My Experience

I grew up around boats and got hooked on passage making when, as a boy, my father and I delivered a small boat to Sitka, Alaska from Seattle, Washington. I’ve sailed the San Francisco Bay and its coast extensively and in 2005 crossed with two others the 3,000 miles from Kauai, Hawaii to Vancouver Island, British Columbia in a 39 foot sloop.

In 2010 I departed on a two-year, solo loop of the near Pacific in my 31 foot ketch, Murre. 

This adventure included sailing 12,000 miles of open ocean and three, month-long passages where risks ranged from encounters with hurricanes, collision with Japanese Tsunami debris and icebergs.

The story is told in Murre and the Pacific: One Man, One Boat, One Big Ocean, a collection of 170 articles and video logs chronicling the marine and island worlds as I saw them. Most of these reports were posted from sea, a sampling of which are appended here.

Articles

• “Sailboat, Sailboat!” ​  

• The Time of our Lives

• Makemo, In Reality

• Champagne and Strawberries   

• Sail on, Sweet Boat

• Confused in Kake

Videos

• Dealing with a Big Fish

• Reflections upon Falling Overboard

• Wing and Wing on a Fast Sea

• A Happy Discovery

• The Noon Shot for Latitude

• Arrival in Sitka Sound