by Elsie Hulsizer
04/09/2013

Among the pleasures of being an author is getting to know other writers and learning the back stories of their books. One of the authors I've enjoyed meeting is Christine Smith, co-owner and operator of a small cruise ship and author of More Faster Backward: Rebuilding David B. I first met Christine and the David B. in Juneau and immediately decided that if we ever give up Osprey, I'll take a cruise on the David B. Then when I read her book, I was amazed by her story and awed by the task she and her husband Jeff undertook in rebuilding the boat. She had me laughing and crying with them as they struggled through the project.

A couple of weeks ago Christine sent me an email inviting me to join a "blog hop." I'm supposed to write a post and title it "The Next Best Thing." In the post I am to answer a few questions about my writing and spotlight a couple of my favorite authors. In turn, those authors are supposed to link to my books and spotlight other authors.

My author picks are Sheila Kelly and Migael Scherer. Both of them share my fascination with Southeast Alaska. With Migael I also share a love of sailing, and with Sheila an interest in history. I have more information on them at the bottom of this post, but first, here are the answers to the ten questions about my writing:



What is the title of your book?
Glaciers, Bears and Totems: Sailing in Search of the Real Southeast Alaska.
Where did the idea come from for the book?
I enjoyed the process of writing my first book, Voyages to Windward: Sailing Adventures on Vancouver Island's West Coast, so much that when we made plans to sail for SE Alaska, I immediately decided to write a book about it. At the time I had no idea what the theme of the book would be. That theme - finding the real Alaska in a world of tourism - came out of a conversation I had with a shopkeeper in Ketchikan. I asked him what it was like to live in Ketchikan in the winter and he replied, "...like a ghost town. Those 15,000 people who are supposed to live here? They're not real."
What genre does your book fall under?
Travel and memoir.
Which actors would you choose to play you in a movie rendition?
Since the idea of a movie based on Glaciers, Bears and Totems is outlandish, I'll be even more outlandish and pick a dead actress: Katherine Hepburn. I've always admired the way she portrayed that plucky woman in the African Queen.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
The author and her husband sail off the beaten path to find the "real" Southeast Alaska -- in stories of calving glaciers, bears feeding along the shoreline, small coastal fishing villages and vibrant Native communities.
Was your book self-published or published by a traditional publisher?
Both of my books were published by Harbour Publishing of Madeira Park, B.C. After seeing the work they had to do to put my two books together, I'm glad to let them do it!
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
I started writing it the day we left the dock for our first trip to SE Alaska in May, 2006, and finished it in March, 2010. I might have taken a few more months but an email from Harbour Publishing saying, "If you get it to us by the end of March, we can publish it in the fall," gave me a final push.
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
One of the things I share with Christine Smith is agreement on the books we admire: A Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet and Passage to Juneau by Jonathan Raban. I think I read Curve of Time about four times when I was writing Voyages to Windward and Passage to Juneau at least three times when writing Glaciers, Bears and Totems, trying to understand how a great book about cruising comes together.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
My first book inspired the second. Beyond that, the realization of a need for a cruising narrative about SE Alaska spurred me on.
What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?
Having Glaciers, Bears and Totems along on a trip (real or virtual) to SE Alaska is like having a biologist, geologist, anthropologist and historian aboard. Yet, despite being packed with information about SE Alaska, it's what one of my readers described as, "a good read."

Now that I've answered those questions, here's some more information about Sheila and Migael.



