Hi! We are Jason & Charity, the creators and owners of Shearwater Cove.

Shearwater Cove is the culmination of our shared dream to create a wilderness retreat in the stunning landscape of Alaska’s Kenai Fjords. Building this business from the ground up (quite literally!) hasn’t been easy, but it has been immensely rewarding.

When we met in 2014, Jason already owned the remote property that would become Shearwater Cove, but nothing had been built on it. Within less than a year of dating we decided that ‘if we build it, they will come!’ And with that, we got to work because there was a lot to do. Neither of us had a background in business, but Jason had construction experience and a captain’s license, and Charity had management and communications experience with an ecotourism company in Seward. The rest we would learn along the way.

This is one of the very first photos from building Shearwater Cove featuring our dear friend Jesse repelling off the cliff with a hammer drill to drill holes for the steel supports that would be anchored into the cliff wall to carry our dock beams. If it looks crazy that’s because it was. But crazy was the only choice we had to build a dock so that we could access the property.

Over the summer of 2015 between working full time jobs and boating out to the property any free chance we had, we managed to complete the dock framing so that we had a flat place to store lumber and tools and yurt parts. Our goal was to have one yurt ready to rent by the following summer, but we still had a bridge and several flights of stairs to build before we could even access the first yurt site. Flat land is just not a thing in the Kenai Fjords - it’s all rugged, steep terrain that makes building very challenging.

The catch-22 of remote construction: there is nowhere flat to put stuff until you build the flat place to put the stuff. So until then everything feels a bit chaotic. This is the infant stage of what would become the bridge that crosses the stream just above the dock.

Charity and Izzy work on the bridge posts and beams. Izzy is Jason’s friend from childhood who was instrumental in the early years of building Shearwater Cove.

Despite mud and rain and freezing temperatures, building continues into early winter of 2015. Here Izzy works on the stairs up to the first yurt building site. Jason and Izzy spent weeks camping on the property and working through the notoriously wet and miserable fall weather. Jason is often the one behind the camera which is why he hasn’t been seen yet.

September 24, 2015: The first three beams of the first yurt platform are up. This is HUGE progress in addition to the fact that the sun is shining!

November 2, 2015: We are so close to getting the first yurt erected! At this point Izzy has returned home to Montana. Just Jason and Charity have been working together to finish the platform and get the yurt standing before taking a break for the winter.

On November 4, 2015 we raised the first yurt and then high-tailed it outta there before winter set in. We were exhausted to the bone. We took the winter to recover before getting back to it in April 2016.