Joanne van Os - Australian Writer

Passage end, San Juan, Victoria, Tofino and Seattle

2011-12-09T13:30:00.000-08:00

Whirlpools and strong currents over the 'rapids'

This cruise has been remarkably calm sailing. Apart from a couple of rougher hours crossing Queen Charlotte Strait due to storms along the coast, the only other watery dramas were some "rapids". We crossed three or four sets of these - strong tide and current confluences - that threw up challenges for the skipper in the form of very rough but short stretches of water with whirlpools and dramatic current rips. Apart from dragging the boat a little sideways, or making it heel over another time, they were almost non-events. But that probably had more to do with the skipper's skill in choosing the right time to cross those stretches, and the path he picked.

Stepping back in time at Billy's Bay

We went back in time at Billy's Bay, a tiny cove with half a dozen houses scattered around a boat shed and a jetty. A handful of inhabitants were seated along a verandah, listening to a young woman in a flowered dress, straw hat and bare feet sitting on a kitchen chair in the sun with a guitar, and singing in a beautiful clear voice. The scene was straight out of 1968 - sunshine, green grass scattered with wildflowers, a painted wooden shed behind her, and an audience made up of long-haired bearded men, and women in overalls and tie-dyed t-shirts. The only difference was that the long hair and beards were white, and the young woman was the daughter of one of the couples. These were people who dropped out as youngsters back then, and came out to this remote spot to live, and they're still there. Nice to know the dream is still a reality for some of the original hippies!

Notice the two men walking on the logs in midstream...

This part of the world has always been synonymous with logging, and we saw many floating log rafts at this end of the Passage, usually towed by a single tugboat. The rafts are wide and extend for hundreds of metres, and how they get through those rapids I mentioned above, must be something to witness if they get the timing wrong. Having said that, we saw loose logs floating all long the coast, so perhaps they don't always make it. One of the hazards to shipping in these parts is the Ship Killer, or Dead Head. These are huge logs that become waterlogged and end up hanging vertically, slowly bobbing down the waterways, just beneath the surface. One morning a couple of us were in the saloon and saw a sinister looking shape bobbing gently past the boat. We watched with solemn awe. "Wow, lucky the skipper missed that... must the Ship Killer he was talking about. It's huge..." Five minutes later Lex came down from the bridge, and said excitedly, 'Did you see the sleeping elephant seal a few minutes ago?"

If I thought it was something else, can I still claim that I saw an elephant seal??

Friday Harbour, San Juan Island

We ended the cruise on the 10th day, at Friday Harbour, San Juan Island, one of a beautiful group of islands between Vancouver Is and Seattle. The word 'Idyllic' has an incarnation, and it's San Juan - perfect climate, gentle hills, great growing conditions, pretty farms and villages. And no bears. The people are exceptionally friendly too.

The Longhouse, Mitchell Harbour

We stayed at a lovely B&B - the Longhouse on Mitchell Bay, with Patty and Jerry Rasmussen, who unbeknownst to us were the parents of one of the Catalyst's engineers, so we were treated like family. Fantastic food, and more hospitality than you could wish for. So glad we chose the B&B alternative to the motels. We learnt a lot about the history of the island, and explored it pretty thoroughly. It's the kind of place that makes you wish you could live there for a few years, and get to know the locals.

Tofino, Vancouver Island BC

From San Juan we took the ferry across to Victoria on Vancouver Island, back into Canada, and spent three days wandering around that very pretty, very English city, and visiting the Classic Wooden boat festival.

Three days in a city again was enough though. We cut our stay short and hopped a bus for a slow, winding journey to Tofino, a tiny surfing village on the windswept northwest coast of the island. The shores along here are very rugged and ocean-battered, and consequently have great surf - the Hemsworths spent a few days here last year, which is how we knew about it. Our room looked out at the Pacific, past a few rocky islands, and proved to be a great writer's garret. Lex went off bike riding while I sat at the table and worked on my book, happy to be stopped in one place for a while. The muse caught up with me somewhere - must have been that slow bus. Surroundings can be so effective for writing. When I've written that best seller, I'm coming back here for a month.

Jo's writer's garrett at Tofino...

We ended this holiday with two days wandering around Seattle, a pleasantly surprising city. We'd originally planned to spend a week in Vancouver City, but after the dreamy wilderness of the Inside Passage, we weren't ready for a big city. Vancouver Island and Tofino beckoned instead.

Seattle was memorable for its wonderful markets near the water, and its "Experience Music Project" - a fantastic rock and roll museum celebrating the eclectic musicians that have emerged from the Pacific Northwest like Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Quincy Jones, and was the birthplace of grunge, producing bands such as Pearl Jam and of course Nirvana. It also housed a brilliant interactive display of the creation of Avatar, and Battlerstar Galactica. The cold weather must be good for something, because Seattle also produced Bill Gates, and Starbucks coffee.


Giant guitar sculpture at EMP, Seattle

It was a fantastic month - from the astounding glaciers in the north, down through Juneau, Sitka and Ketchikan along the Alaskan panhandle where the only access is by air or sea, to the start of the voyage on the Catalyst.

If the glaciers restored our sense of wonder, those ten days sailing down the Inside Passage completed the process. It was a dreamlike experience, sliding along narrow fjords and evergreen conifer forests, waterfalls and snow shrouded peaks. And if our senses weren't totally satiated by the landscape, the chef on board filled in the gaps with the most wonderful food!

Alaska has been a long held destination for both of us, and we'd go back to there tomorrow. Next this time we'd start at Anchorage and go north, to the Arctic Circle and the really remote places like Barrow and Nome. And then we want to explore the Pacific North West properly. We need a couple more lifetimes, I think.