Sheila Kelly is the author of Treadwell Gold: An Alaska Saga of Riches and Ruin (University of Alaska Press), a book that combines Alaska history, hard rock gold mining history and a frontier memoir. She first heard about the Treadwell gold mines as a child. Her father and aunts were born and raised in the town between 1899 and 1925, and Sheila was fascinated with their stories about a hardrock mining town with country-club amenities. Wanting more details about her family's life in Treadwell, she interviewed other people who had lived there and scoured archives, museums, libraries and personal scrapbooks. She was surprised to learn that Treadwell embodied an important piece of Alaska history that needed to be told.
I first met Sheila when we both worked at the Puget Sound Water Quality Authority in 1984. Years later we ran into each other at a conference and, when I learned she was writing a book about Alaska, I immediately suggested she join my writing group. In the group I got to see Treadwell Gold come together. I knew it was good, but when I finally sat down to read it from cover to cover, I was thrilled. It's a fascinating story of a chapter of Alaska history few people know and a family saga as well. For anyone interested in Alaska history, it's a must read.




I've been privileged to share several panels with Migael Scherer at boat shows and seminars and am always impressed by her thoughtful approach to sailing and writing.

Sailing isn't just a metaphor for Migael Scherer--it's a means of survival. Back Under Sail describes her voyage of discovery during a five-day sailboat race in breathtaking Alaska wilderness. Three years after Scherer was raped at knifepoint in a Seattle laundromat, she resolved to overcome lingering fears by participating in a 200-mile sailing race around Admiralty Island out of Juneau, Alaska. Scherer was no stranger to sailing; she had helped her husband build a sailboat from scratch, cruised to Alaska and lived aboard in Juneau for four years. But racing and living in tight quarters with the four men who were her fellow crew members was a new experience for Scherer, and her memoir spells out the epiphanies and pitfalls. The most memorable parts of her tale explore the dynamics of the group and often lead to flashbacks about other mishaps and adventures in her sailing career. She captures so much about Southeast Alaska beyond the race: harrowing landings in Juneau airport, extreme tides, living among bears, ravens, and whales, the seemingly endless rain punctuated with days of brilliant beauty.

If you're planning a trip to SE Alaska, these three books (plus Glaciers, Bears and Totems) should go high on your reading list.

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Elsie Hulsizer
01/12/2013

Revised post 2/11/2013 based on additional wind analysis.

The conventional route for circumnavigating Vancouver Island is counter clockwise: north up the protected east side and south down the exposed west coast. Sailors prefer the counter clockwise route because prevailing northwest winds are supposed to give them a downwind ride on the west coast. Power boaters usually prefer the counter clockwise route too because the ride is smoother when going with the ocean waves. Guide books assume that's the direction you'll explore this coast.

Last summer Steve and I circumnavigated by the clockwise or contrary route, going up the outside and south down the inside. We chose that route because we wanted to avoid August on the west coast, which several previous trips had shown us can be stormy. I thought we would be the lone boat going clockwise, but we met three other boats also doing so. The experience made me want more information about just how the weather patterns can affect a circumnavigation.

• Monthly Differences in Winds. For a reality check on winds, I visited the windfinder website that provides statistics on winds, waves and weather for surfers, windsurfers, sailors and other outdoor sportspeople. There I found wind statistics for Tofino, on the southern part of the coast, Estevan Point midway up the coast, and Solander Island off the Brooks Peninsula. I printed out the windroses for all three locations for May-August and arranged them on the floor to get a sense of how winds change with month and location on the coast. Here are some things I learned by studying the windroses:

At Solander, summer winds really do blow predominantly from the north to northwest. But as you head south down the coast, they shift direction, becoming more Westerly at Estevan. At Tofino, they blow from a southerly direction almost half the time.

The chance of a southerly wind when rounding Estevan or the Brooks, although always less than a northerly wind, is higher in June and August than in July. This is consistent with our experience of sailing on this coast; the later in the summer we have sailed, the more frequently we've encountered southerly winds.


Photo: beating against southeasterlies off the Brooks Peninsula.

• Fog. August also brings fog. They call the month "Fogust" on the west coast. The Sailing Directions British Columbia Coast South Portion 16th ed shows fog at Estevan Point 21.4% of the time in August, 14.8% of the time in July and 12.8% of the time in June. If you start your trip in July, a conventional counterclockwise circumnavigation will put you on the west coast when the fog is at its worst.

