Tag: Sänna

By Gum It’s Good News From Alaska

“If it wasn’t for my bad luck then l would have no luck at all. The curse of my bad luck is in my head but my good luck is always on the horizon where the sun rises every day. I head that way but the sunshine is all the time in the same place each morning when I wake. Now I am old and my bones are creaking like the bending trees in the wind I thank my good luck each day I see the sun rise from the horizon of my dreams.” Chief Eagles Fist of the Huna.

So I got a call from Braden to say there’d been a really heavy snowfall and Sänna was much too low in the water. He said many of the fishing boats in Hoonah harbour were bad but not to worry, because they’re gonna get their shovels and clear the snow as best they could. Then he called to say everything was OK but a few days later he called and said there’d been another bad storm and this time everything had froze over… meanwhile we’re sitting in the sunshine of sunny Norfolk all stressed out wondering what the hell we’ll find in a few weeks time when we get back onboard…

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Wild Alaska

Our latest VIDEO production details our voyage deep into the Glacier Bay National Park from Hoonah in Southeast Alaska during 2016. Crossing the Icy Straits in gale force winds of thirty-five knots made a splendid change from endless engine work… all three of us relished the challenge of intense sailing to seek shelter in Bartlett Cove, where we needed to validate our permits with Park Rangers who vigorously restrict the number of vessels allowed into the immense Glacier Bay area. With over 3.3 million acres of rugged mountains, frozen glaciers, temperate rainforest and exceptionally wild coastlines of the St Elias Mountain Range, Glacier Bay is an undoubted challenge for any sailing vessel.

We transported photographic and video equipment ashore to find and film Alaskan wildlife at its most extreme. Please take time to view this ten minute film production expertly produced by www.davidungless.com. Continue reading “Wild Alaska” →

THE WILDERNESS THAT IS CHICHAGOF

“If you do go there, and I really don’t think you should, if you do find the old mine and perhaps the young girl in the ragged white dress, if she begs you to take her with you, keep walking. Don’t listen or turn to look back, just keep walking…

That’s all I’m gonna tell you about that.”

Chichagof Island in southeast Alaska is huge, the second largest island in US territory. It’s a remote and wild place in a wilderness that is itself spectacular and largely unexplored; all of these mountainous islands create the fabled Inside Passage, the sheltered thousand-mile sea route stretching southwards from the Glacier Bay National Park and Skagway in the north to beautiful Vancouver and mighty Seattle in the south. Together with close-by Baranoff Island, almost impenetrable Admiralty Island, the more sedate Prince of Wales Island and numerous other islands, a small sailing vessel like Sänna could spend years exploring this region using the countless anchorages and remote fishing harbours hiding amongst the Sounds, fast flowing Straits and deep fjords.

Rugged Hoonah is much the largest settlement on Chichagof but not the remotest. There’s the infamous whiskey-watering-hole of Pelican… which is incredibly difficult to reach, the small hippie community of Elfin Cove and the rusting remains of the Chichagof Gold Mine, a ghostly camp hidden in the mists which many in Hoonah beg you not to visit, to not go there for a very good reason…

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Frozen Alaska

Alaska is starting to freeze and it’s much too cold for an ageing Englishman to keep warm. Sänna is cleaned, wrapped up and winterised ready to withstand the long cold winter ahead. Her sails are down, electrics safely turned off and water supplies all disconnected ready for the big freeze. She’s been a pig to me through the summer and our love affair has sometimes been sorely tested but I’m sorry to leave her floating there forlornly in Hoonah Harbour. So I’m heading back to England to get back into my warm bed beside Marie, she herself left Hoonah a short while ago with Henry who, would you believe, is now fifteen. We’ve had a magical time this summer the three of us…

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Is This Sailing Race Perhaps The Toughest In The World?