There's A Bear in There...

2011-09-16T05:32:00.000-07:00

The landscape down the Inside Passage is breathtaking: the long narrow fjord we sailed through for a whole day has given way to a multitude of islands, alternately shrouded in winding sheets of fog, or bathed in sunshine. The air is cold but it’s very pleasant. The mountains are lower now the further south we travel, and the trees are changing, the dominant Sitka spruce and Western hemlock being overtaken by cedars, firs, pines, larch and alders, amongst many others. The species change but the patterns on the mountain sides stay the same – ordered ranks of varying shades of deep green, Christmas tree shapes, so very different to what we’re used to at home.

We kayaked for the first time in a lovely sheltered anchorage. Had to get togged up in just our thermals under waterproof pants and jacket, feet in thick socks and kayaking boots, which we’d brought with us. Warm but not too warm. The kayak looked very tippable and the water looked very cold, but after a brief lesson up on deck in how to get in, we managed to get into the kayak in the water without getting even slightly damp. What a wonderful way to travel, sliding across the water with (almost) a minimum of effort. Makes us wish our rivers weren’t so full of crocodiles… It’s lovely seeing the landscape from sea level rather than the deck of the boat. We did it again the following day in another beautiful anchorage, and saw sea stars, ochre stars, huge multi-legged sun stars, colourful sea urchins and anenomes. A harbour seal came to investigate us.

In the evening we were given an idea of where totem poles might have originated, when the water was still as glass, and the reflections along the shoreline were clear. Exquisite patterns.

But, it was inevitable. We would have to go ashore. Walking. On land. In BEAR country.

It reminds me of a fairy tale I once heard...

I don’t mind admitting that bears scare me. Maybe I was frightened by a teddy when I was small. More likely it’s that damn book I read on board about first-hand experiences of being eaten by bears that’s done it. When the Catalyst anchored off Village Island, and Shannon piled us into the dinghy for a trip ashore, I was nervous. Just a bit. I stood on the beach, and looked around, and thought, at least I can see them coming out here - and they don't swim, do they?

Then we turned inland, through bushes, pushing our way up a narrow little path between very tall berry bushes of various kinds, blackberries, thimble berries, all kinds of berries. Bear food. We were walking through a bear SUPERMARKET! My brain kept yelling at me – “This path was made by BEARS you IDIOT!!” Shannon was calling out ‘Hey Bear! Hey Bear! We’re just visiting!’ to let any bears know we were around, so they wouldn’t be surprised and possibly pissed off. This didn't really calm my nerves much. Then we found a bear footprint. Not a big one, a middle sized one. Which begged the question that Papa Bear and Baby Bear were around somewhere, probably picking bits of Goldilocks out of their teeth.

All that remains of a Village gathering house

Shannon explaining an old abandoned Totem pole

Before any bears did appear, we arrived at the site of the old village, where some houses are still standing, in a manner of speaking. We climbed up into one to see the most perfect view anyone could wish for out of a window, with the added bonus of three baby swiftlets perched on a rail waiting for their mum to come back with dinner. I was relieved to see them – proof that bears didn’t venture into the houses. The houses, fast falling into ruin, are all that’s left of a once busy First Nation village. Times and commerce changed, and
everyone left to find work in the bigger towns. The blackberries and the alders have taken over the
structures, and the only one left standing of any significance is the ceremonial one in this photo – built of huge old tree trunks – and an ancient Totem pole abandoned on a rise above the beach, now covered in moss and fungus and returning to the earth.


Mountain lions? No one mentioned MOUNTAIN LIONS!!

And then, to really bring home the nature of the place, was this signboard we found at the end of the beach… I rest my case. Give me crocodiles any day.

View from the ruined house

Baby swiftlets in the house

The Inside Passage, and the Singers of the Sea

2011-09-15T23:55:00.000-07:00

August 21: we began a 10 day cruise down the Inside Passage from Ketchikan to the San Juan Islands on the Catalyst.

We boarded in the wee hours, unpacked in our cabin, and settled back in the saloon with hot coffee to watch Ketchikan disappear in the rain and the early morning gloom. Gales were forecast and the skipper had us board at 5 am rather than midday to take advantage of a weather window. We didn’t make a clean getaway – the 80 year old engine sprung a serious fuel leak after 2 hours, and even though we could have continued to the next port, Bill decided not to risk an open water crossing in bad weather so we turned back. A new part was waiting for us by the time we arrived and we were underway again shortly.

The galley looking forward

Galley looking aft

We certainly picked a good boat to spend ten days on. The Catalyst is a 75 ft wooden boat, built in 1932 as a research vessel for the University of Washington. It’s been beautifully restored and maintained, and is a very comfortable cruising vessel, with 3 decks, 6 cabins plus crew quarters, beautiful warm timbers inside, and the best galley I’ve ever seen. The crew is made up of the captain, Bill Bailey, and his wife Shannon, the boat’s naturalist, Cap the engineer who sings to his engine before he starts it every morning, and Tracie the cook. They’re all very friendly and easy going, and the captain has the most wonderful dry sense of humour. He and Shannon have lived in the San Juan Islands most of their lives, and know the Pacific Northwest well. Calling Tracie ‘The Cook’ is selling her very short indeed. She’s a professionally trained chef and creates the most amazing food at every meal – it’s rather like sailing in a 5 star restaurant, with 5 star gluten free versions for me where necessary – I didn’t know gf food could be so good! As well as symphonies of food, she is also a professional classical musician, playing the flute, the piccolo and the bass sax.

