Sail Alaska

Wild Alaska Video Production

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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.

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THE WILDERNESS THAT IS CHICHAGOF

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Chichagof Island

 

“Get this… Chichagof Island in southeast Alaska is officially the most unbelievable place on earth. In a recent poll conducted by myself I unequivocally decided there’s not even a close comparison with any other location… and when the poll was taken there was no one around to argue with me anyway. We were all alone, not anyone, nobody even remotely close-by for nearly fifty miles…” Dave

Also consider this… Chichagof Island is nearly the size of Wales back in the UK. There are only four human settlements of any size… Hoonah, Elfin Cove, Pelican and Tenakee Springs of which Hoonah, by far the largest, has only eight hundred and eighty inhabitants. There is also the mysterious Chichagof Gold Mine which no one is sure still exists or not… it’s a ghostly place that only sometimes appears out of the grey mists. These small townships are foremost Tlingit First Nation settlements although those Americans down in the lower forty-eight states who decide enough is enough head this way too. You know the type, pony-tailed with platted silver beards, red-necks toting firearms with enough firepower to take down encircling siege law-enforcement forces dedicated to protecting wider society… they all head for Alaska at some point. So let me tell you just a little more about this wild part of the world that is Chichagof…

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Is This Sailing Race The Toughest In The World?

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Do you know of any other sailboat race where $10,000 in prize money is nailed to a tree on the finish line? Or an endurance race that can take anything from three days to two months to finish, with the boat coming second being awarded a consolation set of ten dollar steak knives?

All the intrepid sailor needs to do to claim their ten grand is race their sailboat seven hundred and fifty miles into the wilds of Alaska, through some of the world’s most treacherous seas and inland passages that are prone to whatever the weather rolling in from the Gulf of Alaska can throw at them. And, just as an aside, twelve knot riptide currents, complete with whirlpools and standing waves bar the way through narrow rapids and misty mountain channels. What’s more, the greatest concentration of hostile grizzly bears and hungry wolves prowl the shorelines, killer whales and ‘dead-head’ trees lurk all of the time in the exceptionally cold waters to remind intrepid racers that catastrophe is only ever moments away. Welcome to the Race to Alaska…

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New Website Launch

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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…

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Sailing on Thin Ice

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Ice flows from the John Hokins Glacier

Ice from John Hopkins Glacier blocking Tarr Inlet

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little did we think we’d see anything like this. From Hoonah, where we’d overwintered, it’s a mere twenty eight sea miles across Alaska’s Icy Straights to the entrance of Glacier Bay.

For those of you who don’t know Alaska well, Glacier Bay is a hefty fifty mile inlet with deep jagged fjords, where remote high mountains meet a shoreline carved out by numerous tidal glaciers. Tidal glaciers are ones that come right down to the sea to calve off huge slabs of towering ice and, incredibly, no less than eleven enormous glaciers grind their way southwards within Glacier Bay. They are spectacular and exciting to see… but the floating bergs and ice fields can be hazardous to a sailboat such as Sänna…

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Fisherman’s Friend

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imageHoonah, 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…

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On Matters of Laundry

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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?”…

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The Cold Debate

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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…

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The Simple Art of Catching a Fish

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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…

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Who Owns the Wilderness?

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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

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…

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MICKEY MOUSE WOZ ‘ERE

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Sänna in Alaska

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…

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NOTTINGHAM COUPLE PREPARE FOR THEIR ULTIMATE SAILING CHALLENGE

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PressRelease

For immediate release

NOTTINGHAM COUPLE PREPARE FOR THEIR ULTIMATE SAILING CHALLENGE

Dave and Marie Ungless are preparing to attempt a transit route through the Arctic’s infamous Northwest Passage

March 2014: The ambition of husband and wife crew Dave and Marie Ungless is to one day complete their sailing circumnavigation of the world west to east against the traditional winds and currents. Their adventure so far has included wild and remote locations such as Eritrea, Sudan, Yemen, Borneo, Indonesia, the North and South Pacific and New Zealand. Now it’s time to prepare for their ultimate challenge and head north to Alaska and then through the Northwest Passage back to the UK.

