Eyes on ...

 
… the Northwest Passage … where friends from last year's passage - on ARCTIC TERN- and Canadian friends from London - on GJOA - are trying to battle through this year's seemingly even more stringent conditions than we faced in 2013. Sign on to Douglas Pohl's Northwest Passage Blogsite <northwestpassage2014.blogspot.com> and to Gjoa's blog <gjoablog.blogspot.com> which is extremely detailed and will inform you in great detail of the ice charts and problems which they are facing.

***Ocean Navigator Magazine: Features our own Captain Larry Roberts article about one phase of our own trip last summer - that's in the July/August edition. Or download it by googling Ocean Navigator Magazine. or click on this link  http://www.oceannavigator.com/July-August-2014/NW-passage/

Beautiful Lowe Inlet Anchorage

About us: We are now motoring along southward on spectacular Finlayson Channel - the traffic is very light and we have spent the last days taking turns sitting outside surrounded by the grandeur of tree-covered mountains. At night we've been in nearly deserted spectacular anchorages.

What's for lunch? I just concocted a VERY successful curry for lunch to use up the wilting spinach (we bought too much in Prince Rupert). It's a whitefish curry recipe. I used cod infused with a kaffir lime curry paste. For the paste: 3 fresh kaffir lime leaves (you can use dried soaked in boiling water)  cut into tiny pieces, 4 garlic cloves cut up, 6cm of grated fresh ginger, some red chili leaves, 1 tsp ground star anise and 1 tsp fennel seeds (blend all these together into a paste). After frying some onions, you minimally cook the cod on each side, then coat with the kaffir lime paste, add a mix of 100 ml coconut milk / 300 ml skim milk and bring this to a slow simmer. Gradually add 8oz (225 gm) of fresh spinach and cook for about 5 minutes. Serve on rice.

Don and Linda Thom on Traversay III in Kingston Ontario

Peter and Samantha

About our new friends: We were delighted to meet Samantha (Thom) Lambright and her husband Peter and their children in Prince Rupert. Their family is part of the Gitwinksihlkw Nation
where Peter is a hereditary Chief.  Currently living in Terrace British Columbia, Samantha has taken some time off from teaching while her kids are little. She's the daughter of Don and Linda Thom. Linda was an important member of our expedition to Svalbard (look back at earlier blogs) where she carried the required polar bear gun along with the gold medal she'd earned pistol shooting at the L.A. Olympic Games.

Mahini Tiare leaves Prince Rupert

We had lots of fun eating out and then singing with new friends on the 46' Hallberg-Rassy yacht MAHINA TIARE III … John and Amanda have been offshore sail-training for years and it's difficult to believe that we had not met before as they have traversed many of the same places on the globe that we have visited. They are energetic and inspiring to the already-experienced sailboat owners who enrol in their courses.

Mahini Tiare III and her large crew in Hawaii

John and Amanda captain Mahina Tiare III

In recent times it has been rare to find people who wanted to sing so Larry and I have been having a daily sing-along time of our own using TRAVERSAY III's built-in electronic piano. I needed to practice improvising and transposing into different keys (I have to practice but Larry has unmalleable Poly-tonality so he can do it naturally). Anyway, meeting up with John and Amanda and their crew: Gary, Glen, David, Steve, Peter and Jay all of whom (at least pretended) to like singing was just great. We spent 2 evenings in the activity preceded by a visit to a Japanese restaurant which we had overlooked before.

Eyes on: 'Winter in Fireland: A Patagonian Sailing Adventure' by friend Nicholas Coghlan published by The University of Alberta Press in Edmonton. I found it for my Kindle through Amazon. Nicholas is a Canadian Diplomat and he and wife Jenny have taken jobs in the war-torn countries of the world including Afghanistan and now South Sudan in Africa. During their time in the diplomatic corps they've taken several disparate years off to go sailing and made their first circumnavigation in the 80's.

His background as a teacher shines through and I recommend the book for anyone who has a confused idea about the practical "ins and outs" of how to get yourself and a boat out sailing. Nick and Jenny are of British descent and are imbued with that solid sense of history which an Oxford education seems to impart - every historical detail in the locations he describes has been meticulously researched.  He brings a sense of fun and immediacy to his writing through interviews with fishermen and other just plain folks - this is because he's trilingual in English, French and Spanish. We met them some years ago in New Zealand, and recently on Kodiak Island (look back at previous blogs for photos of Nick and Jenny and their boat BOSUN BIRD).
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At 8/27/2014 20:13 (utc) our position was 53°10.67'N 128°42.48'W