We really fell on our feet on this trip, because in addition to great food, and an entertaining and delightful crew, instead of sharing the boat with 10 other passengers, there are only two others – Ron, a geologist, and his wife Dee, a former nurse, from Arizona. The machinations of the US economy have hit tourism pretty hard and the Catalyst hasn’t avoided it, unfortunately.

Sliding down narrow silver waterways between steep, green-clad mountains is a wonderful way to endure rain on a holiday. Especially from inside a very snug and comfortable boat. After two days it cleared and instead of rain, we woke most mornings to the most amazing fog and mist, behaving like some sentient creature wreathing the Catalyst in fingers of vapour, or rolling down the sides of passing islands. Beautiful and otherwordly.

A pod of Dall’s porpoises came hurtling over to us one morning. It was as if they’d spotted us chugging by, judged our size and speed and yelled ‘Woohoo, let’s have some fun!’. They charged in, arcing and diving in formation through the waves straight at the boat, and spent the next 20 minutes playing with us, surfing the bow wave and generally having a good time, then disappeared as quickly as they’d arrived. They’re about 7 ft long, with markings like a killer whale (orca), a small head and a large body.

The next day was memorable for humpback whales. We’d spotted a few already, feeding in the channels, and curving out of the water, but this morning we were treated to an amazing display. We came across a group of three or four whales feeding close along the shoreline, and “bubble-netting”, where they dive down together, and release masses of air bubbles which frighten the fish and make them herd together, and then the whales surge upwards with open mouths, engulfing the fish and krill. Apparently only certain whales know how to do it, and they teach others they travel with, but it’s not a widespread skill.

There’s something about sighting a whale spout or a graceful curving tail that sends the pulse racing and the heart leaping. No one remains unmoved around whales. And there is still so much about them we don’t know – such as why humpbacks sing. I don’t believe anyone can watch them, and still support Japan’s right to hunt them. Or anyone’s for that matter. There’s a lot of controversy about First Nation people being allowed to kill whales, especially when they’re able to use modern methods, ie fast motor boats and high powered rifles, to hunt them. Just because was a traditional practice, doesn’t mean it’s automatically okay to continue it. Like exposing twins to die, or binding young girls’ feet, or sending children down mines…

The list of wildlife we see just keeps growing: humpbacks, orcas, porpoise, Steller’s sea lions, sea otters, river otters, harbour seals and one day a huge sleeping elephant seal drifting down with the tide. Bald eagles, myriads of diving birds, gulls and other sea birds send us reaching for the ID books, and bombarding Shannon with questions. The deep diving Common Murre is a chunky, almost non-descript little bird, but it can "swim" to 600 feet down! We watch them "swimming" underwater as they dodge away from the Catalyst.

Juneau-Sitka-Ketchikan

2011-09-02T19:24:00.000-07:00

19 - 21 August

Waterfront at Juneau

Our flight to Sitka had a four-hour stopover in Juneau, so we headed into town for dinner. The taxi driver recommended a restaurant on the harbour, and the food was good. We love the local ‘Alaskan Amber’ beer, too… Juneau is the state capital, although it’s much smaller than Anchorage. A huge mountain range rears up immediately behind the town, which spreads out along a narrow inlet.

We flew into Sitka very late at night, and arrived at our bed and breakfast accommodation to find a note on the door telling us to let ourselves in, take off our shoes, and go upstairs to our bedroom. Total contrast to the rather spartan rooms at Glacier Bay. Our bed was about a football field wide, if a bit short in length, and covered with enough pillows for ten rounds of a pillow fight. It was the Rose Room, and roses were everywhere, from the carpet on the floor to the china on the table to pictures on the walls to fresh buds in the vases. Chintzy, homey and very …decorated! But very comfortable.

Sitka

Breakfast next morning – early as we'd booked a driver for a condensed 2 hour tour before our flight to Ketchikan at 11 – was salubrious, and came with a wonderful view of the bay from the dining room windows. French toast (and gluten free for Jo), eggs and bacon, baked fruit, gf pancakes and maple syrup, muffins, scones, toast, fresh fruit, home-made raspberry preserves and sauces - the choice was staggering. A dangerous place to stay for a few days. The owners were friendly and chatty, and enjoy having a stream of foreign and local visitors come through their house. We narrowly avoided an international incident when the owner noticed – before I signed the credit card slip – that we’d been accidently charged $1400 instead of $140.00. The mistake was hastily rectified!

Sitka

Sitka was lovely, a small town, about 8000 people, with a strong Native American influence. The cultural centre was brilliant, very well set up and arranged. The Tlingit people (pronounced Klinkit) are the traditional owners of this part of Alaska, and still have a strong presence with gatherings and ceremonies happening from time to time. A bit hard to get much of a feel for the local indigenous situation in a couple of hours, but judging by the cultural centre, they had a very rich craft and artifacts tradition, which they are still carrying on.

Alaska used to be owned by Russia, until it sold the territory to the US in 1867 for $1.7m, and Sitka was the capital, then called New Archangel. It’s famous for its wooden Russian Orthodox cathedral, which houses the largest collection of religious ikons outside Russia. A benediction was just finishing as we arrived, and although the elderly bearded priest, dressed in gorgeous vestments and swinging an incense brazier, shook our hands and welcomed us warmly, once he started to say Mass we felt we were intruding, and took just the one photo before we left. The only congregation was two elderly women and a tall young priest in a black soutane. The old priest had opened double doors leading into a room with the altar, and the mass began, with beautiful sung responses, in parts, from the three worshippers. We’d have loved to have examined all the ikons more closely, but we just didn’t have enough time. And our shoes were so loud on the bare wooden floor, so we crept out.