Photo: Fog in Barkley Sound

• Putting it all together. If you just considered wind direction, you would probably always opt to go the counterclockwise route as most sailors do. And if you added fog to the equation, you would probably choose to start your trip in June, go down the west coast in July and get home by August. But if your schedule precludes a June departure, things get more complicated. If your trip starts in July, there's an advantage to going the clockwise route, to going outside first: it puts you on the west coast when the weather is at its best. Yes, this means some beating and its best to give yourself time to wait for a good weather window when rounding the Brooks..

There are other reasons to choose the clockwise route. Marianne Scott, who is writing a series in Northwest Yachting . about going the "wrong way" chose the clockwise route, starting from Victoria, because she and her husband wanted to attend the annual festival of classical and jazz music, Music by the Sea. (http://www.musicbythesea.ca/) in Bamfield, in Barkley Sound on the southern part of the coast . If they had gone counterclockwise (the "right way"), they couldn't have reached Bamfield in time for the festival in early July. The other boats we encountered going the clockwise route were doing so because their owners had plans to meet family and friends on the inside later in the summer.

• Powerboating. Is it different if you're taking a powerboat up the coast instead of a sailboat? At the boat show I saw a presentation entitled Visiting the West Coast of Vancouver Island by Brian Pemberton of Northwest Explorations http://www.nwexplorations.com/charters/guided-flotillas/. Pemberton has guided flotillas of powerboats from Bellingham to Ketchikan via the west coast of Vancouver Island in two different years. He chooses to do the west coast portion of the trip at the beginning of the voyage, in May and early June (i.e. the clockwise route), because that's when the winds are lightest. The windfinder statistics back him up at Solander, but not at Estevan or Tofino where the lowest average wind speed is August, not June. But then rounding the Brooks Peninsula is one of the most treacherous passages of the trip so light winds there are more important.

• Purpose. If your goal is to visit the west coast of Vancouver Island, the best way is to not circumnavigate at all but to go up the west coast as far as you can get, then turn around and go back before you reach the Brooks Peninsula. That's what we did for 17 of the 18 trips described in Voyages to Windward: Sailing Adventures on Vancouver Island's West Coast. By going up and back on the west coast instead of around, you not only avoid the Brooks Peninsula, you also avoid Johnstone Strait with its wind against current and Cape Scott with its rough seas ---and you see the best part (i.e. the west coast) coming and going. And you still have a chance at those wonderful downwind sails in the sunshine on the way home. (And again, it's best to go in July.) For more information about this windward route, see the blog I posted a year ago: http://www.sailblogs.com/member/ospreyvoyages/?xjMsgID=207041

If you do circumnavigate - if you just want to say you did it or if plans with family and friends require you to visit both sides - then whatever way suits your schedule will work. Either way around the island will be a challenge and may involve long weather delays or beating against the wind. But then if it weren't a challenge, it wouldn't be such an accomplishment.

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Elsie Hulsizer
11/11/2012, Shilshole Marina, Seattle

We were returning from a chilly weekend of sailing to Poulsbo and Port Madison, when Steve spotted an owl on the land side of the Shilshole Breakwatrer, roughly opposite G dock. I thought immediately that it might be a snowy owl but wasn't sure as I had never actually seen one before.

I was focusing my camera to get a better, second picture when a crow started dive-bombing the owl. The owl flew a short distance away and appeared to try to protect itself by hiding behind a rock.


When we tied up in our slip we got out our bird book and identified it as a snowy owl. The blindingly white round head without obvious ears was the giveaway. Later I looked them up on the internet http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Snowy_Owl/id and learned that the black speckles mean the bird is either a young male, which will lose the black speckled feathers as it ages, or a female.

A year ago the Seattle Times reported that the northwest was having an irruption of snowy owls http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2017100661_snowies27m.html. The owls were expected to hang around only until March so this must be a return. Looks like the irruption is repeating itself.

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