Anchoring a boat has come a long way. On our sailboats, it always felt like a risky proposition. We'd make sure to set the anchor and watch our position in relation to a fixed point on land. I'd stand at the bow for a long time before turning in, feeling the pressure of wind on my cheek, wondering if I should let out more rode. Many nights I'd be up in a flash if I heard a strange noise or a shift in the wind, looking out for something familiar on the dark shore to ease my mind.
The reason for this unease stemmed from our sailboat’s lightweight anchoring system and our inexperience as boaters. Our largest sailboat had a Bruce anchor that couldn’t have weighed more than 20 pounds with just 50 feet of anchor chain and 200 feet of rope. I embedded a series of colored zip ties into the nylon rode to approximate the amount of rode we had deployed. A small Maxwell windlass made pulling up the light anchor easy, but it couldn’t accommodate chain, so I had to pull up that last 50 feet by hand. The windlass tended to break off those colored zip ties, which threw off my already confusing system of measuring rode (“two red ties and one blue one is 75 feet, or is that 125 feet?").
And yet, our anchor dragged just one time in all those years of sailing. We were anchored on the south side of Blake Island, an area known for currents and kelp beds, which can be trouble for anchor holding. I stood at the bow a long time that night, studying our swing, scanning other nearby boats. The next morning as I washed the breakfast dishes, I looked out the companionway to see a boat gliding our way. The boat's captain stood at the bow with a cup of coffee and an amused expression. What the hell? Doesn't he know his boat's adrift? I climbed into the cockpit to get a better view of his troubles when I noticed that, in fact, we were the boat on the move.
"Morning, skipper!" The captain called over. "You seem to be dragging."
I had the engine going in about 15 seconds and managed to avoid hitting another boat or grounding ashore. What if this had happened in the wee hours of the night? That was a lucky break.
Indiscretion’s Anchoring System
On our trawler, we have a much more advanced anchoring setup: a 120-pound Rocna 55 anchor, 400 feet of high test anchor chain, a Maxwell 3500 windlass with an integrated chain counter, and a snubber line which takes any surge strain off the windlass. The chain counter provides a digital readout in the pilothouse of exactly how much rode we have out. An "Anchor Watch" on a nearby computer screen displays Indiscretion's current GPS position in relation to the anchor. If she leaves a predetermined radius around the anchor, an alarm sounds, and we get a text message. Anchoring technology designed to let the skipper and crew rest easy at night.
Maretron Anchor Watch
We also keep a TecTecTec VPRO500 laser range finder in the pilothouse that provides precise distances to other anchored boats and objects onshore. Now, instead of worrying whether we've gotten closer to a nearby boat, we can put the vessel inside the viewfinder of the device, click a button and get the actual distance. This has eliminated disputes between Captain and First Mate regarding how close another boat is to us.
Two Boat Units Later ...
And yet, with all this robust anchoring gear and technology, we still managed to flub up in a big way—no damage to the boat luckily, but certainly a ding to our pocketbook.
The first sign of trouble occurred when we attempted to anchor in about 60 feet of water off Blake Island's west side. We would typically try to anchor in shallower water closer to shore, but the anchorage was full. We needed to let out 300 feet of chain to maintain a 5:1 ratio. I kept the boat in position from the pilothouse while Lisa deployed the chain from the bow.
"Hold up!" Lisa called after a few minutes. "We're almost out of chain." Sure enough, just past 200 feet, red paint on the anchor chain indicated we were near the bitter end. I opened the chain locker and saw maybe 30 feet more before we ran out. I scratched my head. The boat was commissioned with 400 feet of chain. What happened to the other 150 feet?
We pulled up the anchor and went looking for a more suitable anchorage. And I added new anchor rode to our boat shopping list. 250 feet of chain wasn't enough for some of the anchorages we planned to visit during our travels.
We bought 400 feet of 3/8" high test Grade 43 galvanized anchor chain at Washington Chain and Supply based on recommendations from fellow trawler captains. The total cost, including sales tax, was about $2,200. We decided to wait until our spring haulout to swap out the chain. The drum weighs over 600 pounds, and I didn't relish the idea of wrestling it down the dock. Washington Chain and Supply has a convenient location on the south side of Seattle and loaded the drum into the bed of my pickup truck with a forklift.
I backed the truck under the bow. Lisa lowered the anchor down to me and then started unspooling chain into the bed of the truck. When we reached the end of the chain, she fed the short length of rope that serves as our bitter end. This rope section allows the anchor line to be severed quickly in case of an emergency. I surveyed the old chain now flaked around me in the bed of the truck. It seemed in fine shape other than flakes of rust on the section that sat lowest in the chain locker. And it sure looked like a big pile.
Anchor Chain Swap
Before loading the new chain, Lisa checked the chain counter in the pilothouse. All 238 feet deployed.
I shackled the anchor to the new chain, added seizing wire, and watched the new anchor chain climb up the bow pulpit. With all the new chain on board, I checked the chain counter. It showed zero chain deployed. I was expecting an error message because we just pulled up 162 feet more chain that we let out. Huh.
