Wild Alaska Video Production

This video film production is the culmination of six months work onboard Sänna whilst exploring Glacier Bay National Park and the St Elias Mountain Range in Southeast Alaska during 2016.

Our objective was to test film grizzly bears in their natural habitat prior to a more detailed wildlife filming expedition planned for the summer of 2017 using more specialist equipment. We were fortunate enough to also locate and film wolves, humpback whales, seals, otters and bald eagles set against stunning background landscapes.

Please take time to view this production and let us know your feedback.

For best viewing please enable sound and HD resolution if your device allows. Follow the Read link to view.

Too Many Eggs and No Toblerone

Finally arriving in Prince Rupert

Marie finally confessed she’d hidden chocolate Toblerone on the boat to eat when alone on watch during the night. I was devastated. When I found out, having at last made landfall in Prince Rupert, she giggled finding the whole thing amusing.

I myself confess to an inherent chocolate addiction and usually stock Sänna with copious amounts for long passages, but on this occasion I’d decided to try and abstain. It was either that or another trip back to the hypnotist. Marie doesn’t usually eat chocolate and I can’t get my head around why she suddenly decided to become a secret-eater during our twenty two days at sea. We finally made port much further north than we’d originally planned, departing Hanalei Bay on the wonderful island of Kauai in Hawaii for Victoria, on the southern side of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. But we didn’t plan for the vicious storm that crossed our path six hundred miles out from the Canadian coast.

New Website Launch

Marie and I have just published our new website for our ongoing sailing circumnavigation. We’d like to keep those of you who wish to follow our round-the-world adventure more regularly updated.

There is lots more information and photo images but the prime reason for the change is to allow us easier access to amend and update our site from more remote locations when internet access isn’t so good.

We’re sure you’ll thoroughly enjoy our site and recommend that you check it out at…

http://www.sanna-uk.com

For your interest Sänna is now located in the centre of Vancouver at Bayshore West Harbour, having sailed south from Alaska throughout this incredibly warm summer stacked with tons of sunshine… an unusual occurrence in this part of the world. We will soon depart British Columbia because of Customs time limits in Canada to find someplace south of the US border in Puget Sound to spend the winter. US Customs & Immigration are far more forgiving than their Canadian counterparts when it comes to foreign flagged vessels…

Fisherman’s Friend

Hoonah, Alaska

Moored right next to Sänna here in Hoonah is Icy Queen, a wily forty five year old Seine fishing trawler. At first call I could see the roughneck crew weren’t much interested in the likes of us… sort of retired, snobby English who’d sailed their fancy sailing boat all the way. But we and them would sometimes nod our good mornings whenever our eyes met… these no nonsense, hard working, proud men who grind their lives from the sea.

We ourselves have always admired hardsalt fishermen everywhere and anywhere we’ve been, for their toughness and extreme demeanour. And Icy Queen is a typical battered and bruised working boat built not for luxury but for making a living when the sea does not want to give it up. She is wonderful to behold in my eyes…

On Matters of Laundry

Getting your whites whiter than white is no mean feat when living onboard a sailing boat and crossing oceans. It’s not just a question of your favourite wash powder brand…

Let’s face it, we stink! Well, no, not really, but most people assume we do and that we disguise our rancid body smells by using exotic lotions, just like the olden days during the Middle Ages. You see, we don’t have the modern day laundry appliances onboard Sänna that are found in even the most humblest of homes nowadays.

Whenever we get into any landlubber conversation with anyone remotely interested in how we manage our lives onboard a sailing boat, the first question we are asked in almost every instance is “How do you do your laundry?”…

The Cold Debate

In 1845, Captain Sir John Franklin attempted to discover a route through the Arctic’s infamous Northwest Passage with his two Royal Navy sailing ships Erebus and Terror. Both vessels were lost with all hands and the mystery of their disappearance in the ice vexed the civilised world until strange rumours began to emerge several years later.

The Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who beat Scott to the Antarctic in 1911, finally forced his way through the ice bound Passage in 1906 although there are those who suggest he wasn’t the first. In both instances, neither of these intrepid adventurers had any inclination that global warming would one day (in 2007 in fact) open the route through the Arctic to connect the two great oceans of the Atlantic and Pacific.

I daresay the issue of the Arctic getting warmer never entered the minds of Franklin’s crew as they resorted to cannibalism and froze to death. Nowadays, vessels of various types transit the Northwest Passage and it’s still a controversial argument.

Consider this…

The Simple Art of Catching a Fish

Did you know a female Pink Salmon lays between 1,200 and 1,900 eggs? They incubate over winter for five to eight months and hatch early spring. The little baby pink salmon migrate to the deep ocean as soon as they emerge, feed for eighteen months, then return to the exact same creek to spawn and die at two years of age.

If we think about this a little more then we get to a thought provoking calculation. Perhaps you’re not much interested in what I’m about to tell you but please try and stay with me for just a short while. I’m going to explain the simple art of catching a fish…

Who Owns the Wilderness?

“Who gave you the right to plant your flag and call this land yours? You people give us nothing but misery. You call yourselves our Kings and Governors but you are only the Lords of our suffering.”

Nuuntuuq, The Yukon

Here is the extraordinary story of the Norwegian sailing yacht Berserk and the death of her brave crew in the wild Southern Ocean. A perilous voyage through two frozen lands. A shipwreck… but not for all of them a watery grave.

Judge for yourself the rights and wrongs of their infamous voyage south. Their story is one of bravery, of reckless tragedy and aftermath not often seen in our modern world of comfortable luxury travel, when explorers and discoverers are no more than glossy magazine travel writers following well worn trails. Whatever your opinion, what cannot be denied is the incredible adventure of Berserk and her crew…

MICKEY MOUSE WOZ ‘ERE

I’m not sure where I’m going with this particular blog. I could easily come across as a moaning, deep, reflective old goat whilst trying to confess a point that’s been bothering me more and more over the last few weeks. The subject of my increasingly frenzied frustration is Mickey Mouse.

Like everyone I loved Mickey when I was a kid. I watched Mickey and Minnie and I watched the others too. Many years later, the previous Mrs Ungless and I took our daughters to Mickey Mouse’s heartland in Florida and, totally overwhelmed, I booked the same trip the following year too. We had a marvellous and memorable time. I was a Disney convert and eagerly sang along with the Mickey Mouse chorus loving every minute, riding ‘It’s A Small World’ over and over again with my own adoring kids. Somewhere since then everything changed…

Eric Two Corks

Photo: The Mercurial Texan

Eric Two Corks, skipper of Maluhia, was adamant we should go and see the Judge. We could somehow free Horst, skipper of Awenasa, from appearing in the Kona Court. So we rode off in Eric’s car to set things straight and I imagined it rather like two cowboys riding to the Sheriff’s jail to free the condemned outlaw about to be hanged. I saw there was already a rope in the back of the car which, I figured, could be used to free the hapless Horst if things took a turn for the worst. This, I thought, was going to be fun…

David Ungless

Freelance Writer and Media

Honolulu. Sailing the North Pacific.

Wild Alaska Video Production

Too Many Eggs and No Toblerone

New Website Launch

Fisherman’s Friend

On Matters of Laundry

The Cold Debate

The Simple Art of Catching a Fish

MICKEY MOUSE WOZ ‘ERE

Eric Two Corks

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“Who gave you the right to plant your flag and call this land yours? You people give us nothing but misery. You call yourselves our Kings and Governors but you are only the Lords of our suffering.”

Nuuntuuq, The Yukon

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