Trawler Life

Shilshole Marina — The Voyage Home

Thursday, May 26, 2022 • 6 min read

Kicking back in the cockpit of Indiscretion on this fine May evening, I've been thinking about how life has a way of circling back on itself in strange, unexpected ways.

We've been settled in our new slip at Shilshole Marina in Seattle for a month now as we finalize the sale of our Vashon Island home. After all the frenetic activity involved in readying a house to sell, it feels good just to be still and observe the hustle and bustle that surrounds us here, in what surely must be the very center of the trawler universe.

Shilshole Marina is home to nearly 1,500 slips and one of the world's largest communities of liveaboard boaters. Every marine service imaginable can be found within a five-minute drive to nearby Ballard. What once was a five-hour trip to have the boat hauled out at Seaview Boatyard can now be accomplished without even leaving the breakwater.

And then there's the community. We find ourselves surrounded by kindred spirits who have gravitated to a seafaring lifestyle that most can't begin to understand. I have this feeling that we've slipped through a portal to an alternate universe where it's perfectly normal to sell your house and move on a boat, to laugh maybe a little too much, to enjoy a dockside bagpipe concert while you're sipping your morning coffee on the flybridge, and to fall into new friendships with people you just met but feel like you've known your whole life. We have found our tribe.

This spirit of community has even infected the marina staff, who, by decree, are charged with throwing up obstacles and rules and prohibitions.

Last week, I changed the oil on all three engines on Indiscretion as part of our preparation for summer cruising. The marina offers on-site oil recycling, but a large red sign near the tank proclaims a limit of five gallons of oil. I had close to nine gallons. Here we go, I thought.

The oil tank was padlocked, so I went to ask for the key at the office. They would have someone meet me at the tank shortly. I pushed my dock cart with its two waste oil containers the 200 yards to the north-end of the marina. By the time I arrived, the tank was already unlocked, and the marina staff person was getting back into her Port of Seattle truck. I thanked her and told her I would lock up when I finished. She smiled, welcomed me to the marina, and drove off.

As I carried the first five gallon container to the tank, I watched the truck slowly reverse course out of the corner of my eye. The truck stopped next to me and the window rolled down. Here it comes.

"I forgot to mention," she said. "There's a separate area on the south end of the marina that you can safely dispose of coolant, bilge water, old fuel, and batteries in case you ever need that." She smiled, waved and drove off.

We've definitely entered the multiverse.

Selling the house, moving aboard the boat, and arriving here at Shilshole marks an exciting new chapter for us, but it's also a return to our beginning.

Lisa and I met playing pool in a dive bar not five miles from here. Seattle has has changed a lot in thirty years, but that bar on Stone Way — The Pacific Inn Pub — still looks the same.

Looking south through the forest of masts, I can make out the very apartment that Lisa and I shared when we were first married 25 years ago. Neither of us were boaters then, but an extra allotment of saltwater in our veins must have drawn us here to the shore.

I recall watching boat traffic on the ship canal over beers at the long gone Bait Shop Cafe. A glorious wooden trawler glided by, and though we didn’t know stem from stern, the possibilities of far flung adventure did not escape our rapt attention.

Across the fairway from us lies a small fleet of Seattle Sailing Club sailboats. I enjoy watching the crews of new sailors take to sea each evening. I'll admit my heart races a little when a novice skipper backs a J-105 into the fairway, coming out hot, sometimes uncomfortably close to a collision without casting a single backwards glance.

I went sailing for the first time at that very club in 1997. I learned the parts of the rig and how to tie a bowline in the cockpit of a 26-foot Capri sloop tied up less than 100 feet away from where I now sit. It took just one afternoon on Shilshole Bay to ignite a lifelong passion for sailing. I can still remember the exhilaration I felt as the sound of the engine faded away and the boat heeled and shot forward, my grip fastened to the tiller as if by electric shock, my whole being immersed in the connection between wind, sail and rudder.

That afternoon sail, which soon resulted in the purchase of our own Ericson 35 sailboat, also marked the end of our time at Shilshole. We moved to Vashon Island to start a family and a new life in the country.

The Ericson made way for a succession of boats over two decades that taught me the rules of the road, the ways of the sea, the art of sail trim to gain an extra half knot through the water, the fickleness of marine engines, the dangers of singlehanded sailing.

Truth be told, my life should have ended twenty years ago. Alone in a remote anchorage, I fell overboard into a fast running current in 42 degree water. No life jacket. No one else on board to assist. Through sheer luck, a keen-eyed boater plucked me out of the water as I drifted out to sea and certain death. A guardian angel took pity on me that fateful morning, and I got a second chance at life.

Over the many years of sailing out of Vashon, we made a few stops here at Shilshole, but never longer than a day or two. It feels decadent to call this our home, like we've taken a permanent suite at a luxury hotel.

The fact is, we don't truly live here. With the closing of the sale of our house a few days away, we are anxious to put some nautical miles under our keel without worrying about how high the grass is or what home repair project might be waiting.

Keeping this slip at Shilshole gives us the perfect home base for expeditions through these beautiful Pacific Northwest waters, and yet still have a place to rest up, lick our wounds, and draw upon the finest trawler marine services in the world as the need arises.

But first, let me take in this quiet moment of reflection to simply enjoy the warmth of the setting sun and give thanks for all the many tacks and gybes that carried us to this special place, here and now.

A New Life of Indiscretion

Tuesday, April 19, 2022 • 6 min read

A sea change is underway for Indiscretion and her crew. In the span of three cold, dark and rainy months here in the Pacific Northwest, we have decided to shake things up in four significant ways.

First, we are selling our waterfront home here on Vashon Island. We’ve lived in this sprawling farmhouse for twenty-three years and raised our family here on this beautiful island. We’ve made lifelong friends and put down roots that run very deep. But keeping an older home on acreage no longer fits our vagabond plans of exploring distant ports by boat. The children that made this house a wonderful family home have grown up and moved thousands of miles away. We have retired from our professional careers, and nothing but familiarity and habit hold us to any particular place. For everything, there is a season, and we think it’s time to cast off the bowlines to chase the next chapter in our lives.

[caption id=“attachment_1118” align=“alignleft” width=“800”] The Family Home[/caption]

Second, we have moved aboard Indiscretion. Shifting from a 4,000 square feet home to a 43-foot trawler requires an adjustment, but the changes are welcome and comforting as we look back on our three weeks of life aboard. Everything on a boat has at least one vital purpose, which appeals to the side of me that craves tidiness and compactness. While waterfront living is nice, living on the water is even better. When your driveway is a dock, and your neighbors are boaters, you can’t help but smile.

[caption id=“attachment_1116” align=“alignleft” width=“800”] Boat neighbors are the best.[/caption]

Third, we are relocating Indiscretion from Vashon Island to Seattle as our official home port. After years of waiting, our number came up for a permanent slip at Shilshole Marina, which boasts of one of the largest liveaboard communities in the world. We’re excited to return to Ballard, where the two of us started our life together so many years ago.

Fourth, we’re building a winter home in Arizona in a 55+ community called Victory at Verrado, which is about 30 minutes west of Phoenix. This was the missing puzzle piece in creating our new hybrid lifestyle, and perhaps the biggest surprise, since the last time I checked, there definitely isn’t any oceanfront property in Arizona.

Summers on the boat, winters in Arizona

We originally planned to take the boat down the coast to Mexico for the winter season and reverse course each spring to the Pacific Northwest. However, we struggled with the idea of leaving our house empty over the damp and cold winters as we weren’t ready to call Indiscretion our permanent home. We briefly considered moving up to a larger Nordhavn for more creature comforts and space — I have a fondness for the beautiful Nordhavn 60 — but it simply wasn’t practical. Everything grows exponentially more complicated and expensive as you move up in size. As an expedition trawler, the Nordhavn 43 is perfect for us.

We also fretted over the uncertainties and discomfort of open-ocean voyaging, particularly the trip back north along the Pacific Coast, aptly named the Baja Bash. The boat could handle it; the weak link is most assuredly the crew.

One early idea was moving south. Lisa grew up in Southern California. She has family in Costa Mesa, and now our daughter lives in Los Angeles. “Let’s sell the house and buy a condo in Newport Beach,” she suggested about a year ago. “We can keep Indiscretion at Dana Point.”

My gut reaction was immediate and emphatic. No. I love Southern California weather, and it would be good to live closer to family, but the cruising opportunities there are too limited. Even after twenty years of boating, I realized that we haven’t even scratched the surface of the destinations available to us right here in the Northwest. A near-endless array of pristine waterways and protected anchorages from the south end of Puget Sound to the northern reaches of the inside passage to Alaska would take a lifetime to explore. This little ship can take us safely and comfortably to destinations that few get a chance to visit: the West Coast of Vancouver Island, the Sunshine Coast, Desolation Sound, Princess Louisa Inlet, the Broughton Archipelago, Prince William Sound … No, we have more to see here.

[caption id=“attachment_1121” align=“aligncenter” width=“525”] So many cruising opportunities (Source: Salish Sea Pilot).[/caption]

So, a new plan has emerged that checks all our boxes: we spend half the year living aboard Indiscretion and the other half in Arizona.

We’ll cruise on Indiscretion full-time from May through October during the most beautiful weather the Pacific Northwest offers. Six months is ample time to see our friends on Vashon and still explore British Columbia and the far reaches of Southeast Alaska. In keeping with an expedition mindset, six months also seems like the perfect amount of time to squeeze the best part of living within the confined spaces of a boat without feeling burned out.

When the weather begins to turn in October, we’ll either winterize the boat at Shilshole with a vessel watch service or sublease the slip and haul out in Anacortes (we’re still deciding that part) and make the three-day drive to Arizona.

Why Arizona? We love the glorious winter weather. A lower cost of living and tax burden also helps. And importantly, we’ll be within driving distance of our kids in Los Angeles and Colorado Springs.

Our new home requires little maintenance and is in a community with plenty of leisure activities. I am looking forward to wearing flip-flops and short sleeves in January while I plot and scheme our cruising itinerary for the coming year.

Six months of warm weather, desert hikes, flushing the toilet without worrying about the current level of the black water tank, pickleball, bad golf, Seattle Mariners baseball spring training, and exploring the town of Verrado in our golf cart is just enough time to begin pining once again for the greens and blues of Northwest boat life. We’ll lock up the house in early May and make our way back to Indiscretion for another season.

[caption id=“attachment_1122” align=“alignleft” width=“800”] Happy snowbirds[/caption]

As new snowbirds, I know we’re following the same well-trodden path as many like-minded Washingtonians grown tired of the winter rain and gloom. Yet, I can’t help but feel we’ve found a way to follow the sun with our summers aboard Indiscretion that still breaks a little from tradition.

How long can we keep up this hybrid trawler-desert lifestyle? I don’t know, but I’d sure like to find out.

[caption id=“attachment_1115” align=“alignleft” width=“800”] The new back porch.[/caption]

The Gales of November

Monday, November 15, 2021 • 9 min read

We’re in the middle of a wet, windy month here in the Pacific Northwest. A weather phenomenon known as a “bomb cyclone” brought sustained winds of 30 knots and gusts up to 50 knots earlier this month. Since then, successive weather systems, aptly called atmospheric rivers, have pummeled Puget Sound, bringing rain and high winds almost every day. Today is no exception: a new storm has knocked out power to our entire island, so we’ve added the steady hum of our noisy generator to the whistling of 40-knot winds and the percussion of rain strafing the windows.

It is said a mariner’s plans are written in sand at low tide. We’ve already canceled two trips because of deteriorating weather this month. A friend of ours, who rode out the cyclone on his boat up in the San Juan Islands, teased me when I mentioned our change of plans.

“You’re in a Nordhavn! That boat can handle anything,” he chuckled.

He’s right. Nordhavn trawlers are built for heavy weather, with many open ocean crossings under their collective keels. I didn’t cancel our plans because of any limitations of the boat. It’s crew discomfort I fret about.

I recall a conversation about this with the skipper of Epoch, a Nordhavn 47. Scott had graciously welcomed us aboard, back when we were first looking at trawlers, and we enjoyed our first glimpse of one of these beautiful yachts. He shared his plans of taking Epoch down the coast to Mexico and beyond (he and Abby are now cruising the Eastern Seaboard aboard Orenda, a Nordhavn 55). We commended Scott on his selection of such a seaworthy vessel, capable of handling just about any sea conditions.

“I hope to never find myself in the really bad stuff,” he said. “If I do, it means I screwed up somewhere in my planning.”

I like Scott’s way of thinking. It’s nice to have the rough weather capabilities of an ocean-going trawler — just in case — along the lines of buying life insurance. I hope not to require that anytime soon either.

Steady As She Goes

While I do my best to avoid heavy weather, I find I enjoy myself when we’re in the thick of it. I like the feeling of a heavy sea, the sounds of various things shifting in the lurch of a wave, stomach muscles tensing from the pitching fore and aft, the fountains of spray and green water that flood the foredeck ahead of the Portuguese Bridge. I feel especially fond of our little ship as she slides through the whipped-up waves and wind, keeping us safe and warm inside the pilothouse.

Indiscretion underway in a fresh gale

I’ve been caught with too much sail up during squalls in our sailboats, and the feeling then was different: a mix of adrenalin-fueled fear and exultation, my feet braced against the coaming as the boat heeled with the gusts to an astonishing angle and the rig groaned under the pressure of the wind. Sailing seven miles an hour in a gale feels like a high speed car chase on the freeway.

Our watery world on the trawler is mostly insulated from the extremes of wind and waves. Without gauges to inform me, it’s hard to tell if the wind is blowing fifteen knots or thirty. Yet, docking this trawler in high winds does bring me squarely into the present moment. I move up to the flybridge for these occasions for better visibility while Lisa takes her position in the cockpit at the far stern of the boat to handle dock lines. We talk through our Eartec headsets, but I feel a world apart from her up here. I’m exposed to the wind and weather, which shakes me from any lethargy I might have felt in the cozy confines of the pilothouse. I scan the basic instruments on the flybridge dash: an electronic chart, water depth, boat speed, and wind speed, but from this elevated perch, I have all the data I need swirling around me: the height and shape of the waves, the boat’s progress through the water toward the approaching marina, the feel of the wind on my cheek.

Any uncertainty I harbored in trip planning or assessing forecasts vanishes. For 99% of my time aboard the trawler, I am as skeptical and doubting as Mr. Spock, always scanning for trouble. But put me at the helm during an approach to a windy dock, and I’m suddenly a brash Captain Kirk piloting the Enterprise through an uncharted nebula. In a life that’s usually ordered and controlled, docking in high wind brings a raw wildness, like driving down a mountain road in snow and ice with shoddy brakes. Anything can happen, often with onlookers. “Steady as she goes, Mr. Sulu,” I sometimes mutter as we close with the solidity of the windswept dock. Lisa laughs when she hears this on the headset, but it’s a nervous laugh.

Luckily, in our three years of trawler ownership, we’ve managed to avoid the docking mishaps my worrisome imagination had envisioned. Indiscretion’s bow and stern thrusters have saved the day a few times. Still, I’d much rather avoid the whole drama if at all possible. Hence our keen interest in weather forecasts.

Windy, the Great Sage of Wind Forecasts

I used to roll my eyes at the comically unreliable weather forecasts of the nightly news. That sure has changed. An explosion of meteorological observation data fed into sophisticated computer models has vastly improved the accuracy of weather predictions, making even long-range forecasts pretty insightful. We rely on the weather app Windy for our forecasting and trip planning and pay extra for its premium features for the more frequent updates and by-the-hour forecast granularity. It’s been well worth it.

