Photography

Alert Bay

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The first of the First Nations communities we anchored at, Alert Bay, has lots of totem poles both old and new, indigenous art, and a lovely museum, the U’mista Cultural Centre. With a focus on preserving the history and culture of the Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw, there was a collection of the creation stories, art, textiles, and even a large collection (no photos allowed) of Potlatch dance masks.

While Alert Bay was between the 50s-70s a booming fishing and marine industry town with, apparently, more than enough liquor, gambling, and other vices to go around, these days it’s a quiet community with ferry service to Port McNeill and lots of indigenous art.

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Heading through Johnstone Strait

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After several days in Campbell River getting some provisioning done and receiving a few packages in the mail, it was finally time to head north, through Discovery Passage, through the Seymour Narrows, and into the Johnstone Strait. Campbell River is the last large town we’ll see for a while. From here, it’s just small towns and wilderness.

Timing Seymour Narrows is not particularly difficult: the current tables are accurate, and we just had to go through around slack tide. Due to the timing, we were going to have to fight a little bit of current in Discovery Passage once through the Narrows, but getting through was easy, especially with several knots of current carrying us through. Slack tide the day we went (Friday the 13th) was at 1:11pm, and we ended up going through around 12:30.

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Orca whales and some birds

We had a pleasant sail + motor from the Catalina meetup at Roche Harbor to Shallow Bay on the west side of Sucia Island on Sunday. Motored out of the bay, between San Juan Island and Spieden Island, then unfurled the sails for an easy, slow sail up towards President Channel, which separates Waldron Island and Orcas Island.

Not far out from the entrance to the channel, we spotted several whale watching boats and a few private boats all grouped up near the south tip of Waldron, Point Disney. Once my partner confirmed with her binoculars that she should see a dorsal fin, we immediately furled in the sails (the wind had just died anyway) and motored over to see what was going on.

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Gallery

Birds (and more) from a brief trip to the Dominican Republic

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In early June I flew to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, for a friend’s wedding at a resort on the coast north of the city. Naturally, despite the limited time there and the schedule for the wedding, I made some time for some bird photography, with little regard for the amount of photography equipment I had to haul along with me.

At the resort there was a small eco-park, which was well populated by native, wild birds. These birds being accustomed to human presence, getting these photos was not especially challenging, but it was certainly fun!

Click on the photos if you want to view them in fullscreen (and use the arrow keys to move through them).

Antillean mangos were around if you paid attention, but there weren’t all that many flowering plants around, so I only saw a few:

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Sailing the Sea of Cortez, January 9th-12th

Back in November, Davina (one of my closest friends) told me she had a companion fare on Alaska Airlines that she needed to use before it expired. “We should go to the tropics somewhere!” Between looking at airline prices and considering our activity options, one thing turned into another and within a few days we were inviting friends along and talking to charter companies about our bareboat options.

After a few false starts and some last-minute “oh crap, we can’t actually go on this” cancellations, we firmed up our crew list (me, Davina, Emily, Ben, Diana, and Shawna) and found a boat at a cheap price: a 41′ Morgan “Out Island” ketch. It was an older boat, mid-70s (1976 I think), but the price was right and the charter company was happy to help us with transportation to and from the airport. Within a few more days we’d all purchased our tickets to San Jose del Cabo and arranged our ride from the SJD airport up to La Paz, a beautiful coastal city where the sailboat resided in one of La Paz’ marinas.

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