April 21, 2015
Sharon Green’s The Pursuit of “Ultimate Sailing”
An artist is able to visualize their thoughts and interpretations through their mind’s eye to produce objects of great beauty through their hands. Others visualize them through a lens to produce masterful photographs. This often requires great patience, a great deal of waiting, planning, and often frustration when the “shot” they wanted didn’t work out as they had anticipated. When we sit down to enjoy the Ultimate Sailing calendar every month, we don’t see this part of Sharon Green’s work. As she herself has said, ”My greatest satisfaction comes when it all connects – the anticipation, organization, high-powered yachts sailed by stellar crews, and epic conditions – and combines to create a thrilling photograph. The pursuit of ‘Ultimate Sailing’ never grows old. Three decades and I still love the challenge of creating memorable images for my clients and the calendar.” Sharon started sailing with her dad, Don Green, when she was seven years old, on the family’s 21-foot Bluenose sloop. Later, when Don got a C&C 35, Sharon and her brother talked him into letting the junior sailors race it, and soon Don ended up with a very reliable and victorious young crew.
April 20, 2015
A Prairie Boys Voyage
My early reading about sailing explorers and fur trading voyageurs gave me a desire to travel by water. As a boy growing up in Gladstone, Manitoba, I constructed a rather poorly built raft. I planned to journey down the Whitemud River to Lake Manitoba. I managed to get a half a mile downstream before my raft disintegrated and plunged me into the river. I emerged cold and wet but determined to do better in my water-borne travels. Our family cottage was at Delta Beach at the south end of Lake Manitoba. A neighbour had an old wooden “Lightning” anchored in three feet of water. My younger brother Bryan and I would climb into it and pretended we sailed the seven seas, even though the boat never moved, other than up and down with the waves. In my early teen’s we lived on the shore of Lake Killarney in Southern Manitoba. Bryan and I had a canoe. We would paddle upwind, then hang an old bed-sheet between the paddles and sail downwind.
October 11, 2013
Oar and Sail to Desolation
As a rower and dinghy sailor, I was pleased to discover a slim volume entitled Oar & Sail – An Odyssey of the West Coast by Dr. Kenneth Macrae Leighton. Leighton rowed and sailed his 14’ boat, sporting an unstayed standing lugs’l rig and a pair of nine-foot wooden oars, from Vancouver to Prince Rupert over two summer holidays. The first stage took him to Sonora Island, just north of Maurelle Island where we camp. Later, he launched at Port Hardy and completed the journey.
August 20, 2013
A Summer’s Day on the Credit
Three boys, a homebuilt raft and a slow-moving river, launch a lifelong love of boats and the water. After owning our Spencer 35 sailboat for almost 30 years, Anne and I recently sold her with the intention of getting a roomier vessel for two teenage boys, an energetic terrier and us. Our old boat headed for a new life on Vancouver Island and seemed a good fit for the new owner. After helping deliver Sway to the island, I returned to the marina on the Fraser River where she had rested between our many cruises up and down this rainy coast.
July 16, 2013
Brothers in Boats
Knowing the inflatable trade spells success for the Keys brothers, in BC and back home in Ireland. This is a story about two brothers in two countries, and how the booming popularity of inflatable boats on a global scale has changed both of their lives. The brothers are Brendan and Ronan Keys, born and raised in the port of Drogheda, on the east coast of Ireland just north of Dublin. Today, Brendan’s home is Vancouver, where he is a partner in GA Checkpoint Yamaha, one of BC’s leading inflatable and outboard dealers, while Ronan operates Inland Inflatable Services, Ireland’s leading inflatable sales and service firm, in Sligo, on the country’s west coast.
July 15, 2013
Passing the First Test
For an eager and experienced 14-year-old, passing the boater competency exam is just the first step in a lifetime of learning on the water. One of the toughest tests I have ever written wasn’t even at school. It was the pleasure craft competency exam. In contrast to the 30 minutes of studying I usually do for one of my grade eight exams, I spent weeks preparing for my boating exam. Every night during the weeks leading up to the exam, I would review a chapter in the study guide. I even took the guide to school with me to read when I had the chance.
May 14, 2013
A Sparkling Sea
Whether you see it as fairy dust in the water or stars in the head, ocean bioluminescence is a fascinating phenomenon. I had my most recent exposure to the remarkable phenomenon called bioluminescence during our beautiful West Coast weather last autumn. It was a crisp, clear night and we were on a mooring buoy at Newcastle Island Marine Park in Nanaimo, when my husband spoke to my love of the night sky and offered to take me for a dinghy ride to see the stars.
April 5, 2013
Sailing with the Wind
Is it the journey that counts – or the destination? My wife Sandy and I are avid sailors, although for many years we didn’t actually own a boat. To get our sailing fix, we simply chartered yachts in a variety of destinations. Typically, we would follow routes suggested by the charter company, always returning to the home marina within a week or two. And often, especially on our last day, our course would be directly into the wind, requiring us to beat, motor or both.
