Mike Litzow – Author of “South from Alaska”
Episode 7 of The Sailing Podcast is a great interview with someone who is an author, mountain climber, academic, a sailor, a parent, a marine biologist and has been a commercial fisherman. His name is Mike Litzow who we spoke to over skype as Mike and his wife Alisa were on their yacht in Hobart, Tasmania.
Mike and Alisa have a very inspirational story where they have decided to sell up everything and head off sailing. This must have been a challenging time – giving up good jobs and cutting off ties with family and friends. Just to make things interesting, they also took off with a 10 month old as crew.
- You can find Mike and Alisa’s blog here – www.thelifegalactic.blogspot.com
- You can find South from Alaska on Amazon
here
I had heard that Mike had written a book about their trip so I decided to contact him for a quick run down of what they had been up to. It turns out that not only have they had a couple of huge trips across the Pacific with their children, but they are not finished yet and have plenty more on the cards. Mike explains this to us in the interview.
Next episode with Sailing in South East Asia with Ian and Michelle of SV Raku
Show Notes for South from Alaska
I would like to thank Mike for taking the time to talk to us and let us know about his journey with his family and I would recommend that you visit them at their blog which has heaps of photos and journal entries going back a few years covering their sailing trips.
- It’s at www.thelifegalactic.blogspot.com
I was looking for photos of their new boat “Galactic” and I found some photos in the blogs from February 2011 which is about when they purchased it. It looks like a fantastic vessel for their future trips into the high latitudes. I am very jealous of them.
Transcript of the interview with Mike
Introduction
This is The Sailing Podcast with David and Carina Anderson, episode number 7. We would love you to come and join us on our journey. Hello everyone and welcome to the seventh episode of The Sailing Podcast. Thank you for joining Carina and I on our journey. Today we have a great interview with someone who’s an author, a mountain climber, an academic, a sailor, a parent, a marine biologist and who’s been a commercial fisherman. His name’s Mike Litzow. We spoke to him over Skype as Mike and his wife Alyssa are currently on their yacht in Hobart Tasmania. Mike and Alyssa have a very inspirational story where they’ve decided to sell up everything and head off sailing. This must have been a challenging time giving up good jobs and cutting off ties with family and friends, and just to make things interesting, they also took off with a 10-month-old. I’d heard that Mike had written a book about their trip, it’s called South from Alaska, so I decided to contact him for a quick rundown of what they’d been up to. It turns out not only have they had a couple of huge trips across the Pacific, but they’re not finished yet and they’ve got plenty more on the cards. You’ll find notes for today’s episode at thesailingpodcast.com forward slash south from Alaska. That’ll be just one word, South from Alaska. I’ll have details there about Mike’s blog and links to his publisher. Okay, it’s time to get into the interview and I started off by asking Mike where he and Alyssa were living when they first got the idea to head off sailing.
Mike: Well, we were living in Kodiak, Alaska before we sort of sold the house and quit the jobs and started sailing. That’s where our trip began from, but I started thinking about sailing long distances, Lord knows when, a lot of years before that. Anyway, Kodiak is where we started our trip from.
David and Carina: How old were you when you set sail from Kodiak?
Mike: Oh jeez, I would have been about 38 or 39, something like that.
David and Carina: And how long had the plan been brewing in the back of your mind?
Mike: Yeah, I don’t know, we were planning for quite a while, it takes a bit of doing of course. I’m not sure when you sort of transition from thinking about it and talking about it to actually planning on it, but we’ve certainly been talking about it for years and years
David and Carina: That’s great, because I don’t know, I feel at the moment like there’s a great big magnet sort of, and I’m a little piece of metal and every time I try and walk away from it, it just sort of pulls me back, I mean, how do you get to the stage of actually making that jump and getting away from everything?