As an example, Windy predicted 42 knots of wind would greet us on our planned arrival at a Nordhavn Rendezvous in Poulsbo last May. Yet, the event was still ten days away.

“How can they possibly predict anything that far in advance?” I scoffed when Lisa pointed out the forecast. “Let’s watch it. I’m sure it will change.”

Three days later, with the rendezvous now a week away, a wind advisory remained in effect: 42-44 knot gusts at the time we planned to arrive. The Poulsbo Windy forecast became our morning topic of conversation over coffee.

Windy was still predicting 40+ knot winds as we got within four days of the event, which was enough prognostication for me. I called the marina and changed our reservation to get there a day early to be safe.

We arrived at the lovely Poulsbo Marina in dead calm. We were the first of more than forty Nordhavn trawlers to attend this biggest-ever gathering. Backing a 46-foot trawler into a 30-foot slip can be interesting, so I was glad to perform this docking without dozens of more experienced trawler captains commenting on my technique from the quay.

We woke the next morning to a beautiful sunny day. Zero wind. Could Windy have got it wrong, we wondered?

Not a breath of wind stirred at 10 am. At noon, a little wind began to ripple the fairways of the marina. But by 2 pm, gale force winds out of the south arrived exactly as Windy had predicted. Indiscretion groaned at her dock lines in 40-knot gusts as we hustled from dock to dock, helping arriving boats get safely tied up. Landing a 100,000 pound trawler gives you a new perspective on the sheer weight of these beasts. You can shove all you want, but no amount of muscle is going to fend off a full displacement vessel pinned to a dock in a blow. A few boats in the anchorage drug their anchors that afternoon as gale-force winds tore through Liberty Bay. Only the heroics of the marina crew in a skiff prevented the collision of a dragging sailboat with a very expensive Nordhavn trawler on an end-tie of the dock.

It still astonishes me that a weather app predicted this gale a full ten days ahead of time. So much so that we now think of Windy as an essential member of the crew. We’ve encountered a few false positives when the high predicted gusts failed to materialize, but I can’t recall a time when we had high winds that Windy didn’t anticipate. I’m sure there are other excellent weather forecasting apps (we have friends who swear by PredictWind), and an iPhone app is no replacement for an experienced weather router for ocean passages, but I won’t sail anywhere these days without checking Windy first.

I Think I Got Cabin Fever

I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest for most of my life, and yet I can’t remember a longer stretch of wet, stormy weather. We manage to get out and walk the dogs along our island trails during breaks in the rain, but it’s been a full month since we’ve gone anywhere by boat — our longest time on land in a long, long while. While we’ve remained in port, boating friends of ours have continued to ply these windswept waters without shipwreck or other calamity. Perhaps they carry on in blissful ignorance of the looming wind and weather. More likely, they know and don’t care. Ships weren’t made for safe harbors after all.

One of the benefits that comes with retirement is a greater sense of patience. We don’t have the same constraints that would otherwise force us into sailing in inclement weather because of rigid schedules, the bane of every mariner. Taking the dogs ashore three times a day in a rain-and-wave-soaked tender makes us both pause and reconsider. Do we really want to go out in this?

But maybe, just maybe, our fortunes are about to change. This morning’s forecast calls for two more days of high winds with a chance that things might settle down after that. The mere prospect of blue skies and calm seas lifts my spirit. With a decent weather window, we could head for the southern reaches of Puget Sound, or turn the bow north to enjoy the San Juan Islands in the off season. Feeling the thrum of that big Lugger engine beneath me and the gentle roll of a boat underway is the perfect antidote for this claustrophobic stretch of land-based life.

As Aristotle once counseled, “patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.” Let that please be true!

Fall Cruising on Hood Canal

Tuesday, October 12, 2021 • 6 min read

The crew of Indiscretion achieved a matrimonial milestone this month — our 25th Wedding Anniversary. This is remarkable, not only because our marriage has lasted far longer than the statistical average, but also because our friends all expected this spur-of-the-moment marriage to dissolve within six months of our elopement in Greece. There had been a large quantity of Ouzo consumed the night before we wrote out marriage vows on a rocky outcropping on Skiathos, so even we wondered early on how this would all work out.

We decide to celebrate our anniversary at Alderbrook Resort and Spa on the southern end of Hood Canal. We could have driven to this beautiful resort from our home on Vashon Island in about an hour, but what would be the fun in that? Instead, we would travel there by boat, which requires voyaging about seven hours north to the entrance of Hood Canal, and then heading south for another seven hours. Such is life at seven knots.

On our way north, we stop for the night in Eagle Harbor on Bainbridge Island. With the cooler October weather, the crowds of boaters we encountered in the high season have vanished. We tie up to the city dock in Eagle Harbor, where we join just one other boat. By late afternoon, another six boats traveling together from Port Ludlow arrive, but there is still a couple of open spots on the dock. Ah, fall cruising!

From Eagle Harbor, we push on for Hood Canal. We consider stopping at Port Ludlow, a favorite waypoint of ours and conveniently located at the entrance to the canal, but the weather forecast for the following day predicted high winds, and we want to make more progress on such a fine, calm day.

In all our years of northwest boating, this is our first time cruising Hood Canal. Part of the reason is the limited clearance under the bridge itself. Roughly 50 feet of clearance exists on the bridge's eastern span, too close for comfort for our former sailboat’s 49-foot mast. The bridge does open for large ships, but it's a hassle. Besides the bridge, the glacial-carved canal itself is extremely deep — some 500 feet even close to shore — limiting the number of suitable anchorages along this pristine 50-mile stretch of waterway.

We pass under the Hood Canal bridge on a beautiful, calm fall day. My grandfather owned a home about a mile from the bridge, and I spent my summers there as a kid, beach-combing on that sandy beach, throwing rocks, sitting around driftwood campfires while my grandfather played the accordion, feeling like life went on forever. He was the captain of a small ferry boat that took two or three cars and a few passengers across the canal where the bridge is now, and I of course adored him. Most of the ideals of how life ought to be came from that man and those summers — moving our family to an island, spending all my free time messing around on boats, and the decision to buy this trawler — all can be traced back in some way to those years. It's funny how we attempt to recreate the carefree bliss of childhood.

After a full day of cruising, we pull into Pleasant Harbor, a popular destination about halfway down the canal. We arrive on a rising tide to navigate the narrow, shallow entrance and soon find ourselves inside a well-protected, glassy bay. We tie up to the state park just past the harbor entrance. The dock has plenty of room and is free for us since we have an annual pass with the State, but we discover there aren't any good walking trails for the dogs. We walk down the highway with cars speeding by closer than I like, but soon find ourselves on a lovely waterfront strand with a couple of large marinas that offer surprisingly ample guest moorage. We'll take advantage of this guest moorage or the nice anchorage at the southern end of the harbor on our next visit if only to avoid walking the highway. And we'll have to check out the inviting dockside pub and grill.

We get an early start the next morning as we depart Pleasant Harbor. A storm system is headed our way later in the day, bringing gale-force winds, and we want to be safely tied up to the dock in Alderbrook before it arrives.

We settle in for a three-hour cruise. The tide is ebbing, so we fight a half-knot current. There are few navigational hazards, no ferries or container ships to evade, and for whatever reason, hardly any logs or other flotsam to avoid. I know from childhood memory that this stretch of water can be treacherous during winter storms. I recall the picture glass window at my Grandfather's waterfront home bowing and flexing during the gusts of one particularly fierce Christmas Eve gale. But today, even with 20 knots of wind on the nose, the sea remains flat, docile.

The morning passes almost hypnotically; the steady hum of the big Lugger engine plays bass to the oldies playlist I have on low in the pilothouse — Beyond the Sea, You Belong to Me, Earth Angel. I sip hot coffee and enjoy the warmth of hydronic forced air heat as a mostly untouched shoreside with all the colors of fall slowly passing by the pilothouse windows.

After three years and thousands of miles under our keel, I am tuned to the boat's operation. My eyes flick to the instrument panel above my head every five minutes to check engine temperature and oil pressure. I glance at the radar screen to my right every minute or so for any new dots behind us that represent overtaking vessels (I see none the entire trip). Unconsciously, I feel for any change in resonance in the main engine and am alert for any new sounds. While off watch and napping, a change in engine RPMs brings me wide awake from the deepest sleep. Even after three years, my heart rate elevates when the coffee maker completes its brew cycle and emits three loud beeps.

We pull up to the sizeable end-tie dock at Alderbrook Resort after this quiet trip from Pleasant Harbor. The predicted wind hasn't yet arrived, and docking is uneventful. I imagine this place fills up in the summer months, but on this October Saturday, just two other vessels share the dock with us. We loll around on the boat after taking the dogs on a hike through a few of the many walking trails that span out from the report. We devour take-out burgers from the resort.

We see every kind of fall weather the Pacific Northwest can drum up on this trip, but our anniversary on Sunday morning brings calm seas and brilliant sunshine. We drop the tender in the water to make the three-mile trip to the Hood Canal Marina for brunch at the Hook and Fork Café (delicious!). We check out the resort grounds with its fire pits, heated pool, sauna and bar. Lisa enjoys a massage at the spa time while I chat it up with resort guests down the docks who are curious about this unique trawler.

We enjoy a nice dinner at the lodge on Sunday night. The staff find out it's our anniversary and seat us at a romantic table for two by the window. We can just make out Indiscretion in the gathering darkness. This is the way to celebrate an anniversary, I think. We skip the Ouzo but still count our blessings.

Water, Water

Wednesday, August 11, 2021 • 8 min read

On a boat, the most basic conveniences of life — like running water — require forethought and attention. In this post, we explore how we manage water aboard our Nordhavn 43 trawler.

Ample fresh water aboard Indiscretion is one of the many extravagances we enjoy aboard this expedition trawler. Our Catalina sailboat had just 50 gallons of fresh water, which we stretched to six or seven days of cruising with careful dishwashing and quick cockpit showers for the kids. The trawler holds 300 gallons of fresh water with onboard water-making capability that, in theory, provides us with an infinite supply.

With greater supply comes greater use. Besides washing dishes, we take hot showers every day and wash our clothes in a Splendide combination washer/dryer. Every toilet flush uses fresh water. I wash down the boat using fresh water outlets in the bow and stern after most passages. Even the watermaker uses fresh water during its flushing routine. Between two people, we use about 50 gallons of water a day when we’re cruising. With our 300 gallon tank, that equates to six days of water — ironically, the same as our sailboat.

But Can We Drink It?

Water treatment on our sailboat was pretty simple. Once a year, I treated the 50-gallon tank with a small amount of bleach and let it sit overnight. I drained and refilled the tank twice, then patted myself on the back for a job well done.

On the trawler, it’s not so simple. For one thing, draining and filling a 300-gallon water tank takes a long time, let alone twice. And wasting that much fresh water makes me cringe. But more importantly, bleach damages the expensive membrane in watermakers that use fresh water for periodic flushing and is, therefore, a no-no in our trawler’s water system.

Without our bleach routine, I had concerns about the potability of water from the tanks without some kind of water treatment or filtering process. I considered installing an inline water treatment system, but in the end, we opted for the simplicity of a dockside water filter setup that many RV owners use. We bought an Ultra with VirusGuard from ClearSource that filters incoming dock water in three stages: a 5-micron filter that removes any sediment or rust in the water; a 0.5-micron coconut shell carbon filter for improved taste and smell; and finally, a NASA-designed filter that removes any bacteria, cysts, and viruses from the water before it enters our tank. We keep a Brita water filter pitcher in the galley for drinking water.

We keep the Ultra in the lazarette locker and pull it out when we take on water at docks. The filters last about a year and a replacement set costs about $60 from ClearSource. While dock water here in the Pacific Northwest is generally potable, we definitely noticed an improved taste in our water after switching over to this filter system.

Water, Water Every Where

Besides a large water tank, we have a Spectra watermaker that transforms seawater into drinking water using a desalination process. The system makes 12.5 gallons of fresh water an hour, so we can keep up with our daily usage by running the system four hours a day. For expeditions like our planned trip up the inside passage to Alaska, we’ll run the watermaker in open water while underway and never worry about running short.

Making water at anchor is also possible, but comes with some cautions. Our system utilizes two pre-filters — a 20-micron filter and a 5-micron filter — before seawater enters the watermaker itself. When making water in open sea, these pre-filters might need to be cleaned every two or three months. When making water at anchor, the pre-filters might need to be cleaned daily or even hourly. The Spectra provides a pre-filter status on a control panel in the pilothouse during the water-making process that helps you track how mucked up the pre-filters have become.

The process of cleaning (or replacing) pre-filters is straightforward, if a bit disgusting: First, the seacock that feeds seawater to the watermaker must be turned off to prevent flooding the lazarette. Then, you unscrew the filter bowls from their housings with a filter wrench, careful not to spill too much seawater. I learned to keep a disposable aluminum baking pan nearby to catch the inevitable spills. Once the filters have been extracted, they get rinsed using a seawater wash-down hose on the swim platform. Words fail to describe the smell coming off these filters during this hosing-off process: a bouquet of rotten eggs, seaweed, decay, and a dark, primordial stench you hope washes off as it splashes around your bare feet. When the filters look clean and the water runs clear, they get a final rinse of fresh water and spend a couple of days of drying in the sun to kill off any lingering sea life before being put back in rotation for the next filter swap. A pre-filter can withstand a half dozen cleanings like this before needing to be discarded. I pop in a clean pair of filters from a supply I keep near the watermaker and apply a little silicone grease to the o-ring of the filter housing to keep a good seal before reattaching. Finally, I reopen the watermaker seacock, and we’re back in the watermaking business.

We had family join us midway through a long stretch of anchoring during a recent cruise through the San Juan Islands. I had neglected to run the watermaker, and our water tank was getting low. We were anchored inside Garrison Bay on the northwest corner of San Juan Island, which was crowded with boats ahead of the July 4th holiday. I decided to make water in the morning and night to coincide with our daily running of the generator to boost our water supply. However, after just one hour, the pre-filter alarm sounded in the pilothouse. The brand new pre-filters I installed at the start of our cruise were miserably clogged. I cleaned the filters and tried again, only to have the alarm sound again the next hour. Either the bay was too shallow (we had just five feet under our keel at low tide) or too crowded, but I gave up trying to make water after the second alarm. We had to watch our water usage for a couple of days — no showers, careful dishwashing, etc. Leaving Garrison Bay, I ran the watermaker on our two-hour trip to Sucia Island without any trouble and again once we were anchored in Echo Bay to replenish our tank.

I learned I need to be more proactive about managing our water levels when we’re away from docks. I had many opportunities to make water ahead of our stay in Garrison Bay, but became complacent. Likewise, I discovered that some anchorages are much better for making water than others, that making water is better on an incoming tide, and that the best water you can make is underway in open sea.

Did We Just Run Out of Water?

Indiscretion has Tecma electric toilets that magically flush with fresh water at the touch of a button. I still delight in this technological marvel after so many years of pumping seawater by hand into the heads of our sailboats.

About halfway through our recent cruise, I encountered a problem with our master stateroom toilet. Pressing the flush button caused the toilet to make all the sounds of a proper flush, but no water flowed through the bowl. Huh.

