our peers use, or that chain is nothing but short pieces of single strand wire that has been bent and then welded into a series of loops. As I reminded myself that nylon rode is better than chain (expert opinions notwithstanding), the doubt dissipated, but it had been there, leaving me laying, wide-eyed in the forepeak for some time.

This year we are using a very wonderful and trustworthy anchor drag feature in our Vesper AIS. Should we drag outside a defined radius from where we dropped the anchor, an alarm by the companionway sounds.

In Dolgoi harbor, I set the radius tightly to keep an eye on things. We had many hundreds of yards we could drag safely. The alarm went off at 2:21 am: we had dragged twenty feet while the anchor reset. It was reassuring to see that everything worked as it should, but is was my fault for making such a tight perimeter, Jennifer had trouble sleeping the rest of the night.

The next day, yesterday, was to have been 10-15 knots building through the day. Good sailing weather. We had 65 nautical miles to travel at a planned 5 knots, twelve to thirteen hours. Leaving at 7am, we should be there at 8pm.

Two days earlier we had overcome to suspected problems, each caused by me.

Sailing from Dutch we learned that I had incorrectly preserved (pickled) the water maker – it was refusing to draw water. During the work to fix that, I bumped a switch that disconnects the negative ground wire from the engine.

It took thirty minutes to discover the flipped switch, but when we went to move from Captain’s Harbor to Dolgoi, a slipping fan belt tripped a warning light on starting the engine.** The light went off and I replaced that fan belt in the harbor at Dolgoi Island – engine work in a remote place is always concerning, if something goes wrong… Jennifer volunteered that she would take the dinghy to the entrance of the harbor and using the handheld VHF radio call for help if we became disabled – ignoring that we could sail out. When she told me, I countered we could just call them on the Caro Babbo’s VHF. We’d been hearing vessels calling each other. There is reason for concern and contingencies and reason for fear.

I had two spare fan belts and installed one in a little less than fifteen minutes including locating the spares and getting the tools.

Our sailing has changed on this trip to Dolgoi and other trips. Especially on trips where there really is a reason for arriving by a certain time, generally darkness, we motor when sailing will move us less than our target 5 knots.

We came out of the harbor to complete calm, overcast skies and water that changed back and forth from orderly waves to confused seas. We motored for five hours before the wind came up enough to give us five knots.

Jennifer has voiced her fears for me and herself when I do deck work. Without roller reefing I go to the point of the bow to raise, lower and make head sail changes. It isn’t done much any more on pleasure boats but gives us the proper sail for each condition… it may contribute to why Caro Babbo is a such a fast boat: the right sail. Jennifer’s fears made me shy of going up front, or even on deck, at the beginning of the trip. That has passed as I repeatedly do so and notice everything that makes it safe, including the ability to stand in bow locker, hip deep, if I feel that is the safer place from which to work. BUT, I am often not visible from the cockpit when I am working at the bow.

The deck work was easy and as simple as it gets: easily done.

After four of so hours, the wind died, I dropped the genoa and we continued to Sand Point and a harbor quiet, deserted and empty of the life of sailing vessels waiting for an opening.

Only professionals dock boats as well as Jennifer docks Caro Babbo, and no one docks better. Jennifer docked at the end closest to the harbor entrance, bow out, before we took a walk along the dock where she decided she would rather be tucked in close to the shore in front of a dive/research vessel that would block us from the wind Jennifer expects to arrive Sunday evening. We untied, and re-docked.

Like a political echo chamber, catching Jennifer’s fears gives credence to those fears and amplifies both hers and mine.

While Jennifer lay in bed this morning, I asked her about all of this. She felt ambushed; I suppose she was justified. She listened and we discussed for a bit. She gave me credence for recognizing her fears and then dismissed it all saying, ‘‘But, I’m here.’’ Followed by the non-verbal equivalent of, ‘‘I love you, now shut up.’’

Like so many things the person we love suffers, I can’t take her fears from her and carry them instead.

Jennifer makes these plans for us and does her best to carry them out. Her decision to not move past Dutch is within her role as navigator and prudent mariner.

While lying in bed, she told me she thought it might have been a mistake not to anchor out last night in a nearby anchorage. My reply was that it might have been overly cautious, but it was not a mistake. Mistakes have bad consequences. We are prudent sailors. If we stay in and bad weather does not show up, we have not made a mistake. If we go out and bad weather show up and breaks our boat, then we have made a mistake.

After we re-docked. We went below. I made a movie-watching meal of pigs-in-blankets (hot dog quarters wrapped in baking powder biscuit dough and baked), canned chili con carne, and cole slaw using Cardini’s Caesar dressing – this may all be shock to those who have eaten dinner with us, but when no one sees, I will cook like this – and watched Glazer and Howards’ Jon Larson musical Tick, Tick, Boom – neither Jennifer nor I can recommend it enough. It seems movie musicals are back!