Ketchikan! It's a fascinating town, full of interesting architecture and character, and reeks of Alaskan history. We ventured out as much as we could, taking some photos and looking at the restored buildings around our hotel, which was in the old part of town. Pretty, and pretty touristy, but I guess tourism is why it’s still there, and restored. The cruise ships come in their hundreds and disgorge thousands of people, who line up to buy – jewelry made in other parts of the world! We’re told the cruises travel at night, and stop during the day so the passengers can visit the next lot of identical jewelry stores…

Weird.

The New York Hotel, where we are staying, is a delightful old hotel with the barest of restoration. No lifts or air-con, and the steepest staircase I’ve ever seen. The room is pleasant – plain and functional in an old fashioned way, with a patchwork quilt and old fashioned plumbing in the bathroom, and a magnificent view of the small boat harbour across the road. It was built in the 1920s, on the corner of the infamous Creek Street, the location of the original brothels and bordellos built alongside and practically over Ketchikan Creek, a white-water challenge that roars down beneath the walkways and the buildings to erupt into the harbour where a dozen fishermen are lined up on the bridge opposite our room, pulling in salmon.

I’m writing this from inside the Inn at the Creek Café, part of the hotel, and watching people leaning into the wind in their foul weather gear outside. It’s ages since I’ve been in a cold wet climate. Ketchikan is world famous for its salmon, its rainfall, and its majestic temperate rain forest. Like Sitka and Juneau, you can only get here by sea or by air. The mountains are too steep to cross.

We’re finding Alaskans to be very similar to Territorians in their relaxed open manner and their friendliness, and the sense that they are a long way from the rest of the country, in more than just miles. Like the NT, people seem to arrive here in their youth, and just never leave. A few months ago I met a woman on-line through a book review site who lives in Ketchikan, so we caught up with Elizabeth and her husband Terry for a drink, which turned into dinner at a hotel and a very enjoyable evening. Terry was born in Ketchikan, and Elizabeth arrived there as a young woman and never left. We learnt a lot more about Alaska, and decided Alaskans were even more like Territorians that we first thought! We also decided we would love to come back and spend a lot more time in this part of the world, especially further north. Mountains are very addictive, and as for glaciers.... The sense of total wilderness is overwhelming, even from the deck of a boat. I don't think I'm ready for hiking and camping out in it, and taking on the bears, but I'd certainly be happy to cruise up and down these bays and inlets for a while.

Rubber boots: the Alaskan equivalent of the NT's iconic footwear. We saw some furry thongs in one shop that would sell well in the Dry season at home!

Humpbacks at Point Adolphus, Alaska

2011-09-01T16:55:00.000-07:00

Our second day at Glacier Bay - whale watching at Point Adolphus, near Gustavus.

The skipper was a small, seemingly laconic guy with a sailor’s roll and cold weather mustache. He wore a cap, foul weather gear and a pair of the ubiquitous brown rubber boots everyone seems to wear in Alaska. All he was missing was a pipe. He welcomed us aboard the Taz in a quiet manner, got us underway, and then gave a short safety lecture, which basically consisted of telling us “if you go in the water, we’ll throw a life ring, but you’ll have to swim around for a minute or two while we turn the boat around to come get you. Water’s about 44F, so it’ll wake y’ up a bit.”

Whales surfacing near small fishing boats

He spent most of the time at the helm, looking for whales, and getting us into a good viewing position when he found some. His offsider was a young woman from Mississippi with the clear skin and impossibly white teeth of her generation. She loved the work, and was planning to come back next summer, and enthusiastically passed on all she learnt this year. She or the skipper would hang off the outside of the rail, standing on the unguarded outer deck walk, to chat to guests, totally unconcerned about the heaving water or the gusting wind. There were about sixteen board, all Americans except for us two Aussies.

Humpback whale diving

Lucky to see Orcas from our boat - a male and female here

The fog was heavy, and it didn’t look promising out there. We crept through the gloom as it gradually lifted and sank, wrapping islands in drifts of long white fingers of cloud, only a few feet above the water. We found whales, lots of them, some individually, some in groups of two or three, huffing and curving out of the water several times before disappearing with an elegantly raised tail, diving deep to scare up herring and stir up the krill. These are humpbacks, mainly females about to return to Hawaii with the calves they gave birth to in warmer waters the previous winter. Unfortunately it was the wrong time of year to see any of them breach, that impossible leap only a forty ton whale can do. The jury’s out on why they do it – but I reckon it’s for sheer joy myself.

Fishermen were out in droves in small chartered fishing dinghies with two or three people aboard. They seemed to be catching plenty of fish, judging by the number of bent rods, and we saw at least one huge halibut brought in. They loomed in and out of the fog, sometimes dwarfed by a huge back surfacing between us and them and spouting vapour into the air.

We stopped at Gustavus for lunch, at the only café for a few hundred miles. It was full of heavily bearded locals in the same rubber boots, and a bustling busy woman who served two things – homemade pizza and chowder. The chowder was amazing – clams, halibut and smoked salmon in cheddar soup, essentially. I decided not to think about the kilojoule possibilities. Anyway, cold weather means a lot of extra energy is required. Doesn’t it?

A walk in the forest with a ranger that afternoon ended our time at Glacier Bay. Sitka spruce and western hemlock dominate the forest there, with understories of alder, blueberries and other plants such as deadly baneweed and devil’s club, and storybook toadstools, with a covering of moss and lichen over most of the scenery. At the western end of the bay, where the Lodge sits, recovery from the glacial retreat during the last 175 years is well underway, but closer to the glaciers the hills are still quite bare with only early regrowth struggling up the slopes. It’s all beautiful and
exotic to people used to crunchy, messy eucalypt woodlands. And you don’t get moose footprints around our creeks either.

