How Our Plans to Sail the World Took Shape amoung glaciers and fjords

Southeast Alaska was not where I expected my life to change. The first time I went there to photograph an elopement, to witness glaciers, and to document a fleeting solstice. What I found instead was a place that rearranged me. The landscape moves slowly but decisively, glaciers carving valleys, tides reshaping shorelines, light stretching long into night. I came north for a single week and left with my course in life quietly altered. Somewhere between rain-soaked forests and tidewater ice, between long light and longer conversations, I fell in love — with a captain, with a sailboat, and with a way of living that required motion. It is not a place you pass through unchanged.

When I look back now, it’s hard to separate my love for Louie from my love for this rugged frontier. They arrived together, braided by glaciers, saltwater, and a steel-hulled sailboat named Arcturus. In that season, I also embraced more fully into the part of myself that feels most alive in motion, anchored only loosely to any one place.

Even before we met, we were both pulled toward distant horizons, carrying a shared restlessness and curiosity about faraway coasts and cultures. From the beginning, there was a sense that our story was never meant to stay contained in one harbor. Alaska was teaching us how to listen, to weather, to tide, to instinct, whilst quietly preparing us for a voyage neither of us had fully named yet.

Our Alaskan Meet Cute

“It all began in December 2021,” Louie likes to say, “when our mutual friends Noah and Garrett asked if I would host their elopement aboard Arcturus for the summer solstice of 2022.” At the time, Louie was running summer sailing charters through his business, Alaska Adventure Sailing. Noah and Garrett also chose me, Lerina, as their wedding photographer — though none of us yet understood that this single decision would quietly reroute our lives.

For the next six months, Louie and I spoke with Noah and Garrett separately as they planned their elopement with our own correspondence, unaware of how intertwined our paths were becoming. “That was the moment that set everything into motion,” Louie says now.

In mid-June of 2022, I woke before sunrise at my cousin’s apartment in Seattle and headed with her to the airport for what I believed would be a once-in-a-lifetime assignment. At Sea-Tac, just before boarding the long and infamous “Milk Run” flight north to Alaska, I met our captain for the first time. Louie had been rerouted onto the flight after a cancellation after he had taken a short trip to New Mexico to attend his cousin's wedding. Already at the gate, coffee in hand, a jolly smile and warm presence that felt immediately disarming, introductions were made between us somewhere between boarding zones.

We landed in Petersburg after stops in Ketchikan and Wrangell, the rainforest thick and impossibly green even from the air. With luggage in tow, we got an immediate taste of the massive tidal swings: arriving at Petersburg Harbor at low tide, it took three people to guide the cart down the ramp, which angled nearly 45 degrees from the parking lot to the docks. From there, we boarded Arcturus, a blue steel-hulled beast of a sailboat that carried a surprising gentleness and coziness, like a wood cabin. Perhaps it was the boat garden in the covered doghouse — which Louie likes to call “the greenhouse” — teeming with nasturtiums, herbs, green onions, and ripening tomatoes, that made her feel so alive and welcoming.

As we departed Petersburg, the sea lay calm and a rainy day softened into rainbows as we headed west through Frederick Sound beneath the long twilight of an Alaskan summer night. Humpback whales surfaced around us, lighting the water with green bioluminescence, each breath igniting the dark like a small, private firework.

The next day we paused briefly at Lord’s Pocket on Payne Island, then woke to the dramatic rise of Baranof Island ahead. We continued on to Warm Springs Bay, where steep slopes disappeared into mist and waterfalls stitched the cliffs together. Docking in the bay, we spotted the bathhouses perched on stilts above the dock, steam drifting into the cool air, with a booming and dramatic raging waterfall crashing into the bay in front of us.

We enjoyed a bachelor-like evening at the upper pools hot springs with the group, taking a short hike to Baranof Lake, which felt much like an alpine lake, though not a far walk from sea level. The next morning, Louie and I returned to the springs for a quiet soak alone – it was there that the attraction between the two of us undeniably sharpened.

We sailed back into Frederick Sound and tucked into Thomas Bay's Sunset Point, hiking the Cascade Creek Trail beneath dripping hemlock and moss-covered rock. In Scenery Cove the next morning, Arcturus rested while we prepared for Noah and Garrett’s solstice ceremony.

