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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Winter had been rather mild. Only a few days of frost and snow when at “Commodore’s Boats” shipyard, on the Fraser river. Hopefully Bo, the manager, only works on wooden boats and we were not in lack of wood for the stove ! Just the time to replace some planking, to make a new paint, and some and many other works…. and we are back to our tramping life, from anchorage to anchorage. We go back to the indian culture in Vancouver museums, meet again our friend Ronan who settle himself on Protection Island, just two paddle strokes from Nanaimo by kayak, chat with Tim the street poet and his dog Doggy, and, gently, spring come back : the birds bustle about , the flowers reappear on Newcastle island and at Silva Bay, on Gabriola, fishermen, Steller lions and eagles stuff themselves with herring. It’s also on Gabriola that we discover the petroplyphs, testimony of a civilisation who, 150 years ago, was florishing.
Meanwhile the world is collapsing : killings, beheadings, murders, kidnappings, bombings, enslavings…always for a good reason, as if we had learned nothing from the past. It’s difficult to look for future with optimism….
In a few days we will sail again, Alaska is waiting for us, we need the purity of elements and nature.

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Dick passed away.

He was 14. As a real sailor he went away in a stormy day, leaving us orphans. He had been with us everywhere in the world, from Tunisia to Norway, thru England, Ireland, Orkneys, Shetland, from Maroco to Africa, crossing the Atlantic, the Pacific….sharing our life, day and night, at sea, at anchor or in the port. In ten years  he will sail more than 46 000 nautical miles, never afraid, always waiting for dolfins, agreing with our tramping life. He has always been the star, in the arms of the guinean childs as in the ones of the cunas women. As Fancesca Ivaldi , who took very well care of him in Grenada said : “ though he was small, he filled everyone’s heart”
We will miss him terribly, with him it’s a quarter of the crew who disapears.

We have buried his ashes in indian territory, beneath a small pine, the deers and all the other dwellers of the forest will be his companions.

Bye Dick

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