I tried the nearby sink. No water. I tried the galley sink. Nothing. I knew the tank couldn’t be empty. If a tap had been left open, we would have heard the water pump cycling. Could the tank itself have developed a leak? My mind raced through all the dependencies we had on running water. Toilet flushing rose quickly to the top. No water, no toilets. I began cursing myself for not keeping a spare pump aboard. A Marco UP6/e supplies our water and runs about $700 to replace. I was waiting to buy one on sale, but hadn’t found a deal before leaving for this trip. Ugh.

I powered off the water pump at the distribution panel and waited a few adrenaline-filled moments before powering it back on. Resetting power to the water pump restored water pressure. Whew! A scan of the Marco operating manual led me to a series of coded blinking lights on the pump itself, which could mean overheating, an obstruction, or a leak somewhere in the system. A quick search on the Nordhavn Owner’s Group forum revealed that other owners with this pump had similar malfunctions without a clear resolution apart from powering off and on.¹

That morning, I ordered a spare Marco pump from Fisheries Supply in Seattle by express delivery to Roche Harbor Marina. I may be $800 poorer, but I’ve eliminated a critical dependency aboard this expedition trawler that would disrupt our cruising plans. A captain must keep the water flowing and the toilets flushing!

Questions or comments about water systems aboard Indiscretion? Leave us a comment below.

1. Once back in port, I checked the water filter that feeds into the Marco pump. After cleaning out a fair amount of debris, the pump has functioned flawlessly. ↩

Boat Problem? Think Horses, Not Zebras

Tuesday, July 20, 2021 • 5 min read

One of the great joys of anchoring out in a beautiful bay is the free time you have to focus on lingering boat projects. When you’re away from the boat, these issues seem to stack up until a later day. But here in Hunter Bay in the beautiful San Juan Islands? I had plenty of time.

My focus of the day: a wiring problem lurking somewhere in the pilothouse that randomly kept flipping our Maretron system circuit breaker. This happened when I opened or closed the ship’s service panel door, so I suspected a loose wire somewhere.

I had done just about everything I knew to do: wiring checking and connection tightening, temperature reading with an infrared thermometer, voltage checking with a voltmeter, and wire tracing to the Maretron computer. It all seemed fine, which led me to think the breaker switch itself must be failing. This conclusion troubled me. The internet is full of caution about replacing a circuit breaker when the real problem is a short somewhere, akin to bringing down a new canary to your coal mine after the last one up and died.

As I pondered this dilemma, I watched a fellow trawler yacht drop its anchor out in the channel for at least the tenth time today. The boat left the anchorage early this morning, headed out of the bay, only to stop about 500 yards out and drift. They soon dropped their anchor again, but out in the middle of the channel. I thought initially they meant to do some fishing. But an hour later, the boat pulled up the anchor and headed out again, only to stop and drift, then redeploy their anchor. The process repeated all day. It sure seemed like engine trouble.

I decided to take a break from my circuit breaker problem and head over in the tender to see if I could lend a hand. The idea that I might help another boater with an engine issue would have been preposterous three years ago, but I’ve learned a lot since then. Who knows, but maybe I could help? At a minimum, I could tow them into the anchorage for the night.

I arrived alongside the boat to find a flustered skipper. The boat's gas inboard was overheating, and he had run out of ideas on what could be wrong. It was the hottest day in history here in the northwest, and he was drenched in sweat. His first mate smiled, but looked worried.

We talked through the possibilities: clogged raw water intake? Good flow and no obstructions. Bad impeller? Replaced, though the old one looked fine. Coolant level? Topped off. He thought it must be a clogged or corroded heat exchanger. I asked him if he had an infrared thermometer to confirm it wasn't just a bad gauge. He didn't have one.

I motored back to the boat to retrieve my Fluke 62 Max IR thermometer. I learned the importance of carrying one of these indispensable gadgets aboard after our first Northern Lights Training class with Bob Senter. I take temperature readings of a half dozen areas in the engine room when I complete my routine checks underway. Knowing the baseline temperature of your coolant tank, stabilizer system, alternator, prop shaft, etc. can help identify potential problems early if something is running hotter than normal. These point-and-shoot thermometers can also verify temperature readings from digital and analog gauges that can sometimes produce erroneous, heart-thumping readings.

After checking all parts of the engine with the IR gun, the trawler skipper was able to confirm that his engine wasn’t overheating, despite a gauge in the pilothouse saying otherwise. It turns out he had pulled out a faulty temperature gauge on the flybridge last week and planned to replace it at some point. He reinstalled the non-working gauge, and voilà, the pilothouse gauge started working correctly again. He promised to buy an IR thermometer when he got back to his home port in La Conner. His smile as he waved goodbye was priceless.

I returned to my Indiscretion and my circuit breaker problem, feeling good about helping another boater in a jam. Lord knows I’ve been the recipient of some good boating Samaritans these past three years. I finally got to pay some of that goodwill forward. I inspected the circuit breaker again, thinking I would detach it from the ship’s service panel to see if I could detect any cracks or corrosion. That’s when I noticed the single screw that attaches the circuit breaker to the panel was loose. Really loose.

When I opened or closed the panel door, the loose screw allowed the circuit breaker to shift just enough to nudge the switch off. Tightening a single screw solved the entire issue.

I laughed at myself when I realized how simple the problem was. Sometimes we look too far beyond the most obvious solution in front of us. A faulty temperature gauge, a loose screw. As the old saying goes: “When you hear hoofbeats in the night, look for horses — not zebras.”

Indiscretion Gets a Second Brain

Monday, July 12, 2021 • 12 min read

With most of my nautical life spent on sailboats, marine electronics has never been much of a focus area. Our most well-equipped cruising sailboat carried just basic navigation equipment: an autopilot, a chartplotter, and instruments for speed, depth, and wind. I knew that more sophisticated systems were available; I just didn’t see the need for anything more complex, though radar would have been a welcome addition with all the fog we have here in the summer.

Indiscretion has navigation instruments and electronics that are far more advanced than any of our sailboats. Besides the basics, we have an open array radar with a satellite compass that overlays radar images right on the chart. We have an NMEA 2000 network running throughout the boat that tracks all sorts of information when we’re underway or at anchor. A Maretron monitoring system tells us, for example, how much fuel and water sit in our tanks, the angle of our rudder, the temperature of the sea, and how far we’ve drifted from our anchor — all from a computer screen in the pilothouse. In our three years aboard the trawler, I haven’t felt the need to add much to our electronics suite. A compass, an open view of the water ahead, and a good chart felt like all I needed.

That is until I spent some time this spring buddy boating with marine technical wizard Steve Mitchell. Besides being a super nice guy, Steve knows more about boat electronics than anyone I’ve ever met, and he freely shares his expertise on his blog, SeaBits.com. If you have any interest in marine electronics, especially getting internet on a boat, have a look at this wonderful resource.

Steve has equipped his beautiful Ocean Alexander with practically every electronic tool you can imagine. He gave me a boat tour of Rendezvous when we shared a dock at Fossil Bay on Sucia Island. While Steve pointed out all the myriad screens and panels from his helm station, I felt a little dizzy. So much information. So many gadgets! He showed me his navigation software, TimeZero Professional, and screen after screen of critical navigation information. My head hurt a little after trying to understand it all.

I invited Steve aboard Indiscretion for a tour of our pilothouse the next day. He took in our instrument panel like a veteran quarterback scanning down field for an open receiver. In a few minutes, he was flipping through never-before-seen setup screens on our Furuno TZ Touch chartplotter and our Furuno NavNet MFD 12. He poked button combinations on our Furuno autopilot that I didn’t know were possible. He turned back to the chartplotter.

“I don’t see any saved routes here. How do you navigate from place to place?”

“Oh, I just use the autopilot and spin that little course change dial,” I said.

Steve studied my face for a moment to make sure I wasn’t joking, then shook his head. “You should enter your route into the chartplotter and let it steer your autopilot for you. That way, you aren’t constantly changing course, and you can keep a better watch for logs and other boats.”

“This chartplotter can talk to that autopilot?” I asked. The possibilities bloomed in my imagination. I could sit back like Captain Kirk and hand off navigation duties to Ensign Furuno.

After a few more minutes of poking around, Steve gave me his verdict. “You’ve got a good set of navigation equipment that will work well with modern electronics, but the brain of your system,” he said, pointing at the NavNet MFD, “is beyond obsolete. You’re probably due to replace both Furuno MFDs and the TZT Touch with current models.”

I swallowed. That sounded expensive.

“Or you could just get a NUC and run TimeZero,” he offered. “That’s probably what I would do.”

After Steve’s visit aboard Indiscretion, I found myself dreaming about the boat steering herself for long passages while I sat back in the captain’s chair, gazing at the sea ahead and taking note of the many wondrous sights in the ship’s log. I tallied the cost of replacing our older NavNet 3D units with the current generation of Furuno chartplotters to modernize our pilothouse and flybridge navigation systems. The total cost, including an estimate for professional installation, would run close to $20,000.

I researched Nobeltec’s TimeZero navigation software, which runs on a Windows PC (no Mac version) and can interface with most modern marine navigation equipment. After reading and rereading online features and capabilities, what I saw during my tour aboard Rendezvous began to make more sense.

I discovered that a NUC is a tiny Windows PC made by Intel that many trawler owners use to run TimeZero. They are popular because of their small size, impressive performance, low power needs, and relatively low cost. NUCs also appeal to the DIY crowd because swapping memory and storage is dead simple.

Fate and good karma conspired a month later when I won a raffle prize of a free license of TimeZero Navigator at the 2021 Nordhavn Rendezvous (thank you, Nobeltec and all the event sponsors!).

That settled it: Indiscretion would get a second brain.

Shopping Spree and Installation

I purchased the latest generation NUC with an Intel i5 processor for about $500. Another $150 for a 500 GB SSD hard drive and 16 GB of RAM, and I had a versatile onboard PC that would run any software I might need on the boat. I picked up a DC converter on Amazon to use 12V to power the NUC to minimize battery drain. I rounded out the setup with a wireless keyboard and mouse.

Next, I spent $1,000 to upgrade my free copy of TimeZero Navigator to the Professional version. Typically, a recreational boater wouldn’t need this extra functionality, but in our case, I could upgrade to ultimate navigation software for $1,000 or pay $500 to unlock the module to connect TZ Navigator to our Furuno system (Professional comes unlocked). I went big.

Indiscretion has a 15” marine-grade Furuno monitor in the pilothouse that provides an easy-to-see screen even in direct sunlight and dims automatically to preserve your night vision during nighttime passages. We use this monitor for our Maretron system and a variety of cameras on the boat. I connected the NUC to its last remaining video port, eliminating the need for another screen on the pilothouse dash.

A week later, the boxes arrived with the computer and its innards. The TZ Professional software license codes sat waiting for me in my email inbox. All I had to do was set it up. I installed the hard drive and RAM modules in mere minutes. That was easy. But when I powered up the NUC, I learned that Windows wasn’t installed. Uh oh. I would need to download the Windows installer program on another Windows computer. Ugh. This is why I use a Mac.

Luckily, I keep a cheap HP laptop in a drawer on the boat for updating our Maretron monitoring system. I used it to download Windows 10 onto a thumb drive and, after deciphering some cryptic installer options, had Windows 10 Professional running successfully on the NUC.

Next, I installed TimeZero Professional and then all my charts. Another benefit of going with the Professional version is that the charts I bought for our existing Furuno NavNet system transfer over free.

Then, the moment of truth. Would this NUC and TimeZero software connect to my Furuno navigation instruments and radar? I powered the Furuno gear up, plugged in the NUC to our NavNet network using an ethernet cable, and ran the connection wizard in TimeZero.

After some initial failures, I received navigation data in TimeZero, but no matter how many configurations I tried, I could not get TimeZero to send steering commands to our Furuno autopilot. I spent a long weekend searching Furuno and TimeZero forums and tinkering with settings unsuccessfully.

I called TimeZero technical support on Monday for assistance. A friendly support technician named Lucas picked up on the second ring, and I described my problem.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “You can’t connect to your old equipment using ethernet. You need an Actisense NGT-1 USB cable, so you can connect directly to your NMEA 2000 network.”

I found the $240 cable on defender.com and a $20 T-Connector to patch into the boat’s network backbone.

A week later, the cable arrived, and I installed it in place of the ethernet cable. I ran the TimeZero connection wizard. Still, no luck.

I called TimeZero support again. Lucas answered on the first ring. He started asking questions about network settings and whether TimeZero was connected to the NMEA network. My uncertain replies must have been a clue that I didn’t really know what I was talking about. “Do you have boat internet?” He asked.

“Yes, I do.” Finally, a question could answer.

“OK, great. Let me take over your TimeZero system, and we’ll figure this out.”

In a few moments, Lucas had full control over my system. I watched as screens quickly appeared and vanished as we chatted.

“Yeah, so you aren’t connected to your NMEA 2000 network. Did you install the drivers for the Actisense cable?”

“Uh …” I stammered.

“No worries. I can do that from here. Also, the firmware on the cable needs to be updated to work with the latest version of our software.”

After a few minutes, Lucas had the drivers and latest firmware installed. He ran the connection wizard in Time Zero again, and this time the software connected to the NMEA 2000 network. A simple checkbox near the end of the connection process integrated the autopilot. Another click added TimeZero’s cloud service for my iPad. The system was now fully integrated and operational, thanks to terrific technical support from TimeZero.

Navigating with TimeZero Professional

We had a chance to put Indiscretion’s new navigation system to work on a cruise to the San Juan Islands last week.

The night before departure, I built the route for our first leg of the trip: Quartermaster Harbor to Port Ludlow. I plotted the course from my easy chair at home using TZ iBoat on my iPad. The iPad app lacks much of the functionality of the desktop software, but the touch interface for plotting a course is terrific.

The next morning, I powered up our navigation equipment and the new TimeZero system as the engine warmed up. The route I created the night before on the iPad appeared as if by magic, ready to activate on the pilothouse screen.

TimeZero provides an estimate of the best time to cast off using a route optimization routine. Currents can run pretty strong in Puget Sound and the northern islands, so planning your trip around them is critical, especially on a slow boat like a trawler. Before this, we cobbled together a few different tide and current apps to make our best guess on when to leave. TimeZero turns this into a more exact science, providing a departure time to the minute to minimize your voyage time.

As we left the marina and steamed out of Inner Quartermaster Marina, I activated our chosen route and turned the helm over to TimeZero. The route transformed into a highway shape with an icon for Indiscretion chugging down it. I sat back in the helm chair and watched the magic unfold. Waypoints arrived and passed astern, with the autopilot responding perfectly for each course change. Instead of focusing on our course, I could simply watch for boat traffic and obstructions in the water. Other than diverting for commercial traffic and a few logs, I rarely interfered with the helm. On the five-hour trip, TimeZero steered 99.5% of the time without needing a single coffee break.

A Smart Investment

Between the NUC PC, TimeZero software, and the ActiSense cable, I spent about $2,000 to equip Indiscretion with this new navigation setup. This a terrific bargain considering these benefits:

Two Are Better Than One. Before this, I relied exclusively on the 14” TZ Touch chartplotter for navigation. That worked fine, but having two independent navigation screens directly in front of the helm is much better. The TimeZero screen shows our route, radar overlay, AIS targets and closest points of approach, and time and distance left on our trip. I use the chartplotter screen for all other chart-related information. I can zoom out and pan forward to check the waterways ahead while keeping tabs on our current course at a zoomed-in level on the left. Or, I can zoom in to a much finer detail on the chartplotter to check charted depths, again without disrupting my view of our current voyage. Both screens show similar information, but I can tailor the views to fit any navigational need I might have.