We dropped the anchor to the ground of the boatyard and let out 50 feet of chain according to the chain counter. I stretched the chain out and measured it. 83 feet. What? We let out another 50 feet. Again, 83 feet by the tape measure. It seemed our brilliant chain counting system couldn't count. And extrapolating this error to the chain counter's 238 feet meant we really did have 400 feet of chain all along. Doh!
This chain counting error meant we set out way too much anchor chain every time we anchored these past two years. If the chain counter said 100 feet, we actually had 167 feet out. Uggh!
It took some simple algebra and 15 minutes of tinkering with the Maxwell display in the pilothouse to calibrate the chain counter properly. We let out another 50 feet of anchor chain, and this time the measurement of the chain deployed matched the chain counter. My guess is this calibration error has persisted since this trawler's commissioning over ten years ago.
What a humbling lesson for someone with an intrinsic trust of data and computers. I never once considered that the chain counter might be wrong. My climb up the steep learning curve of mastering this complex trawler continues, two inches forward, one inch back. But at least we have brand-spanking-new anchor chain and resolved an anchoring issue we didn't even know we had. And perhaps we will be a little more suspicious of the digital readouts onboard this little ship. Trust, but verify seems a good adage here.
Questions or comments about the anchoring gear aboard Indiscretion? Let us know in the comment section below. Fair winds!
Over the past few months, we’ve been awakened by our Maretron monitoring system with a low-battery alarm during the wee hours. You cannot distinguish the low-battery alarm from the Anchor watch alarm, so on the times this has happened, I immediately launched myself to the pilothouse to gauge which way we’re dragging, peering out of the dark windows for some sign of a lee shore. Once fully awake, I noted that the battery level was perilously low.
While there are lots of power-draining systems on the boat, the main culprits are the freezer and refrigeration units, which make up more than 70% of our typical amperage use.
Indiscretion has four Lifeline 8D batteries to power the house, which were over five years old, and was having a hell of a time keeping a charge. Our generator run times had grown from two hours, twice a day, to eight hours, four times a day. And even that wouldn’t allow us to make it through the night without running low. Our ability to anchor out for more than a day was severely compromised. Not the kind of thing you expect from an expedition trawler.
One way to potentially breathe new life into older batteries is to run an equalization process through the inverting/charging system. Equalization is a controlled overcharging of a fully charged battery. This overcharge mixes the electrolyte, evens the charge among varying battery cells, and reduces permanent sulfation of the battery plates. Our Xantrex inverter has this function, but we saw no improvement in performance after equalizing the battery bank.
So, it was time to replace the batteries. Besides the four house batteries, we have a Lifeline 4D battery to start the main engine, and two smaller Lifelines to power the generator, wing engine, and an isolated communication battery for emergencies.
We got a bid to have all seven batteries replaced by during our upcoming haul out, but the price tag surprised us. All told, we were looking at $7,500 installed, and we would have to wait at least two months until business got back to normal with COVID-19.
We searched online and soon found that Batteryguys.com would deliver these same batteries to our door for $4,300. I contacted Lifeline to ask about this online vendor. I was concerned that I would be getting old or refurbished batteries but was informed that Batteryguys was one of Lifeline’s largest customers, and they ship out pallet loads of batteries to them every week. We could buy these with confidence.
A nine hundred pound pallet showed up ten days after we placed our order.
Installing the Batteries
Now, we faced the hard part of removing the old batteries and installing the new ones. These batteries are heavy! A Lifeline 8D battery weighs a whopping 156 pounds, and we had four of these beasts to finagle in tight places.
On Indiscretion, five of the batteries are stowed in the stern, deep inside the lazarette, with a limited wiggle room to work. All the batteries fit inside custom battery trays and are secured with stout hardware to keep them in place, even if we capsize.
Batteries stowed in Indiscretion’s lazarette. The far one on the other side of the rudder post was a bugger!
I recruited my 18-year-old son Connor to help me with the project, and he was a huge help. Not only does he now seem as strong as me, but he also had some great ideas during the long day of ways to make the arduous process easier.
Our first mission was removing the old batteries. Before messing with battery terminals, we switched off all the battery switches, unplugged from shower power, and turned off the inverter. The boat became eerily silent without the ever-present hum of transformers and refrigeration.
We started with the group in the lazarette. The first two in the line were easy to access and the lightest of the bunch. We removed the tie-down hardware and disconnected the battery terminals. Out came the Lifeline 31XT used by the wing engine and generator. At a mere 74 pounds, it gave itself up without much fight. Its next-door neighbor, a 124-pound Lifeline 4D that starts the main engine, slid straight out. These batteries have rope handles to make lifting them less awkward. We tied an eight-foot loop of stout rope to each handle of the 4D to lift the battery out of the lazarette into the cockpit. I grasped the rope from inside the lazarette, and Connor lifted from the cockpit above. Up and out, the battery went. Once in the cockpit, we worked together using the lifting rope to work our way to the cockpit door and over the 18” chasm between boat and dock.
