Shore Support

Lady Slipper has received amazing shore support throughout the journey.

My brother-in-law Dave Spoor agreed to be our shoreside emergency coordinator. We file a Coast Guard float plan with Dave and send him our intended route in a GPX file along with our departure, and ETA for each sailing passage. We check in with him when we get in. Well, usually we do, but if we forget, we always get a friendly, “looks like you got in OK” shortly after arriving at our destination. He follows our progress using the Iridium Go Predict Wind tracking and often has an encouraging word. If we ever need coordination with search and rescue, Dave will be our point person and I could think of no one better.

Rick Ruiter, a best friend since grade school, and now a career emergency room doctor, ski patrol MD and SAR MD supports us as our voyage medical advisor. He helped us prep our first aid kits, one for injury and another for sickness. He has been on-call via our satellite communication device. Additionally, we have a Starlink Internet, which gives us the ability to do FaceTime or zoom calls with Rick. We are so thankful and fortunate to have his calm and steady expertise immediately available.

My brother Ivan provides frequent monitoring of our journey and is a consistent sounding board for our many issues and problems. He’s met us at all of our major stops, helping with the hundreds of tasks that build up on a journey of this nature.

Many family members, old friends, new friends and people we meet along the way have various needs and desires to share in our stories and experiences. We try to do this through photos, videos, progress-tracking, Instagram, and our blog. Our sister Trish stepped up to take over the blog and has posted, updated and coerced entries (very pleasantly of course) in support of our social media. At the start of our trip, I’d underestimated the importance of this to staying connected, but Trish knew. It’s been a wonderful part of making this trip real and engaging to share with so many we care about.

I suspect few journeys have more confident and reliable shore support than ours. We are so grateful for this help.