The Power of the Cloud. TimeZero connects wirelessly to the internet for chart and weather updates and extends the reach of AIS by incorporating vessel tracking via MarineTraffic.com. For me, the ability to plan a route on my iPad in the salon as Lisa and I discuss our next destination and have that route ready to activate from the pilothouse is a killer feature.

Potential for Future Expansion. This NUC computer has the horsepower to run more than just TimeZero Professional. We need to update our Maretron MBB200C “black box” computer, which runs our vessel monitoring system. This unit is seven years old and can no longer run the current version of Maretron’s N2KView software. A quick call to Maretron support confirmed that the diminutive NUC could take over that function for us, saving us $1,500 in computer replacement and the power drain of running two separate pilothouse computers.

I’ve just scratched the surface of the capabilities of TimeZero Professional, but it’s already become an essential part of our navigation. This new setup has added a ton of new life into the boat’s aging electronics, which will allow me to defer this $20,000 replacement of those expensive chartplotters for at least another year. When I do buy new units, this NUC/TimeZero system will still provide all the benefits of a second navigation brain for the boat.

While spending money on a boat rarely provides a return, I can already tell that this particular setup will pay dividends for years to come.

Early Spring in the San Juans: Island Jewels

Monday, May 3, 2021 • 13 min read

Part three: After a rough start (part one) and a nice passage north (part two), we concluded our three weeks of island hopping through the beautiful San Sun Islands, enjoying mostly fine weather and deserted anchorages.

Jones Island

After a blissful three days on Stuart Island, we plot the seven-mile course to Jones Island. A strong current flows against us between Speiden and San Juan Island, so we decide to take the northern route above Speiden to see if we could make better time. This turns out to be a mistake. An even stronger current slows us, and worse, a series of tidal eddies have us spinning this way and that as we make our way eastward through New Channel. At the narrowest part of the passage between Speiden and the Cactus Islands, I marvel at a flock of floating birds spinning on the water like they are riding an invisible merry-go-round. Moments later, we enter this vortex to hell ourselves.

Let’s just say we are still cleaning up the mess from our drinks refrigerator spilling all its contents into the salon on one particularly vicious careening lurch. Now I know to lock the refrigerator door before each departure, regardless of how calm the water might seem.

We find the northern bay of Jones Island nearly deserted when we arrive. The dock had been reinstalled a day earlier after being removed all winter. We take a spot along the pier, joining a small powerboat. All three mooring buoys sit vacant. Spring cruising!

We love anchoring and mooring buoys, but docks are incredibly convenient when traveling with dogs. After our ceremonial arrival beer, it’s a simple matter of stepping off the boat and walking down the dock for shore leave for the pups. No crane to lower the tender, no long motoring to the dinghy dock. This is especially welcome when it’s dark and rainy. We find ourselves gravitating towards state park docks a lot this trip.

Friends from Rendezvous and Alexandria join us at Jones for some buddy boating the next day. We enjoy hikes through the island, cookout meals on the dock, and merriment. Getting together with boat friends after a long winter of isolation and social distancing is like salve for our souls.

During a visit here many years ago when our kids were still quite young, we encountered miniature deer that came trotting straight up to us. We have deer on Vashon, but none so small, cute and friendly as these fellas. We watch for them during our hikes, but I’m guessing our two rambunctious dogs spooked them this time.

Jones Island when the kids were young. My, how time flies.

We have fantastic weather for two and half days, but a north wind rolls in on our last night. Our friends are on mooring buoys, and both boats roll and pitch from about midnight on, making for a very uncomfortable night. Even boats at the dock surge and lift with the waves. Our captain friends cast off their lines at dawn for a calmer anchorage elsewhere, and we depart ourselves soon thereafter.

Deer Harbor

We make a stop at Deer Harbor Marina on Orcas Island to top off our house battery bank, offload some trash, and pick up supplies from the little dockside store. We miss the cut-off for their delicious bacon-cheeseburgers by twenty minutes. Ugh! Next time.

The marina has ample guest moorage with little need for reservations this time of year. An added bonus: off-season moorage rates are less than half of what they will be in the middle of summer.

Deer Harbor at twilight.

Fossil Bay on Sucia Island

We depart Deer Harbor after a single night for Sucia Island. We prefer Fossil Bay to the other anchorage options at Sucia because of the easy access to the shore via the two docks. On this visit, we take a space at the eastern end of the innermost dock. We expect high winds during our stay and don’t trust mooring buoys during a blow. We worry a bit about depth at the dock as the guidebooks are unclear about it. At a zero tide, we still have about two feet of water under our keel (Indiscretion draws 5 1/2 feet), but we wouldn’t want to dock here during a minus tide.

Flat calm in Fossil Bay

We stay three days at Sucia, taking in this beautiful island. We spoke with the park ranger when we first arrived, sharing our delight at how uncrowded it was. “Traffic has quadrupled in the last week or two,” she said. “For a few weeks in February, we didn’t have a single visitor here.” Wow.

We are joined at the dock by our friend Steve Mitchell on Rendezvous. We take long, picturesque hikes through the island trails and enjoy cocktails and boat stories together on the dock in the evenings. Welcomed by utterly flat water and sunshine, we take our tenders for a tour through Ewing Cove, Echo Bay, and even make a landing on prehistoric Finger Island.

On our second night at Sucia, a wind squall steals our Nordhavn welcome mat I left on the swim step. We search the shoreline but can’t spot it. It’s heavy, so it might have simply sunk near the dock. Steve brings out his underwater drone to see if he can spot it. I am doubtful, but I am learning never to doubt the ingenuity of boaters.

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Friday Harbor

We depart Sucia Island in a fresh North wind and uncomfortable seas en route to Friday Harbor. Two days of high winds have whipped President Channel into a maelstrom with rolling waves on the beam. Besides cooler weather, storms and high winds keep you on your toes when you cruise in early spring. This would have been a mighty uncomfortable passage without active fin stabilizers. Steaming along on an even keel in a cross-sea on a blustery morning like this reminds me once again why we chose a go-anywhere Nordhavn trawler.

We take a guest slip for three days at the Port of Friday Harbor Marina to enjoy some shore leave while we wait out another squall. We heard stories about a notorious current that interferes with docking inside the marina, but we hadn’t experienced it ourselves.

Our assigned slip is on K dock on the inside of Breakwater D. Winds gust to 15 knots inside the marina as we make our way between boats circling the fuel dock, then through the tight fairway turns leading to K dock. We don’t have much wiggle room to maneuver. A beamy trawler takes up at least half our assigned berth, so this is going to be a tight squeeze. An impromptu audience assembles along the encircling dock like fight fans at a boxing match to observe any miscues I might make. With prop wash and prop walk, I spin the boat around to face our slip, and slowly ease her forward. I don’t know it yet, but I’m about to experience first-hand the unwavering force of a cross current. I want to avoid hitting the neighboring trawler to port, so I favor the dock to starboard on my approach. With the bow about ten feet inside the slip, I get bad news from Lisa over the headset.

“You’re coming in too too close! Bow to starboard! OH! BOW TO STARBOARD! We’re going to hit the dock!”

These are not the words you want to hear as you dock a boat, especially with a crowd watching.

I find that the thrusters aren’t powerful enough to keep us off the dock, so I give the engine a healthy burst of reverse, and we back out and away from calamity. Once clear of the slip, we have about ten feet behind us before hitting a beautiful 60-foot motor yacht, with other sailboats and yachts in every other direction. I have nightmares about being in this kind of situation. I take a breath, get the boat aligned with our slip, and try again, this time with a little more speed, aiming for the beamy trawler next to our slip. It takes a certain amount of moral certitude to purposely aim your trawler at another yacht. This time, the current corrects our course and we squeeze in without a scrape on either side, though we only have inches to spare all around. The disappointed crowd shuffles off. There should be cheers, but none are offered.

We enjoy our stay at Friday Harbor, taking long walks along the harbor and to the off-leash dog park outside of town. We buy more provisions at King’s Market. We treat ourselves to a delicious date night dinner at Herb’s Tavern, where the two of us played pool so many years ago.

Date night at Herb’s Tavern!

Heading Home

Despite an improving forecast of sunny weather in the islands, family responsibilities require we point the bow south and homeward after almost three weeks of island cruising.

Before releasing the dock lines, I toss a piece of bread in the water off our stern. It bobs there unmoving until a seagull swoops down to devour it. No current. I smile.

We set out at 9 am through Cattle Pass to catch the flood. True to the forecast, the Strait of Juan de Fuca welcomes us with light wind and calm seas. At seven knots, it takes us around four hours to cross this large body of water, which is exposed to the vast Pacific Ocean. On a smooth crossing like this, we mainly focus on avoiding logs and other boats while keeping a keen eye for porpoises and whales. We take hour-long turns at the helm to break things up. I enjoy a hot shower, another cup of coffee, and time in the cockpit watching the islands sink over the horizon in our wake. At trawler speed, you have more time to meditate on life afloat: the changing colors of the water, the astonishing forms a single stretch of sea can take (so beautiful today, but the Strait can be harrowing in a small craft), and the almost evolutionary process of traveling to a new place on a slow boat.

Crossing the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Goodbye San Juans!

The wind picks up and the seas grow as we approach Port Townsend and Admiralty Inlet. The next day’s forecast calls for heavy winds out of the north, so we decide to push on for Eagle Harbor on Bainbridge Island to make the final leg home shorter.

As we travel down the interminable coast of Whidbey Island, a confused cross-sea has our stabilizer fins working hard to keep us from rolling, though we can’t avoid a corkscrew motion as we navigate a following sea. A little uncomfortable, but nothing like it would be without stabilization. The current pushes us along in excess of eight knots, but eddies and cross-currents toy with our Furuno autopilot, which finds itself in a perpetual state of course correction. I tinker with the Furuno autopilot settings to account for rougher seas, and the steering improves.

After a nine-hour trip, we find space on the outside of the city dock in Eagle Harbor on Bainbridge Island. We postpone our arrival beers to allow the dogs their shore leave. After such short hops in the islands, nine hours must seem like an eternity to these little fellas. We arrive too late on a Sunday evening to take advantage of our favorite restaurants near the harbor, so we dig a bit in the freezer and cook our last boat meal aboard before home.

Home Port and High Wind Docking

We leave Eagle Harbor at 8:30 am on our final leg home. We have a spirited trip past Blake Island and down Colvos Passage. North winds of 25 to 30 knots against an ebb tide work up quite a fetch. We toil our way south with the stabilizers and autopilot working overtime to keep us level and on course.

Gusty winds welcome us as we near inner Quartermaster Harbor. I watch the wind speed climb from 15 knots to 30 knots within a couple of breaths. Typically, a north wind lines up well with our slip, but today it veers in gusts to starboard as we make our approach. We arrive at low tide, which limits our maneuverability near the shallow marina. We consider anchoring out to wait until the winds dies down, but dropping the tender in this kind of wind and choppy seas can be difficult. Plus, we need the practice of docking in all sorts of conditions, right?

First Try: I make our usual approach, hoping the wind might be lighter near the dock. In and out of gear, letting the wind blow us inside our slip. I see that the wind is more abeam than usual, and when we are halfway inside the slip, a 35-knot gust takes hold of us (of course!), and we are pushed hard to port. We touch the dock briefly, but I give the engine a heavy burst of reverse, and we back safely away. I look astern and see mud spun up in our frothy prop wash. Ugh. Low tide has us nearly aground. I spin us around and head for deeper water to regroup.

Second Try: I aim upwind from the slip at the bow of a sailboat docked next to us. Like before, a heavy gust arrives as we near the slip, but the wind direction comes dead astern, pushing us dangerously close to a collision with the sailboat. Ugh! I back straight out this time, about 30 yards from the marina. I have a chat with Lisa over our Eartec radios, and we talk over our options: give it a third try or anchor out. I hold the boat in position in reverse gear as the wind buffets us from behind.

Third Try: I decide on one final try, this time waiting for a lull in the wind. Sure enough, the wind drops to 15 knots, and I edge forward. I was too close to the dock on the first try and too close to the neighboring boat on the second. This time, I choose a middle path with more forward throttle to keep steerage, coming in hot. I don’t realize it at the time, but our bow and stern thrusters have turned off (they shut off by themselves after a short period of inactivity). We slide into the slip at a 30-degree angle, and a burst of hard reverse with the helm hard over stops our forward progress. Prop walk and wind pushes the stern alongside the dock. Lisa has a spring line holding us in the slip faster than I could peek over the side from the flybridge. I try the thrusters to keep the boat positioned alongside the dock and realize the power is off. Good thing I didn’t need these coming in! We both have some adrenaline flowing through our veins for this landing.

Cruise Reflections

Spring cruising in the San Juan Islands was pretty fantastic. Yes, we had some weather and wind, but we have a trawler that can handle just about any conditions we might face afloat. And I got to practice some challenging docking maneuvers that I can build on as we continue our adventures in more far-flung waters.

Across our three weeks of cruising, we had two and half weeks of calm, beautiful, sunny days and nights. We couldn’t help noticing that even better weather arrived in the San Juans after making our trip home, which attracted more boaters. At the start of our voyage, we marveled at the empty bays and anchorages. By the trip’s end, things had started to get busy. Docks began filling up. Mooring buoys were taken.

I think next year we’ll go again, but perhaps even earlier, and stay longer. Even after two decades of visiting these beautiful islands, We can’t seem to get our fill of these pristine islands. Maybe Indiscretion will be the first boat that intrepid Sucia Island park ranger welcomes in 2022.

Fair winds and smooth sailing.

Early Spring in the San Juan Islands: Heading North

Saturday, May 1, 2021 • 7 min read

Part Two: Having quickly resolved our hydraulic system problems, the crew of Indiscretion heads north for the San Juan Islands.

After departing Shilshole Marina, we arrive at Port Ludlow and spend the night at anchor to cross the Strait of Juan de Fuca with the tide in the morning. Weather on the Strait can be unsettled this time of year, but we have a nice window before a storm arrives on Sunday. This is our second visit to Port Ludlow and each time we wish we had more time to explore this lovely, protected bay.

Indiscretion at anchor in Port Ludlow

The crossing of the Strait is uneventful — just lumpy. High winds the night before leave behind a confused sea that has our stabilizers flapping this way and that to keep us on an even keel. I make more than a few trips to the engine room during the crossing to ensure the hydraulic system hasn’t sprung any new leaks. We’re steering for Roche Harbor, so we take the more exposed route through Haro Strait, hoping we might see whales again near Lime Kiln Point. No whales this trip, unfortunately.

Roche Harbor and Gale Force Winds

As we weave our way through Mosquito Pass, we marvel at the empty bays. Not a single boat occupies Westcott Bay or Garrison Bay, and just one lonely sailboat sits at anchor in all of Roche Harbor as we make our approach to the marina. What an incredible change from our visit last September when anchored boats choked all three of these popular destinations.

Guest moorage at Roche Harbor can be challenging to obtain in the summer months, but we have our choice of a number of open slips on the old guest dock. We pick a slip that could easily accommodate a mega-yacht deep inside the marina. The dock is so high we need to disembark from the starboard side rail. Indiscretion looks tiny in this gigantic berth, but we like how close we are to the top of the dock.

On the morning of the storm, we treat ourselves to freshly baked donuts from the Lime Kiln Café, followed by a hike to the Mausoleum in the wind and rain. Despite many trips to Roche Harbor, we had never made the trek. We time our visit with the ringing of the bells from the Roche Harbor Church on this Sunday morning. A solemn dirge drifts through the forest as we take in these sacred grounds. I can’t imagine a more peaceful place of eternal rest than this magical spot, dappled by sunlight, in a forest by the sea.