Dropping off ~~bear food~~ kayakers in Glacier Bay

We could have happily spent much longer here, exploring all of the glacier inlets and going ashore in other places. During the glacier visit yesterday we picked up three kayakers from a really remote spot, and dropped several more off even further out. It’s sobering to see them lining up their gear, with all the food packed into sealed black plastic cylinders too tough and too big for the bears to bite into. The cylinders have to be hung up in a tree (when you can find one) well away from the camp in case bears are attracted. We were told they can smell a human from nine miles away, and what they had for breakfast yesterday. (I don’t reckon that’s such a feat – I know some people who fart a lot too) I don’t mind admitting that bears scare me, and I was quite happy to stay on the boat, although the mountain goats looked very cute, a thousand feet up the mountain as they were, bear-proofing themselves. There are wolves here as well, but we didn’t see any. Lots of birds – mainly waterbirds, such as guillemots, cormorants, common murres (which can swim down to 600 feet!!), murelets, phalaropes, black scoters and various gulls. Most exciting to see puffins! The tufted puffin to be precise, a very shy bird, but we got close enough to several to get a good look at them. Rhinoceros auklets were another unusual species, and we saw a lot of them. Plenty of bald eagles in evidence too - what wonderful birds they are.

The Park interpretation was good – a park naturalist travelled with us, explaining what we were seeing and the history behind it all. Most of the glaciers are retreating at an alarming rate. They make a lot of noise, muffled explosions, and cracking and banging and every so often a large lump crashes into the water in a flurry of shattered ice. We didn’t see any large calving happen, but there was a lot of small erosion going on. It was very, very cold. Even with several layers on, standing on the deck of the boat while it was moving was not for the faint hearted. And this is summer, so I can barely imagine what it must be like in the depths of winter.

The photo here of a Puffin is a little blurred but they're very shy and don't make it easy. Probably doesn't help lumbering up to them in a large boat, either. But it was so exciting to see real ones! It's a bird watcher's paradise here.

Glacier Bay, ALASKA

2011-08-20T22:50:00.000-07:00

18 August 2011

It's a pretty humbling concept to absorb, realising that the land you're standing on was covered by a glacier, 1200 metres thick, only two hundred years ago. Glacier Bay Lodge is at the entrance to Glacier Bay, the furthest that George Vancouver was able to venture in 1794 because there was a bloody great ice sheet in the way. The local Tlingkit people tell the story that the ice, which had been quietly minding its own business up the bay for countless generations, suddenly began moving at the speed of a running dog, and chased the tribe across to Chichagof Island where they live today. By 1888 it had retreated 44 miles from the sea leaving a scoured out valley where the animals and plants are still on the way back. It's now 65 miles from its original position in 1794.

We arrived at the Lodge in the afternoon of the 16th August, about 36 hours after we left Darwin on the same date. It was a good test of the resilience of the human body. Mine failed. Lex had no trouble, having long ago mastered Sleeping on Barb Wire Fence 101. LA airport was a nightmare. How can a country as clever as the USA get an airport so wrong! Three hours of waiting in a huge crowd for bags, queuing for Customs and then queuing for Alaska Air saw our comfortable four hours' layover eroded to a mad dash for the connecting flight.

As we neared Seattle, the view out the windows gave us a taste of what was coming - high snow capped peaks of the Cascade Mountains on one side, Mt St Helens and more on the other, and several deep blue lakes in the caldera of volcanoes. Just like Mt Gambier, except these volcanoes are just sleeping.

We flew into Glacier Bay at Gustavus, a tiny hamlet boasting 11 miles of roads - two of them. One is called The Road, the other is called... The Other Road! Australia obviously isn't the only place in the world where place names reflect the vast imagination of the naming party. (How many Sandy Coves, Shark Bays or Shelly Beaches have you seen?) The airport is surprisingly sophisticated, and has more security personnel than any other type of employee - just like every other airport we've come through in the US.

Glacier Bay. There is finally a reason to describe something as AWESOME! If all we'd been able to see when we came to Alaska was this place, it would've been worth it. Nothing prepares you for seeing a glacier up close. Close being a respectable quarter mile distant. The edge of Rendu Glacier was 250 feet high, dwarfing a 975 feet cruise ship nearby, just to give us some perspective. And they really are blue - it's not the tv colour. We spent a whole day cruising up several inlets with glaciers at their ends, and hearing about the local geology and history of the area from a naturalist with the Parks service. It was cold - very cold for a couple of sooky Territorians, but we didn't let the side down, and put on three or four layers of clothes, woollen beanies, gloves and wet weather gear so we could stand out in the freezing wind with the best of them. Then we realised the best of them were in the saloon getting outside of some hot chocolate...

Humpback whales and a pair of Orcas provided huge excitement, as well as sighting pure white mountain goats and families of bald-headed eagles on the steep sides of the inlets. The further you venture up the bay, the newer the land is, and the younger the vegetation. This is a truly dynamic system, rebounding gradually from the effects of the glacial retreat since the early 1800s. Very recent history.

Teaching writing

2011-07-26T22:45:00.000-07:00

Teaching is not my natural position. Even as a little kid, I never wanted to 'play school', but for the last two years I've been inveigled by a local school -The Essington School in Darwin - to teach some writing workshops during the holidays. I did this last year, and just like last year I stressed over it for weeks beforehand, over-prepared like mad, and then really enjoyed it. Maybe in a couple more years I'll just enjoy it without all the stressful parts!

