We’re continuing the Crew’s Log, first started during our return to the Gulf of California—a running mix of updates, photos, and messages from the crew and team as the Pacific Northwest expedition unfolds.
Entries are posted in near real time, with the most recent at the top.
SUNDAY, APRIL 26, 2026
Jenni Johnson
18:16 – We are starting to round Cape Mendocino. Phil and I just took over the watch from Capt. Paul and Trip. Fueling up on stir fry and plums as we slowly hobby horse our way north.
Captain Paul
15:15 – Life out here is inspiring; feeling the legacy!
13:48 – Last evening in the fading daylight, as we sailed north outside the San Francisco Bay entrance and Farallon Islands, the sea surface was alive with predators and prey. Humpback Whales viciously slapping the surface with pectoral fins and tails, while all manner of sea birds shared in the feast.
Dolphins splashed and circled wildly, and a massive Humpback Whale matched our pace 50 meters out, perhaps wondering if our shiny new black hull paint suggested we were some kindred sea mammal.
As the last vestige of daylight penetrated the sea surface, Trip was at the rail outside the starboard wheelhouse door. Staring down into the water, he was startled to see a large set of open jaws lined with glistening white teeth seemingly suspended just below the surface. As he watched from the Western Flyer deck, the creature closed its jaws and descended into the dark depths below. Maybe as John Steinbeck surmised in The Log From The Sea of Cortez, “Sparky and Tiny do not question the Old Man of The Sea”, and now neither does Trip” for they have looked at him.”
12:41 – At noon on our second day of the run the sky broke overhead, the sea no longer gray now bright blue with whitecaps streaming off the wave crests – and a lone Black-Footed Albatross pacing us in long soaring sweeps of the sea on either side.
12:28 – [Hows the weather looking at Cape Mendocino?]
I haven’t been on the computer. Tom sent me some info @ 0400: winds moderate around Mendocino, but steep seas to 8 ft about what we have now. We will be there at 6:00 pm. It gets worse then, so our timing is good!
Jenni is doing well, logging an observed 15 whales and small pod of Pacific White Sided Dolphins at 0815.
11:40 – We’ve been hanging on through watch and checks. No sit down meals or much eating at all. Gray sea and sky. But around 0500 the nearly full moon lit the seascape for an hour before setting!
08:58 – Phil Sconce – Good morning! Short steep seas all last night and this morning. However, it has been beautiful. Lots of birds, whales, and a small pod of dolphins. Making good time.
06:42 – Captain Paul – Slowed down during the night by seas. Doing better since daylight.
Saturday, April 25, 2026
14:26 – Captain Paul – That was a nice send-off from the fuel float! I think the Flyer took to the seas with extra vigor after being waved off by Carol Stenbeck’s alter ego. It was a real thrill to bend our course northward and begin the return voyage to the Pacific Northwest. The swell and cool misty drizzle we drive into leave no doubt as to our destination! We are edging offshore into deep waters about 12 miles west of Point Ano Nuevo and will shape our course passing west of the San Francisco Bay entrance and the Farallon Islands this evening.
09:24 – Sherry Flumerfelt – The crew and the Western Flyer have just taken off on our second expedition, this time to the Pacific Northwest. I was feeling a little nostalgic sending them off – sad to see them go, even though I’ll be meeting them in Oregon in ten days. It reminded me, once again, of the passage in The Log from the Sea of Cortez as the Flyer was leaving Monterey:
The moment or hour of leave-taking is one of the pleasantest times in human experience, for it has in it a warm sadness without loss. People who don’t ordinarily like you very well are overcome with affection at leave-taking. We said good-by again and again and still could not bring ourselves to cast off the lines and start the engines. It would be good to live in a perpetual state of leave-taking, never to go nor to stay, but to remain suspended in that golden emotion of love and longing; to be missed without being gone; to be loved without satiety. How beautiful one is and how desirable; for in a few moments one will have ceased to exist.
The book also describes bringing “truckloads of food.” As you can see from the photos below, our crew is not wanting for food, thanks to the generosity of our friends Alex Castanos, Amy and Michael Ponce, and Pat Webster (with sourdough straight out of the oven). They also came by Moss Landing to send us off. We are deeply grateful!
Wishing our crew fair winds and following seas.
