June 27 – 30 Rain overnight and heavy wind, but the gale we hide from at Effingham stays well to the north. Rain in the morning. We do chores below decks. Kurt swaps out the primary fuel filter and wonders if we will ever solve the engine problems. He rebuilt it, an old Mercedes,, Read More

June 26 I entered Tofino Harbor for the first time in August of 2005. Night. A dense fog covered the sea. The boat on which I crewed had departed Hanalei Bay 23 days earlier, overshooting its goal, the Straits of Juan de Fuca, due to a gale from the south. We were out of, Read More

June 24 Rain overnight and low fog in the morning, but by the time we’d had coffee and eggs, a light breeze flowed down Matilda’s narrow flanks. We raised the main and then the hook and silently departed this hush of an anchorage. To our amazement, the breeze followed us into the channel and, Read More

June 23 I woke to grey skies and Kurt’s clanking away at the engine. Over dinner we had worked through the engine’s steaming-up, the most logical source of which was, we reasoned, a broken raw water impeller. On marine engines the importance of this item, of any item, is indicated by the difficulty of, Read More

June 21 Having got below Brooks Peninsula, we felt we could relax a bit, if not too much. We took the reward of a long night’s sleep without alarm and a leisurely breakfast of fried potatoes and eggs before suiting up and departing through Gay Passage to the south. Soon we were in the, Read More

June 20 Wind increased as the morning wore on, swinging SE and upchannel. By noon we had clocked several gusts to 45 knots with average windspeeds to 30. Sometimes came a gust to turn RAVEN’S head, then with her broadside to the wind, another lay her over, almost but not quite to her rail., Read More

June 17 Our third member arrived at 8PM and we immediately disembarked Port Hardy for Bull Harbor on Hope Island, this so as to stage our run around Cape Scott with the tide. Here we dropped anchor at midnight. Glassy black water. Two fishing boats; cabins dark. Steady drizzle. June 18 Up at five, Read More

Aboard RAVEN after long, beautiful day in the air and airports. See tweets for some photos of travel. Near disaster when I took the wrong train to San Francisco International, an error not realized until I was at the bitter end of the line. Note to self: don’t doze, even it if is 5AM., Read More

Sailing is like riding a bike: once learned you never forget. That said, my Figure 8 attempt, now a mere year and two months off, isn’t just any old bike ride. It’s more like a motocross stunt performed over and over again for months. I need to keep my skills up. To that end, Read More