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Arctic Rafting: Returned
Kongakut River, Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, Alaska, United States

After 15 days on the Kongakut river, we’ve returned to Anchorage via Kaktovik and Fairbanks. We nearly got stranded on Icy Reef on the shore of the Arctic Ocean as a big storm was moving in, but we managed to squeak out and make it home. Below are some photos and a satellite map of the area with the river route and some of our camps marked.

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View Kongakut River in a larger map

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Final Touches: Kongakut River
Fairbanks, Alaska, United States

Car TetrisThe trip is on. I departed PDX at 9.30pm in the dark and chased the sun down by flying north and arrived in Anchorage around midnight where, though it was overcast, it was still dusk out.

Nathaniel Wilder with Sune and Lindsay Tamm picked me up and we stayed up until 2.30am catching up on all the corners of the world we had been to since seeing each other last, fully aware that we had the next 18 days to do this on the river and that we should get some much needed sleep.

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New Gear & Prep for Alaska
United States

While I’ve spent some time on rivers, including a great 18-day trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, I have yet to experience an Arctic River like the Kongakut. I leave for that trip on 19 June and we’ll be on the river for 15 days or so. Follow the adventure LIVE (starting [...]

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Floating the Continental Divide
Panama Canal, Colon, Panama

(c) Cameron L. Martindell/offyonder.com

It was late afternoon when we motored from Shelter Bay Marina to the staging area in Bahia de Limon to await our pilot and extra line-handler. The past two days was a much needed rest after having just sailed over 1,700 miles from the Bahamas, around the western point of Cuba and due south across the Caribbean Sea. It wasn’t a lazy, sit by the pool with a frufy drink kind of rest. Rather it was a change from the ten days of being at sea where a constant watch is kept to ensure there is still wind in the sails, the course is maintained, the crew is rested and fed and collisions of any sort (with other vessels, drift wood, large containers or even land) are avoided.

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Caribbean Sailing
Caribbean Sea, Nassau, The Bahamas

(c) Cameron L. Martindell/offyonder.com

A pod of dolphins escorted us out as we sliced through the electric blue waters, departing Paradise Island near Nassau in The Bahamas. With 15 knots of wind, our jib was enough sail to pull us along through the small swells of water as we headed out to sea. The joy and thrill of embarking on a 10-day, 1,700-mile voyage across the Caribbean Sea glowed from each of the four of us delivering this beautiful 65-foot catamaran sailboat to Panama City.

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Narragansett Fog
Long Island Sound, Rhode Island, United States

We sailed overnight, a full day and overnight again, not quite totally without incident. We found what looked like a nice abandoned pier around 90th Street to tie on to and wait out the ferocious ebb tide before trying to motor our way through Hells Gate. This is essentially where the North River (the Hudson), [...]

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Boat Jockey
Chesapeake Bay to Jersey Shore, Havre de Grace, Maryland, United States

It started off as a one-day job helping move a sailboat down the Jersey Shore. It ended up being three sailboat delivery jobs over the span of a week. When people buy a sailboat, it usually needs to be moved from the previous owner’s slip or the boat yard to it’s new home. Sometimes new [...]

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Hudson (Winter) Sailing
Hudson River, New York City, New York, United States

Shawn and I departed New York City at 6.30am under light wispy clouds in an otherwise clear sky to drive about fifty miles north up the Hudson River. It took all day to get the boat in the water. We originally wanted to catch the early morning ebb. But that didn’t work out. We had [...]

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Sea Kayak Tour
Cypress Island, Puget Sound, Washington, United States

(c) Cameron L. Martindell/offyonder.com

The Dickman family from Pennsylvania came to the Great Northwest looking for a unique adventure that would suit their wide age range of children. With two sets of twins, David and Laura at nine years old, Natalie holding the middle ground at twelve, and the two older twins Amy and Maria, sixteen years of age a piece, they needed something equally stimulating and unburdening for the older to support the younger.

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Rafting the Grand
Colorado River, Grand Canyon, Arizona, United States

(c) Cameron L. Martindell/offyonder.com

How ironic that the pinnacle of whitewater rafting experiences is found over a mile deep into the earth.

As the Colorado River flows through the Grand Canyon, numerous side canyons and rock falls have deposited piles and piles of rocks and boulders to create some of the most notorious whitewater in the northern hemisphere. Because the constraining canyon walls rise thousands of feet above the river, it has no way to go around these impedances. It has no option but to go over these obstacles in a churning, violent, frothy flow. And once we’re in the canyon, we have no option but to navigate our way through these unyielding currents in our little rafts. As one of the earliest river runners of the Colorado in 1869 described it, the water snagged a boat and “whirled it around quick enough to take the kinks out of a ram’s horn.”

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