Mike: Yeah, it’s certainly not easy. We had some friends, we had some friends, some German friends who spent the winter in Kodiak a few years before we left on their sailboat, they’d sailed a 10 meter sailboat from Germany to Kodiak and eventually back, and their take was that leaving is the hardest part of any of it, and so we really sort of took consolation in that because it is a struggle to break the ties from land. We found out sort of down the track that leaving is not necessarily the hardest part, but it’s certainly one of the hardest parts, and you just got to be determined, it’s what I guess all this stuff comes down to is we can do so much these days, I mean, we’re so wealthy compared to, if you look at our grandparents’ generation, we have so many choices and so much money, just the ability to buy boats and stuff, and so it’s certainly hard, but I think that if you sort of, you know, if you’re determined to steer your life one way or the other, we’ve got a lot of ability to do silly things like sailing across the Pacific.
David and Carina: I know, that’s awesome, and so it sounds like you pretty much sold up everything and bought your yacht?
Mike: Yeah, we did, we had owned the yacht for a few years, we started off with a 25 footer and then sailed that around Kodiak for a few years and really liked it, and then moved up to our 37 footer Pelagic, and we had that for two or three years, and we only bought that boat when we were pretty sure we were going to go, so we had that boat for a few years and sort of got it ready and did some trips on it, and there’s just incredible sailing around Kodiak, just really, really good, yeah, and then we did, we sold our cars and sold our house and quit our two permanent jobs with the U.S. government and sort of sailed away from it all.
David and Carina: And you had a young baby when you set off sail, is that right?
Mike: Yeah, yeah, that was the real twist, because we had a 10 month old, our oldest son Elias was 10 months old, you know, and we didn’t know anyone who had sailed long distances with a kid that young, so there was really no one we could talk to, you know, to get advice about how doable it was, but we knew that people had done it, but we sure hadn’t met anyone who had done it, and so he was born in August, which up north, that’s sort of the end of the summer, and during that winter, that subsequent winter, we were planning on going, you know, and getting ready to go, and that really took a bit of, that was a leap of faith, I guess, you know, and it was really Elissa at that point that had the sort of the determination that we had to go, you know, that if we decide it wasn’t a good time, we’d always sort of wonder what might have been, she was, I think, she was sort of the bedrock of our determination.
David and Carina: I think my mum would have murdered us if we tried to run away with a 10-month-old. What was the verdict from the family?
Mike: Oh, yeah, it was generally pretty good, you know, a little mixed at times, but, you know, I think they’ve, everyone’s kind of on board with the idea now, you know, it’s generally worked out.
David and Carina: Were you all living in the same area? Like, have you got family in Trinidad or where you were?
Mike: No, that’s the thing, Alaska is one of those places where a lot of people are from somewhere else, and so Elissa and I both went to high school in Ohio, serving the Midwestern part of the US, and had moved to Alaska as adults, and so all of our family was pretty far away to begin with.
David and Carina: Were you childhood sweethearts?
Mike: No, no, we actually met at the University of Alaska. Yeah, we were living 20 minutes apart from each other, but never knew each other.
David and Carina: Ah, nice. That’s good, you would have had a lot in common, anyway.
Mike: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
David and Carina: So how was it travelling, getting back to having a 10-month-old, how was it travelling with a 10-month-old? How did you cope? How did Elissa cope?
Mike: Yeah, well, it’s got its moments, as you might imagine, but, you know, so I guess the answer is that the first six months were pretty tough, just because we were, you know, figuring out how to be parents at the same time that we thought how to be long-distance sailors, full-time sailors. And so Elissa was washing nappies every other day, from, you know, all the way from Kodiak to, to Bundaberg, I guess, and beyond. And so, you know, just like the routine work of it all is fairly, fairly considerable.
David and Carina: So you managed to do cloth nappies all the way across?
Mike: Yeah, yeah, it’s really the only way to do it, you know, you just, you know, it’s, yeah, it’s the only way to go.
David and Carina: I think when we first had our first child, we were sort of trying to do the right thing, and we had cloth nappies. How long do you think we lasted with cloth nappies?
Mike: Yeah, I can hardly guess.
David and Carina: Probably like six months, and then we went to disposables. It was just too easy. But on the boat, where are you going to put the disposables? And because you would have had salt in the nappies, did the baby get nappy rash a lot?