* Though one has made the first concrete successful step. The other has been over the past two years building the difficult platform to starting success.

† In each of these three cases we quickly understand the cause of the death, each was easily recognizable at the time and each would have been prevented with routine safety steps that Jennifer and I take. In the pleasure vessels merely attaching to a jack line would have saved the sailor on Greenland and Greg James, though with Greg, was the being in the water what killed him, or did he have a heart attack or stroke that led to him falling into the water? This fishing boat capsized because she was too top-heavy from ice and overloading. Having said all of this, accidents happen in moments. There have been more than one occasion where I was certain I was clipped in, only to find that I was not.

** It’s difficult to see this as a coincidence. In fact, flipping that switch should have mortally injured the alternator and it did not. Is there some sort of the safety circuit in this alternator? The penultimate owner spared no expense on the things he installed. The light on the engine console flashed for fifteen or more seconds before becoming a bright steady light, then dimming and going out. I need to research this.

Find our location at Carobabbo.com along with blog posts

False Pass, AK, 10-JUL-2020 — The first interchange we heard on the radio here in False Pass was two vessels negotiating time on the fuel dock. The first apologized to the second for moving towards the dock while the second boat was waiting.

The second boat asked how much fuel the first boat was taking on. The captain replied, ”I’m just topping off the two forward tanks. Two thousand gallons, maybe. ” They continued to politely negotiate while I turned my attention to other things.

Friday, today is Sunday, Jennifer and I left King Cove to start our tour of the south side of an island. The wind was to have been pleasant from the west at 10-15 knots outside, but inside between the islands we expected to motor. The wind, as it does here in Alaska started as a nice breeze coming down through a valley west of King Cove, then quieted to the point of considering motoring, then picked up as we passed a bay, building for the next few hours.

Caro Babbo easily sails faster than her theoretical hull speed. We were quickly sailing between 7.2 and 7.8 knots. Ahead, on AIS, we could see our French friends on Inook, a Boreal 46. To be as close behind them as we were, meant we were going faster than they were. This is always disconcerting.

There is the matter of pride that we should be able to overtake a vessel that large, and the uneasiness that we are.

As the wind built, we heeled past 25 degrees and it was time to reef.

The waves had built and as I stood on the deck I was splashed and eventually slipped and fell down. I finished most of the reefing kneeling, I put in a double reef. We did lose a bit of speed, settling in at 7 knots.

The wind clocked (rotated clockwise when looked at on a compass) to full north. Ninety degrees from where it should be. Our chosen anchorage, East Anchor Cove, would be untenable. But, hope springs eternal: I insisted we sail into the cove only to sail right back out again.

Jennifer considered the next two candidates, neither of which would work, and plotted a course three hours further to Dora Harbor inlet.

The wind faded when we were close into the lee of a cape. I wanted to get there now; it was a longer day than I had planned. We left all the sails up and motorsailed at 6 knots into the inlet.

Jennifer pointed out on the way down from East Anchor Cove that there was now an ocean swell from the south that flowed into our new harbor. Moving deeper into the harbor we became protected from the swell by a line of denticulate rocks the blocked about 10% of the mouth.

After studying the weather, Jennifer concluded we could not continue our planned voyage to Dutch Harbor; we’d need to back track three hours and then head north to False Pass and go to ‘Dutch’ via the Bering Sea.The weather on the way to False Pass would be unpleasant, without I thought she forecasted.

She didn’t mean to intimate that, but I slept poorly.

The anchorage was quiet with only the smallest surge coming in. The wind died overnight, as is common.

We left the anchorage with no sails set. When we hit the southerly swells I put up a double-reefed main to stop the rolling.

There was no appreciable wind the entire two hours to the pass.

We had weighed anchor at 5am to catch the northerly flood to take us to False Pass. We were later than we normally transit such things, but all went smoothly with the expected sharp currents and eddys that divert and spin us. The Raymarine autopilot was quite good at keeping us pointed in the right direction. Where we were actually going, versus pointing was something Jennifer kept a hand on.

Our time in False Pass has been full. It is the busiest commercial harbor we have been in with vessels off loading fish 24-hours a day.

In the yard are easily a hundred refrigerated containers: this is how much fish they process here. The midsize tenders collect about 260,000 pounds of fish from the fishing boats. The largest tenders collect over 600,000 pounds.

(Please forgive this writing. A phone cramps my abilities.)

Because pleasure boats are so rare, everyone speaks with us. People fishing are the nicest people, but I’ve written about this before.

About a mile from the harbor is an old fishing camp, the locals call it, but it was the other dorms and docks for Peter Pan, one of the current large fish processors. It is very apparent that the intended to return the next season and did not.

Everything is intact as is the people just walked out the door.