Each class was made up of nine students, ranging from about 11 to 14 in age. Once again I was excited by the skill and imagination shown by the participants. The future of story telling is in good hands, if this small sample is anything to go by. It was school holidays, so most of them were there because they wanted to be, and not because they were press-ganged, which is encouraging.

We looked at basic word use - trying to find alternate words to the ones we automatically think of - and thinking laterally. The Lipogram, or the art of writing a piece without a particular letter in it, was popular, if challenging. It makes you think outside the square - eg, how do you write about a forest without using the letter T, or anything much without using an E? 50 word fiction was fun too. The best results were from responding to a starter sentence, giving them plenty of writing time, and seeing where that went.

It's a challenge to keep teenagers busy and engaged for a whole day - 9 till 2pm - given how limited one day is when you can't follow things up. But I hope the exposure to a 'real' writer is positive and inspiring, and convinces at least some of them to keep on writing. I try to pass on a few useful skills, and encourage them to have a go at everything. And most of all to make it fun!

When is a blog not a blog...

2011-07-18T13:30:00.000-07:00

This blog is suffering from a lack of sailing. When I began it, I thought it would be more of a writing project than a sailing log, but seeing as this is the first post since last November, it's not managing to be either! To tell truth, I've been too busy writing.

The Secret of the Lonely Isles, my new children's novel, was published on the 1st of February this year. It's off to a good start with 3500 copies already pre-ordered by a national school bookclub list. This book is a slight departure from the style of Brumby Plains and Castaway. It starts off in a town setting rather than the bush and then heads out to sea, but continues to put kids in situations where they have to make decisions and take actions independently of adults. I love writing these books, but I'm taking a break from them for a bit, and writing some adult fiction. That is, fiction aimed at adult readers, not eroticism! Every time I've said I was writing adult fiction, I get raised eyebrows and knowing grins. My husband has already offered to write any sex scenes but I have politely declined...

Coming up with a title is harder than writing the book, I reckon, and this current work in progress is no exception. It's about a forensic anthropologist who is engaged to identify the missing Australian soldiers at Fromelles, northern France, scene of Australia's first battle on the 1916 Western Front. In the process she discovers a lot more about her own - slightly dysfunctional - family, and herself. It spans a hundred years and four generations, and I still like it so that's a good sign! (My agent likes it too so that's an even better sign) I'm about three quarters of the way through, and I hope to get it finished before the end of the year. Along the way I've learnt a lot about police procedures, forensics, identifying dead bodies, the process of decomposition, and World War One, amongst a host of other miscellaneous bits of information. Researching is one of the great joys of writing, except that it can be hard to stop reading and start writing.

Tramontana gets her feet wet again

2010-10-25T04:20:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about our recent week sailing to Port Essington, was that we were actually sailing. We bought Tramontana in November last year, then had to return to Darwin in mid December before we'd had a chance to sail her anywhere. Stuie McPherson brought her down to Darwin for us the following March, and we moved back on board in early May, but various things had got in the way of any sailing till now.

The run out to Port Essington was slow rather than rough. We left an hour before sundown, and had a comfortable ride on the outgoing tide before it turned and started working against us, so much so that by daylight we'd only reached Abbot Shoal. We then hammered into a headwind the whole way to Port Essington.

We arrived at Black Point at about midnight after a 30 hour passage. It takes a few nights of watches on a long passage to get used to interrupted sleep, so when we dropped the anchor and made the boat secure, we were asleep in minutes. Next morning we sailed down to Record Point and stopped for a few more hours. Lex and Mark headed off in the dinghy for some fishing, while I happily stayed on board and read to my heart's content.

The blokes caught some mud crab and sand whiting which made a gourmet lunch feast, and managed to snag barramundi and mangrove jack for the evening meal as well. A storm came belting in, and we decided to up anchor and move somewhere deeper. Mark has the incriminating photos of me on the foredeck in the blinding rain, raising the anchor like a good crewman. Evidence for the divorce judge, he reckons! But I had to agree it was better than dragging the anchor and banging into the sand bar nearby.

The time here at Victoria Settlement was wonderful - see previous blog - and we both loved coming back to this special place. The last time we were here we had Ali with us, and she spent as much time as she could with a fishing rod in her hand too.

The sail home was fast and furious - the boat speed reached 15.8 knots at one point. Listening to Lex and Mark whooping you'd have thought we'd broken the water speed record, but it was pretty fast. The wind was in the right place for most of the way home. We made it to Darwin in about 22 hours, and had a peaceful day reading and napping at anchor until there was enough tide for us to go through the lock at Tipperary again.

Keep an eye out for the next ""Weekend Australian or two for Mark's article about Port Essington!

Disturbing Old Ghosts

2010-10-23T12:38:00.000-07:00

Lex and Mark casting for whiting at Record Point, Port Essington

Once in a while you have an opportunity to be part of something truly wonderful. Lex and I were invited to join an expedition organized by retired Darwin architect Peter Dermoudy to Victoria Settlement, Port Essington, to locate unmarked graves and to rescue the four existing grave monuments from the encroaching bush. Peter had recruited Geoff Annear and his 60 ft motor yacht Seacret to provide transport and accommodation for themselves and a dozen very keen expeditioners, including the Northern Territory Administrator Tom Pauling.

Monday 11 October we collected our friend Mark Day, a journalist with The Australian, from the airport and headed Tramontana out of the harbour. We slogged through strong headwinds and opposing tides, and with great relief dropped the anchor off Black Point, just inside Port Essington harbour, at midnight thirty hours later.