Mike: No, no. So the routine is, yeah, you drag them behind the boat, and then you soak them in, in fresh water in a bucket, and give them a wash in salt water, and give them a final rinse in fresh. But Elissa got to the point where she could do two days’ worth of nappies with a liter of fresh.
David and Carina: That’s pretty impressive.
Mike: Yeah, I can be pretty frugal with the water.
David and Carina: So did you find that out? Did you just like Google how to wash nappies on sailing a boat across an ocean?
Mike: I’ve never tried that. No, you just need something to figure out, I guess.
David and Carina: Great. And so you’re at 10 months old when you left. Your baby was, what is it, Elias? Was Elias walking yet, or not quite?
Mike: No, no, he wasn’t walking. So in a way that’s easier when they’re really young, before they get very mobile, because you can sort of put them in one place and they more or less stay where you’re going to leave them. But we set the boat up so that we had a place above decks and a place below decks where we could put him and secure him so they couldn’t get out. So if both of us had to be working the boat, we knew that he was safe and he didn’t have to be supervised. So that was pretty key to figure out. And then it’s just like life anywhere, except that you’re sailing instead of going to work.
David and Carina: Yeah, but well, instead of going to work, you’re sailing a boat 24 hours a day, though. I mean, how did you get sleep? How did Alyssa get sleep when her baby was awake?
Mike: Yeah, when you say sleep, what do you mean? Yeah, we were pretty unclear on that concept. Yeah, so that was that was a big unknown early on, you know, where it was pretty hard to just to sail the boat coastally and watch Elias. And to get from so to get from Kodiak to that sort of to get out of Alaska is 2000 miles of sailing that we did. So it’s you know, we did a lot of coastal sailing just to get out of Alaska. And there comes this point where you’re still in Alaska, where you have to make a three day crossing of the Eastern Gulf of Alaska, where there’s no you know, you go over a track of the coast where there’s no bays or harbors. And so that was our earliest test of our ability to sail night and day with the little fella. We really were not sure that we could do it at all, you know, beforehand. It must have been absolutely beautiful sailing like in those areas. Yeah, Alaska is incredible. I mean, it’s pretty different, you know, it’s and that’s been fun, you know, as we’ve seen the Pacific, we’ve crossed the Pacific twice now, we’ve fantastic places. And we’re not that kind of traveler who kind of compares everything to home and says, Oh, this isn’t as good as home. But when we do go back to Alaska for a visit, we’re reminded that it’s so big, and it’s so relatively wild. And you can find solitude so easily, you know, it’s a pretty spectacular place.
David and Carina: Excuse me for my geography, but in Alaska, where Kodiak is, is that like, were you like sailing through icebergs?
Mike: No, there’s, there’s no, there are some tidewater glaciers that discharge ice around where we were, but it’s a very localized phenomenon. And, and there’s no sea ice per se, in that part of Alaska, southern Alaska, the Gulf of Alaska. So ice isn’t really an issue there.
David and Carina: So you had the three day test across to see see how you could deal with it. And I guess you figured out some sort of routine.
Mike: Yeah. And you know, the routine there, when Elias was young was pretty much we’d, he’d sleep for 10 hours a night. And so, you know, we’d each more or less get five hours of sleep. You know, which, of course, you lose some with the changeover and everything. So it gets to be a pretty hard schedule to maintain. And then when we cross the Pacific, we actually, when we’re on passage, you know, in the trades, we would set the radar alarm and both go to sleep.
David and Carina: Ah, good idea.
Mike: We did that for our first crossing on Pelagic. But then, you know, we’re now on our second boat brought in California. We just sailed across the Pacific this last year. I guess this is jumping ahead in our story a bit. But we’ve got a second a second child and he was about the same age. He was a year old when we left California. And the radar on this boat is not very good. And we couldn’t trust the radar alarm. And so we stood watch the whole way across the Pacific. And it’s doable. You know, it’s hard with kids for sure. But it’s certainly doable.
David and Carina: Was it just the radar itself was just wasn’t as good as the other radar you had?