Experienced sea going sailors with over sixty thousand nautical miles, Dave and Marie have spent the last two years preparing their sailing boat “Sänna” for full circumnavigation eastwards; an unusual and difficult task for a sailing boat against the prevailing winds and currents. Sänna has undergone a refit and various modifications, which include the installation of solar panels, wind generation and a watermaker to provide ‘green’ self sufficiency during her voyage.

Dave Ungless said, “We are currently docked in Hawaii and plan to depart this coming May or June when the North Pacific winter has subsided. We’ll then head north for either the Aleutian Islands or British Columbia in Canada before moving up to Alaska.”

The couple intend to return from the North Pacific to the UK by negotiating the normally ice filled route. The Passage has been ice free for some years but it is not yet consistent enough to be reliable.

Dave Ungless continued, “It’s a challenging opportunity for small sailing yachts like Sänna. This is only possible due to the receding ice pack caused by global warming. Sänna’s aim is to provide pilotage information specifically for sailing vessels.”

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For further information and to follow this journey, please contact:

Dave Ungless: dave@sanna-uk.com or

Karen Randall, Sixothree Marketing: karen@sixothree.co.uk

NOTES TO EDITORS

The Northwest Passage:  The Northwest Passage is the sea route through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America amidst the Canadian Archipelago, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The various islands of the archipelago are separated from one another and the Canadian mainland by a series of Arctic waterways collectively known as the Northwest Passage.

About the Crew

Skipper Dave Ungless:  With over forty thousand miles of ocean sailing, including cold weather voyaging in the northern Baltic and Gulf of Finland, Dave is a qualified Yachtmaster and holds numerous other RYA sailing and navigation qualifications.

His previous extensive experience under sail involves crewing on the round the world Challenger Yachts and owners’ yachts on the north west coast of Scotland and south coast of England. Having been skipper and owner of the sailing vessel Sänna since 2003, Dave spent a number of years in Croatia and Turkey refitting the boat for extended ocean cruising before embarking on the circumnavigating cruise now underway.

Dave’s non sailing experience includes mountaineering and skiing in Scandinavia, Scotland, northern Russia, the Alps and Iceland. In between Dave has owned and sold two successful UK and Finland based business.

First Mate and skipper’s wife Marie Ungless:  Marie’s sailing experience extends to nearly thirty thousand sea miles over a number of the of the world’s oceans. She is RYA qualified to Skipper level and, like Dave, holds numerous other RYA sailing and navigation qualifications. Marie describes herself as being highly practical, skilled in first aid and cool under pressure during challenging conditions.

Joining Dave onboard Sänna in 2005 whilst in the Mediterranean, Marie’s previous water experience includes dinghy sailing, canoeing and advance level scuba diving. She played a large part in the refitting of Sänna in Turkey and Thailand and considers her culinary skills in feeding a hungry crew under any prevailing sea conditions her prime excellence. Marie takes on the key responsibility of teacher when her son Henry spends extended time onboard.

Marie is a skilled skier and climber having travelled extensively in the Alps, Iceland and SE Asia. Her experience as an outward bound Guide leader leading Scouts and Guides in endurance environments serves her well in addition to her jungle survival training in Borneo.

For more information, please visit www.sanna-uk.com

ARCTIC ICE VOYAGE OF THE SAILING VESSEL SÄNNA

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Northwest Passage

PressRelease

For immediate release.

ARCTIC ICE VOYAGE

OF THE SAILING VESSEL SÄNNA

Dave and Marie Ungless are preparing their sailing yacht for the Arctic’s infamous Northwest Passage

March 2014: The ambition of husband and wife crew Dave and Marie Ungless is to one day complete their sailing circumnavigation of the world west to east against the traditional winds and currents. Their adventure so far has included wild and remote locations such as Eritrea, Sudan, Yemen, Borneo, Indonesia, the North and South Pacific and New Zealand. Now it’s time to prepare for their ultimate challenge and head north to Alaska and then through the Northwest Passage back to the UK.

Experienced sea going sailors with over sixty thousand nautical miles, Dave and Marie have spent the last two years preparing their sailing boat “Sänna” for full circumnavigation eastwards; an unusual and difficult task for a sailing boat against the prevailing winds and currents.

