Local weather guru Cliff Mass has declared on his well-read blog that the worst of winter has passed — at least climatologically speaking. Turns out that those seemingly endlessly dreary weeks between New Years and Valentine’s Day, when the first signs of the coming spring resume, are not typically the worst weather of the year. That [...]

I certainly don’t consider myself a rabid environmentalist, but I do very much care about reducing my impact on the planet. And that is especially the case when it comes to preserving and improving the quality of the Northwest waters where we spend our time boating. One thing that dawned on us during our summer of [...]

There is an old saw that forest rangers, who don’t typically enjoy large salaries, make up for that in part by “getting paid in sunsets.” And at least during this summer, the saying was certainly true for Northwest boaters. Deborah and I stayed aboard our boat at Elliot Bay Marina for much of the past [...]

This weekend, we’ll be celebrating Labor Day, hopefully by leaving the marina Saturday morning and heading up to Port Ludlow for a few days on the anchor. I love a good three-day weekend, but there is something a bit sad about Labor Day because it marks the end of summer. And with our summer getting [...]

It was a dead-still morning and the harbor at Port Angeles was shrouded in a deep fog. The sun was somewhere to the east still climbing the slope of the Cascades, and the morning twilight was too weak to penetrate the mist. This wasn’t the first time I had navigated in fog. But it was [...]