Mike: Yeah, it’s an older unit. And it’s just not as trustworthy, I think, as the other one. It was sort of fiddly where you have had to had to really tune it, you know, to get good quality returns from targets. And so you couldn’t just trust it to pick up targets necessarily. And then about halfway across it, it made things really easy for us by just dying completely. So we had no radar whatsoever. Yeah. So, yes, we just stayed up.
David and Carina: So typically, after you left on your first trip from Alaska, and you’re having a sleep, you’re both asleep, did the radar go off? Was there was there anything out there?
Mike: Yeah, I mean, yes, definitely. We never picked up another yacht. So I’m not sure if we would pick up a yacht, but we picked up ships, you know, any number of times, maybe a dozen times crossing the Pacific. And then squalls would wake us up a lot. You know, because you get the squalls are so tight and dense that they leave quite a they give you quite a good radar target. So we’d wake up for bad weather, too, which was also handy. You know, you’d know there was a squawk coming so you could wake up and be ready for it.
David and Carina: And how old is Elias now? So Elias is five now, about five and a half. And your other child’s name again?
Mike: Our other boy is Eric. Eric just turned two a few days ago.
David and Carina: Oh, happy birthday, Eric. Yeah. I hope the children remember these great adventures that they’ve had when they get older.
Mike: Yeah, no doubt. I figure we just have to keep going long enough so that, you know, they’re guaranteed to remember. You know, if we sail until they’re 15, then they’ll definitely remember.
David and Carina: Yes. I’m interested in the trip from Alaska. Where did you, what was your sort of next port of call after you’ve left the mainland of Alaska? Did you head to Hawaii?
Mike: No, we talked about taking that route, but, you know, from Kodiak to Hawaii is so 2,000 miles or so. And it’s not a trade wind passage, you know, so it wouldn’t necessarily be a very fast passage. So no, we did the coastal route all the way from Kodiak all the way down the west coast of North America to the southern tip of Baja, California. So from Alaska, from southeast Alaska, we actually did a one, a week long passage to get all the way down to Washington state. So we just bypassed Canada entirely. And that was just a factor of the season where it was so late August, early September when we got out of Alaska and the gales, sort of the fall gales were beginning and the weather was really starting to deteriorate. So we just, we needed to get south as fast as we could. And that actually ended up being the toughest bit of sailing that we’ve ever done. Where the weather wasn’t terrible, but it was variable and we had some pretty bad deck leaks that we discovered so that a lot of the boat was soaked inside and our autopilot wasn’t working. And we were motoring against light headwinds. And so we couldn’t use our wind vane and you know, it was pretty exhausting stuff. Yeah. So that was a tough week. So, you know, there’s really, I think when you’re starting out in particular, there’s just a lot of value in just being too stupid to give up. You just got to keep at it and kind of figure it out. You know, because like the, you know, the magazine or, you know, sailing blog vision or version of living on a sailing boat and traveling a lot, you know, it’s not very realistic, you know, and it’s, you know, you don’t, you know, the sailing magazines aren’t full of stories of being seasick and wet and kind of half miserable, you know, and it just sort of takes a little getting used to that to get to the good stuff, if you know what I mean. So I think it was sort of good for us that we were just, we were a bit stubborn at that point. We just kept on going, even though it didn’t, you know, didn’t always seem like a good idea early on.
David and Carina: Did either of you suffer from seasickness?
Mike: not real bad. We both get seasick, but not bad. I think it was helpful that we both spent a lot of time on commercial fishing boats in Alaska. We’re both fisheries biologists, so we’d go out on chartered vessels to do research and I did a little commercial fishing in the Bering Sea as well. And so we’d been at sea a lot and we were used to being a little seasick and we could deal with it and we sort of knew, you know, what our limits were and when we would get sick. So in general that hasn’t been a problem.
David and Carina: What about remedies? Do you have any sort of special remedies for the, what do you think, do you have any ideas on how to reduce seasickness?
Mike: I don’t. You know, it seems like it’s so individual. So, you know, different, so subjective I guess you’d say. Different people seem to respond to different things. You know, there was one drug that sold over the counter that I did really well with for a while, but then I started sort of having a, not a reaction against it, but I had, I just sort of got to the point where I couldn’t really get that drug down anymore. I think maybe I was associating it with being seasick. No, maybe.
