For Christmas I made Susanna a fleece ski skirt with matching hat, mittens and scarf. I hoped that she would wear it telemarking and touring. She wears it so much, that I think I will have to make her another one! This past Sunday we went to the local rope tow to make a few turns in the new snow and to let the skis out of the shed...they get pretty restless. It felt good to slide over the snow, and Susanna looked even better than usual in her new skirt!

Turns out your mother was right! If you eat too much of one thing you will turn into it. Susanna has a love of all berries. She ate so many that she has now turned into a berry bush! Starting this spring Michael will to go down the hill to water her and pick her fruit. Such is life.

The summer of 2008 was full of surprises. While shrimping in Northwestern Fiord, the trap brought up more than the tasty Spot Prawns we expected. A sculpin had entered the trap, and only he knows how many shrimp he ate. The most amazing part was the voraciousness of the sculpin, it continued to chow down on the remaining shrimp in the trap even while being removed! Note the antennae sticking out of the sculpin's mouth. THOSE WERE OUR SHRIMP!

The Omega Block suffocating us with sub-zero temperatures was smashed by a series of storms known collectively as a Pineapple Express: Storms connected to the tropics. The massive storms brought 100 m.p.h.(161 k.p.h) winds and several inches of rain. Warm rain. It had been -10ºF (-23ºC) and quickly became 45ºF (7ºC). The snow is all gone, the grass is green. What a tease, it feels like spring, but it is January in Alaska. So we took what we could get, a sunny day on the beach. What a glorious, glorious feeling to walk the sunny beach in January!

Here is a sneak peak of the summer gallery: Bluewater anchored in Taroka Arm, a fjord on the Outer Coast. Past Granite Cape the Outer Coast is seldom visited. The tilt-shift effect gives a sense of scale, perhaps with a greater sense of scale you might better understand how big Alaska is and just how small we feel while exploring here.

]]> We arrived in Taroka Arm quite by accident. Upon leaving Taz Basin the seas were more exuberant than comfortable. At first we assumed that it was a result of the ground swell coming over the continental shelf - as the water get shallower, the swell gets taller - so we made for deeper water expecting that the sea state would moderate. It didn't. By the time we entered deep water, it was too late to turn back. We had come too far to work back against the seas, and rather than suffer and press on farther we tucked into Taroka Arm. We anchored at the head of the fjord behind a gravel spit and once again found ourselves blessed. Neptune sent us someplace we didn't know we wanted to go. Funny how that works out.

Everything is a matter of perspective. Are those white pebbles or ice-covered boulders? How big is the sky? How deep is the ocean? The cold temps continue, with highs just above 0ºF (-18ºC) and overnight lows hovering around -8ºF (-23ºC). Everything along that magic space between the sea and land is coated in a thick rind of ice. Cold? Depends. Just an hour north of Homer the daily highs have been hovering at -24ºF (-31ºC) with lows around -35ºF (-37ºC)!

What appear in the photo to be tiny pebbles are actually car-sized boulders. This image was taken from over 200 feet above the beach. The application of the tilt-shift effect tricks your brain into seeing the world as a miniature.

The new year is starting with lots of promise. It was a balmy 8ºF (-13ºC). The sky was streaked by high clouds and the edge of the sea was almost frozen. Like a giant wave pool full of Slurpee mix. The beach was covered in ice, frozen waves coating the sand and rocks. It must have been cold on the paws, the dogs gave up the chase before we did and clearly wanted to head home.

“The country itself…it’s grand. It’s so damn grand. It is so much grandeur that it is impossible to encapsulate that either in words or in a painting…I was overimpressed by it, and it is very hard to look at something with your mouth open and at the same time try to think in technical terms: how do you control this image, how do you present it? How do you compose it so that it is the most effective?”
Karl E. Fortess, Artist
WPA Alaska Art Project

There are moments in life that are so perfect, that so stunningly summarize every instance that came before, that they make you pause, calmly let the perfection of the moment possess you, feel yourself smile at the balance of that second, and then move on to the next chapter, like savoring the last moments of a book, knowing that you’re coming to the end, eyes lingering on the last words. As you close the book, your fingers caress the page, and you shut it, and stare at the back cover, and smile, sad to see it end. And yet a sense of accomplishment and peace exists.