The Mausoleum near Roche Harbor

We continue our walk in search of a famed isthmus that the guidebooks suggest is just a mile past the mausoleum. We ignore road signs that proclaim the road ahead is restricted to property owners and guests. About a quarter-mile in, I start to feel nervous. We are almost certainly trespassing as we walk by mansion after mansion along this private road. More signs remind us of our ingress. We later discover we each made up a different name of the family we were supposedly visiting in case we were stopped.

As we took in a spectacular seaside estate, I turn to Lisa. “If we were black, would we dare take this walk?” She shakes her head and we talk though this blatant inequality. A black man and woman walking down this country lane would almost certainly be noticed. We exchange waves and smiles with the locals as we make our way past these beautiful homes. I feel shitty about the racial privilege we take for granted and get a glimpse of what it must feel like all the time to be black in this part of the country. We are both unsettled.

We take the long way back to the marina to avoid further trespassing and end up on a gravel and dirt road the carries on up and up through dense woods for some long while in the rain before descending again past the airport and back to the harbor.

After the morning rain subsides, we take the dogs for a walk up the hill to the off-leash dog park. Franklin is a Puggle who simply can’t be trusted off-leash. One interesting smell and he’s gone, no matter how emphatically we implore him to return. Both dogs enjoy stretching their legs around the large park, but soon Frank begins a systematic search of the perimeter for a way to freedom. Sigh.

We return to the boat as the wind builds for storm watch. The marina is well protected from south winds, so there isn’t much drama. We get some hail and lots of shifting and swaying boats. A friend anchored in Prevost Harbor reports 40 knot winds, but the highest gust we see is far below that. It’s nice to watch it all from the security of the dock, all warm and cozy in the panoramic pilothouse.

Reid Harbor on Stuart Island

We depart Roche Harbor the next morning for a short trip to Reid Harbor on Stuart Island. We motor slowly through the empty anchorage and vacant mooring buoys. Two small boats occupy the main dock, so we head for the floating dock. A north wind blows the boat off the dock as Lisa struggles with securing mooring lines to the bull rail.  We neglect to don our headsets, so there may or may not have been some unfortunate curse words that carried over the quiet bay as we made fast (by the end of our trip, Lisa ties up to bull rails like a cowboy in a rodeo). 

Within a couple of hours, the main dock itself is vacant, and we have the entire bay to ourselves.

In the tender on our way back to Indiscretion

We stay three full days at Stuart Island, establishing a pattern that would stick with us throughout our cruise. While most parks limit your stay to three days, this feels like the perfect amount of time to settle in and really see a place without feeling hurried.

Our first night on Stuart is magical. All is calm. The water reflects the hillside in near-perfect clarity. The sun sets against the backdrop of the western shore of the harbor. I put Linda Ronstadt’s Round Midnight on the boat’s stereo as the wonderful smells of Lisa’s cooking waft through the boat. I feel the stress of the journey sloughing off me, and something more: a warmth welling up inside me of peace, bordering on joy. We enjoy a fabulous meal and good red wine in the salon, taking in the beautiful evening, grinning at one another as if we’d just won the lottery.

The view from one of the hiking trails on Stuart Island

We tied up to the disconnected float in Reid Harbor instead of the dock because of our two dogs. Since there’s no access to shore, the dogs have free rein of the float for as long as no other boats join us. We had this romantic notion that the dogs might pee on the dock in the wee hours of morning and night instead of demanding us to take them ashore in the tender. They do race down the dock to chase off the cackling geese that dare to waddle too close to us, but alas, they fail to consider this 100-foot dock as a suitable place to pee, despite all forms of coaxing. Their dog-logic must consider the dock as part of the boat and thus off limits. Oh well.

The weather remains sunny and calm throughout our stay. I use the float to launch and land our drone for some aerial views of the bay, but my flying skills need a lot of work.

From the drone in Reid Harbor

We criss-cross the island on hikes, taking in amazing vistas and getting exercise in the process. We make the six-mile round-trip hike to the lighthouse on the western edge of Stuart. It feels like we have the whole island to ourselves.

The Stuart Island lighthouse

Our final night in Reid Harbor finds us lacking some important essentials. A trip in the tender to Roche Harbor would take just 15 minutes, but would involve crossing a pretty wide expanse of water in a small boat. The water inside Reid Harbor is glassy. After a little give and take with Lisa about the importance of beer on a boat, I make the trip alone in millpond-like conditions. I loved our sailing years and appreciate our trawler's fuel economy and ocean capabilities, but I sure love going 25 knots every once in a while.

25 knots across a flat, open sea

Keep reading for Part Three of our Early Spring Cruise in the San Juan Islands: Island Jewels.

Early Spring in the San Juan Islands: Departure Troubles

Thursday, April 29, 2021 • 6 min read

Part One: The crew of Indiscretion sets out for an open-ended cruise through the San Juan Islands in early spring, but their voyage is in jeopardy within hours of departure.

The San Juan Islands are some of the most beautiful cruising grounds in the world. More than a hundred named islands and reefs with numerous state parks, anchorages, and destination marinas are scattered throughout this archipelago spanning the waters of northwestern Washington state. While currents can sometimes be tricky to navigate, the San Juans are perfect for slow boats like trawlers. The islands are close enough that your next anchorage is usually just an hour or two away, even at seven knots, and there are almost an unlimited number of harbors and inlets to explore.

We’ve made dozens of trips and are still finding new places to visit. Even with all this potential variety, we seem to return to the same places year after year because we love them so much.

Our family has spent many weeks and months boating in the San Juan Islands over the past two decades. Two separate month-long trips stand out as incredible memories we made when the kids were young. But our cruising always took place in the peak season due to school schedules and a general preference for warmer weather. Now, with an empty nest and a comfortable all-weather trawler, why not explore these northern islands in the less crowded off-season? And check out places we’ve always meant to visit, but never found the time?

As we would soon learn, cruising the San Juans in early spring is an incredible experience. Yes, the weather and wind can be a handful at times, but the deserted anchorages and parks are well worth the extra care in trip planning.

Departure

We depart Vashon at mid-morning on March 25, headed for Port Ludlow on the ebb, which is around the halfway point from Vashon to the San Juans. Rain flecks the pilothouse windows, but we are snug inside with the hydronic heater blowing warm air at our feet and music playing softly on the pilothouse stereo.

I spent the previous three days provisioning the boat and checking off maintenance tasks. I’m always nervous before casting off on an extended cruise. Will we have mechanical troubles? Do I have all the spares and tools I’ll need to fix whatever might break in a remote anchorage? These worries fade away as we put a few miles astern as the soft edges of a floating world replace the hard lines of a linear land-based life.

The view of the helm on the eve of departure

We enjoy a favorable current for most of the way. In the three hours it takes to travel the length of Vashon Island, we don’t encounter a single pleasure craft. Other than ferry boats, tugboats, and cargo ships, we have the sea to ourselves.

Seattle skyline from the water. Always beautiful

Just north of Seattle, Lisa takes the helm, and I tour the engine room. We do these visits every two or three hours to check the bilges, fuel filters, and temperatures of the engine and equipment. Usually, these inspections are ho-hum. As I wedge myself alongside the rumbling Lugger engine, I glance perfunctorily at the hydraulic system’s oil reservoir that feeds our stabilizer system. My eyes widen. Whoa! What? The oil level has fallen to dangerously low levels. In every previous check over years of doing this, the hydraulic oil level remained stubbornly topped off. Uh oh. The stabilizers minimize side-to-side rolling from waves and wakes using large fins jutting out from both sides of the hull, about four feet below the water. I return to the helm to check the stabilizer status panel just as a low oil level alarm rings out at the console. We center and lock the stabilizer fins and power down the system. Our smooth and level ride turns into a belly-churning rock and roll tumult in a matter of seconds. We decide to divert to Shilshole Marina to sort things out.

Once safely moored at the guest dock, I search the boat for the source of the oil leak. The actuators that power the fins sit inside closets within the master stateroom and head — no sign of leaks or problems there. Inside the engine room, I discover gallons of hydraulic oil sitting in the bilge. I trace the oil upstream to a pressure gauge that has failed under one of the engine room floorboards. A post on the Nordhavn Owner’s Group Internet forum confirms this diagnosis. Other Nordhavns, some far offshore, have experienced this unsettling failure and had to limp a long distance without stabilization. Many have preemptively replaced these time-bomb gauges with test ports where a gauge can be temporarily plugged into the system to check the pressure.

The failed pressure gauge

I share the diagnosis with Lisa as she lounges in the cockpit, warmed by the sunshine on a beautiful March Seattle afternoon, taking in the bustle of Shilshole Marina.

“Well,” she smiles. “This is as good a place to be stuck as anywhere. And you’ll figure it out. You always do.”

I toss and turn all that night, worrying about whether I can find the right parts here in Ballard without having to abort our trip. I search for nearby hydraulic outfits on my phone at 3 am when I can’t fall back to sleep.

I rise early. I am chatting with a friendly Uber driver from the Philippines at 7 am. Within an hour, I find the exact replacement gauge at Nebar Hose and Fittings in Ballard. Covich-Williams, right next door, sells me a 5-gallon bucket of hydraulic oil. I convince the Uber driver of a newer Prius to allow me to stow the bucket of oil in his trunk, and we’re on our way back to the marina. I wedge myself inside the engine room by 9 am, my first cup of coffee steaming on top of the engine’s coolant tank. Since the oil has already drained out of the system, it is a simple thing to replace the gauge. The more difficult job is removing the spilled oil from the bilge and cleaning it. I pump the oil into a waste bucket for safe disposal, but more oil soon oozes out from the upper bilge where the leak originated. After three flushes of the upper and lower bilges, I finally have a spotless, dry bilge — what a pain.

With some trepidation, I energize the stabilizer system with the engine running at the dock. No leaks. We complete a sea trial once we clear the breakwater. Again, all good. We are underway again by noon. All systems go.

Every great adventure should start with some mechanical failure and a flood of oil in the bilge; otherwise, we’d take all the elaborate systems aboard these trawlers for granted, right? And honestly, it feels good to solve a problem like this with my own two hands without having to cancel or postpone our trip.

Keep reading for Part Two of our Early Spring Cruise in the San Juan Islands: Heading North.

Winter Cruise through Central Puget Sound

Friday, March 12, 2021 • 7 min read

With a welcome change in the weather, the crew of Indiscretion made immediate plans to cast off our dock lines. We unloaded a dock cart full of too much food, topped off the water tank, and set out for a much-needed winter cruise through central Puget Sound.

We decided on Dyes Inlet and the Port of Silverdale as our first destination, though we also considered favorites like Blake Island and Poulsbo. Dyes Inlet provides an ample secure anchorage, and the dock at the Silverdale Waterfront Park is rarely crowded. The nearby park is great for the dogs, and the town of Silverdale is walkable. We’ve visited here a couple of times before on Indiscretion and many times on our previous sailboats.

Docking in a squall

While we enjoyed calm seas on our trip north, a brisk south wind materialized as we made our way up Dyes Inlet. The marina is near the end of the inlet and lacks protection from southern winds and waves. As we neared, I could see quite a fetch had worked up and wind waves were cresting over the empty dock. I steered from the flybridge while Lisa waited in the cockpit to handle dock lines. With our Eartec headphones, we could talk over our options and discuss any last-minute change in plans.

“The wind’s holding steady at 25 knots, so I’m going to turn up into the wind and dock to starboard,” I said using my confident Captain voice.

“OK, I’ll tie the stern first and then the forward spring.” She sounded pretty confident too.

Docking in windy conditions is my least favorite thing about boating. From my perch on the flybridge, I felt the full force of the wind as we made our turn upwind. There’s a feeling of detachment up this high, like I’m a fascinated spectator and not the person driving the ship. Part of this stems from the distance. On the flybridge, I’m too far away to help with dock lines or position fenders. But I sure can see everything unfold before me. If you’ve ever watched those “Bonehead Boater” videos on YouTube, you’ll agree that this would be a marvelous spot to capture a boat docking debacle.

I approached the wave-splashed dock at a 45-degree angle, feathered the boat slowly through the wind and nosed the bow forward to keep the steerage needed to make one last turn. Despite the wind and heavy chop, control over the boat was steady and controlled. I wouldn’t have dreamed of attempting this in any of our sailboats.

Lisa’s running commentary through the headset provided comfort as we approached the dock: “twelve feet, ten feet, eight feet, FIVE feet.” This last came across with urgency. I took one long breath, then swung the wheel hard to port and gave the engine a heavy burst of reverse power. As I hoped, the prop walk from the propeller against Indiscretion’s massive rudder pushed the stern sideways, right up to the dock. Lisa scrambled to tie dock lines while I kept the boat in position with thrusters and the prop. Stronger gusts heeled us against the pier, and I had to really work the thrusters to keep the boat off long enough to drop extra fenders to cushion the hull.

Once we were safe and secure, I had a chance to philosophize as we served up our traditional celebration beers in the pilothouse. We could have taken the safe route and dropped anchor in Dyes Inlet to wait out the squall, but surely we needed practice in carrying out these kinds of docking maneuvers in all types of weather. Besides anticipating the worst (i.e., featured video on Bonehead Boaters), we carried out a drama-free, textbook docking aboard a very capable and forgiving trawler. Each experience brings us more competence and confidence. And, as always, that beer tasted delicious.

And yet, when I shared my recollection for this blog post with Lisa, I got a slightly different perspective on this particular docking experience.

“You weren’t the one on the dock with the waves splashing over it, and the fenders nearly popping as the boat pushed against the dock,” she told me.

“Well, what about the way I used prop walk to bring the stern over?” I asked, a little defensively.

“Yeah, well, we basically slammed against the dock. If that was what you were aiming for, it worked great.” She then reminded me how stressed I was in those minutes after arriving as I attempted to squeeze every fender we had between the undulating dock and my precious Indiscretion before the hull caved in.

“Well,” I laughed. “Maybe stress during docking is something you forget, like the pain of childbirth.”

“No, that’s a myth. You don’t forget that. That’s why we only have two children.”

Like I said, every challenging docking situation is a learning experience.

Port of Silverdale

We anchored out in Dyes Inlet during our previous visits to Silverdale, but chose the convenience of the dock this trip for taking the dogs ashore. The marina has a good number of slips, and each time we visited, we noted available space along the outside dock and fingers. An area for dinghies lines the northern end of the dock near the ramp for easy access to shore for anchored boats.

Moorage rates are reasonable — $10 per night for boats under 28 feet, $20 for larger vessels. Shore power costs just $5 per night, though it is turned off for the winter season. The maximum stay is three consecutive nights. During our two-night stay, we were the only boat on the dock. Moreover, pedestrians are prohibited from walking the docks while the county completes a construction project near the landing. We truly had the place all to ourselves.

The park at the head of the dock is perfect for boaters with dogs. Plenty of grass to sniff and trash cans to dispose of dog waste along a nice waterfront walkway. We made our way through what seemed like dozens of hair salons (why so many in Silverdale??) and busy construction sites to find a nice trail system along the northern edge of Dyes Inlet. After about four miles of walking, we ran out of steam and still didn’t find an end to the trails. Our two dogs slept pretty well the rest of the day after that trek.