March 8, 2013
Wicked Oysters
Easy to collect and prepare, fresh, wild oysters are one of the pleasures of cruising the BC coast. One of my favourite things about cruising BC’s south coast is the local seafood. And nothing beats a few oysters! It was late August and we opted for a dock day at Lagoon Cove Marina on East Cracroft Island because it was overcast and drizzling. We were getting to know new cruising friends at the dock, swapping stories and experiences, when I casually asked if anyone would eat a few oysters if I barbecued them. There was a combination of enthusiasm and skepticism – because oysters are not native to the Broughton Archipelago.
February 6, 2013
Rowing My Own Boat
Fifty years ago, my parents bought a cottage on Gambier Island in BC’s Howe Sound. Facing the snowy Lions to the east and the undeveloped north side of Bowen Island, the tiny cabin – replete with mice, horsehair-stuffed furnishings and antique oil lamps – was accessible only by boat. My parents bought a 17’ clinker boat made by Elia Boat Works in Vancouver, and powered it with a Johnson outboard from Woodward’s Marine. They were set.
November 30, 2012
Feeding the Inner Sailor
Even the simplest galley can produce great food, like these cinnamon buns… A well-fed crew is a happy crew, we say aboard Eleuthera Soleil, our 24ʹ twin-keel British Snapdragon. Robert and I both love to cook. Our galley is utterly simple: a Dickinson diesel stove with an oven, and a stainless steel Lagoustina pressure cooker. We cook as often as possible out in our canvas-enclosed cockpit, on our two-burner Origo alcohol stove, to minimize condensation.
November 21, 2012
The Voyage of Free Spirit V: Northbound!
Our first summer cruise aboard Free Spirit V changed our lives and introduced us to places and challenges we could never have imagined. Rob and I were complete novices when we bought our first boat, Free Spirit V, a 1991 Kadey Krogen 42 foot full-displacement trawler, in December 2010. Still, we wanted to follow friends north for a 10-week cruise the following summer. Bringing our knowledge and skills up to standard would mean a lot of winter cruising. Between December and the end of May 2011, with our reluctant standard poodle, Blue, in tow, we clocked almost 100 engine hours, and many of them weren’t pretty.
September 27, 2012
Tales of a Catcherman
Did I mention how much I hate standing in the rain in a seaway…fishing? Messing around in boats has been our passion for almost 30 years. Corinne and I currently spend our summers cruising the Pacific Northwest in our American Tug 41, Ocean Mistress. We have a passion for finding new and remote anchorages. We love to explore. About 10 years ago we began adding other activities to our cruising agenda. We do a lot of hiking into the remote areas of British Columbia’s rainforest, and we add to our cruising larder with a little fishing.
September 27, 2012
The Voyage of Free Spirit V – Starting From Scratch
Bitten by boating bug, the author and her husband choose a rugged 42’ passagemaker and start their climb up a steep learning curve…In the beginning…we lived on the prairies. We did not know a tide from a current but we harboured a dream of moving west, where we could see the ocean every day. We had spent a lot of time in Vancouver and, as the possibility of moving there drew near, we felt the urge to be out on the water – not just to look at it.
September 27, 2012
This One’s For You, Tolly
Yacht builder and boater’s boater, the late ‘Tolly’ Tollefson is remembered at a place he loved, Princess Louisa Inlet Princess Louisa Inlet is a narrow cleft in British Columbia’s Coast Range mountains, a four-mile-long appendage near the upper end of Jervis Inlet, 40 miles from Pender Harbour. Dark granite walls rise to peaks 3,000 feet above the surface and plunge straight into the inlet to depths of 600 feet. Beautiful waterfalls fed by snowfields on the heights above wash the rock walls year-round, but the waterfalls are more numerous and more dramatic during peak snow melt in the spring. At the head of the inlet, Chatterbox Falls bursts out, creating a stunning background for boat photos.
September 27, 2012
Our Four-Legged Crew
The perfect crew, Kona the Mastiff is always ready for adventure and never fails to entertain. Watching our boat Sea Foam steam up a channel in the early morning, an observer might notice many things: the red dinghy towing in our wake, the yellow and red kayaks on the pilothouse roof, her salty cabin and graceful lines. But you definitely won’t miss the mastiff riding on the bow. At 120 pounds, Kona is heavier than our largest storm anchor, roughly the same size as our engine and by far the best conversation piece in our 40-foot home. Again and again, we are asked the inevitable question, “Why not get a smaller dog?”
August 30, 2012
Our home and Native Boat
The 2012 C&C Yachts Reunion and Conference Brings Canada’s Greatest Sailboat Brand Back to Life. Is there a C&C on your dock? Yes. Did you ever race against a C&C? Likely. Do you own a C&C? Did you ever own one? The chances are extremely high that we have now included every one of the Canadian sailors and crew out there in the Canadian Yachting Nation. Each and every one of us has certainly had contact with this famous brand. I don’t own one, but I race against a C&C 27 and a Viking 28 every Wednesday.