The location Louie had picked out for the ceremony was at the terminus of Baird Glacier, and we had to jet boat up a river then weave through a maze of ice to get to the beach we would land on. Being this deep in the wilderness for a wedding ceremony felt simply unreal, and it was the perfect sunny solstice day. Surrounded by still water and calving ice, we held Noah and Garrett’s ceremony on a hill overlooking the glacier — quiet, luminous, unforgettable. That evening, we returned to Arcturus for a gourmet meal prepared by Louie and one of the most memorable cakes I’ve ever tasted, courtesy of The Salty Pantry in Petersburg.

Our final stop that week was visiting LeConte Bay and LeConte Glacier, Louie’s favorite tidewater glacier in Southeast Alaska. Sheer fjord walls rose straight from the sea, stream-like waterfalls pouring down their faces. Seal mothers floated with their pups among the brash ice, utterly at home.

As we motored deeper into the fjord, my mind cracked open at the scale of it all — the glacier spilling into the sea like a frozen cathedral, jagged and blue, rising fifteen stories above us. We cut the engine and sat in silence, listening to the ice snap and groan, gulls circling overhead as bergs rolled and fractured, with ice calving regularly, thunderous and alive. With the sun sliding lower and a cool wind moving across the water, I felt, for the first time, that I understood how landscapes like Yosemite had been carved — slowly and relentlessly by ice. We looked behind us at views of the scenic Epic Valley.

“Back in Petersburg, I fit in one more adventure,” Louie says, laughing. “Jet boating up Petersburg Creek with Lerina — to the mild annoyance of one groom who suspected I was trying to make her miss her flight.” We talked about future adventures and when we would see each other again. “Lerina asked where I would take her if I was to steal her away on the boat” remembers Louie, to which he answered: “Around the world, obviously!”

A Two-Week-Long First Date

Returning to the Lower 48 after that first week aboard Arcturus felt like surfacing from a vivid dream. Something beneath the surface had shifted. I thought I was flying to Alaska for a job — photograph an elopement, explore a wild place, return home. What I didn’t know was that somewhere between boarding zones at Sea-Tac, a Milk Run flight north, and a sailboat waiting in a small Alaskan harbor, the trajectory of my life had begun to bend.
We talked constantly after that, making plans for me to return to Alaska in early fall. Someone once described our relationship as unfolding in a pressure cooker, and that first week was exactly that. By the time it ended, I had fallen in love with Louie, with Alaska, and with a sailboat I would soon call home.

In September, I flew to Sitka for what would become known as our two-week-long first date: sailing from Sitka to Juneau, just the two of us. Roaming around Sitka, I fell even deeper — into the place, and into him. We hiked Harbor Mountain, looking down on scattered islands floating in the deep blue water, and walked through the forest at Totem Park. We soaked at Goddard Hot Springs, steam rising to meet the misty air. We crossed to Kruzof Island, making a loop around St. Lezaria Island, a hot spot for migratory birds and sealife, before anchoring at Fred’s Creek. We climbed Mount Edgecumbe in inclement weather — wind, mist, sideways rain — laughing at the absurdity of it all.

As we made our way north slowly on Kruzof Island, we anchored in Kalinin Bay and hiked across the island to wander across beaches of Sea Lion Cove. This is without a doubt one of the most beautiful stretches of sand in Southeast Alaska: wide and pale, framed by dark forest and rolling surf, the kind of place that makes time feel optional.

Heading toward Juneau, we timed our passage carefully through Sergius Narrows, a stretch notorious for high current. The sun was shining, and we stopped to fish for rockfish, making ceviche for lunch. After we passed through the strait, without warning, a sharp bang echoed from the engine room. Louie emerged after inspecting it, calm but serious: “We’ve lost propulsion” he said. The transmission was offline.

With no engine, we sailed Arcturus all the way back to Juneau on fickle winds and stubborn patience. We learned each other that way — through shared problem-solving and the quiet trust that builds when there’s no easy way out.

Despite the breakdown, those days were filled with beauty: slow miles, shore explorations, and long evenings. It was mid-September, and despite Alaska’s reputation for dreary autumns, the sun broke through at least once each day. We saw massive pods of humpbacks beginning their migration south, and hiked mountain trails where deer and bears moved through the bush.

On our final day, we pulled anchor from Funter Bay with favorable winds, finally, and under full sail passed by Point Retreat Lighthouse — a crossing that felt like an invisible finish line. Docking in Auke Bay with the help of Louie’s Juneau friends felt the same.