Illahee State Park

We departed Silverdale for Illahee State Park just north of Bremerton off Rich Passage. We visited here many years ago on our sailboat but chose not to stay because of the wake from the ferries and the dilapidated condition of the main dock. Big improvements have been made since then. The old dock now serves as a floating breakwater for protection from the exposed northern waters. A new dock offers some 300 feet of side-tie moorage. We experienced some ferry wake, but the motion hardly moved our 60,000 pound trawler. We spent a relaxing day and night enjoying hikes through the park and marveling at the view astern from our sunny and sheltered cockpit, though we probably would only stay the night here in settled weather.

Homeward Bound

This streak of fine March weather has us poring over charts and reviewing marine forecasts for crossing the Strait of Juan de Fuca. A cruise through the beautiful San Juan Islands sounds awfully nice right now. However, family responsibilities require we point the bow south after too-short a cruise. Call it a pit stop before we head north again.

Indiscretion Hires a Full-time Captain

Monday, February 15, 2021 • 3 min read

I could see the problem from the very start. This complicated trawler yacht with all her engines and systems required more attention than I could possibly dedicate on nights and weekends. She needed a full-time captain and engineer to keep her Bristol and ready at a moment’s notice to cast off and make for remote destinations.

So, I ran the numbers. A Captain with the skills and resourcefulness to manage a yacht like Indiscretion wouldn’t come cheap. The minimum salary for a professional Captain runs $150,000 a year, plus travel and meals. It turns out I’d also need an engineer for another $90,000 to $100,000 because the complex mechanical systems are beyond the skills of a mere crewman. On a larger yacht, the costs would even be higher.

Then, there’s travel. First-class flights to French Polynesia to meet your boat don’t grow on trees. And to be honest, Indiscretion is a bit small to host a crew while we tool around these remote destinations. I’d probably end up upgrading to a larger vessel to accommodate decent crew quarters. Now we’re talking big bucks. Maybe millions.

When I added the extra costs to my current boat budget, I grew concerned. Boats aren’t precisely the best place to invest your money in the first place, but adding a crew to the annual tally sure didn’t help matters. I dreaded the conversation I would need to have with my better half as I explained this financial decision. She once took away my eBay privileges for an entire year for buying too many rare first edition books. I can’t imagine what she might say about this.

Even with a professional crew, things don’t always work out well. I’m a fan of Kenny Chesney’s No Shoes Radio station on SiriusXM. Kenny keeps his boat down in the Caribbean and routinely complains about being stuck at the dock because Boat Captain Ben couldn’t get the generator running, or some such issue. If that stuff happens to Kenny Chesney, it could happen to me too. That would be super irritating.

And then it hit me. My Eureka moment. What if I took the job as Captain? I’d have to quit my day job, but after running the numbers six different ways, it would be cheaper and better for me to do it than pay someone else.

So, that’s what I’ve done. After more than thirty years of various finance and strategy roles, I have officially retired from traditional corporate life to become Indiscretion’s full-time Captain. I can’t believe how much money I’m saving! I sure hope I can keep that generator running.

Boat Captain Bob

Indiscretion Gets a New Screen

Wednesday, December 2, 2020 • 3 min read

The crew of Indiscretion has fully embraced the Apple ecosystem. It doesn’t seem very long ago that the Mac was the underdog, but now, Macs, iPads, iPhones, Apple Watches, Apple TV's, and even the underwhelming HomePod have found their way into our lives. We use this technology in the pilothouse for music, audiobooks, our maintenance tracking system, backup navigation and our ship’s log.

Indiscretion has a Bose sound system that pipes music through zones in the salon and in the pilothouse, but it was limited to CDs or a subscription-based SiriusXM radio for music. We remedied this by installing a Bluetooth transmitter inside the media cabinet in the salon that allowed a paired iPhone or iPad to stream whatever we wanted throughout the boat or in a particular zone. This worked pretty well, but we ran into issues when the paired device moved too far away from the Bluetooth transmitter. Or, when I would watch a video on my iPad while lounging in the salon, only to have the sound came blaring out of the pilothouse speakers.

We had some empty space on the port side pilothouse dash, so we decided to replace the SiriusXM radio with a dedicated pilothouse iPad. This was the first time I made a significant modification to our electronics or dash layout. Unlike a car, the console of a Nordhavn trawler is meant to be easily customized. The dash consists of three adjoining plywood panels that can accommodate just about any layout you might want. If a complete revamp with new electronics is warranted, new dash panels can be designed online so that the cutouts for the new instruments are already in place. In the case of installing this iPad, the procedure was pretty easy.

Here’s the port side dash where the original SiriusXM radio was installed.

I measured and an iPad Mini in portrait orientation would fit perfectly in its place. I bought a nearly-new one with enough internal storage to house our entire music collection for $200 on eBay. I found a very clever 3D-printed mount with an incorporated power cord on ETSY for $40 that plugs into a 12 volt accessory plug behind the dash.

Installation was straight forward. I removed the SiriusXM radio, drilled a small hold to feed the power cable through the dash panel, and installed the mount. Here’s the dash with the finished installation:

I am happy with how this turned out. This dedicated iPad has our entire music library downloaded, so we have ample music no matter how far from internet service we stray. “Hey Siri” makes selecting music easy and fun. We have a few other music and audiobook apps for longer passages. I installed the Navionics boating app which serves as our route planner and backup chart plotter, even without internet.  All our manuals and ship’s records are accessible through the fantastic DevonThink app. I’ve even customized the iPad ’s wallpaper to provide key specifications of indiscretion when we’re hailing marinas on VHF.

[caption id="attachment_816" align="aligncenter" width="525"] Custom iPad Wallpaper[/caption]

With screens now on all three dash panels, I feel I’m one step closer to the bridge of my own private starship. Now, I just need to automate our ship’s log system to accept voice recording and transcription. And work on my best Captain Kirk impersonation. 

Fall Cruising in South Puget Sound

Thursday, November 12, 2020 • 12 min read

Fall weather in the Northwest can be pretty iffy. Rain and wind are the norm for this time of year, which took its toll on our boating time back when we sailed. Unlike my more hardcore sailor friends, the novelty of freezing my ass off in the cockpit lost its appeal some time in my mid-forties. Each year, as fall turned its gaze to winter, I would grudgingly decide to put the boat away. Off would come the cushions and bedding to avoid mildew. Three or four dehumidifiers would decorate the cabins of the darkened boat to soak up the winter moisture. Dock lines would be inspected for chafe ahead of the winter storms to come. Sadness would creep over me as I walked up the dock, perhaps for the final time of the year, already pining for spring. 

Trawler life has changed all that. We no longer hibernate. Why would we? It can be freezing outside but still toasty warm inside the pilothouse and salon. In fact, fall and winter cruising on a trawler here in the Pacific Northwest is downright amazing.

One of the great things we've discovered is how little planning or effort it takes to head out on an impromptu cruise. We keep Indiscretion’s freezer and pantry full of food. There are always cold drinks in the refrigerator. Her closets hold plenty of clothing for any kind of weather. She has plenty of fuel and water to go just about anywhere we choose. 

So, when the weather forecast predicted a week of sunshine and calm seas in late October, we didn't think twice. A quick trip to the local market for fresh produce, fruit and snacks and then straight to the boat.

We decide to spend the week visiting the southern reaches of Puget Sound instead of venturing back north to the Seattle area or the San Juans. With our home marina on Vashon Island, it's roughly the same distance to Olympia as it is to Seattle. The only south-bound constraint involves timing the trip through the Tacoma Narrows with an appropriate tide. Currents run through the Narrows at upwards of six knots, so we must wait for a flood tide when traveling south and an ebb tide on our way back north. 

Departure

Lisa and I have perfected our departure logistics. We work through our departure checklist: the forced-air hydronic heating system and navigational instruments are switched on in the pilothouse. Lisa stows the groceries and readies the cabins for sea. I visit the engine room to check oil, fuel filters, belts, and coolant levels. Lisa finagles the half-fender covering our exhaust stack with a boat hook (our low-tech way of keeping rainwater out) and pulls off the instrument covers at the flybridge helm. I fire up the main engine and energize the stabilizers. Lisa hands me the shore power cords from the dock as we talk through our departure from the slip: the wind strength, the order she'll untie dock lines, etc. The whole process from start to finish now is under 20 minutes. We make a good team.

When the engine is warm, I usually head for the flybridge, where visibility is terrific, and Lisa handles dock lines. Today is different. I untie us from the dock, and Lisa takes the helm. Before today, I'm the only one that has docked this big trawler, which is a safety concern. Should something happen to me, Lisa needs to be able to get safely back to port. I stand by, ready to offer pointers, but Lisa calmly backs the boat and spins us around like a pro. I put away dock lines and stow fenders, a job Lisa normally handles. I am huffing and puffing by the end. I hope I get my old job back. 

Heading South

We enjoy blue skies and flat blue water as we motor out of Quartermaster Bay. We catch occasional glimpses of Dall's Porpoises as we put the Tahlequah ferry terminal astern on the southern end of Vashon Island. Seals pop their heads up, watching us, like stray black labs. We ride a nice flooding current as we passed under the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, past Fox Island, and on into proper South Sound. 

The hydronic heating system has thoroughly warmed the boat by now. The system employs a diesel-fired boiler to heat a network of water tubes that run the boat's length beneath the floor. Forced air heating ducts in the salon, pilothouse, and the two sleeping cabins provide a pleasant warmth. We could heat the boat with our HVAC system, but that requires the generator and doesn't offer the same quality heat. The automatic thermostat clicks off in the pilothouse as the temperature rises to 70 degrees. Hydronic heating is a godsend for off-season boating.

We confer over our Waggoner's Guide and a nautical chart splayed on the pilothouse table and decide on Olympia as our first destination, which is at the far south end of Puget Sound.

We pass McNeil Island off to starboard as we proceed through Balch Passage. I give this island a wide berth. McNeil served exclusively as an isolated Washington state prison for more than a hundred years. In the early 1960s, Charles Manson did time here for car theft before becoming famous for his more notorious crimes. The prison closed in 2011 but now houses 214 of the most dangerous sex offenders in the state. These "residents" have served their allotted sentences in prison elsewhere but are now held indefinitely at McNeil under a controversial civil commitment statute. This is not a place you ever want to visit.

McNeil Island – not a place you ever want to visit

Rounding Harstine Island, we enter Budd Inlet. We have the water to ourselves. Throughout our five-hour journey, we see only three other pleasure craft — all trawlers. The empty water is so different from our cruise last month in the San Juan Islands. Like us when we sailed, the colder weather has chased almost everyone back to land. 

Percival Landing, Olympia

We visited Olympia earlier this year and chose Swantown Marina for our moorage. This time, we opt for Percival Landing on the western end of Budd Inlet. There are two side-tie docks for overnight moorage, but only E Dock has power and water hookups. Space is available on a first-come-first-serve basis, and other than yacht club gatherings, you can't make an advance reservation. We arrive around 2 pm on a Tuesday, a little worried that the dock might be full, but find the dock completely empty. We spin around in the narrow fairway and tie up on our starboard side. It feels like we've parallel parked our trawler on the beautiful water-facing Main Street of town.

Indiscretion all alone on E Dock at Percival Landing

The historical treasure, MV Sand Man, graces D Dock at Percival Landing

A five-hour trip is long enough for our two trawler dogs to get antsy for shore leave, so we power down the instruments, plug into shore power, and head out. Up a nearby ramp is a park for the dogs, and many restaurants and shops beckon nearby. Two blocks north is the wonderfully serene Capitol Lake with spaced out benches, runners, walkers, and lots of ducks and geese on the water to tease the dogs. We follow the path that winds around the lake for a scenic two-mile walk. 

Tied up at Percival Landing. The State Capitol building looms in the background

View from Capitol Lake

I pay for two nights of moorage at the registration office at the Olympia Center. $68 for two nights with shore power is a good deal for a 43' boat. The central location of Percival Landing is perfect for exploring the downtown area on foot. We broke out our Ninebot scooters to get around when we stayed at the more remote Swantown Marina, but we find we don't need those here. We walk a couple blocks to the famous Spar Cafe - McMenamins for dinner, passing a dozen or more restaurants on our way. We enjoy great food and safe distances between patrons at the Spar. We also have a delicous lunch on the deck at the Olympia Oyster House, which is so close you could hit with a well-thrown rock from the cockpit of Indiscretion.

During our two days at Percival Landing, a few other boats tie up, but most leave after taking on water, a few hours of free shower power, and running errands in town. 

Water like glass at Percival Landing

Our only concern during our stay is the noise and foot traffic at night. The environment changes quite a bit after dark, and we feel a little nervous walking the dogs through the park at night. 

Jarrell Cove, Harstine Island

We say farewell to Olympia after our two days and nights of exploring, but vow we will make this a regular stop on future South Sound tours. The weather gods treat us to another day of light winds and calm seas. We head north up Case Inlet, slowly making our way up the east side of Harstine Island.

An endless wake on flat seas

We arrive at Jarrell Cove on the northern end of Harstine Island after three hours of uneventful motoring. We see just one other powerboat during our trip. This bay is a popular summer destination, but we find it utterly empty of visiting boats. We wonder to ourselves, where is everyone? We tie up to one of the 14 mooring buoys that take up the middle of the bay and then notice that the state park dock has shore power. We cast off the mooring and are soon tied up to the dock, plugged into power. We're big fans of the Washington State Parks annual moorage permit, which allows you to use any state park buoy or dock at no additional cost. There is a $6 per day fee to use shore power, which we gladly pay. 

Jarrell Cove State Park

The dock leads up to a nice network of trails and campsites. The main park facility has bathrooms and an outdoor amphitheater. The grounds are as empty as the bay. 

Our night time walk with the dogs is quite a change from Olympia. A heron's grumble from the shore creeps the dogs out, and something growls at us from the underbrush along the trail. Back on the boat, we flip on our FLIR night vision camera to spot the heron (or bear!), but find only empty shore. 

We spend two lovely days at the dock. We have the place to ourselves until our second night when two smaller boats tie up for the weekend. There's still plenty of space along the 650' dock for four or five more boats, and the buoys remain vacant during our entire stay — so different than our last visit in early May when every buoy was taken, and more boats were anchored in between. 

Dock Street Marina, Tacoma

We leave Jarrell Cove early to catch the ebb tide through the Tacoma Narrows. It's pitch black at 6:45 am when I planned to leave, so we dawdle until first light at 7:30 am to depart. 

A beautiful sunrise greets us as we leave Jarrell Cove, and calm seas accompany us as we reverse our course back the way we came, through the Narrows and along the waterfront of Ruston and Tacoma. We decide to spend Halloween at Dock Street Marina near the end of the Thea Foss Waterway. We call ahead for a slip assignment and are told that there is plenty of space; pull into any vacant slip on G or H docks.

We end up taking the same slip we used on our last trip here, back when I was still learning how to dock this big boat. Fortunately, I've improved a lot as a skipper, and there is no drama as we tie up. We count just four other visiting boats in this spacious marina, with its convenient access to downtown Tacoma, the Glass Museum, and wonderful Foss Waterway Promenade. 

Lots of space available at Dock Street Marina

We spend Halloween night on the boat watching scary movies on the Salon TV. A full moon shimmers through clouds out our port salon window, adding to the movie's suspense. 

A full moon rising on Halloween night

The Marina offers a slip side pump-out system, which makes emptying the holding tank especially easy. The fee is $5, but the affable dock manager waives this if you handle the "dirty" end of the job. 

