Setting Sail – Project Kaisei

STS Kaisei

I am heading back to Canada this weekend to meet up with the STS Kaisei (meaning Ocean Planet in Japanese). A 150ft square rigged brigantine sailboat owned by Ocean Voyages of Sausalito, CA. The boat is currently operated by the non-profit organization Project Kaisei. Their mission is to; “increase awareness of the scale of marine debris, its impact on our environment, and the solutions for both prevention and clean-up.” They have made several trips to the Pacific gyre and have been on  their mission since 2008. The upcoming expedition is going to focus on the tsunami debris that has been washing ashore the West coast of the US for several months now. We will be sailing about 200 to 300 miles offshore in an effort to take water samples and conduct research on the effects the debris is having on the ocean environment. I will be working as a deck hand, climbing the rig and setting sails (all the sails are set by hand on this boat!). Our port of call is going to be San Francisco and if everything goes according to plan I should be there in a couple weeks. I am looking forward to building some more sailing experience and working towards cleaning up our oceans, it ought to be quite the adventure!

Sailing under the Golden Gate bridge

 

Squamish Climbing Trip

Over the labor day weekend I jumped in with my buddies Logan and Danny for a trip up to Squamish, BC. It’s a little over 2 hours North of Bellingham and sits right on the waters of Howe Sound. There is endless amounts of outdoor adventuring in the Squamish area but the climbing is truly world-class. The rock is predominantly granite and the main attraction, for us, is called the chief (pictured below, as seen from the town marina.)

We arrived on Friday evening and climbed a few routes on smaller cliffs that sit right across the highway from the marina called the Smoke Bluffs. After the warm-up we set up camp off of a gravel road closer to the Chief. We got a decent start in the morning and made it to the base of the Angel’s Crest route behind one other party. In the Squamish rock climbing guide Angel’s Crest is graded at 5.10c and has 14 pitches, so we were looking at about 2,000 feet of climbing, give or take.

     Logan led a majority of the pitches (all trad climbing) and Danny took a few as well, while I climbed in the middle all day. Pretty grateful to have friends that climb a lot harder than I do! Here’s Logan on Angel’s crack, the first tough pitch of climbing.

     It was a solid 12 hour day, we had a few breaks for food and scenery as well as a few nature hikes in the wrong direction, but all in all we were successful. Nobody fell and we were able to hike off  the back of the cliff on a well maintained trail. It has been a goal to climb the chief ever since I started climbing and getting up on it was worth the wait. Here’s a few more photos from the climb.