65 Days Until Lauch - Short Delay
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
65 Days Until Launch Con't
Changes have swept through my lists and all of our planning. We have made a slight delay of a couple days in our start date and further planned our shared food and gear. As a team we will share a tent and a kitchen, combining good gear from both of our kits. Food will be a shared responsibility as we will cook for each other only at dinnertime. This leaves me to plan for my own breakfast and lunches for 30 days. I always pack food for a few extra days and this time we will have the luxury of shipping parcels of it ahead to Wrangell and Ketchikan in the mail.
The days are whipping by fast and the reality of this adventure is coming quickly. I have been focused on our charts and navigation for the past few weeks. I really want to make sure that I have dialed in exactly which charts we will need to be safe and pass by the most hazardous "sticky outy bits" as my instructor last year referred to them. The book charts provided for home printing by the NOAA are decent for overview of the area. I've ordered a few back up paper charts for the critical areas like Cape Fox, in the event all three of our Garmin GPS maps crash and burn. The most important chart arrived this week in the mail already. It is a five foot tall tourist map of the inside passage I bought for my youngest daughter to track my progress with her marker and little stickers for my camps.
I dream of the whales and the icebergs, of paddling through the icy channels, piloting among them like a seal. It is difficult to remind myself at times that this is my ultimate goal, despite the anxiety of preparation. This week I expect to receive several shipments of gear that I needed to replace or upgrade and I will drive four hours round trip to collect expedition food from my American mailbox! (I'll sneak in a ski at the White Pass if I can.) Training for a paddling expedition when you have frozen water is challenging; I have learned to be flexible and creative and use the frozen water to recreate with. Currently I am xc skiing a few times a week and swimming twice a week with weights and the odd planking thrown in for good measure. I expect the first week out on the water to hit me hard anyway.
My dehydrator will rest again at the end of April, when I have completed preparing food for this trip. I love and hate meal planning. I learned last year when we took our kids on a multi day hike that making our own dehydrated meals was far more palatable and thrifty. My new favorite is dehydrated watermelon, oh my! Then I trained as an assistant sea kayak guide and the other students and I shared our cooking skills over a couple of weeks and I learned some great tips and tricks. Kayak cooking is unique unto itself, and I am definitely one of those people that needs appetizing food on my trips. The typical ramen noodles rarely make it in my food sac.
May attempt an April paddle in Haines, Alaska. To be determined by the weather and moods. :)
Changes have swept through my lists and all of our planning. We have made a slight delay of a couple days in our start date and further planned our shared food and gear. As a team we will share a tent and a kitchen, combining good gear from both of our kits. Food will be a shared responsibility as we will cook for each other only at dinnertime. This leaves me to plan for my own breakfast and lunches for 30 days. I always pack food for a few extra days and this time we will have the luxury of shipping parcels of it ahead to Wrangell and Ketchikan in the mail.
The days are whipping by fast and the reality of this adventure is coming quickly. I have been focused on our charts and navigation for the past few weeks. I really want to make sure that I have dialed in exactly which charts we will need to be safe and pass by the most hazardous "sticky outy bits" as my instructor last year referred to them. The book charts provided for home printing by the NOAA are decent for overview of the area. I've ordered a few back up paper charts for the critical areas like Cape Fox, in the event all three of our Garmin GPS maps crash and burn. The most important chart arrived this week in the mail already. It is a five foot tall tourist map of the inside passage I bought for my youngest daughter to track my progress with her marker and little stickers for my camps.
I dream of the whales and the icebergs, of paddling through the icy channels, piloting among them like a seal. It is difficult to remind myself at times that this is my ultimate goal, despite the anxiety of preparation. This week I expect to receive several shipments of gear that I needed to replace or upgrade and I will drive four hours round trip to collect expedition food from my American mailbox! (I'll sneak in a ski at the White Pass if I can.) Training for a paddling expedition when you have frozen water is challenging; I have learned to be flexible and creative and use the frozen water to recreate with. Currently I am xc skiing a few times a week and swimming twice a week with weights and the odd planking thrown in for good measure. I expect the first week out on the water to hit me hard anyway.
My dehydrator will rest again at the end of April, when I have completed preparing food for this trip. I love and hate meal planning. I learned last year when we took our kids on a multi day hike that making our own dehydrated meals was far more palatable and thrifty. My new favorite is dehydrated watermelon, oh my! Then I trained as an assistant sea kayak guide and the other students and I shared our cooking skills over a couple of weeks and I learned some great tips and tricks. Kayak cooking is unique unto itself, and I am definitely one of those people that needs appetizing food on my trips. The typical ramen noodles rarely make it in my food sac.
May attempt an April paddle in Haines, Alaska. To be determined by the weather and moods. :)
Sunday, February 10, 2019
79 Days Until Launch
Most people paddle the Inside Passage in one go. My expedition partner and I have decided that due to time and family constraints we will split it into two sections. A north section down to Prince Rupert and then from there to Seattle the following year. Many paddler's accounts made us wonder if we could paddle efficiently from north to south, and so in 2018 we tested the theory and paddled from Skagway to Juneau in four days, with one more spent windbound. We proved to ourselves that May temperatures are tolerable in Alaska and the winds won't slow us terribly. You may be wondering "Why paddle south?" and for us it is a simple answer, we live up here in the north.
There are so many questions swirling in my mind as I begin this post. Am I ready? Is my gear ready? Have I got enough lists? Has our planning been concise? I have been researching for months now. Reading anything I could to help us on our adventure in the Inside Passage including other paddlers accounts of their adventures, blogs, historical weather, marine flora & fauna field guides and even dehydrator cook books. There is a plethora of information to wade through for anyone considering the challenge of propelling themselves through the passage.
I am setting goals for preparations as I realize that the time is getting short and there is still much to do. Between working full time, training for the expedition, eating properly and sleeping there are not many extra hours left for preparation and planning so I need to use them wisely. Organizing my thoughts as well as my gear is going to be the purpose of this blog. I think it will be just as handy as all those lists.
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