Homeward Bound

We leave Dock Street around noon on Sunday for the quick trip home to Quartermaster Marina. Once back in our slip, I spend a couple of hours cleaning up the boat and putting on her winter covers. Our week of sunshine is ending as the forecast calls for rain, rain, rain, which of course is typical for this time of year. 

Our first fall cruise of the year has been spectacular, and we're excited to take many more of these mini-cruises during the offseason. And yet, the sailor remains strong in me. I can't shake the notion that this all feels wrong somehow, like a Northerner spending Thanksgiving with family in Southern California, with its sunny weather and palm trees. It's nice, but not tradition to celebrate the holidays without rain, clouds and cold. 

Though we've owned Indiscretion for more than two years, my memory of cold weather boating is embedded in my DNA. I recall that feeling of a deep, pervasive chill at the wheel in the cockpit while the rest of the family sheltered below. It was probably a cold spell in August, which, with our even-keeled Pacific Northwest climate, can be hard to distinguish from a typical day in February. The windblown rain found purchase inside my foul weather gear, and water squished in my boots as I tended the sails. Off to port, I watched a 50-foot trawler slowly pass us by to windward. The pilothouse windows were steamed up, but I could make out the captain taking a sip of hot coffee after a friendly wave. I waved back, usually a no-no to show any kinship between a sailing vessel and stinkpot, but I appreciated his kindness in allowing me right of way under sail. I am ashamed to admit I also muttered a curse of envy and spite at that happy captain, like Ahab and his bitterness about a certain white whale.

It took many years, but it seems I've now become that happy captain who waves with kindness and heartfelt concern from a steamed up pilothouse (yes, I wave to sailboats). Perhaps it's my long history of discomfort under sail that makes me feel so grateful for it all. Curse me if you want, I whisper to myself after a sip of hot coffee, but trawler life is good.

MV Indiscretion, all cleaned up and ready for her next adventure

Charging System Upgrade

Thursday, October 22, 2020 • 7 min read

During our two decades of sailing, we held a particular disdain for powerboats and their noisy generators. On starlit nights, the chug-chug-chug of neighboring generators disturbed the quiet stillness of the anchorage. Back then, we could be smug. With the simple systems on a sailboat, we could go days and days on the hook, relying only on the small house battery bank for power. 

Times have certainly changed for this old sailor.

On Indiscretion, we operate lots of power-hungry systems. Three refrigeration systems provide ample food storage for expeditions spanning a month or more between provisioning. A watermaker, extensive interior lighting, computerized vessel monitoring, TVs and entertainment systems, electric toilets, etc. etc. all take their toll on our bank of house batteries. 

At anchor, we typically run our generator for two hours in the morning and two hours at night to keep the batteries reasonably well charged. We take our cue from a computer display that provides a state of charge reading for our four Lifeline 8D house batteries. We start the generator when the state of charge drops to 50% and run it until we reach an absorption charge state of 75%. Morning and night. 

While I love all the fantastic systems and equipment aboard our trawler, I find I've become a bit obsessive with tracking and eliminating any excess power draws to avoid draining our house bank unnecessarily. The ship's panel shows our battery voltage (a proxy for our state of charge) and amps currently being drawn. When one of the refrigeration systems cycles on, this amp reading jumps way up. If I'm in the pilothouse and happen to glance down at the amp meter during one of these times, my pulse quickens. "What's drawing all this power?" I ask myself, looking around for something left on. I have a habit of touring the boat at various points, making sure lights are off. At anchor, I am an electricity miser. 

Unlike many other powerboats we've encountered, the sound-enclosure of our Northern Lights generator, buried deep inside a well-insulated engine room, keeps the noise to a minimum. Other than a burbling from the wet exhaust, it's hard to tell it's even running from outside the boat. That makes me feel a little better when I crank up the engine inside a quiet anchorage. 

Early in our trawler ownership, I asked the owner of a prominent yacht service company here in Seattle about installing solar panels on Indiscretion's fixed flybridge cover. Harnessing the power of the sun seemed like a great idea to cut down on generator time. 

"You sailors just don't get it," he grumbled. "These expedition trawlers require a tremendous amount of electricity to operate. It's not like the simple systems of a sailboat. Solar panels wouldn't make any meaningful difference at all in your case. Don't waste your money." 

During last summer's cruising, we needed to run the generator even longer, the more days we were away from shore power. We kept track of our daily generator runtimes to assess battery performance. The logs showed that after four days at anchor, we ran the generator close to eight hours a day to keep up. This normally wouldn't be a huge issue since we have plenty of fuel aboard to run the generator, but Indiscretion was commissioned with an oversized 12KW generator that needs to be run with at least a 50% electrical load to avoid maintenance issues down the road. Running the generator just to charge batteries might work with a smaller generator, but it's a no-no with this big engine. 

When a fuse blew on our ten-year-old Xantrex inverter during an overnight cruise, we learned we had a critical dependency on this aging device. Without an inverter, many of our systems, including our refrigeration, would fail to operate unless we ran the generator or plugged into shore power. After reading up other trawler captains' experience with our inverter model, we discovered that its useful life runs about ten years. We were on borrowed time. If our inverter failed on a long trip, we would be in a pickle. 

Once home from our summer cruising, we took all this information to Mickey Smith, a marine electrical guru at Pacific Yacht Management here in Seattle. Mickey is a living legend in the Nordhavn trawler community. He knows more about the electrical makeup of these vessels than maybe anyone alive. When he visited us on board to go over our battery charging needs, he pointed out his signature on the original as-built electrical diagrams for Indiscretion we keep as reference below the pilothouse settee. We knew right away we were in good hands. 

Based on Mickey's advice, we decided an overhaul of our battery charging system was necessary. We replaced all seven of our five-year-old Lifeline AGM batteries. And even though it was still functional, we preemptively replaced our Xantrex inverter with a new Magnum MS2812 2800W inverter/charger. The Magnum control panel in the pilothouse fit beautifully where the old Xantrex one used to be. And to speed battery charging and load on our generator, we added a second battery charger — a Victron Centaur — designed to charge in parallel with the Magnum. We also reconfigured our Maretron DCM100 battery monitoring system to provide a more accurate state of charge percentage for our battery bank. With brute strength and tenacity, we replaced all the batteries ourselves, but we hired Mickey to replace the inverter and add the second charger. All told, we spent about $15,000 on the project.

The Magnum inverter is half the size of the original one, freeing up space in the crowded lazarette.

The Magnum inverter remote control panel.

The Victron charger runs in parallel with the Magnum inverter to cut down charging time.

We had a chance to test our new charging setup last month during our empty nest cruise through the San Juan Islands. While we still needed to run the generator morning and night, our generator runtimes stayed under two hours per session, no matter how long we stayed away from shore power. As we had hoped, the Victron charger added a hefty load on the generator during the initial bulk charging phase. We no longer needed to scurry around, turning on various appliances and systems when we charged the batteries. 

When using the generator to charge our batteries, we rarely exceed a 75% state of charge. Our house battery bank needs to be charged to 100% at least once a week to avoid shortening its life span. We did plug into shore power weekly on our trip and discovered that the main engine's alternator can top off the batteries on a longer motoring passage. 

I am pleased with the upgrades we made to Indiscretion's charging system. I have grudgingly accepted the need to run the generator morning and night, and we can travel now for an extended period without running without needing to return to port for shore power. 

I am still thinking about installing solar panels on the roof of our flybridge. We met a couple of trawler skippers on last month's cruise that swore by them, saying they cut their generator time in half. I've read accounts of other Nordhavn owners who have experienced similar results. And when these our AGM batteries reach their end of life, lighter and faster-charging lithium batteries will almost certainly take their place. Between solar panels and more efficient batteries, we might someday reach a point where this former sailor can finally relax and enjoy the stillness of a quiet anchorage and the wonderful electrical amenities this trawler affords.

I can dream, can't I?

Indiscretion lit up at anchor. Can you hear the generator?

The Cruise of the Empty Nesters

Tuesday, September 29, 2020 • 15 min read

When we purchased our Nordhavn 43 trawler a little over two years ago, we had big plans for the fall of 2020. We’d leave our newly emptied home and sail off to far away destinations — a longtime dream come true.

In fact, we did cast off, but not like we expected.

We left our home port on Vashon Island on September 1st aboard Indiscretion headed generally for the San Juan Islands, some of the most beautiful cruising grounds in the world. No fixed itinerary. No set time to return. For once, we were cruising in September, a time long reserved for settling our kids into the new school year. Not this year. You see, we’ve reached that waypoint in life where the captain and first mate are mostly retired, and our children have flown the coop, left the nest, hit the road.

Well, sort of.

Our daughter is completing a master’s degree at the University of Washington, but her classes are all online because of the pandemic. So, she’s given up her apartment in Seattle and returned home. Our son left for his freshman year college in Colorado Springs in August, but the university told its incoming students to pack light; they will close down in the event of an outbreak. Since classes began, there have been 26 cases of COVID-19. We’re on alert, waiting for the phone call that he’s loaded up his Jeep and driving the 1,500 miles home to Washington state.

Indiscretion has the range and seaworthiness to go almost anywhere, safely and comfortably. Before the pandemic struck, we planned to voyage to Alaska this year as our first major expedition before heading down the west coast to Mexico. With closed borders, we can’t venture very far north. And with all this uncertainty over COVID-19, we can’t risk an extended trip down the coast.

So, while our voyage into Marriage 3.0 has begun in shoaling water with the possibility of uncharted reefs ahead, we’re still grateful for the position we’re in. We are healthy, live on an island which remains largely COVID-free, and have the freedom and flexibility to jump on our trawler and leave port for weeks or months. Life is good.

Port Ludlow and the Strait of Juan de Fuca

We spent our first night at anchor in Port Ludlow, a fine, protected harbor and well-suited for those traveling with dogs. It’s a good stop-over spot for South and Central Puget Sound boaters looking to cross the Strait.

There’s a place to tie up a dinghy just past the fuel dock and a nice network of walking trails near the Resort at Port Ludlow. Our evening walk took us near the restaurant at the resort with its beautiful, candlelit porch dining. We’ll have to try that on our next time here.

We thought we might stay a couple days in Port Ludlow, but the weather window to cross the Strait of Juan de Fuca was too good to linger. We made the crossing the next morning in mostly flat seas and blue skies. Our destination was Westcott Bay on the western side of San Juan Island, so we steered for the open water of Haro Strait.

About an hour from San Juan Island, we could make out a dozen or more boats huddled near the south end of the island, including three whale-watching boats. Whales! We’ve boated here for twenty years and have never encountered the famed Orca whale that plies these waters. This was our chance! We adjusted course to intercept, but we were too slow at our trawler speed of seven knots and the boats disbanded before we arrived. Oh well... We steered again for Haro Strait. Lisa took over the helm and I went down below for a nap.

From a comfortable snooze, I awoke 30 minutes later to a change in the engine’s RPMs and a shout from Lisa. I flew up the stairs to the pilothouse to catch a huge whale fin surfacing maybe 30 yards to port of us. We were all alone with no other boats anywhere around. We steered off to starboard to give the whale sea room and stopped the boat while this beauty put on a show, at one point lifting her entire body out of the water. We drifted along for ten minutes, totally mesmerized. What an incredible treat for our second day of cruising!

Westcott Bay, San Juan Island

We arrived in the islands on the Thursday before Labor Day weekend and wanted to find a place to anchor that wouldn’t be overrun with boats. Westcott Bay is a ten-minute tender ride from Roche Harbor, but far enough away that it didn’t feel crowded during the five days we spent there. We enjoyed a wonderful feast of oysters and wine at the Westcott Oyster Company before it shut down for the season. We took many hikes with the dogs through the historic English Camp inside nearby Garrison Bay.

Oysters at Westcott Bay Shellfish

During our time at Westcott, we endured two days of brisk wind out of the north. The bay seemed better protected from a north wind than other areas. We experienced 15-20 knot winds with occasional gusts of 25, but no higher. We slept well with our trusty Rocna anchor with Mantus bridle on the job.

Sunset in Westcott Bay

Reid Harbor, Stuart Island

We next ventured north to Reid Harbor on Stuart Island. This anchorage has been a longtime favorite of ours for its protected harbor, dinghy dock for easy access to shore, and great trail system.

We spent two nights here on a mooring buoy. We admired three fellow Nordhavn trawlers that joined us in the bay.

Nordhavn 47 Kelli Ann

After a few aborted attempts in past years, we completed the long hike to the lighthouse on the extreme western edge of Stuart. The dogs slept very well that night.

To the lighthouse!

A Stuart Island fixer-upper …

Friday Harbor, San Juan Island

We made a two-day stopover at the dock in Friday Harbor to pick up our daughter and her boyfriend for a visit. They drove up to Anacortes and took the ferry to meet us for a couple of days. We enjoyed the hospitality of Friday Harbor and took on provisions.

We moored up on the inside of breakwater D, the same place we tied up last year. The stern of Indiscretion faced the opening of the marina channel, so we got to see and wave at all the boats coming and going. After walking back to the boat after a nice dinner ashore, we noticed many boats had their underwater lights on for ambiance. We decided to turn ours on as well. Once illuminated, hundreds of squid swarmed the lights, and just moments later, a very agile seal swam in figure-eight loops right around our swim-step, devouring the squid. It stunned us all. We were slow to get our camera out, but here is the seal near the end of his feast:

One fast seal!

Short Video Clip - Friday Harbor Seal Feast!

Blind Bay, Shaw Island

The smoke from all the forest fires burning in Eastern Washington, Oregon and California finally reached the islands as we motored from Friday Harbor to Blind Bay on Shaw Island. A little patchy fog mixed in with the smoke to made the trip visually challenging, though we could see quite well with radar.

Blind Bay living up to its name …

After twenty years of cruising in the San Juan Islands, this was our first visit to Shaw Island. We anchored in about 45 feet of water near the opening of Blind Bay, close to Blind Island and the little marina/store.

We did some shopping at the store, which was surprisingly well-stocked, and chatted with a few Shaw islanders who were patiently waiting for one of the limited ferry sailings off the island. The store’s dock is the only place in the bay to land a tender, but it is limited to just patrons of the store, and off limits after hours. After buying $150 worth of food and supplies, we hoped we could use the dock that evening to take our two dogs ashore. But when we asked at the store, the answer was a firm no. This left a bad taste in our mouths, so we probably won’t visit again. Voyaging with dogs with a tender that can’t be easily beached has its limitations.

Fossil Bay, Sucia Island

We departed Blind Bay in a smoky haze on our way to Jones Island in hopes of snagging a mooring buoy, and if not, onward to Sucia Island. The haze began to thicken and once we cleared Orcas Island we were traveling in dense fog, the thickest in my boating career. Fog is common late summer in the San Juans and usually burns off by late morning. Indiscretion has radar and AIS, which becomes our electronic eyes in times like these.

As we approached Jones Island, the fog was so thick we couldn’t make out the island though we knew we were close based on the chart plotter and radar. We slowed down and steered for the north entrance. About halfway in, we still couldn’t see the shoreline or any boats, though we could tell the small bay was full based on radar and AIS signals. Visibility couldn’t have been more than 25 yards, making entry here too dangerous. We carefully reversed course and made way for more open water towards Sucia Island.

This thick fog persisted through the ten nautical miles up President Channel. Boat traffic was light and we were able to steer clear of other vessels. Most had AIS, which allows you to see their course and speed and whether you’re on a collision course. We passed a dozen or so boats during this 90 minute trip, but other than a blip on a screen, never actually saw them. Eerie.