The easy ones …
Next was a line of three Lifeline 8D batteries, deep inside the lazarette. Each sat inside a recessed enclosure and would need to be lifted out of the enclosure, pulled forward, rotated 90 degrees, and slid out. Lifting a 156-pound battery in an enclosed space without headroom is hard. We worked together to pull the battery up on one edge of the enclosure, only to have it become wedged or fall back inside its box as we jiggered it. Eventually, we discovered applying a lever to pry up the battery worked well. We used a long wrench and the wooden handle of a hammer as levers. With this new leverage, we managed to extricate two of these beasts and haul them onto the dock, leaving just one remaining 8D battery nestled on the other side of the rudder post. For this one, Connor contorted his thinner frame over the hot water tank on the starboard side, and I wedged myself from the port side, laying where the previous four batteries once sat. Levers, sweat, and some cursing eventually led to the successful extraction of this last lazarette battery.
The communication battery in the pilothouse was simple to remove. We used brute strength to lift and hoist the 8D battery under the floorboards in the guest stateroom out of its hole, and up and down the pilothouse stairs, one step at a time. Did I mention these 8D batteries were heavy?
We used a hand truck to haul the new batteries from the back of my truck in the marina parking lot down the long dock to the boat. One by one, we hauled the new batteries aboard and began installing them. We had been working about three hours by this point and were plenty tired, but it felt a little easier to get each one put in place. Plopping a battery into its retaining box is a lot easier than trying to extract one out. Another two hours of battery wrangling, and we finished the installation. We turned on all the battery switches and shore power and watched the boat come back to life. The new batteries were taking a charge from our inverter, and everything worked as we expected.
Hauling the old batteries away was our final task. We waited until the evening high tide when the ramp to the parking lot was near level and hoisted each battery into the bed of my truck. I sold these old batteries to a salvage yard in Tacoma for about $100.
Hauling up the old batteries, one at a time
All told, it took us six hours of labor to remove and install the batteries. Connor seemed unfazed from the work. Ah, the joys of youth. I definitely needed a soak in the hot tub that night.
Testing Out the New Batteries
A few days after we completed the battery installation, we decided to take advantage of the lovely June weather here in the Pacific Northwest and spend a few days on the hook to test things out. Our chosen anchorage was a mere mile from our marina: Inner Quartermaster Harbor.
We had the anchor set around noon. We tracked the battery levels throughout the day. They seemed to be holding up fine. At 8 pm, we ran the generator for an hour and were able to bring the battery level up nearly to 100%.
At 7 am the next morning, I was pleased to see our battery level hadn’t reduced much. The voltage at the panel read 12.7. Our Maretron battery percentage showed a respectable 80%. We ran the generator for an hour to top off the batteries while we made coffee and showered. By the end of the hour, we were closing on a 95% battery charge.
Indiscretion after a night at anchor in Quartermaster Harbor
Restoring our battery capacity and recharging capacity took some physical effort and a hefty price tag. Still, the benefit of staying out on anchor for days (or weeks) on end is worth it.
Are you mechanically-inclined, perhaps an engineer? Are you inquisitive by nature, wondering how things tick? Do you like to fix stuff? If so, this post is not meant for you, although you might get a chuckle here and there if you decide to keep reading.
I wrote this for a different segment of the population, which I count myself a dues-paying member: the mechanically challenged. I’m pretty good with a spreadsheet, and I can make PowerPoint get up and dance. But fixing things? Not so much.
I made it through 50 good years by nurturing relationships with skilled mechanics in a variety of trades. Broken dishwasher? I’ve got a person for that. Lawnmower won’t start? I have a small-engine whisperer on speed dial. When our longtime island appliance repairman retired a few years back, I felt a surge of panic. Larry fixed nearly every appliance in our home at one time or another. How could he dare retire?
I once attempted to fix a fuel leak on our gas generator during a power outage over a holiday weekend. I mucked things up so badly I had to buy a whole new generator.
The kids retreated to their rooms whenever my battered toolbox came out of the closet. If my life were a movie, low scary music would play. Lisa would sometimes offer advice over my shoulder as I cursed and fretted. My responses were seldom civil.
This mechanical disadvantage showed up often on our sailboats. Our first boat had a temperamental Atomic 4 gas engine that would cough, sputter and die at the most inconvenient times. I would gaze at the abyss of engine space under the companionway with helpless misery. That piece of crap engine taught me a valuable lesson that lasted for the remainder of my sailing years: on a sailboat, the engine is considered a mere convenience, a backup to the real driving force of the sails.
So, you can imagine my predicament when we considered crossing over from sail to trawler. There were many great things about trawlers that excited us, but the maintenance of systems wasn’t one of them. No sails to save me. And enough mechanical equipment to run a small municipality.
While we searched for the perfect trawler, our yacht broker made sure we got a good look at the engine room on every boat we toured. What in the hell is all this stuff? I looked around and nodded, but soon made my way out of the claustrophobic space back to the light and allure of the pilothouse and boat deck.
“What is all this stuff?”
