SamTime
Aboard either a sailing yacht, Windborne, or a land yacht, WanderBus, Sam is doing his best to get out and about the eastern Caribbean (for now) and the American West.
This is just to share on the following pages some of the images enjoyed during these wanderings.
Once she is launched, Windborne can be tracked via the web site Vesselfinder. Enter her name in the top right search box, look in the dropdown for the Windborne with the British Virgin Islands flag, hit enter, then look left on the site to track her on the map.
The first forays were with WanderBus. And, of course, the first stop has to be at a wind farm. And not just any wind farm. Columbia Gorge. This is the site of my first (albeit unsuccessful) wind development effort. Good site. But, siting conflicts with the local tribe.
But the first real trip was south. Mt. St. Helens….
And the Northern California Coast.
One wind farm isn’t enough. Next trip had to stop by Vancycle, in the wheat desert of north-central Oregon. A site I lusted after earlier on, but then much later helped expand for the firm that eventually bought it. Original turbines below. Newer versions to the right.
From there, I headed east, stopping for a couple of days in Craters of the Moon National Park. The heart of a massive lava flow in central Idaho. Otherworldly place.
From there, a quick stop on the west side of the Wind River range in Idaho. The Winds are the headwaters of the Green River, the main tributary to the Colorado River. Neither this visit nor this photo do the Winds justice. I plan on going back .
And somewhere along the way, I passed by the Foote Creek Rim wind farm. Foote Creek was to us early wind folks THE wind farm site. The westerlies coming down out of the Rockies and flowing out to the Plains just scream over the sharp up-down terrain here. Original machines at this time being replaced (“repowered”) with new, larger equipment.
In June of ‘24, I crewed on a portion of a France-to-Polynesia yacht delivery, from Grenada in the Caribbean to Panama City, via the Caribbean Sea and the Panama Canal. We did our own line handling through the Canal (that’s not me pictured). Long day, but fun. We shared the locks with some big ladies.
And, at some point, I worked in a fishing trip out of Depoe Bay, Oregon, organized by my friend Stu Webster. Lots of wind folks on the trip. Clayton Derby is a fishing machine!
Back to serious vacationing. The Sawtooths and the Upper Salmon River Valley. The Sawtooths offer as striking a vista as I know of, rising straight up out of the valley floor. And the valley is as beautiful as they come.
Sadly, as one encounters often across the West, burns. I drove through miles of the one on the right one to get to the trailhead.
The Desert Southwest. Home of an endless array of wind-sculpted sandstone landscapes and formations.
I started with Canyonlands National Park, a massive area which contains the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers. My former colleague Aaron Zubaty introduced a group of us to it in 2019. I went back, but I have barely scratched the surface.
Interesting hikes across (and through) massive rock, guided only by rock cairns thankfully maintained by the Park Rangers.
And then Arches National Park. Entry has become a bit of a game, but well worth the effort. Amazing what the wind can do to seemingly permanent stone.
The scale of these formations is not done justice by photographs.
Keep your distance.
That is a person there to the left.
Life is not easy here.
In 2025, The Big Kahuna. Grand Canyon. Have not seen it from either rim. Just a 2-week raft trip through it on the river. I will do it again in 2026. This is a place one wants to return to.
Photographs cannot do justice to what it is like to be in this space. And it is a space. The constant, incessant, and viscerally powerful flow of the river is impossible for them to capture.
The first ascending line of rock across the river is the beginning of Grand Canyon.
And, cutting through these stone layers, the river has carved out interesting formations.
Good to get up off the river for some perspective.
The grey is basement rock - schist - and sedimentary layers all the way to the rim.
I didn’t really capture this beautiful glade up off the river…
There is life down here.
The full moon at night can be so bright as to make sleep difficult. The air is that clear.
Yes, those are people in the center of the beach.
For example, you can get up close to a 1.2 BILLION-YEAR break in age in the stone layers. The Great Unconformity. “Basement” metamorphic rock below. Sedimentary above. Yes, there was deposition during that interval, but it was all scraped away by glaciers.
The Little Colorado River just above confluence with the main stem. “Too thick to drink and too thin to plow”.
But it had this wonderful stream flowing through it. ..
Throughout the canyon, one will see how layers of sediment laid down over eons, compressed into stone over eons, and reoriented by uplifts are exposed by the scouring by the river.
Which culminated in this.
One of the farewell views approaching Grand Wash.