I have written several posts in the past few months, but every time I realized I was only using writing as a means to list the hardships we were facing. I can summarize the months of April through early June as cold, challenging, hard, dirty, stressful and incredibly rewarding.
We closed on “Resilience” on June 7th. We were in Port Townsend Washington at the time. We had been working on the boat since May. After hundreds of hours of hard work we were finally able to leave the dock on July 7th. We sailed for the San Juan islands and shortly afterwards we departed to begin the journey North for Sitka, Alaska.
Originally our plan was to connect with folks we met last summer in a targeted effort to kick of our season with incredible stories that we knew would fit well into our mission. It would be a time to mold story, as well as find time to learn and get into a good mindset to begin the new journey. Since our departure was delayed, and the boat needed much more work than we had anticipated, we are still planning to kickoff our mission, however we are allowing for much more time and energy to be spent getting ourselves and our vessel into shape for the larger picture.
Our work delayed our plans significantly and for a while, I wasn’t sure we’d make it to Alaska this summer. Even now as I type I pause. We’re not there yet! Alas, we’re underway. We shot out of the San Juans and into Canada. I was anticipating a difficult “check in” processes into the country. When I we arrived to the customs dock in Sydney, I stepped into a phone booth on the dock, waited on hold for an hour, spoke to the agent for five minutes and we were granted access into the country. Easy.
We departed the dock that same day and headed five miles North to Russell Island where we planned to meet some Dutch friends I had met in French Polynesia in 2020. They were in Canada for most of the summer and were actively selling their boat (it has since sold). They brought a child into this world and have been hearing the call for life ashore… We spent two nights and a day with the new family before weighing anchor and sailing for Buccaneers Bay, 70NM North. There we met some other friends we had made while sailing J. Henry through Mexico. We were invited to join our friends at a beautiful cottage ashore. Our short visit included the best dinner we’ve had to date, lively company and full moon evening dock jumping to cap things off.
More to come.