We met other trawler captains and crew to get better acquainted with the lifestyle and the challenges they faced underway. While many were former sailors like us, they seemed to have this zeal for fixing things. Engineers and former mechanics, most of them, MacGyvers, all of them. I admired their can-do attitudes while I struggled to keep up with their engine-speak as they discussed kilowatts, heat exchangers, and hydraulics. After these encounters, I fretted about my lack of skill.
But this story has a happy ending. What follows is the journey this non-mechanic took to achieve, if not mastery, at least a pretty damn good working relationship with the many systems aboard our 43’ Nordhavn trawler. If I can do this, really anyone can.
Taking Stock
In the first few weeks we owned Indiscretion, I spent time taking stock of the equipment and machinery aboard the vessel. This involved looking into every cabinet, cubby, crawlspace, locker, and recess. Lifting floorboards under bunks, and discovering even more floorboards under those. Twisting my frame into the deep cockpit lazerette and squirming to the outer reaches, past the hydronic heating system, the inverter, and the watermaker — just looking and identifying things.
Next, I sorted through three large file boxes of equipment manuals stowed under the pilothouse settee. Our trawler came with an owner’s manual that describes practically every aspect of the ship’s operation with details on all the equipment and systems as it was commissioned. I went through the manual, section by section, and completed a second, more informed tour through the boat. This time, I sought out the equipment described in the manual and studied its use and maintenance requirements. I took the manuals home and created a digital library by downloading PDFs of the manuals if I could find them online, and if not, scanning them myself. I stored all these PDFs along with maintenance records, licenses, etc. in an app called DevonThink, which I use on a Mac, iPad, and iPhone. Having all these manuals on a digital platform means I can quickly search and access my entire library of boat records and manuals from anywhere, even when not connected to the internet. I have frequently made use of this easy access deep with the bowels of the engine room.
iPad View of engine manuals in DevonThink
In My Wheelhouse
Most all of these operating manuals have a section on required maintenance for the equipment in question with instructions and frequency intervals. Ah, I thought, a perfect application for a spreadsheet to keep track of all these maintenance tasks. Here I found solid footing. The crew of MV Dirona shared a spreadsheet they’ve used as a maintenance log for their trawler. I happily began tailoring it to our boat’s systems and engines. Finally, something I could competently carry out!
Soon after creating my digital library of operating manuals, and about halfway into creating a spreadsheet-based maintenance log, I received an email from Wheelhouse Technologies (now Vessel Vanguard), a vessel maintenance software provider. I learned that the former owner of our Nordhavn had recently implemented their cloud-based system, which we were free to use for the first year, and could renew after that for a $450 fee. I knew that owners of larger trawlers swore by this system, but I wasn’t sure I needed to spend this kind of money each year on a software system I could piece together myself.
That changed after I spent time with the system, which had been configured explicitly for Indiscretion. Every piece of equipment aboard the boat was listed with operating manuals, maintenance schedules, maintenance log, and recommended spare parts for both coastal and offshore cruising. The heart of Wheelhouse is its maintenance alert system, which provides a to-do list of recommended maintenance tasks based on time or engine hours. For every task, the system includes helpful hints on how to perform it, the parts needed, and links to the appropriate manual for more detailed instructions.
Wheelhouse took the mystery away for me about the proper steps to maintain our trawler. And my accountant-brain loves a good to-do list. I’ve definitely got that with this system. When my first year free trial period had ended, I happily renewed for the peace of mind of knowing I was keeping up with the critical maintenance needs of this complex vessel.
Outfitting with Tools and Spare Parts
I soon learned that having the right tools for the job made life a lot easier. I found a list of recommended tools to keep onboard a trawler and began slowly accumulating these tools throughout our first year. Boxes would show up, and I would cackle to myself as I held up a set of ratchets, or a snake-like device meant to retrieve a dropped item in the bilge, or a strap-wrench that can grip onto oil filters with superhuman strength — who knew? All told, I spent about $2,000 on tools for Indiscretion in our first year, and I now have the tools I need to fix or maintain almost everything onboard.
Wheelhouse provides a list of spare parts to keep on hand for the various systems onboard, including annual replacement items like filters, but also parts that routinely wear out with use. I spent another $3,000 on a near-complete set of spare parts for all three engines, the watermaker, the hydronic heating system, and the other systems aboard. I tucked these treasures away in cubbies and lockers throughout the boat.
My confidence as a trawler captain grew a lot with the acquisition of these tools and spare parts. I’ve now had many chances to use the tools and have needed a few of these spare parts in the past year. That’s a good feeling.
Bending the Learning Curve
I’ve already written about the training courses we took at Northern Lights with “Lugger Bob” Senter (see here and here), but I’ll reiterate that those three days provided more value than any training I have ever received, and without these sessions, I would still be quite lost. I learned a ton from Bob and fellow trawler captain classmates and gained a whole new appreciation for the practice of preventative maintenance. But, perhaps most importantly, I discovered that trawler maintenance and repair wasn’t some dark alchemy for trained engineers. Anyone with the right tools and a little common sense can do this.