David and Carina: Was that some sort of antihistamine?
Mike: Yeah, you know, I’m trying to remember the name and I can’t remember it right now. It’ll maybe come to me. There’s this other drug called Sturgeon that is, it’s very widely used among full-time sailors and I think it’s only available in the UK and Mexico. And that, I’ve used that a bit and it works well, but then we had this funny experience when we were leaving Fortuna in down to Queensland on this last crossing where we knew it was going to be rough when we left and I took some Sturgeon on and then we ended up delaying our departure for 24 hours. And so we just sat there at anchor and sort of left a bad way to go by. And after taking that Sturgeon on, I was sick at anchor, you know. So it was sort of this unintended experiment that showed me that taking that medicine actually made me feel really bad. There’s always a side effect for every sort of medication, isn’t there?
David and Carina: Yeah, there really is. So yeah, I mean it’s something that, you know, a lot of people deal with. I don’t know, I guess everyone just sort of finds their own strategy. So I sort of interrupted you before. You were telling us that you sort of headed across from Kodiak, skipped Canada, you sort of hopped down. I’m trying to draw myself a mud map here. You hopped down the west coast to Baja California and then you took a right-hand turn?
Mike: Yep, that’s right. Yeah, so we got as far as La Paz, Baja California, which is a lovely old city. And it’s been a few months there and then headed off for the Marquesas. And so that’s a great trip. You know, that’s about 3,000 miles of sailing. And it was our first trade wind sailing and our first time across the equator. And it took us 21 days, I think it was, that first time. So three weeks outside of land. And it was just fantastic.
David and Carina: That sounds like quite a good trip, doesn’t it? 21 days.
Mike: Yeah, yeah. Plagic’s a Krelok 37, which is just a really great cruising boat.
David and Carina: Is that a monohull or a multihull?
Mike: Yes, she’s a monohull and she’s sort of traditional looking above the waterline. So canoes stern, long overhangs, fairly narrow beam. But then a pretty, not super modern, but reasonably modern underbody with a modified fin keel and a speckhung rudder. So she’s not like a very super traditional full keel boat. And that boat really moves well in light air. And so, you know, if we had, like on that crossing, if we had six or seven knots of wind forward of the beam, we could put up the spinnaker and move along, you know, three or four knots. We could do a pretty good speed. So anyway, that’s, I think, why we made that crossing pretty quickly.
David and Carina: That’s right, because I sort of followed so many stories going from Panama, but you’ve started up way up higher and come down and across to the Marquesas. That would have been a lovely sail.
Mike: Yeah, it was really good. Yeah, it’s pretty common jumping off point for people from the west coast of either Canada or the US. Because if you go farther down the Mexican coast, you get into really poor winds for making the crossing. And it’s quite hard to get away from the Mexican coast. So a lot of people jump off them.
David and Carina: Were there any times during your trip that you felt really, like you felt worried? You know, you felt unsafe?
Mike: No, not, you know, not unsafe. You know, and I’m not sure why we just got lucky or if we prepared really well. You know, I mean, I worried every day about something. And, you know, I tend to be a bit of a worrier on the boat. You know, and there’s, like, Plagic was 25 years old when we left. And, you know, a 25-year-old boat has a lot of moving parts that can break. And so there’s a lot of things to sort of be concerned about potentially. But we never really felt like we were in over our heads or anything like that or things were unsafe.
David and Carina: Okay. I just have this vision and it’s because I haven’t sailed out in the open blue water. And I always think, oh, what about how big the waves are going to be out there? And, you know, you hear the stories of people having 30-foot waves and that frightens me. So I guess, you know, did you have big waves when you were out there or?
Mike: No, touch wood. We never did. I mean, I think something that Alyssa and I kind of incorporated into our world view is that open ocean is a refuge for sailors. And the coast and its near shore areas where boats come to grief. Actually, I’ve heard that several times, yeah. Yeah. And that’s particularly true in the tropics, you know, and the trade winds outside of the cyclone season. You know, you’ll get squalls, but, you know, again, touch wood. We never saw a gale. I mean, I guess we saw a gale once anchored up in Tonga, and we were lucky enough to be anchored up. But in general, the weather is pretty benign, you know. So, yeah, it’s, no, you know, our experience in general is that in those latitudes, in the tropics, sailing in the open ocean is just a delight. You know, it’s just great.