All you sailboat racers out there will find this Race to Alaska event enthralling… and if you’re not a racing enthusiast then it’s an emotional story of tears, triumph and tribulation set against truly adverse conditions to test even the toughest sailors regardless of their ability…

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Eight Fathom Bight Cabin

“Do we Brits need to carry a gun? It’s totally alien for us to be armed but the locals here in Hoonah say we are crazy. Not only can we not protect ourselves if we hang out down in Eight Fathom Bight but how have we managed to sail all the way from England without weapons. What about all the other remote bays we’ve anchored in? How do we feel safe? We reply that we’ve never encountered any situation when we’ve felt we’ve needed weapons… and we wouldn’t know how to use them anyhow.” Dave

The standup arguments we have are always friendly enough but most Americans we’ve encountered just don’t understand how we cannot contemplate carrying weapons onboard Sänna. Of course, such discussions are primarily with white, middle-Americans… the regular American guy, but here in Hoonah we’ve been taken to task by a few women too… not the local Tlingit people let me tell you but, well, you know, those more affluent type who somehow feel there’s a threat, the ones who need to carry at least small handgun in their glove compartment ‘just in case’…

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Grizzly Bears

“The general rule is, if it’s a black bear try to fight back but if it’s a brown bear then hit the ground and play dead. So, remember this if attacked by a bear… ‘Brown go down, black fight back’. Of course, the chances are that you won’t survive in either case but bears are rarely predatory, you’re in their territory and they see you as the threat. Which in most cases is true, in many instances bears are simply shot dead for being where they at the wrong time – as a wrongly perceived threat.” Bear Attacks of Canada

Henry has now joined us onboard Sänna whilst in Sitka and he’s so pleased to be finally out of school for the summer. Braden, our good friend from the fishing boat Icy Queen also stopped by in Sitka to stock us with fresh halibut and he told us the Coho salmon were now arriving in large numbers before heading up the creeks. So Henry and I fished with a fly reel off the head of the Baranoff River and caught ourselves a large Coho for dinner. The bears are gathering beside the creeks for their annual salmon feast so our exciting project can finally get underway…

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North

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“We thought our voyage north, back to Alaska, would be a cinch. A straightforward journey under sail along the Pacific west coast of Vancouver Island to Alaska’s Prince of Wales Island, taking us to the wonderful harbour of Sitka on remote Baranoff Island. The whole thing turned into a wild adventure we hadn’t reckoned with at all…” Dave.

Leaving Anacortes in Washington State after a fairly benign winter and a new engine transmission gear box meant saying goodbye to our good friends Tom and Donna. At first we couldn’t decide where to head but Alaska again toyed with our hearts – and we needed to be further north if our Northwest Passage plans were not to change for the second time. Being in the south, in the lower forty eight States wasn’t for us… the majority of boaters were of the more monied Seattle type with monster luxury motor cruisers that seem to be used only once in a while for, well, you know, sporty weekends and that sort of thing. No hardcore fishermen with their tough working boats here and not too many wild sailors around either…

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Holed and Sinking…

Sänna emergency haul out in Anacortes — Emergency Haul Out in Anacortes

“For the first few minutes both of us thought we were sinking. Marie quickly dug out the emergency grab-bag containing our personal possessions we’d need if we abandoned Sänna and we donned our life jackets. In somewhat of a panic, I checked our life raft and we were ready to go. Marie manned the VHF radio to call an emergency Mayday…” Dave

We’ve been dodging dead heads all year; huge waterlogged trees in the water that are partially submerged and incredibly difficult to see… especially in poor light or when the sun is ahead of the bows. Most of these sometimes enormous monsters originate from the endless forests that make up the shorelines of Alaska and British Columbia or they are washed down from numerous logging operations up river.

This collision just had to happen! Leaving Bedwell Harbour on South Pender Island in British Columbia and heading for Friday Harbour in the US, the wind suddenly rose out of nowhere as we crossed the Haro Straights. I quickly unfurled both the mainsail and the jib to get us under sail whilst Marie was still below, sending her slipping, sliding and cursing across the galley because I’d forgotten to tell her the sails were coming out! She was not best pleased and we lost breakfast! Then the wind kept rising and rising and we both realised we urgently needed to reef the sails as fast as we could. This whole situation was crazy! Then we struck the submerged dead head…

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