Winter in Juneau

I returned to Juneau in February to spend six weeks aboard Arcturus with Louie in Auke Bay Harbor. We spent our days skiing and snowboarding at Eaglecrest Ski Area, wandering frozen beaches, and exploring the ice caves of Mendenhall Glacier, blue light bending through ancient ice.

We spent time “out the road,” north of town, hiking to Blue Mussel Cabin in Berners Bay with Lions Head Mountain looming across the water. I saw the aurora borealis for the first time. Eagles seemed to be everywhere we went, from the harbor to the glacier, soaring, perched, watching. Mornings and evenings were spent walking rocky beaches along Juneau, Auke Bay, and Douglas Island. We stayed in Forest Service cabins with friends, including several nights at Hilda Dam Cabin at Eaglecrest, as Louie prepared for another charter season and I prepared to return to California for the wedding season.

Soon the Alaskan winter turned to spring, and I found myself coming back up Alaska any chance I could to enjoy a little bit of the local culture at festivals like Alaska Folk Festival in Juneau, Little Norway Festival in Petersburg, and Beer Fest in Haines. On our transit up to Haines, I'll never forget sailing past the iconic Eldred Rock Lighthouse, perched atop a rock in the middle of the channel surrounded by snowcapped mountain peaks.

A Summer engagement

“In mid-summer, we planned a more ambitious trip along the outer coast of Southeast Alaska,” Louie says. We met in Yakutat and sailed behind Hubbard Glacier into Russell Fjord, slipping past walls of fractured blue ice that groaned and cracked in the long summer light. The glacier rose like a frozen wall at the fjord’s head — ancient, creased, impossibly alive — sending bergs the size of houses drifting silently past our steel hull. The water there held a milky turquoise glow, cold and luminous, as if lit from beneath.

From there, we turned south along the wild outer coast, where the Gulf of Alaska breathes against a raw shoreline and forests lean toward the sea. It was my first visit to Lituya Bay — a place of staggering beauty and uneasy history – that we would later visit on the first leg of our big adventure (read our posts "Call of the Outer Coast: Sailing from Juneau to Yakutat" and "Navigating the Icy Giant: Hubbard Glacier & Russell Fjord") . Guarded by steep, muscular headlands and notorious for the tallest tsunami ever recorded, the bay felt both protective and watchful. Inside its narrow entrance, the water lay glassy and calm, reflecting mountains that seemed too large to belong to the same world as our small boat.

Mountain Views from the Doghouse of Arcturus

We soaked at White Sulfur Hot Springs, steam rising into cool coastal air while the tide slipped quietly through nearby inlets. The mineral scent clung faintly to our skin as eagles wheeled overhead and the forest pressed close and green around us. After leaving our anchorage in the reflective Mirror Harbor, we retraced the steps of our first date in Kalinin Bay, where low tide reveals ribbons of sand and the mountains hold their blue shadows late into evening. We wandered Sea Lion Cove once more, the air sharp with salt and kelp.

Later, we sailed past Mount Edgecumbe on a clear evening, its volcanic cone rising perfectly symmetrical against a sky washed in gold. The sun slipped toward the horizon, casting long ribbons of light across the water as Sitka came slowly into view — a small harbor at the edge of wilderness, tucked between mountain and wide open sea.

“In Sitka, I had a surprise for Lerina,” Louie recalls. He had decided to propose on the summer solstice — exactly one year from the day we met. He flew my mom up to visit, and his mom, sister, her partner, and his nephew would be joining the boat in Sitka for a family trip aboard Arcturus.

On a clear solstice day, we walked together to a quiet beach in Sitka, Mount Edgecumbe rising across the water, its dark slopes softened by distance and light. The tide breathed in and out against smooth stones. The sky felt endless — pale, lingering, unwilling to turn toward night. “With our families there to witness,” Louie says, “I asked Lerina to marry me.” I said yes, of course.

Tracy Arm

Later that summer, I returned once more to Alaska to attend a friend’s wedding and joined a several-day trip into Tracy Arm, another first for me, and a place that holds a particular gravity in Southeast Alaska.

Tracy Arm is a fjord that seems intent on drawing you inward. Mile after mile, its walls rise steep and sheer from dark water, waterfalls unraveling down polished stone, the scale of it slowly rearranging your sense of distance and time. As we motored deeper into the fjord, two orca whales appeared alongside us, pacing the boat with effortless grace. They stayed for hours, surfacing and diving in a quiet rhythm, hunting as they moved through the narrowing corridor of ice and rock.

