"Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process; a new factor enters and takes over.  A trip, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys.  It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness.  A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike.  And all plans, safeguards, policing and coercion are fruitless.  We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.  Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality the trip.  Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it.  Only then do the frustrations fall away.  In this a journey is like a marriage.  The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.  I feel better now, having said this, although only those who have experienced it will understand. " John Steinbeck Travels with Charley.

Alaska in a sailboat? Who would have thought?  

Having traveled much of this planet, yet much more to go, I agree with John Steinbeck.  

Author and photographer, Cynthia Montagne

Tim's Birthday......July 23rd

Captain Tim at the helm took Allusion through Blow Hole Channel , with a minimum of 1 foot clearance beneath.  Yikes! NOT a piece of cake but having accomplished that, the rest of the day continued to throw challenges in order to get from Lagoon Cove to Blind Channel.  Chatham Channel was timed perfectly to get us into Johnstone Straits with 20 knot winds on our stern.  Allusion surfed 8 foot waves, then had to handle whirlpools and tide rips.  Mainsail up, speed though water  up to 14 knots.

Looking back at Blow Hole Channel.