We have been "off grid" for a week or more, exploring the "outside", as they say here. That's the outside of the Inside Passage. The side of the islands, islets and reefs exposed to Dixon Entrance and Hecate Strait. The side that sees fewer cruisers and just the more bold local fishermen who possess the local knowledge about the local uncharted rocks. We have zigzagged southward going outside then ducking back up some remote inlets and back then to the coast logging many miles and unforgettable experiences.

The following Posts are a quick look back over the past nine days, starting where we left off in Prince Rupert - June 17, 2012
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Yesterday, we “slept in” more by accident than design. I reached for the smart phone leaning back against the forward bulkhead cradled in the narrow, cupped teak shelf. The bright crisp white digital numbers sharply displayed 7:00AM. Hmmm… my biological hard drive slowly whirred trying to process the meaning of these numbers. Oh yah, that’s the time we wanted to be at the fuel dock in order to catch the big outgoing ebb. I let my head settle back into the soft warm pillow and began randomly processing various bits of information collected during the past 24 hours. I listened.  No rain sounded on the coach roof. Will there be fog today? Are we going to head out late and try to reach the US border?  What will Tiger shoot on the final day of the US Open? I couldn’t even grip a golf club today. How do my damaged fingers feel? I held up my left hand for examination. Looks OK. But damn, why does my back hurt now? Guess I’ll get up and start moving the muscles. Coffee. Hope there’s time for coffee. Hey, it’s Father’s Day. That’s good. Whatever we do today, it’s Father’s Day.

En route to the galley stove, I peered out the glassed window of middle weatherboard in the gangway. The fuel dock was already jammed with fishing trawlers and a couple more working boats impatiently treaded water nearby. Austin stirred in the aft bunk. “Hey, it’s 7, what do you think?”, I relayed the first data of the day.  Within moments Austin nose was an inch from the glassed weatherboard looking at the crowded fuel dock. He blinked a few times trying to clear his sleepy view through the slightly fogged window. “It’s still OK, probably just the morning rush. We can get in by 8:30, out by 9 and still catch a push north.” Austin’s optimism was always refreshing and he was usually spot-on correct in the matters of anything logistical. We would go for the border today.

My father was a man of few words. But I recall him saying with some conviction, “It’s useful to have goals”. In my life, I’ve probably sailed downwind more than he would have approved of, but occasionally I get a destination in mind that requires some tacking back and forth. Yet sometimes, arriving seems only briefly satisfying and maybe a bit anticlimactic. In hindsight, the journey with heartfelt ambition was more significant. Knowing my dad, I’m pretty sure that was his point. Thus, perhaps genetically or otherwise inclined, within our journey northward to “new horizons”, at least as a worthy side note, Austin and I have had a goal in mind – reach and cross the US border between Alaska and Canada by sailboat from Seattle. Not a huge goal certainly by most sailing logs but a goal nevertheless. A goal that required a team, that revealed dependencies work both ways, each member relying on the other in various capacities, that allowed a strengthening of bond between father and son. On June 17, 2012 at 4:30 PM PDT, we sailed across the border just north of Dundas Island on an easterly approach to Dixon Entrance. Thirteen days after leaving Bainbridge, eleven travel days, six hundred and twenty five nautical miles, seven degrees of latitude north and eight degrees of longitude west. We reached our goal…and by coincidence, on Father’s Day.