Watching them disappear and reappear against the vastness of the fjord, I felt again that familiar hum of Southeast Alaska — the sense that you are passing through something alive and ancient, a place that allows you entry only if you are willing to slow down and pay attention. We paid a visit to both North Sawyer and South Sawyer Glaciers, marveling in how much contrast can coexist between two places so close together.

Arcturus at North Sawyer Glacier, Tracy Arm Fjord

Second Winter in Alaska

As autumn settled in, we realized we were ready for something bigger. We planned a summer exploring South Central Alaska, setting our sights on Prince William Sound, Kenai Fjords, Cook Inlet, Kodiak Island… places Arcturus had never been. Instead of retracing the coast home, we decided to cross the Gulf of Alaska back to Sitka, building in a four- to five-day nonstop passage with night watches to test whether long-distance sailing was truly for us.

We agreed that crossing the Gulf would decide our next step. If it went well, we’d continue on to Mexico, a commitment that would mean weeks at sea to return north if that’s what we chose. Or perhaps, if we were continuing feeling ambitious, we would choose to cross the vast pacific ocean to French Polynesia and the Pacific Islands.

That winter, I moved my belongings to Alaska via the state ferry, consolidating our lives into one place on land while we prepared for departure. We spent snowy days enjoying winter, skiing and snowboarding, and staying in more cabins as our April departure with Arcturus from Juneau approached. The Amalga Cabin became my favorite, having snatched a rare reservation and spending a sunny afternoon and starlit chilly night there, wondering if winter was nearly over, only to awake to a blanket of snow the next morning.

A Summer Solstice Wedding

In June of 2024, we left Arcturus resting in the quiet coves of Prince William Sound and flew back to Juneau for a wedding that felt less like an event and more like a gathering of tides. We called it a solstice, summer-camp–themed, renegade Alaskan wedding – a loose, joy-filled week rooted in the same spirit of exploration that had shaped our love. Since we had fallen in love while wandering Southeast Alaska, it felt only right to promise ourselves to one another there.

Before the ceremony, we slipped away by helicopter to Mendenhall Glacier. The machine lifted us out of the green and into the blue, trading forest for ice. Standing together on the glacier, ancient and quietly moving beneath our feet, we exchanged our vows — just the two of us, the wind, and the slow language of ice that has been shaping this landscape for millennia. It felt grounding and expansive all at once, a reminder of how small we were, and how intentionally we were choosing one another.

Later, our community gathered with us at Eagle Beach, where the ceremony unfolded on the open shore overlooking Lynn Canal, the snowcapped Chilkat Mountains rising across the water. Friends and family formed a loose circle between forest and sea, the kind of setting that asks very little of you except honesty. That night, we celebrated in the woods — music, laughter, bare feet, and firelight — under a sky that never truly went dark, only softening from dusk into dawn.

Louie & Lerina’s Summer Solstice Wedding

The days around it blurred into the best kind of summer rhythm: hiking forest trails, paddleboarding quiet coves, canoeing and rafting the Eagle and Herbert Rivers. When it was time, we hugged everyone goodbye, flew back to Prince William Sound, and stepped once more aboard Arcturus, carrying the momentum of the solstice with us as we continued north toward the Kenai Fjords.

Returning to Southeast

Returning to Southeast Alaska aboard Arcturus in August 2024 felt like a homecoming before an even grander adventure south, a pause taken not to linger, but to look closely, to remember where everything had begun. We traveled to Sitka, Petersburg, and Ketchikan with my mom aboard, revisiting the places that had shaped our relationship.

Humpbacks Bubblenet feeding near Petersburg

Before heading south for good, we returned to our favorites — Baranof Warm Springs, LeConte Glacier, quiet corners of familiar towns, and beloved spots like The Salty Pantry in Petersburg. As we prepared to sail toward British Columbia, the West Coast, and Mexico, we realized we weren’t venturing into entirely new territory. Alaska had already taught us the essential lessons: how to move with weather and uncertainty, how to listen, how to trust a vessel, a place, and each other. Sailing away didn’t feel like leaving — it felt like continuing a conversation that had begun years earlier, among glaciers and rain, and was now carrying us outward, across the wider world.