It would be hard not to love San Francisco, and more for sailors ! First it’s a port, a huge bay full of history, where everything reminds you the sea, the boats and their crews, be in Oakland in the bar where Jack London wrote his novels, in Sausalito where the houses are floating, in San Francisco at Pier 39 with the Sea lions stretched out, on the museum boats who are sailing. The hours are timed by the fog, the currents cut off Alcatraz, the  pelicans stuffed themselves , the parrots fly free, it’s a non stop show.

Always the same welcome, the same warmth , that’s America

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We leave Ucluelet with regret, we wanted to stay more, but the wind is blowing, we must take the opportunity to sail the 750 nautical milles to San Francisco. In our mind and heart memories, frienship, friends, pictures of this magnificent nature, wolves, salmons, river otters, eagles, whales,… indian villages with their living culture, museums, watchmen of what was about to disapear.

This part of the world will haunt us for long, for very long.

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The Sound, in any doubt one of the most beautiful place in Alaska, didn’t  disappoint us. It’s a enchantment of mountains and glaciers rushing into the sea, there is  no houses, only some small towns hidden in the heads of the fjords, Cordova, Whittier, Valdez, relying most on fishing. Sea otters, their baby on the belly, seals relaxing on ice floes, whales, Dall’s porpoises and wonderful anchorages, waterfalls, and salmons ! It will be our diet for 3 weeks, and we ask for more.

After one month in the Sound we had to sail back. The Gulf of Alaska is not so easy and a strong gale will push us in Yakutat, were wel stayed for a week.

South East Alaska will welcome us again with new mountains, new glaciers, the Fairweather and La Perouse mounts, and again grizzlis fishing salmon, then Sitka, Tlingit settlement. Russian made fortunes here with the furs, Americans with gold before turning, once again, to salmon fishing.

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Left Nanaimo, Newcastle and Protection islands, left Vancouver, left ours friends. Nearly one year we are here, and the way to Alaska is a long one. We will not sail directly by the open seas, the wind don’t allow it, and we prefer take our time to discover once again our favorit anchorages : Squirrel Cove, Octopus islands, Growler Cove where our mother bear is now with two cubs, Alert Bay and its totem poles. Then further North, God’Pocket, Fury Cove, Pruth bay and the Hakaï Institut, a real university nested in the islands, among red throted loons, sandpipers, tree frogs and wolfes we couldn’t see. Nature burst, the lichens are painters, carvers, the eagles nest, the whales blow, dive, orcas patroll, waterfalls abond with trouts, raven are in love, and this Prince Rupert, the border town.
On the other side, in Alaska, Ketchikan, the twin sister, still in the mood of the aventures of gold seekers on their way to the Yukon or the Klondike, where the hypothetic fortunes often went up in smoke…Small isolated villages, plenty of fishermen. Here in Alaska the whole family often go at sea, even on the big seine boats you meet women, girls and boys. Indiens villages welcome us, as in Hoonah, the Tlingit indian culture is really alive, it’s not only folk and nowadays artists are well worth the ancients ones, even if things have changed. Everywhere the same kindness, the same warmth, we don’t have to buy fish, it’s given to us. The scenery changes, the montains rise bigger, glaciers appear, grizzlis too, the houses more scare, villages or towns are turn to fishing. The salmon is the King, fortunes are made in a few months with seiners, gillnetters or liners. If the rich canadian villas are gone the tourists feed the economy with an average of 7000 a day and up to 12.000….
In Elfin Cove, last call in South East Alaska, we discover gold, sunset gold, before our Alaskan Gulf crossing. We have a good wind, at last we sail. The arrival in the Hinchinbrook Passage had been pretty hard and we are happy to take a good sleep in Deer Cove, well sheltered among the fishing boats, where we can actualy see deers capering on the beach,.
We are in the Prince William Sound.

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