I stared up at the words introducing the photography exhibit in the Anchorage museum and let them roll through me like a voiceover as images of the last 10 days cycled like a flipbook in my mind’s eye: The precious calm settled over me, a sense of completion. For ten days, Jasun and I had sailed with Michael, Susanna, and Admiral Nisa on Bluewater, crossing Prince William Sound from Valdez to Whittier, and the experience was so big, so damn big, that even now, 6 months later, I find it difficult to bring it into focus. Alaska itself, immense, unforgiving, and yet nourishing in its ability to sustain life with an abundance of fish, berries, mussels, clams, and shrimp, seemed to me like the Old Testament diety – harsh and unforgiving when crossed, appeased and accommodating when all the rules were followed. The sense that the edge of the universe was near, the sense that we were adventurers launching into an untouched world, was palpable, especially as we neared the middle of the Sound. And that sense of rustic endurance, intelligent self-reliance permeates the culture of the residents here. After ten days of watching Michael and Susanna battle harsh sailing conditions while simultaneously fighting their own flagging health, and yet also watching them laugh, joke, and make every effort to comfort and appease their guests, I understood why they felt so at home in Alaska. They embodied the spirit of this land and its surrounding waters long before they ever sailed North to its shores.

Despite all of those moments, what stands out in my mind the most is Michael and Susanna’s hospitality and graciousness - not because they were trying to be polite, but because that’s just the kind of people that they are. Believe me, no one could keep up a polite façade for ten days on a boat when everyone was sick, but they diffused illness with laughter, watched out for our warmth and health even when they felt ill themselves, and cooked us food worthy of a Michelin Star. (For those of you who are uninitiated, Chez Sharp is a little-known five-star bistro that operates out of the Bluewater galley. If you happen to catch Bluewater in dock at any of the Alaskan ports of call, make sure that you convince its proprietors to cook up some of their famous steel cut oatmeal, complete with dried fruit, nuts, and a healthy dollop of brown sugar.)

Great food, great friends, great adventure - great enough that perhaps it’s ok to let the picture blur around the edges a bit, because bringing it into focus too much would sharpen the edges of the slate-shard beaches, unbalance my footfalls in the squelchy muskeg, and dampen my eyelashes with sea spray. Better, instead, to let the image’s grandeur exist and unfold and wrap around us, bittersweet for its haze and its distance.

To Michael, Susanna, and Admiral Nisa:
We love and miss you guys!
~Sara & Jasun

Check out the current issue of Blue Water Sailing, on stands now in a store near you (unless you live in Homer, Alaska, that is). You can read our article about living aboard over winter in Valdez here.

And if you haven't seen the last article, check it out here

As usual it was a bigger job than we expected and had a few hidden surprises. Most notably, a spot in the deck that I suspected of being thin was so thin that the grinder ate right through it! The beauty of steel is that it is easily repaired. The welder that came to fix the hole inspired me to learn to weld…that and the bill! Much more welding and I could buy my own welder. Fortunately, our good friend Bruce is learning to weld and owns all the gear, so with his help we added a mount for a new bow light and I was further inspired to learn how to weld.

We departed Valdez the first time this season with Sara and Jasun, who visited from PA to experience Alaska. Their trip was amazing—even if we dubbed it Voyage of the Plague Ship. Sara keeps promising that she will write a guest post for everyone to read, but it has never appeared. So my loyal readers, please email her some encouragement. You can reach her at: saralego{AT}gmail.com. Please send her a nice note and ask her to finish her guest post so the world can share her and Jasun’s adventure!

Sara, we are all waiting!

Here is larger version of the map of our plan.

So expect lots pictures and stories in September when we are connected to the world again and remember that cats are proof that not every living thing has a purpose.

ee cummings

Today is Susanna's 40th birthday! I remember when she said to me: "You know, soon I will be 35!" Oh she thinks she is so old, but if she only knew! She is just getting started!

Happy Birthday Wife!