Captain Bob changing a fuel filter at a Northern Lights Owner-Operator maintenance class
I’ve also benefited from fellow trawler owners we’ve met during our cruising. I recall struggling to get the outboard motor to lower into the water on our tender while anchored off Penrose Point. Daryl, the skipper of the beautiful trawler Cape Ross anchored next to us, must have pitied me because he motored over in his tender to see if he could help, cold beer in hand. It took him about 30 seconds to find the engine lock I had somehow overlooked (it’s really impossible to miss). I got a good laugh at myself, and we drank a beer together to commiserate about boats while we took in the beautiful bay we shared. Boat people are fantastic.
Then, of course, there’s YouTube. You know there are videos to help you repair your lawnmower and oven, but did you know that generous trawler owners also post instructional videos? One of my favorites is an engine room video from the captain of MV Cassidy on changing the oil and filters (and other repairs) on his Nordhavn 40. I watched this video during the process of buying Indiscretion, and it gave me an early boost of confidence that I could actually do this maintenance stuff. A recent video from the crew of MV Dirona showed how simple it is to check and replace the alternator belt and bearings on the main engine. There are some terrific maintenance and repair videos on MV Freedom’s YouTube site, and this video with Jeff Merrill and Kevin Jeffries of MV Red Rover inspired a lot of tool purchases. I am incredibly grateful for the time and effort these trawler owners have given to share their expertise.
And finally, there’s the Nordhavn Owner’s Group, or NOG for short. It’s a private internet discussion forum where owners post questions or problems, and other owners respond with advice or solutions. There are resident subject matter experts on specialty areas that chime in frequently. Bob Senter, for example, is a frequent contributor on engine questions. Currently, there are more than twenty thousand discussion topics in the archive — a literal treasure trove that allows me to search for whatever question or issue I have. A quick search will usually reveal a dozen or more threads, often with direct answers to my current problem. I spent many hours reading these posts and responses in my first months to absorb a portion of the collective wisdom of this resourceful group of Nordhavn owners. In the rare case where my problem wasn’t specifically addressed, I started a new topic and received some terrific feedback. I hope someday that I can develop far enough as a trawler captain to help others on the NOG.
While the NOG is a fantastic knowledge resource, it can be a little intimidating for a new skipper. One early impression I had was the sheer volume of system faults and breakdowns that can occur on a trawler. “What have I gotten myself into?” I thought to myself as I scanned problem and after problem. Reading through these caused some anxiety on our early cruises. What failures will I experience today? But, over time, I’ve come to understand a few things about this owner’s group that have helped me relax. First, of the 600+ Nordhavn yachts plying the sea today, we have one of the smallest and least complicated vessels and, relatively speaking, one of the newer models. There are many, many bigger and older vessels out there that require a whole different level of mechanical expertise and problem-solving ability. Someday, we might graduate to one of these larger, more sophisticated yachts. But not yet. Second, many Nordhavn owners take a real fancy for engineering complex solutions. For example, a recent discussion on how to resolve a frozen seacock caught my attention. One skipper carries a custom-made steel extension to connect to the end of the handle to provide more leverage. The steel was forged to fit the seacock handle perfectly. Another skipper used a ten-inch piece of plastic PVC pipe that slips over the handle and works just as well. I appreciate both approaches, but I am definitely a PVC pipe kind of guy, especially at this early stage of my trawler career.
The Deep End of the Pool
Of course, the best way to learn anything new is to do it or try to do it. Shortly after attending the Northern Lights “Captain’s Class,” we suffered a loss of electrical power, which I traced to a lifeless inverter. As our well-stocked freezer’s contents slowly defrosted, I put on my engineer’s cap. The boat’s owner’s manual and electrical diagrams led me to a switch in the lazerette, which allowed me to bypass the inverter while on shower power. This bought me some time. A search of the NOG pointed me to several troublesome T-Class fuses that could be the culprit, though physical examination of these provided no clues. Equipped with my trusty Fluke multimeter (the same model that Lugger Bob uses), I was able to determine which fuse had blown. I can’t tell you how satisfied I felt after installing a new fuse and seeing all power restored—score one for the novice.
The blown inverter fuse
After attending the more advanced Northern Lights “Owner Operator Class,” I plunged into the annual servicing of both our main engine, generator and wing engine. This involved changing engine oil and oil filters, replacing the coolant on the generator and wing engine, replacing all seven fuel filters, and various other annual maintenance tasks. Bob Senter gives out his cell phone number if you take his engine classes, and I admit to checking with him a few times as I proceeded with the work for his always-helpful advice.
Reflections after 18 Months
I knew going into this new life as a trawler captain would be a challenge. I’ve now serviced almost every piece of equipment on Indiscretion, and feel a growing sense of competence in the process. I know I have a lot more to learn, but I am proud of my accomplishments, especially from where I started.
One sign of my progress occurred to me while watching a boat test video of a Nordhavn 60. My former self would have marveled over the pilothouse electronics or the size of the main salon (OK, these are both still impressive!), but instead, I eyed the spacious layout of the engine room, and later fantasized about having a dedicated equipment room for all the gear that’s more challenging to access on our smaller Nordhavn. I’ve come a long way!