The dates are confusing. Calendars in the rooms are as late as 2019. A local man who grew up here tells us that the precessing building burnt down in 1982, and that the camp had not be in use since the nineties.

What excites Jennifer and me is the we have seen the remains of similar communities with only pilings remaining. Here all the boardwalks, buildings and docks are still there.

On our way to revisit the site, Cindy who works for Trident intercepted us to ask where we were from and other things, and then warned us about the brown bears that have been wandering about the site. We’d seen scat, but didn’t think it was from brown bears. Turns out it is a mother and two two-year olds.

We took bear spray with us.

False Pass, AK, 10-JUL-2020 — The first interchange we heard on the radio here in False Pass was two vessels negotiating time on the fuel dock. The first apologized to the second for moving towards the dock while the second boat was waiting.

The second boat asked how much fuel the first boat was taking on. The captain replied, ”I’m just topping off the two forward tanks. Two thousand gallons, maybe. ” They continued to politely negotiate while I turned my attention to other things.

Friday, today is Sunday, Jennifer and I left King Cove to start our tour of the south side of an island. The wind was to have been pleasant from the west at 10-15 knots outside, but inside between the islands we expected to motor. The wind, as it does here in Alaska started as a nice breeze coming down through a valley west of King Cove, then quieted to the point of considering motoring, then picked up as we passed a bay, building for the next few hours.

Caro Babbo easily sails faster than her theoretical hull speed. We were quickly sailing between 7.2 and 7.8 knots. Ahead, on AIS, we could see our French friends on Inook, a Boreal 46. To be as close behind them as we were, meant we were going faster than they were. This is always disconcerting.

There is the matter of pride that we should be able to overtake a vessel that large, and the uneasiness that we are.

As the wind built, we heeled past 25 degrees and it was time to reef.

The waves had built and as I stood on the deck I was splashed and eventually slipped and fell down. I finished most of the reefing kneeling, I put in a double reef. We did lose a bit of speed, settling in at 7 knots.

The wind clocked (rotated clockwise when looked at on a compass) to full north. Ninety degrees from where it should be. Our chosen anchorage, East Anchor Cove, would be untenable. But, hope springs eternal: I insisted we sail into the cove only to sail right back out again.

Jennifer considered the next two candidates, neither of which would work, and plotted a course three hours further to Dora Harbor inlet.

The wind faded when we were close into the lee of a cape. I wanted to get there now; it was a longer day than I had planned. We left all the sails up and motorsailed at 6 knots into the inlet.

Jennifer pointed out on the way down from East Anchor Cove that there was now an ocean swell from the south that flowed into our new harbor. Moving deeper into the harbor we became protected from the swell by a line of denticulate rocks the blocked about 10% of the mouth.

After studying the weather, Jennifer concluded we could not continue our planned voyage to Dutch Harbor; we’d need to back track three hours and then head north to False Pass and go to ‘Dutch’ via the Bering Sea.The weather on the way to False Pass would be unpleasant, without I thought she forecasted.

She didn’t mean to intimate that, but I slept poorly.

The anchorage was quiet with only the smallest surge coming in. The wind died overnight, as is common.

We left the anchorage with no sails set. When we hit the southerly swells I put up a double-reefed main to stop the rolling.

There was no appreciable wind the entire two hours to the pass.

We had weighed anchor at 5am to catch the northerly flood to take us to False Pass. We were later than we normally transit such things, but all went smoothly with the expected sharp currents and eddys that divert and spin us. The Raymarine autopilot was quite good at keeping us pointed in the right direction. Where we were actually going, versus pointing was something Jennifer kept a hand on.

Our time in False Pass has been full. It is the busiest commercial harbor we have been in with vessels off loading fish 24-hours a day.

In the yard are easily a hundred refrigerated containers: this is how much fish they process here. The midsize tenders collect about 260,000 pounds of fish from the fishing boats. The largest tenders collect over 600,000 pounds.

(Please forgive this writing. A phone cramps my abilities.)

Because pleasure boats are so rare, everyone speaks with us. People fishing are the nicest people, but I’ve written about this before.

About a mile from the harbor is an old fishing camp, the locals call it, but it was the other dorms and docks for Peter Pan, one of the current large fish processors. It is very apparent that the intended to return the next season and did not.

Everything is intact as is the people just walked out the door.

The dates are confusing. Calendars in the rooms are as late as 2019. A local man who grew up here tells us that the precessing building burnt down in 1982, and that the camp had not be in use since the nineties.

What excites Jennifer and me is the we have seen the remains of similar communities with only pilings remaining. Here all the boardwalks, buildings and docks are still there.

On our way to revisit the site, Cindy who works for Trident intercepted us to ask where we were from and other things, and then warned us about the brown bears that have been wandering about the site. We’d seen scat, but didn’t think it was from brown bears. Turns out it is a mother and two two-year olds.

We took bear spray with us.