Sänna is a German designed sailing yacht. Produced by the well renowned Bavaria production yard, Sänna is a limited edition yacht built to the original owner’s specification in 1999. She is not a standard production boat and has been constructed to the European Class A and CAT1 blue water ocean cruising application. She was purchased by Dave Ungless in March 2003.  Since, Sänna has undergone a refit and various modifications, which include the installation of solar panels, wind generation and a watermaker to provide ‘green’ self sufficiency during her voyage. Electronics and rigging were also extensively modified.

The couple intend to return from the North Pacific to the UK by negotiating the normally ice filled route. The Passage has been ice free for some years but it is not yet consistent enough to be reliable.

Dave Ungless said, “We are currently docked in Hawaii and plan to depart this coming May or June when the North Pacific winter has subsided. We’ll then head north for either the Aleutian Islands or British Columbia in Canada before moving up to Alaska.”

Dave continued, “It’s a challenging opportunity for small sailing yachts like Sänna. This is only possible due to the receding ice pack caused by global warming. Sänna’s aim is to provide pilotage information specifically for sailing vessels.”

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For further information and to follow this journey, please contact:

Dave Ungless: dave@sanna-uk.com or

Karen Randall, Sixothree Marketing: karen@sixothree.co.uk

NOTES TO EDITORS

The Northwest Passage:  The Northwest Passage is the sea route through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America amidst the Canadian Archipelago, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The various islands of the archipelago are separated from one another and the Canadian mainland by a series of Arctic waterways collectively known as the Northwest Passage.

Sänna Specification:  Length: 15 metres (49.9ft). Beam: 4.35 metres (14.3ft). Draft: 2.3 metres (7.5ft). Gross registered tonnage: (GRT) 19 tonnes. Hull construction: GRP sandwich. Hull configuration: fin keel with spade rudder. Propulsion: Volvo Penta 112HP TAMD22P Engine. Mast and Rigging: In mast furling main, cutter rigged with furling gib and furling stay sail. Sail storage: Storm sail, try-sail, genoa head sail, spinnaker sail. Spare main sail. Electronics: Raymarine radar, instruments, navigation and autopilot. Digital Yachts Class B (receive & transmit) AIS. Communications: VHF, Icom SSB, Iridium Satellite phone. Emergency: EPIRB, SART, Dan-buoy and flares.

About the Crew

Skipper Dave Ungless:  With over forty thousand miles of ocean sailing, including cold weather voyaging in the northern Baltic and Gulf of Finland, Dave is a qualified Yachtmaster and holds numerous other RYA sailing and navigation qualifications.

His previous extensive experience under sail involves crewing on the round the world Challenger Yachts and owners’ yachts on the north west coast of Scotland and south coast of England. Having been skipper and owner of the sailing vessel Sänna since 2003, Dave spent a number of years in Croatia and Turkey refitting the boat for extended ocean cruising before embarking on the circumnavigating cruise now underway.

Dave’s non sailing experience includes mountaineering and skiing in Scandinavia, Scotland, northern Russia, the Alps and Iceland. In between Dave has owned and sold two successful UK and Finland based business.

First Mate and skipper’s wife Marie Ungless:  Marie’s sailing experience extends to nearly thirty thousand sea miles over a number of the of the world’s oceans. She is RYA qualified to Skipper level and, like Dave, holds numerous other RYA sailing and navigation qualifications. Marie describes herself as being highly practical, skilled in first aid and cool under pressure during challenging conditions.

Joining Dave onboard Sänna in 2005 whilst in the Mediterranean, Marie’s previous water experience includes dinghy sailing, canoeing and advance level scuba diving. She played a large part in the refitting of Sänna in Turkey and Thailand and considers her culinary skills in feeding a hungry crew under any prevailing sea conditions her prime excellence. Marie takes on the key responsibility of teacher when her son Henry spends extended time onboard.

Marie is a skilled skier and climber having travelled extensively in the Alps, Iceland and SE Asia. Her experience as an outward bound Guide leader leading Scouts and Guides in endurance environments serves her well in addition to her jungle survival training in Borneo.

For more information, please visit www.sanna-uk.com