My newfound mechanical skills have benefited me in other unexpected ways. In the past three months, our lawn tractor, hot tub, and clothes dryer all needed repair. The old me would have called in three different mechanics. Not anymore. If I can pull apart a diesel generator in some remote anchorage, I should be able to fix a clothes dryer. With an operating manual and the proper tools, it turns out I’m quite capable of fixing just about anything.
I noted anxiety on Lisa’s face when she saw her dryer disassembled into at least forty pieces strewn across our laundry room, along with a half dozen tools and an iPad propped up on the washer playing a repair video. The hot tub and lawnmower were one thing, but she needed the dryer.
“How’s it going?” She asked.
“Well, I think I got it. It was a failed belt. I should have this back together in a jiffy.”
She walked out through the maze of parts, shaking her head and wondering if we would be buying a new dryer that afternoon. But later, after she finished a load of laundry in the newly repaired appliance, she congratulated me on my newfound mechanical capabilities.
Honestly, this must be a bit of a relief to her, knowing I’m not entirely inept at fixing things anymore. After all, she’s signed up for world cruising with me aboard Indiscretion, and we’ll inevitably face our share of mechanical adversities along the way. These newfound skills give me hope that I can keep us safe and chugging along as we voyage through remote and unfamiliar waters.
I don’t quite know how much time I spend tinkering and carrying out maintenance items on Indiscretion, but it’s not an insignificant amount. I’d guess I spend at least an hour every day I’m aboard doing something maintenance-related. And I’ve spent entire days on more extensive tasks. But this time for me is now fun, almost zen-like in its mental intensity as I work through each step like a complicated dance, usually talking aloud along the way as some form of self-encouragement. And my type-A personality loves the challenge and sense of accomplishment when I successfully complete something I wouldn’t have dared even try two years ago.
If you’re a would-be trawler captain who feels nervous about stepping into the role of mechanic and engineer aboard one of these complicated vessels, my progress should be a real comfort. If you’re on the fence, don’t let the mystery of maintenance and systems deter you.
There is nothing so magical and comforting as the wheelhouse of a trawler at night. Words fail. Pictures can’t capture it. The gentle rocking, the warm light, the sense of adventure and impending expedition, the saltwater soaking into already salty veins. Some people spend their whole lives searching for their happy place in the world. This is surely mine.
Most captains pay close attention to weather forecasts and will postpone departures to protect the comfort and safety of the ship and its passengers. But what if the skipper has a track record of being too cautious? And what if the ship is an ocean-capable Nordhavn trawler?
I’m the first to admit it: I’m a cautious skipper. Even with decades of sailing experience across a half-dozen vessels, my nerves still rattle when the wind pipes up. Unlike a car, maneuvering a boat has an inherent wildness to it, an out of control feeling more akin to riding an elephant than the surety of a stick-shift, particularly in close quarters around docks and other boats.
Before any trip, I read the NOAA marine forecasts and will, as a rule, postpone a departure if the winds are expected to exceed 20 knots in velocity. It can be windy here during the winter, which has prompted more than a few trip cancelations by this careful captain. I often second-guess these decisions later, especially when the forecasted storm fails to materialize.
Since moving from a sailboat to our Nordhavn 43 trawler, I have relaxed my caution a little. This little ship is built for heavy weather and can safely transport its passengers just about anywhere in the world we dare to sail. In our year and a half of trawler life, we’ve made long passages and pushed through weather systems that I wouldn’t have enjoyed at all on a sailboat. Yet, on every passage, I’m continually assessing wind speed and direction and thinking through the conditions we’ll face when we arrive at our destination.
This aversion to docking in high winds conflicts with our desire for adventure and exploration as we make our plans for open ocean voyages down the Pacific Coast to Mexico and beyond. We will undoubtedly face our share of dicey situations in our travels. I know the boat can handle it, but I have questions about the captain.
Which brings me to our most recent trip from Vashon Island to Bainbridge, a leisurely four-hour cruise. It was the first week of school closures from COVID-19, but before the stay-at-home order, and we planned a little social distancing on the water. Our daughter is home from college, and our son invited one of his friends to join us for the three-day trip. I had been monitoring the marine forecasts for the previous few days and it hadn’t budged:
Small Craft Advisory, N wind 15 to 25 knots, wind waves 2 to 4 feet.
This same forecast has been issued for days on end with short-lived bouts of foul weather, but nothing really troubling.
***
We pile in the car and drive to Quartermaster Marina, where we find a blustery scene. The yacht basin is exposed to north wind, and the bay is foamy white with wind waves and spray. We pack our food and gear for the trip into a dock cart and head for the boat. Our slip faces north, and plumes of sea spray pelt the dock and Indiscretion’s stern. The extra bedding we packed in the dock cart for our guest takes a good wetting from the spray before we can stow it inside.
The view from the cockpit inspires awe: large cresting waves march toward us like an endless army of orcs. The waves break on our swim platform, launching showers of spray as we watch.