The fog cleared on queue as we approached Fossil Bay on the southeast side of Sucia Island. We like Fossil Bay because of its two docks that allow easy access to shore in the tender. You can anchor in Fossil Bay, but the dozen or so mooring buoys take up the greater part of the anchorage.

We spent three days here, taking advantage of the network of hiking trails that span the island with long walks with the dogs, and simply relaxing in the gorgeous bay. Most evenings, we found ourselves gravitating to the flybridge to take in the sunset, dusk and twilight together. It doesn’t get much better than this.

Hikes in dorky hats on Sucia Island

Deer Harbor, Orcas Island

We took a slip at Deer Harbor Resort and Marina to charge our batteries, fill up the water tanks, and enjoy some shoreside activities. A little rain loomed in the forecast, so it was a good time to be at dock (dinghy rides in the rain with the dogs are not so fun). We bought more food and supplies at the marina store, enjoyed pizzas from Island Pie, and walked the half-mile up the road for a BBQ meal at the Deer Harbor Inn.

Deer Harbor Marina

We enjoyed ourselves so much at this quaint marina that we decided to stay an extra day to explore more of Orcas by car. We rented a minivan and traveled along the rural back roads of the island. Wineries, farm stands, and stunning seaside vistas welcomed us. We made our way to Eastsound, the largest “town” on Orcas. We bought some gifts for friends back home, ate an OK meal at the town’s Irish Pub, and stocked up on more groceries at the first full-fledged grocery store we had seen in a few weeks.

Cap Sante Marina, Anacortes

We left Deer Harbor with charged batteries and a rested crew. We would normally look for an anchorage to while away a few days on the hook, but after reviewing the upcoming week’s weather forecast of strong south winds and rain, we decided it was time to make our slow progress home.

We steered for Cap Sante Marina in Anacortes. We’d never been there, but kept hearing such good things about the marina and town, we thought we should check it out. I’m so glad we did.

A quick call to the marina, and we had an assigned slip on C dock. The entrance to the marina involves winding your way through a wall-marked dredged channel and maneuvering through and around a lot of boat traffic, but once inside you’re treated to wide, well-marked fairways and easy slip access.

Once safely moored, we walked the busy docks to see four other Nordhavn trawlers moored on our dock alone. Nordhavn has a sales office here in Anacortes, and Yachttech, a renowned Nordhavn service center, has an office here.

So many Nordhavns!

A short walk from the head of the dock brought us to a huge fenced off-leash dock park. Whoa! Our two dogs had a very fine time stretching their legs at speeds their human counterparts could never achieve. What kind of town dedicates an acre of prime waterfront real estate for a off-leashdog park?

On the recommendation of a fellow boater, we walked another six blocks to find the Brown Lantern Tavern. We watched the first half of the Seattle Seahawks game while we enjoyed terrific food and beer. We were falling in love with Anacortes.

On the walk back to marina, Lisa and I wondered aloud: “why not keep our boat here?” We applied for permanent moorage later that night. It’s that good.

Kingston Marina and Home

We left Anacortes with some hesitation. We could have easily holed up here during the rain and wind and enjoyed ourselves at the dock and town, but we decided to push on.

We took the Swinomish Channel south to avoid the adverse currents we would face in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. We took this route a few times in our sailboat, but I found the tight maneuvering through the narrow dredged channel tiring. And we still fought an adverse current. In hindsight, I would have preferred the open water approach through the strait.

We arrived at Kingston Marina after a nine-hour trip, both of us tired. An errant boater had taken our assigned side tie slip near the marina entrance, so we backed into an awkward slip deep inside. This is when bow and stern thrusters come in super handy.

Indiscretion tucked into a slip at Kingston Marina

We hadn’t visited Kingston by boat before, so it was a treat to walk the grounds and have our choice of fine restaurants. We had a lovely dinner at the Kingston Ale House. If you go, try the deep-fried green beans. Trust me.

We left Kingston Marina around 9 am for our last leg home, a six-hour trip. Neither of us were anxious to be home, but the looming heavy winds and rain convinced us to head to the safety of our own slip. Other than dodging hundreds of hard-to-see logs, the trip to Vashon was uneventful. We docked around 3 pm, cracked open our arrival beers, and reflected together on our empty nest cruise.

Reflections on Empty Nest Cruising Aboard a Nordhavn 43 Trawler

First off, the boat seemed to expand significantly in size as our crew complement shifted from a family of four to a single couple. With just the two of us, the boat seemed palatial. We’ve considered larger Nordhavns, but after this trip, I don’t think it would make any sense to move up. This is the perfect size trawler for a couple and occasional guests.

We expected to find the island chain emptied out in September, but that wasn’t the case. We had never seen so many anchored boats in Roche Harbor during our visit over the Labor Day weekend. Later anchorages weren’t quite as crowded, but we found we needed to arrive earlier in the day to make sure we found a spot — not what we expected for September cruising.

Dogs on a boat are a pain in the ass, but I can’t imagine cruising without them.

We cooked some terrific meals aboard the boat without much more effort than our home kitchen. Provisioning with a specific meal plan for the trip made sure we had everything we needed onboard, and took the guesswork out of what to make.

We are getting pretty damned confident at docking this trawler. We had a rocky start, but since then, every docking maneuver has been straight-forward and controlled. I still get nervous, but I now think of this as just good seamanship.

Our confidence in anchoring has also greatly increased. We made some improvements to our anchoring system with new anchor rode, a Mantus bridle and Mantus swivel. We had a chance to put the new gear to the test in a bunch of new anchorages and in some stiff winds. Our Maretron Anchor Watch system proved we stayed put even as boats near us dragged.

We had no mechanical or equipment failures during the cruise, now over 2,000 trouble-free nautical miles put astern since owning Indiscretion. I’m diligent about preventative maintenance and stocking spare parts, but I’m starting to believe these Nordhavn trawlers really are bullet-proof. I’ve probably just jinxed everything by writing this.

Our longest stint away from a dock was seven days, and except for needing to pump out the holding tank, we could have gone much longer. Normal generator runtimes in the morning and night with our new charging system kept our new house batteries topped off. The watermaker kept up with our daily water usage. The trash compactor helped keep our trash to a minimum, at least in storage space. And our ample freezer and refrigeration units held more food than two people could possibly consume (we packed too much food, again).

We met some wonderful people during our cruise that share our passion for the water and boat life. With COVID-19, these encounters can’t expand beyond a chat across a dock or swim step to dinghy, but you know right away that you’re meeting special people, perhaps lifelong friends. We look forward to welcoming these kindred spirits aboard for a drink in future anchorages.

Cruising the San Juans in the final month of summer was amazing. We returned to our home slip at Quartermaster Marina on the first day of fall, just ahead of some torrential rainfall that our area desperately needed. I’m taking a few days to wax the boat and complete a few other scheduled maintenance tasks. Call it a short pit stop before we cast off again for more empty nest fall cruising. Hope to see you out there!

Empty Nesters

The Cost of Indiscretion

Tuesday, September 15, 2020 • 6 min read

As a licensed CPA and long-time boat owner, I’m no stranger to the financial consequences of keeping a boat. People like to joke about how quickly money flows into a boat, like stuffing $100 bills down a bottomless drain. Or, how many “boat units” a particular upgrade or repair will be. Somehow, six boat units sound better than $6,000.

When we were shopping for our trawler, our yacht broker shared this financial rule of thumb: expect to spend about 10% of the value of the boat each year on maintenance, upkeep, moorage, and other ownership costs like insurance, taxes and fees. The rule worked on our $70,000 sailboat. We spent about $7,000 a year on boat-related costs. But surely, that math couldn’t extend to a $700,000 trawler. Could it?

Here’s a summary of last year’s costs for Indiscretion. We spent roughly $44,000, a small fortune for us frugal sailors, but “just” 6% of the boat’s value. Here’s where the money went:

Two insights to share upfront. First, fuel costs of operating a full-displacement trawler are usually low on the list of expenses. We took on fuel just once in 2019. This was a positive surprise as we entered the world of these efficient yachts. Second, since owning Indiscretion, we’ve incurred almost no costs for equipment or mechanical failures. Everything we’ve spent has been either upgrades or preventative maintenance to avoid costly repairs in exotic locations — also a positive surprise.

About half our annual expense came in one fell swoop during our haul-out at Canal Boatyard in Ballard. Oomph! We outsourced the work to a marine contractor since we had some specific deferred maintenance tasks we needed to tackle. In our case, overdue seal replacements for our stabilizer system and a reconfiguration of our electrical panel, which totaled about $7,500. The balance of the costs hit us like slashing knife wounds: $1,500 to drain and replace engine coolant, $2,000 to update our electronics software and charts, $6,000 for bottom sanding and painting, $2,500 for yard fees and haul-out, $1,000 for hull waxing, $1,000 for assistance with transiting the Ballard Locks, and $1,600 for a sundry of supplies and other charges incurred during the haul-out.

Once the initial shock wore off, I took a more philosophical view of these expenses. Some of the bigger ticket costs were expert upgrades or infrequent maintenance tasks that won’t repeat each year. A complete bottom sanding and painting can last two or three years. And the thousands we spent on tasks like changing the engine coolant or help with moving the boat, I will undoubtedly do in the future. However, I am sure I will need other upgrades or expert assistance in the future. For example, this year, we employed an electrical contractor to replace Indiscretion’s battery charging system to make our generator time at anchor more efficient. And sooner or later, I will need to pull out the boat’s aging muffler system and replace it with a new one. After reading about the replacement experience on a sistership’s blog, I quickly concluded that this is a job best left for professionals.

Lessons Learned from Employing Marine Contractors

I learned some lessons about the use of marine contractors during our two years of trawler ownership. First, there are some amazingly talented marine technicians who can perform near-miraculous repairs and upgrades to yachts based on their years of experience and inside knowledge. Second, they operate like any business and thus are, of course, incentivized to maximize their revenue. This might mean replacing equipment that could be repaired more economically or undertaking work that isn’t necessarily warranted. Third, anything I outsource to a contractor that I might need to do in the future to maintain the safety of the boat is a lost learning opportunity to advance my mechanical skills.

Here’s a prime example of a case where the contractor’s business model conflicted with my best interests: shortly after purchasing Indiscretion, I noticed a small amount of oil in the engine room flowing from our wing engine. I examined the engine, but I could not locate the source of the leak. It wasn’t a lot of oil, but after cleaning the bilge, more would soon appear, even if I hadn’t operated the engine. Our contractor diagnosed the problem and recommended we replace the wing engine’s transmission. The job would take a couple of weeks and cost $6,000. We learned all this at the beginning of summer, and since the transmission worked fine, and we weren’t losing any oil in either the engine or transmission, I deferred the job until the offseason. During our summer cruising, the leak stopped altogether and hasn’t reappeared. I now suspect that the oil resulted from a spill during an oil filter change. We clearly didn’t need to replace the transmission.

I've learned to limit my use of marine contractors to projects that meet these three criteria: (1) it’s a difficult task that I wouldn’t be able to do without investing a lot of time and money in tools; (2) there is a specific scope and agreed-upon cost estimate for the project upfront; and (3), I’m able to participate in the work, so I continue to develop my skills as a fledgling trawler mechanic.

I thought last year might have been an anomaly, and our costs might drop in 2020. After all, we took a much more hands-on approach during our annual haul-out and had gotten many of the upfront costs of tools and spares behind us. But, alas no. Our boat costs this year will come in around $45,000, slightly higher than in 2019.

First Mate Lisa scraping barnacles off the keel cooler

So, while our annual boating costs have come in below the 10% threshold, I still think it’s a good rule of thumb. So far, our voyaging has been limited to the Northwest, but our plans include open ocean travel and thousands of nautical miles under our keel. Insurance costs will rise, along with fuel, marina fees, weather routing, and other unforeseen costs. And If you count the 10% Washington state sales tax we paid on the purchase of the boat, and the 10% brokerage fee we’ll pay on sale, our annual costs need to stay under 6% each year to avoid exceeding the 10% rule-of-thumb over our planned ownership of Indiscretion.

Few buy boats for the financial return, but it’s smart to be realistic when planning your finances as a boat owner. None of these costs has come at a surprise to us, thankfully. We used the 10% rule as a budgeting guide going in, and these high expected operating costs in part informed our chosen name for our trawler: Indiscretion. What kind of CPA would buy an asset that not only depreciates but requires additional cash each year just to keep it running? This one did, and I have absolutely no regrets. After all, you can’t put a price tag on dreams. Just remember to keep the boat kitty full. And make sure to translate any big-ticket items into boat units when discussing costs with your first mate. It really does sound better.

If you’re a trawler owner, do you subscribe to the ten-percent rule? If not, how have you managed to keep costs low? Share your feedback in the comment section below.

Mornings on the Boat

Friday, September 11, 2020 • 3 min read

Mornings start early on Indiscretion. Sometime between 6 and 7 a.m., one of our two trawler dogs will jump down off the bed and start issuing low whines I can’t drown out no matter how deeply I burrow into the blankets.

I complain a lot about having to take the dogs ashore in the morning, but to be honest, I love it.

We take it slow in the tender and breathe in the still morning air. The salt and sea smell clear out the sleep cobwebs, and I come fully awake, aware of the beauty that engulfs me. It might have been blowing 20 knots all night, but flat water usually welcomes me on these short boat rides.

I’m no stranger to mornings on a boat. I commuted by ferry every morning from our home on Vashon Island to Tacoma for twenty-odd years. Certainly, that kind of commute beats a freeway any day, but it’s nothing like this.

This morning, we take a short ride from our anchorage here in Westcott Bay to the dinghy dock at English Camp in Garrison Bay. While our souped-up tender could hurtle us along at 30 knots, we take it slow to preserve the stillness. The frantic race up the dock for that first long pee, and then 20 or 30 minutes of glorious sniffing and exploration. The walk back to the tender is always slower as both dogs would be much happier to continue their exploration of land, but will grudgingly step back aboard the tender when requested.

Back on Indiscretion, our morning routine begins. We fire up the generator to charge the batteries. The 12KW Northern Lights generator is tucked away inside a well-insulated engine room, encased in a sound-muffling box. You feel its rumble more than you hear it. I’ll make 25 gallons of fresh water using our watermaker, which helps offset our daily usage. By this time, the wonderful aroma of freshly brewed coffee wafts through the boat. Lisa brings up two steaming mugs to the pilothouse, and we begin the process of becoming fully human again.

I almost always put on my “mornings on the boat” playlist: What a Wonderful World, I Can See Clearly Now, Songbird (Eva Cassidy’s soulful masterpiece), Into the Mystic, and a handful of others that punctuate how amazing it is to wake up afloat. This playlist evolved from our early sailing days when accommodations weren’t nearly so plush and we needed a reminder in that dark, damp saloon first thing in the morning. Now the music is like an old friend, and I can’t help but hum along. And smile.

After the generator runs for an hour, we have plenty of hot water for showers (there is absolutely nothing like taking a hot morning shower on a boat). Showered and caffeinated, the dogs asleep again, I find myself in the pilothouse where I am writing this right now.

Lisa often relaxes in the salon with a book, but this is my happy place. I read, write, or just watch out the dozen surrounding windows at the other anchored boats and shoreline. Soon, loose plans for the day begin to crystalize: A trip ashore for provisions, a half dozen boat projects I’ve been neglecting, a conference call I’ll take from this watery office ... but not just yet. I pour one more cup of coffee to put off the inevitable busyness that pervades boat life and shore life, alike.

I love these mornings on the boat.