David and Carina: Yeah. Oh, that’s good. You’re putting my mind at ease. it’s all good. So the steps from Marquesas, what were the other islands that you went through? You mentioned Tonga just then, and that was after the Marquesas?
Mike: Yeah, so that crossing, the Marquesas were first, and the Marquesas are just splendid. It’s an interesting thing about that crossing is I think, for me anyway, that some of the very best bits are at the beginning. I mean, you don’t really have any reference. You know, the Marquesas are your first bit of Paradise that you come to, so you don’t necessarily appreciate how incredible they are until you’re sort of farther down the track. You know, you’ve got a few things to compare with. But yeah, so the Marquesas first, and then the Tuamotus, which are completely different. The Marquesas are high volcanic islands, and then the Tuamotus are high volcanic islands that are 10 million years old, and so they’re nothing but coral reef, nothing but atoll. And they’re amazing, and we worked pretty hard to get south against the trades a bit, to get a bit off the beaten track in the Tuamotus. Yeah, I was going to say that I’ve heard that they’re a bit more of a remote place to get to, aren’t they? Yeah, I mean, they’re right on the trade wind route, and before GPS, it was common for people just to bypass them entirely, because they’re potentially quite hazardous to navigate along. But with radar and GPS, they’re much more manageable. So yeah, the island where we spent the most time there, Tahanea, is uninhabited at this point, and there’s always yachts there in the cyclone free season, but otherwise, they’re pretty remote and really nice. So after the Tuamotus, then the societies, Tahiti and all that nonsense, and then you’re presented with the choices. The Marquesas Tuamotus in societies are pretty logical if you’re coming from Panama or if you’re coming from Baja, but then you just start getting into this realm of choice. So we went from the societies to Saguaro the first time in the Northern Cooke Islands, which is a really fantastic place, and we had a really good time there. And then from there, we went to Tongan in the Favao group, and then the Hopai group, which is, again, sort of off the beaten track, and it was really great. And then, you know, we sort of looked at the calendar and said, oh my gosh, we’re out of time. So then right through Vanuatu without stopping, and then New Caledonia for two weeks, and then we were off to Bundaberg.
David and Carina: Ah, cool. Yeah, I guess that’s the problem. You can be enjoying yourself so much, and too many places, not enough time.
Mike: Yeah, it’s so big. The Pacific is just so big, and, you know, sailboats are pretty slow and the second season is relatively short. So we were looking for our second boat and ended up flying around California. We weren’t too upset about the idea of sailing across the Pacific again, you know. It’s definitely funny to see on the second time.
David and Carina: . What was the original plan? You were coming to Australia. Did you sort of plan to settle here? Had you sort of prearranged something?
Mike: No. I mean, we were just coming to Australia as a target, you know, sort of because of my back story. I was born in Townsville, and my dad’s Australian, but I never lived here. So it was kind of, you know, we kind of needed a destination, you know, for our, sort of our personalities. We didn’t want to just be wandering. You know, that works for some people, but we were a little more goal-oriented. So when we left Alaska, we were going to Australia, you know, we sort of had enough money saved up to get to Oz, and we figured we’d live in Oz for a bit and just see how we liked it, you know. And we loved it. You know, we really enjoyed Australia. We were here for two years, and Eric was born here, and then we took a year away. And with Eric being so young, you know, just turning two, we were kind of looking for a place where we could stop sailing for a season, just take a season off and let him get a little older. And Elias, you know, is now five and was ready for a year in school. So it kind of just made sense to stop somewhere. And then, you know, if you’re going to cruise the Pacific and you want to stop somewhere and you hold Australian citizenship, Australia is a pretty good place to do it. So we’re just stopping here for the winter, and then when the summer comes, we’ll be off to New Zealand. And then I don’t think we’ll be back to Australia. You know, I think this is, it’s been great, and we’ve, it’s been really fun to sort of get to know the place. But at this point, we’re just going to keep on sailing, you know, and see where we end up.
