Mahdee in the Sailfeed this week

Well, it’s a newsflash! It’s always a little fun when we get to talk about what we’re up to. We’re in the Sailfeed this week with Episode 87 of 59-North Podcast. Andy talked with Brenda on the phone about us, sailing, rebuilding Mahdee and life in general.

Synopsis: Andy speaks with Brenda of the schooner Mahdee, which is currently berthed in California. Brenda and her husband David got inspired to go sailing in their college years while on a cycling trip around Lake Superior. While perched on a rock high above the lake, they looked at a sailboat on the lake and thought, ‘that’s how we ought to travel!’

Years went by while they traveled and focused on shorter, land-based, adventures. In 2006, they bought and began the 2-1/2 year restoration of the classic 1931 schooner Mahdee and have cruised up and down the west coast between San Diego and Alaska.

Their latest project is Bootstrap Adventure (bootstrapadventure.com), where they’re creating a marketplace for outdoor adventurers to swap gear, knowledge, and share adventures.

Go check it out on 59-North.com

or at Sailfeed.

Heading South to California

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We’re back in Neah Bay, WA and will be transiting the coast to San Francisco soon. Likely tomorrow if the weather behaves as planned. As usual, trying to stay behind or get in front of the weather systems seems to be our quest.

Here’s a photo of Mahdee at Columbia’s Anchorage on the west coast of Vancouver Island, BC. This is a great little spot on the south side of the Brooks Peninsula.

Today’s task? Stash & lash, inspect everything one last time, and of course bake brownies for the trip.

Photos

I managed to upload some photos here in Petersburg but somehow I’m just not getting my blog post together. Since we are leaving tomorrow for Admiralty Island and points further north up the Chatham Strait, I thought I’d just post the photos and leave the blog post for “later.” So, here we go:

A Sunflower Seastar always seems to show up in our crab pot. No crab though.

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The cover I made for our 600′ spool of 3/4″ polytron floaty line is now in place on the monkey rail.

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We were next to a very pretty tugboat in Ketchikan.

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Across the dock in Ketchikan we had this lovely motor yacht built in 1931–the same year as Mahdee was launched.

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Sunshine and clouds along Clarence Strait.

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Mahdee on the public float at Meyers Chuck. Yes, it was free to stay there. Just us and one other boat were there.

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The “streets” of Meyers Chuck are paths through the woods. Seriously.

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That speck below the sun is not a bird. It is an airplane. Click Here for a bigger image of it.

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As we exited Meyers Chuck, we went up Earnest Sound and into Seward Passage anchoring in Santa Anna Inlet before continuing up Seward to Zimovia Strait and anchoring in Anita Bay. It was a rainy couple of days but striking and beautiful.

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There were numerous fishing boat setting nets in Anita Bay so it was a mine-field to get to the quiet anchorage at the end of the bay. Well worth the side excursion since it was so lovely.

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Our sealevel rain was snow at higher elevations nearby Anita Bay.

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Anita Bay was the first anchorage we’d shared with another cruising boat since leaving the San Francisco Bay in late March. We’d shared anchorages or floats only 3 times before but always with fishing boats. This little boat was headed from Juneau, Alaska to Portland, Oregon.

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The clouds cleared and we had a wonderful day motor-sailing from Anita Bay to the Wrangle Narrows passage to Petersburg. It was calm early in the day but we had good winds crossing Stikine and Sumner Straits.

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We fished along the way but had no catches other than kelp.

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The historic gold-rush town of Wrangle sits at the mouth of the Stikine River.

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A navigation aid sits on the little island called “Two Tree” and one of those trees looks a little sickly. We wonder what they’ll call it if/when one of the trees dies?

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As we got closer to Petersburg Alaska on the Wrangle Narrows we saw some pretty and old buildings on the waterway.

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That’s it for now, folks. More details on this passage and photos of Petersburg and northwards in my next blog post.

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