The settlement was the site of the third attempt at establishing a British presence on the north coast. The Dutch, French and Americans were perceived as a potential threat to the security of British ownership of northern Australia, so in 1838 a couple of boat loads of Royal Marines were despatched to remedy the situation. They formed a garrison about ten miles down the long, wide bay of Port Essington, at Adam Head, and called it Victoria, after the young Queen.

Yachts anchored off Adam Head

To put this in perspective, Melbourne had only been founded three years earlier, Adelaide just the year before, and Darwin would not be surveyed until 1869. The landing of the First Fleet had only occurred 50 years before. There was essentially nothing comforting or familiar to Europeans in all the distance from the Swan River penal colony in the far south west, to the Moreton Bay convicts in the east.

Cemetery, with Emma Lambrick's monument at the rear

Victoria Settlement lasted for eleven years, during which some 58 people died – mostly from malaria - and were buried in what must be the loneliest cemetery in Australia. In 1849 it was abandoned, and the garrison packed up and went home to England, taking with it Captain John MacArthur, nephew to his uncle of the same name who years earlier had kick-started the Merino sheep industry at Camden NSW, in between various duels and banishments. John MacArthur had not left Victoria in the entire eleven years, and barely escaped becoming a resident of the cemetery himself.

Apart from a short-lived attempt at a cattle business at the site in the 1870s, little has disturbed the ghosts of Victoria Settlement since then, apart from the odd visit by adventurous tourists. It’s too far off the track to become a regular destination, and difficult to get to without a boat.

The Cornish style chimneys, all that's left of the married quarters

Today, it’s as hot and lonely as it was in 1838. Breezes don’t seem to reach the cliff-top, and the light is stark and sharp. At the top of Adam Head, the white chalky cliff from which the settlement spreads out, a row of black stone chimneys is all that remains of the five cottages built for the married couples. It’s not difficult to imagine what a young English wife must have felt, coming ashore for the first time.

We set about disturbing the ghosts pretty quickly. Peter had a copy of a painting that showed the graves in relation to Mrs Lambrick’s monument, so rough sight lines were cleared through the tangled growth by hand to try to fix the positions where the unmarked graves might lie. Wayne then went to work with his non-invasive, ground penetrating radar machine, which looks a lot like a lawn mower, only silent. By the end of the day all 54 graves had been located. Furthermore, archaeologist Steve Sutton was able to confirm that the brick kiln was used to make charcoal and not lime as originally thought.

The ghosts were even more discomfited by the roar of chain saws the next day when the Black Point rangers joined the shore party. Several trees overhung the stone monuments, and these were cut down and removed, and the immediate area cleared. A search across the harbour the following day for the site of a boat building operation wasn’t so successful, although several stands of very old Tamarind trees were noted, evidence of the Macassan trepang fishermen who came regularly to trade with the Aboriginal people along the coast.

The last evening we held a play-reading of the play Cheap Living, a 1797 farce last performed at Victoria in October 1839, when Sir Owen Stanley called in and decided the troops needed entertaining. Peter Dermoudy had a copy of a painting of the original performance night, showing a rough stage draped with old ships’ ensigns. Old ships’ ensigns being hard to come by, Peter hand-painted some large sheets with Union Jacks, and hung them above the ruins of the hospital kitchen on bamboo poles. Lights were strung beneath, wired to a 12 volt battery. No noisy generator was going to remind us it wasn’t really 1839. Tom Pauling, a famous Darwin thespian as well as our current Administrator, directed the action.

For a couple of hours that night, Victoria came alive again as the stage lights glowed on weathered, crumbling brickwork and human voices drifted out across the silent bush. Ten people performed in the play, watched by another eighteen or twenty who leaned in through the window and door openings, the audience bolstered by three or four lucky yachts serendipitously visiting Victoria Settlement and receiving a once in a lifetime experience.

It was a weird and wonderful thing to do, to recreate an event like this at such a remote and isolated place. I'm sure the old ghosts heartily approved.

Writing: 1 Sailing: 0

2010-09-29T00:14:00.000-07:00

Looks like the Fates are making me wait a while longer to find out if I can write under sail. On the day we were due to leave the marina about three weeks ago, we discovered a major engine/shaft issue and have been occupied ever since sorting it out. Why it chose that moment to announce its presence, we don't know, as there was no sign of trouble in the previous few months. However we're very glad it appeared here inside the marina, and not a few hundred miles offshore in a gale...

Those Fates have been busy in other areas though, and it looks like we won't leave Darwin before the wet season begins. It's a more than a year since we've done any serious sailing, and we're getting a bit desperate, but on the plus side a layover for the wet will mean time to write, and we'll be near some of our kids and grandbabies. We can do a lot of sailing along the NT coast, weather permitting, and that's something to look forward to. But it's so hard watching other cruising yachts come into the marina, and a lot harder watching them leave for places north and west of here.

The new book is slowly evolving. I find I can write comfortably in the saloon, even with husband and marine engineers rumbling around close by. But it's warm - the boat's air conditioner really struggles with Darwin's unusually hot build up. The prediction is for a staggering 37C by the end of this week. Find myself wanting to change the book's setting to somewhere with snow. I'll tell a bit more about the book when it's grown a bit more - if I do that too soon, it'll evaporate!

Catching up

2010-09-05T02:38:00.000-07:00

Just to fill in the gaps...

Last November in Phuket, we traded our old boat Malaika for a younger, larger yacht, designed and built by Phil Atkinson, and sailed by Phil and his wife Fay for the last 9 years. She is a 54 ft centre cockpit monohull, built of strip-planked western red cedar and composites, and is beautifully finished. Light and fast, she's a head turner of a boat, and one that people are constantly coming up to look at more closely. She won the "Wow factor" prize in the recent Dragons Abreast charity yacht race in Darwin.