David and Carina: Ah, that’s terrific. That’s what I wasn’t sure whether your plan had sort of been just to do the Alaska to Australia trip, but no, it’s actually an ongoing journey.
Mike: Yeah, yeah, it is. You know, we don’t know, of course, when, when we’ll really end, you know, we, if nothing else, we figured that by the time Elias is 11 or 12, it’ll be time to hang it up, you know, kind of get him into school and give him a bit of stability. But that’s still quite a ways off. So that’s still a good run, though, if you get through to 12. Oh, yeah, we got a bad run. 11 years on the board. Yeah, it wouldn’t be too bad for sure. Yeah, so we’ll, yeah, we’ll be off to New Zealand this coming summer, as I said, and we’re, we’re starting to hatch the idea of maybe sailing down to the New Zealand sub Antarctic to the Auckland Islands or Campbell Island. So I think we’re going to put in for a permit to do that.
David and Carina: you need a heater too, won’t you?
Mike: Yeah, yeah, they’re used to it. They’re from Alaska. Yeah, yeah, it’s sort of, you know, it’s we’re thinking of it as, I mean, a, they’re fantastic islands from, it’s like a really cool destination. And then B, it’ll be sort of a way for us to work our way back into higher latitude sailing, you know, on this new boat and sort of give it a try. In general, we both really like high latitude places.
David and Carina: And quickly, what’s the rundown on the new boat? What’s it, what sort of a boat have you got now?
Mike: Yeah, well, pretty different. She’s a 45 foot steel cutter, core 10 steel, which is this sort of corrosion resistant steel alloy.
David and Carina: I didn’t want to ask you when you said you were going down south. I didn’t want to say, Oh, I hope you’ve got a steel boat because I thought, well, if you don’t have one, that doesn’t sound quite nice. You might. Yeah, you’ve got a nice steel boat.
Mike: Yes, we have. If it’s sort of all the stars align, you know, and if we’re able to sail long enough, and if we feel up to it, we we’ve talked a lot about the idea of getting back to Alaska via the Northwest Passage, you know, over the top of Canada, right? Because there’s quite a number of yachts doing that trip now. And I love the Arctic. You know, I love, love, love the Arctic. I’d love to do that trip. So when we were searching for this boat, one of our top criteria is that we were looking for a metal boat, either aluminum or steel. Yes, we ended up with this boat, 45 foot center cockpit. You know, she’s bigger than what we wanted, really. We didn’t really want more than 42 feet, but she was kind of the one that we found. And there were only two of them built. This guy named Gary Noble Curtis designed her. So it’s a Noble 451 and it’s an origami boat for, you know, for real steel boat nerds will know what that means. But there were two of them built in California in the late 80s. And this one was never finished by the original owner. And she was finished by the second owner and launched in 2005. So a lot of the gear is pretty new. And she’s been great. Yeah, we sailed it for 10,000 miles now. And we’ve gotten another boat pretty well. And we’ve been really happy. So it looks like she’ll be a good home for the rest of our for the rest of the trip.
David and Carina: That sounds awesome. Actually, I was having a discussion with my son the other day. I told him we were going to talk to you. And I told him I had this guy, Mike, sailed from Alaska to Australia and sailed from California back to Australia. And my son asked me, well, which is the longer trip? If you did the Alaska, Australia trip or the California, if you had have taken a direct lines from Alaska, would that have been which trip would have been longer?
Mike: Yeah, if we’d gone direct from Alaska, that still would have been longer. It still would. Yeah, California is a good ways east of Kodiak. But you know, Kodiak is so much further north, 30 degrees north of Diego where we left from.
David and Carina: Yeah, so it’s quite a waste of time. You’ve clocked up a lot of miles then. So how much since you left made that first trip from Kodiak? How many miles have you sailed?
Mike: Yeah, you know, to be honest, I don’t really know. But it must be about 25,000, I would say.
David and Carina: Wow, that’s great. Mike, it’s been really great listening to your story. Now, I’m aware that you wrote a book about your journey as well.
