Mario’s Log: September 19th, 2025 It’s time to stop kidding ourselves. We’re really coming down to it now. A couple of nights ago, as Scott and I discussed the plan for the route to Anacortes, five days was our best guess at how long it would take. “We could make it in three from here if we wanted,” he said. We didn’t want to. Sitting here at anchor in...
Stacy in one of her …sweeter moments. Mario’s Log – September 12th, 2025 All I said was something I’d been saying for two-plus months on this trip. “Get out of my galley.” Spending as much time as I did, preparing almost every breakfast and half of ever other meal for previous crew on this voyage, I had developed a sense of ownership of this little...
The helm station aboard the M/V Sarah-Sarah – September 5th: 0001 Mario’s Log: September 5th, 2025 It feels like a lot longer. Back in May of this year, on a shakedown cruise (of me) with Scott, Jon, and Ivy from St. Thomas to Marathon, I stood my first midwatch aboard Sarah-Sarah. It was a job interview, really. A look see; Scott and Jon trying to figure...
Water over the bow – INSIDE the entrance to False Pass after escaping a 70 mile run from 14 footers in the Bering. Mario Log: September 1st, 2025 Current ripped out of False Pass into the Bering, laying channel markers on their sides, straining at their chains. Storm winds sent a six-foot chop into our bow, pushing green water so often across the deck that it...
August 21, 2025 – Sarah-Sarah heads for an ice field that can only be avoided by turning back. Mario’s Log: 22 August 2025 Everything was going fine and none of us saw anything in the window that bothered us. Then the sound of a ton of ice slamming the hull rang out and the boat shook. We had had hit a clear-as-glass chunk of ice the size of a...
Satellite photo of our exit from the Northwest Passage, taken August 15th. The white is all ice; not a cloud in the sky. Mario’s Log – August 15th, 2025 Many of my friends following this trip have expressed everything from concern to mild panic as we post images of wide open sounds, glassy fjords, and clear running seas completely free from any ice as we...
Sunrise from Sarah-Sarah as we leave Gjoa Haven. Sam’s Log: August 12th, 2025 The Sarah-Sarah is anchored up in a small bay just to the southeast of the town of Upernavik. By many descriptions of other boats that have attempted trips through the Northwest Passage this is one of the final staging areas that most use while waiting for weather and ice to cooperate...
Sarah-Sarah surprises twenty-two Atlantic Walrus, just minding their own business on a gravel beach in Blanley Bay, Devon Island, Nunavut – August 2nd, 2025 Mario’s Log: August 9th, 2025 The vessel approached the turn into the back side of Blanley Bay. I was distracted by the glacier, crystalline white and sparkling as the sun rolled down it’s face...
The 52-foot commercial fishing vessel Jamie K sits aground near Cape Blanco, Ore., July 21, 2015. Petty Officer 2nd Class Darren Harrity, a rescue swimmer and member of the responding MH-65 Dolphin helicopter crew from Coast Guard Air Station North Bend, Ore., pulled all four fishermen to safety through 5-foot seas and 30-mph winds. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Air...
Sandersons Hope – a Mountain just South of Upernavik. Mario’s Log – July 29th Tomorrow morning, we leave Greenland and head across Baffin Bay for Lancaster Sound; the start – if there is one – to the Northwest Passage. I’m making up my bed on the settee. Unrolling the ragged sleeping bag I was assigned; I shove a sheet into the corner of the two-foot-wide...