We had intended cruising in Malaysia this year, but Lex ruptured a disc in his back in December, just before the Hart family arrived for a three week sail with us. The Harts opted for a driving holiday in Thailand instead, while we left Tramontana in Phuket and returned home. We decided to stay in Darwin for a while and Lex went back to work at his old Chambers. By March he was too busy for us to sail the yacht back ourselves, so Stuart McPherson brought her down from Thailand for us. We moved back on board in early May, and have been living in Tipperary Marina ever since, gradually getting her ready for another long voyage.

Now the list is almost completed, and we're down to the provisioning and saying goodbye stage. We hope to cast off the mooring lines in a few days, perhaps the 8th September, and head east to Cape York, stopping off at New Year and other islands near Coburg Peninsula, then the Wessells, and maybe Gove along the way. Hopefully the north easterlies will kick in on time to take us down the east coast.

It feels strange leaving without Ali this time, but once we get out to sea again it should all fall into place. In 2008 we were planning a circumnavigation, via the Ambon rally. This time we have much less of a plan - well, we're not even making plans any more, just cruising and seeing where we feel like going at the time. The general vague intention (GVI) is to head to Tasmania by early February for the Wooden Boat Festival in Hobart, and then perhaps New Zealand for starters. We'll let you know.

2009 was a pretty confused and aimless year for us as we tried to come to terms with losing our girl. But we had unflagging support from our family and our friends, and the Darwin community generally, and we are very humbly grateful for it all. Now it's time for us to climb back on the horse and have another go.

Life in storage, or how I moved out of my study and onto a boat...

2010-08-04T02:26:00.000-07:00

I really had no idea what I was getting into when we bought our yacht. The only sailing experience I had was a damp afternoon on Albert Park Lake in Melbourne, in a little wooden boat with a boyfriend who was a Sea Scout. All I remember was dodging the boom (not always successfully) at the shout of "prepare to come about!", and trying not to think about the slimy weed waiting for me in the shallow water if I fell over the side. If this was sailing, I'd stick to land lubbing, thanks. For a few months, my friend and I planned to build a yacht and sail off into the sunset, but then the relationship did that instead, and I stopped thinking about boats.

Fast forward 35 years, and here I am, living on board a yacht, with my husband Lex. This is it, this is our home. We don't have a house we rent out while we sail, a cosy little bit of terra firma awaiting our return. Just our yacht. That boom must have connected with my head harder than I remember all those years ago on the lake.

On that notion of terra firma: do you ever stop to consider just how solid a floor is? How it doesn't move under your feet? How the desk doesn't tilt and lurch beneath your laptop or your notebook, and the cup of tea stays in one spot? You can forget all that when you go sailing. And include long showers, high ceilings, wardrobes, beds that are easy to make, and space.

Showers are short (on water and on room) and relatively uncomfortable. Ceilings: if you're over 6 ft you're in for a bent neck on most boats. Wardrobes? For starters they're called "hanging lockers", and if there's any room left over from the wet weather gear, you're welcome to it, but shorts and Tshirts don't need hanging space. Beds: this is something you discover about boats the morning after your first night. Most of the bed is generally jammed against the walls and you have to climb onto the bed to make it. And space? According to my husband, space is for spare parts and tools. Somehow I’ve managed to steal a couple of cupboards - sorry, lockers - for my writing gear, clothes and sundries. Oh, and food. Men regard food on yachts as something that takes up minimal space, but can feed multitudes. The loaves and fishes story is obviously missing a boat in there somewhere.

So here I am, the hoarder of the family, the keeper of the family archives, the archaeologist's Nirvana, forced to render my life's accumulation of fascinating historical....stuff, into three lockers with about the total capacity of half a 44 gallon drum. But archaeologists of the future can relax. Luckily someone invented storage units. I made sure I packed up the house when Lex was at work, so I managed to salvage a lot of my life and squirrel it away. I DID chuck out, oh, at least a whole bag full of stuff in the process. Even I can make mistakes in the hoarding business.

I managed to whittle down the truly important stuff of my life into a very small pile. And I am embarrassed to say, I found the experience quite liberating. For example, getting rid of a wardrobe full of bad choices, kept out of guilt, was cathartic. Now I have 10 tops, half a dozen shorts, 3 pairs of jeans and a couple of jumpers, and that's it. The fact that they are still bad choices seems less of a worry out of sight of land. Fashion's not my strong point.

Books, on the other hand, caused me a lot of angst. There must be 30 boxes of books in storage. I took only 25 books on board with me when we first left Darwin, and it was agony choosing between old favourites (too many), books not yet read, and references for the current book in progress. (Lord of the Rings comes with me, no matter how often I've read it). The real drama for a book lover however, is that when you sail, you arrive in ports where other yachties are desperately looking for new books to read, and they want you to swap. Giving away a book I love is like giving away a child. Impossible! So I have to make room for temporary residents on the book shelf, I mean locker, so that there’s something to trade for something not yet read.

At this point I have to confess, that in 8 months of constant sailing I didn't actually read very many books. When we're sailing, reading can make me sea-sick. If it's too rough, I'm busy hanging on. And there's often so much to look out for, like dolphins, whales, floating logs, submerged rocks, supertankers… And then when you get somewhere, there are things to fix, maintenance to do, provisions to buy, sights to see and sleep to catch up on.

So here I am, about to head out again, only this time Lex has relented, and we have some new purpose built book lockers in the forward cabin – book shelves to the uninitiated. Now I have the heady prospect of finding books to put on the shelves. The economy is about to get another boost.