Along the Watery Way....

Minerva Reef - the Big Blue Eye Minerva is the "big blue eye," as Francois calls it, the rim of an extinct volcano, sitting in the middle of the Pacific over 800 nautical miles north of New Zealand. It emerges at low tide, and offers refuge to sailors en route to Tonga or Fiji. Stopping there is much like stepping onto a glittering alien planet, a surreal place to rest and explore. The first day at the reef, we found old shipwrecks, which mostly pre-date modern navigation technology. These ruins are slowly transforming from ships into brilliant underwater flower gardens and fish havens.  One massive ship had cracked completely in half with its bow blown 100 feet from the stern, etching a long scar into the reef where it had dragged. Someone had had a BAD night. Ben dove under to examine it, re-surfaced and made us all laugh, saying, "I see what happened here. The front fell off." We also found an industrial-sized metal anchor, completely intact, but embedded flat in...

 First Mate's Log - Minerva Reef to Fiji 🇫🇯, 433nautical miles, 3+ days. Monday, May 18 - We left at dawn, making the pass in the reef at high tide. The anchor came up with no issues, nothing wrapped around coral. And we are FLYING in perfect conditions. Swell is on our starboard quarter, 20-30 knot winds from the same all day, which means smooth conditions. We cautiously but successfully ate curry & rice for dinns. We are surfing the crest of 4 meter waves - my heart skips a beat each time we get lifted up and flung forward. It's been half a day and we have covered 100miles. Go, Kintaro! Tuesday, May 19 - We've slowed down a little, but the winds and swell are still in our favour. We poled out the jib to starboard and the mainsail to port, sailing "papillon" or wing-on-wing. All reefs are shaken out, it's smooth and beautiful, and not much to report other than the odd seabird. We pass the time by reading. Dinner of leftover curry (How is boat food so go...

Translation of newbie's notebook : Sunday, May 3rd – Sunday, May 10th: inside Kintaro’s belly, out on the Pacific Well, the rough start never stopped being rough. Me, I’m on the 2-to-6 watches. Daytime. Nighttime. During my first watch, everybody stays on deck because nobody’s feeling too great. Ben says seasickness meds are kinda shit anyway, and they slow your body adapting. So me, being the good little sailor, I do what the captain does. Except the captain starts puking everywhere. Jesus Christ. Three heaves and a bucket. Celery puke too. Fucking nasty. Me, I’m holding up… kinda… while Lizzie struggles to dump the contents of the bucket overboard. I’m proud of myself though — I make it through my watch. At 6 p.m., Ben takes over. The swell calms down exactly zero percent. Proper 5–6 meter stuff. Chaotic as hell. Waves straight in the face. The bastards. Me, I need sleep, so I crawl into my bunk. But to do that you’ve gotta climb down into Kintaro’s belly. And inside Kintaro’s be...

First Mate's Log - New Zealand to Minerva Reef 🔱. 871 nautical miles, 7 days and 2 hours. Sunday, May 3 - We checked out at NZ customs and said goodbye to this warm, welcoming country. Bumpy as heck, headed out on a starboard haul into the wind. It is cold, but each day we head north gets warmer. Monday May 4 -  A blur. Beating hard into 3 meter seas, and we can only stomach crackers. The guys decided to power through without seasickness pills. I take a Gravol. They throw up a lot. I am the only one with sea legs right now. Francois throws up in a bucket, I dump it in the bathroom sink, Ben fills the sink with water. We get smoked by waves. The bathroom is spattered all over -- teamwork! I ban them from the area and disinfect it. Tuesday, May 5 - Still living off crackers mostly and the occasional apple. At some point during the night we briefly reached low gale force winds (37 knots), but it died down. With the heel and bounce of the boat, Francois and I cannot stay in our bun...

They say (whoever they  are), that once you own a certain type of car, you see it everywhere. For example, years ago I owned an zippy little honda civic, and sure enough, I notice them all over the place now. I'd never paid attention before, but they seem to be just everywhere. So when we see reminders of lost loved ones, I wonder, are we r eally seeing signs, or is it just our brains filtering for reminders, meaningful situations, or ways of feeling connected to them to ease the loss? It's been two years since Sammer passed away, and it seems his fingerprints remain in the world. As you probably know, Sammer was a captain and career sailor, and sailing was how we bonded. My first "honda civic" moment was in a training course with the Coast Guard, and my officer told me to do an exercise on the charts, which involved recording latitudes and longitudes. He pointed to one spot -- the same reef where Sammer and I had had a particularly memorable adventure when we were fi...

The idea of joining the Coast Guard was first planted during a wild and beautiful sail on a one-hundred year old boat, Ziska , that I helped bring home from Alaska to Washington in 2019. During this voyage, many distress calls came over the radio - especially in the north - and we heard the Coast Guard talk people through very difficult situations. It was comforting to know that the Coast Guard was close(ish) by. When we were further offshore and hit by rough weather, it was harder being out of range of help. After this trip, I started volunteering for the nearby Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue station, and we sometimes did training operations with the local Coast Guard station. This sparked my interest even more. I had been working for the provincial government for three years - great work with wonderful people - but after some big personal losses, I really felt the need for a change. I submitted my application to the Coast Guard and forgot about it till I got a phone call inv...