Mike: Yeah, that’s right. It’s the book is called South from Alaska. Yeah, it’s the story of us, you know, setting out from Kodiak as a family of three and sailing to Australia. And it’s published here in Australia by New South Books.
David and Carina: Okay, and like if I pop something up on the website, is there like a what’s the way people if they have a listen, they’d like the book and buy it is that it’s the what’s the best way to do that?
Mike: Yeah, I can. I’ll I will send you a link to the New South website. And the book’s also available pretty widely in bookstores around Australia. But anyway, you can I’ll send you a link for the for the publisher.
David and Carina: Okay, is it is it on something like Amazon yet?
Mike: It is on Amazon, but only quite expensively because it’s only been published in Oz. So if you go to Amazon, you get like some weird UK reseller. It’s expensive. It’s on the ebook is on iTunes, Australia. And I know it’s on a number of sort of Australian book websites. Yeah. But if people buy from the Australian publisher for your book, they’ll mail it anywhere. Is that right? Yes, that is that is correct.
David and Carina: Oh, that’s good. And when did it get get I mean, how did it take you to write? Did you start writing as soon as you left or did you just sort of reflect on the journey and and put the book together?
Mike: Yeah, I was definitely writing as we went, you know, which is pretty much I think that’s the way you have to do it, you know, because your memory is so you have to, you know, you sort of remember what you think you remember, but there’s nothing like the concrete details of what you wrote down at the time. See, I was writing as we went, but then I spent, oh, geez, a year and a half, at least working on the book here in Australia, before it went off to the publisher.
David and Carina: Okay. Did you guys have got a website somewhere with some pictures as well?
Mike: Yeah, heaps of pictures on the website. And I can send you a link for that as well. It’s our blog is the lifegalactic blogspot.com. And I’ll definitely send you that that link.
David and Carina: Oh, great. Great. Okay. Well, that’s terrific. And yeah, thanks again for taking the time and say hello to Alyssa for us. Was she in the background? Did I hear her giving you some advice or not?
Mike: Yeah, I think she might have just put something up. All right. Yeah. So any of my more cogent answers, definitely from her.
David and Carina: Excellent. Oh, it’s been great to listen to you and hear about your journey. It’s amazing and inspiring. I mean, I’ve read lots of the sort of high latitude books, and they’re all fascinating to me. And yeah, it’s great that you’re going to go off and have your own adventure as well. Well, thanks. And we’ll keep track of your journey as you go along. Hopefully, you’ll keep updating the website as you you head away.
Mike: Yeah, we sure will.
David and Carina: All right. Thanks, Mike.
Mike: All right. Thanks a lot, David. Thanks, Carina. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Conclusion
David and Carina: I’d like to thank Mike for taking the time to talk to us and letting us know about his journey with his family. And I’d recommend that you visit them at their blog, which has heaps of photos and journal entries going back quite a few years covering their sailing trips. It’s at thelifegalactic.blogspot.com. And there’s a link at my show notes pointing to their blog. The show notes for this episode are at thesailingpodcast.com forward slash South from Alaska. The book that Mike wrote is called South from Alaska. And I’ve put a link on our show notes to help you find your way to the publisher, New South Books. I think they’re part of the University of New South Wales. If you want a really easy way to get there, I made a page that redirects you straight there. Just type in www.thesavingpodcast.com forward slash Mike, and that’ll redirect you to New South Books website where you can look at purchasing the book. It’s not an affiliate link or anything like that. I just wanted to make it easy for you to remember the address, thesailingpodcast.com forward slash Mike. Now I ordered my copy today and the postage was reasonable. It was $7 and I’m sure that they’ll post it to anywhere overseas for you as well. If you have any troubles, just email me, david at thesailingpodcast.com. I want to thank Pierre, Mark, Urban and Ryan who dropped by to like our Facebook page. And thank you to all the listeners out there. Thanks so much for spending your time with us. We have over a thousand downloads of the podcast now, which is fantastic. And we thank you for listening and for joining us on our journey. You’ve been listening to David and Carina Anderson of The Sailing Podcast.