We gather in the pilothouse to listen to the marine forecast on VHF and consider our options. The starboard door catches a gust of wind after being left slightly ajar and flies open. The slamming noise is shocking, and everyone jumps. I tell myself there is no way in hell we are going out in this. I begin to formulate a new plan: we try again tomorrow, or make a day and night of it right here at the dock.
I watch the wind speed gauge while the marine observations continue on the radio. 15 knots, a boat lurching 25 knots, then 10 knots, 25 knots again. Gusty. I feel eyes on me, particularly Connor’s. At eighteen, his love for adventure and excitement has yet to be tempered by risk or loss. Our eyes lock and I don’t need telepathy to know his thoughts. “We can handle this! It will be fun! Let’s go!”
I turn to Lisa. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know.” The concern in her voice matches my own. “It’s really stormy. You’re the captain. It’s your call.”
Connor chimes in: “Dad, we’re in a Nordhavn. She was built for this.” He is repeating what I’ve said about the boat dozens of times. He has a friend along and doesn’t want me to abandon our plans.
Ah, the loneliness of command. I climb up to the boat deck to get a better look at the exposed sea. I’m nearly bowled over by a gust. I decide to return the cart to the head of the dock to give me time to think. The crew, watching my every move, interprets this to mean we’re really going to do this. Which I guess is right. Our destination should be well-protected from strong north winds. And, if I’m honest, I don’t want to disappoint my son. The world feels like it’s unhinging from this pandemic. Some time on the water will do us all good. After all, ships weren’t built for the safety of harbors. With misgivings, I decide we’ll give this a go.
Departure
The comfort of a decision and practiced routine settles my nerves. I fire up the main engine and energize the stabilizers. I power on the navigational instruments and maneuvering thrusters. I walk around the perimeter of the boat while the engine warms up to check fenders and gauge how we’ll be blown once we release the dock lines. I give instructions to the crew: Mallory will catch dock lines at the bow, Connor will handle the stern line, and Lisa will release the remaining lines from the dock, beginning with the bow, and leave the stern spring line for last, the only thing keeping us from bashing into the dock. Lisa and I don our wireless headphones. I climb up to the flybridge where the visibility is better.
From my high perch, I see Lisa standing on the dock near the bow, ready to cast us off. With headphones, we can talk without shouting over the wind. “Let’s wait for a lull,” I tell her, and she nods up at me. I test the bow and stern thrusters as we wait.
I look astern once more at the whitecaps and rolling waves. A heavy gust pummels the boat, pushing her hard against the dock. 28 knots. “Shit,” I say to myself, but Lisa of course hears me. The fenders groan in protest. And then, the lull. The wind drops to ten knots.
“Let’s go,” I say.
In surprising rapidity, the bow line flies through the air to Mallory who’s there to catch it on the foredeck. Connor unties the stern and steps aboard the swim platform, which is awash in sea water, his sneakers now drenched. I engage slow reverse to keep us in place while Lisa unties the spring line and steps aboard. We’re free. So many things can go terribly wrong in the next five seconds.
A fresh gust hits us as we begin to back out of the slip. I give the engine a boost of power, and we glide out, weathervaning directly into the wind, more gracefully than my anxious mind had imagined. The bow clears the dock without a scrape, and I give the engine more power.
“We’re away,” Lisa reports from the cockpit.
“I’m going to back us out a ways before I try to turn into the wind. I don’t want to chance being blown back into the dock.” I say this with confidence, but I’m in new territory here.
We get about three boat lengths away and I put the engine in neutral. The wind stops our momentum abruptly. I engage forward gear and give her some throttle as I turn the wheel hard to starboard. I use both the bow and stern thrusters to help with the turn. I inch up the throttle as the ship starts her slow turn. As we come abeam of the wind, I feel a gust, and the entire boat begins to heel to port, ten degrees, then twenty. A scene from The Perfect Storm pops into my head, and I give her more throttle. Lisa’s dismay floods my headset: “we’re tipping!” She cries, but the ship rights herself, and we plow ahead, into the wind, on an even keel, making way.
Gale Force Winds
Once clear of the marina and the congestion of inner harbor, we proceed south through Outer Quartermaster and then east along the southern end of Maury Island. The crew settles in for the four-hour trip, and I steer from inside the warm and dry pilothouse. Blue skies and a frothy blue sea make the weather seem a little less ominous. The diesel engine pushes us along at seven knots, and its low rumble from the engine room provides a familiar comfort as I scan the wind-tossed sea ahead. Wind speeds hold around 25 knots until we reach the southeastern edge of Maury Island, past the Point Robinson Lighthouse, and make the turn north into the wide open expanse of East Passage.
Two things happen at once: first, the wind speed climbs to 35 knots with gusts now topping 40. A fresh gale. Second, the waves grow much steeper. An ebb tide and strong opposing winds create a maelstrom of cresting waves before us, bunched closely together. Indiscretion has active fin stabilizers that limit the boat from rolling side to side, but these can’t stop this fore-and-aft pitch. Unlike ocean swells which have a certain cadence, the motion is constant and lurching. Sea spray instantly showers the pilothouse windows and the upper flybridge. On several occasions, larger waves crest over the bow, and green water floods the foredeck.
