Gatherings
We use gatherings to explore our relationship to the coasts, the water, and each other.
Island Lab holds gatherings on tall ships we charter, and on our members' own boats for the smaller gatherings that happen more often.
Island Lab holds gatherings on tall ships we charter, and on our members' own boats for the smaller gatherings that happen more often.
From October to February few boats are out, the days are short, the dinners below are long and the water is the clearest of the year.
In late winter the herring spawn turns the shallows milky, and everything that eats arrives with them: sea lions, diving ducks, gulls, eagles in the trees. We go where the spawn is, and count what returns.
Four days in early April 2027 on a tall ship with twenty spaces. This list gauges interest; dates follow.
The spring bloom and grey whales moving north through the Gulf Islands. A weekend to read the year's first growth, and to look at where a second Island Lab could live.
A self-supported kayak expedition along the east coast of Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve, by chart and compass, no resupply and no signal: watercolor sketches, water readings, and the streams by old logging areas.
A week on a tall ship with twenty spaces, from the weekend after the 2027 Wooden Boat Festival. This list gauges interest; dates follow the festival's.
Questions on joining, cost or a trip above. Sean replies within a week.
Or write to sean@islandlab.dev.
Six of us kayaked in to camp on Blake Island and walked its trails, collecting driftwood, fungi, trash and stones. We made with what we found, and then held a small ritual to return it to the island.
Thirty of us sailed out of Port Townsend on the 1913 schooner with Sound Experience, into the Strait of Juan de Fuca and back. We stood watches, cooked, gave twenty talks of five minutes each, and kept a record of the Salish Sea as we found it in 2026.
Six days in the Jumentos Cays on the catamaran Nesi with Kristian and Sabrina: learning to free-dive to ten metres, blue holes on the Bahama Bank, a dolphin and her calf alongside for an hour, a school of jacks out of the blue.