Lisa stands next to me in the wheelhouse, hanging on to the helm chair for balance.
“This is bad,” she says. “Should we turn back?”
“Nah. It wouldn’t be safe to take her back to dock in Quartermaster. We’re better off forging ahead and trying for Bainbridge. The boat’s doing just fine.”
And fine she is. Other than some clanking gear that hadn’t been stowed properly, and the hinged salon TV requiring some makeshift tie-downs to secure it, our little ship simply puts her shoulder down to the winds and waves and plows forward at a respectable six knots, slowed only slightly by the gale force winds and whipped up seas.
My daughter turns a little green with the motion, but finds sanctuary in one of the teak chairs in the open-air cockpit facing aft. She soon feels better.
As we proceed north, the wind doesn’t dip below thirty knots. Most of the time, we see true wind speeds in the high thirties and low forties. Other than ferry boats and one southbound container ship, we have the sea to ourselves. I keep my eyes peeled for logs that might be hiding in the steep waves.
A canvas cover on the windlass comes loose at the bow, and I ask Lisa to refasten it. She struggles to open the pilothouse door and retreats after feeling the full force of the wind. Better to buy a new cover than risk venturing forward in these conditions. With the door closed, It astonishes me how quiet and insulated we are within the pilothouse of this sturdy trawler.
It’s times like these that I wish my Pop was still alive. He ran fishing boats in the Bering Sea in his younger days, and I know he would have loved to be here with me, to feel the surge of the sea beneath his feet again, his eyes shining with the blue and white of the sea and sky, regaling me with stories of storms, and drunken misfit crews, and heroic repairs at sea.
Time seems to creep, matching our slow but steady northward progress. Lisa takes the helm while I check on things in the engine room. Nordhavns have handholds just about everywhere, and I find I need these to get around. All is well with the engine, the hydraulics, and the stabilizers. The bilges are dry. I take over at the helm and smile to myself. We’re in the worst sea conditions I’ve experienced as a captain, and yet I know we’re safe and secure.
I learn that Connor’s friend has no previous boating experience. He comes up from the salon to the pilothouse on his way to the head, apparently no worse for the wear. I tell him these are unusual conditions, but he doesn’t seem to mind or care. I hear him whoop down below a few minutes later as we navigate a particularly large wave.
“Are you OK?” I holler.
“Yeah! This is fun!” He yells back. I like this kid.
Safe Harbor
As we approach Bainbridge Island, the wind and seas show no sign of letting up. So much for the marine forecast of 15 to 25 knots, I think to myself. I worry about maneuvering within Eagle Harbor in these conditions.
We tuck behind Blakely Rock and hug the shore of Bainbridge to avoid the massive ferries that serve the island. The wind drops to a calming 25 knots. We time it right and follow a ferry into Eagle Harbor. Once inside the harbor, we are greeted by flat seas and a manageable 15 knots of wind. Whew.
We put out fenders and dock lines and tie up smartly to a vacant spot on the outside of the public dock. Once shore power is connected and the ship is properly secured, Lisa and I return to the pilothouse for beers to celebrate our safe arrival. The boys take our two shell-shocked dogs ashore.
“Well, that was an adventure,” I say to Lisa. I feel happy here in this calm harbor, having brought us through a tempest.
“Next time, let’s stick to our 20-knot rule,” Lisa replies with a smile.
“Definitely,” I agree. We tap beer cans. Deep down though, I am thrilled we did this. We all gained confidence, skipper and crew, in our abilities to handle the ship in rough water and heavy winds. We tested some limits. Conditions we are sure to face, again and again, both on land and sea.
I am reminded that Shakespeare introduced the word Indiscretion, our ship’s namesake, into the English language some four hundred years ago, giving the term a positive spin:
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well When our deep plots do pall, and that should teach us There’s a divinity that shapes our ends Rough-hew them how we will1.
Even the great Bard suggested a little indiscretion now and then might be a good thing. I am coming around to his way of thinking.
Safe and sound at Eagle Harbor City Dock
The crew of Indiscretion remains in harbor during this period of quarantine and social isolation. Fair winds and calm seas to all as we navigate the unsettled times ahead.
We took our first cruise of 2020 aboard Indiscretion to Olympia last week. After a wet and windy start to the year, the weather gods smiled down at us and provided four days of sun and calm seas that perfectly coincided with our travel. That doesn’t happen very often in February around here, so we’re thankful for the reprieve.
Departing Quartermaster Marina
We departed Quartermaster Harbor on Tuesday morning to catch a favorable flood tide through the Tacoma Narrows. Currents run pretty fast through here and sailboats and trawlers can only safely travel through on the right tide.
The sea was calm the entire trip, and we were cozy inside the pilothouse with the hydronic forced-air heating system fired up. The trip took about five hours from dock to dock, shaving a little time with the help of the favorable current running through the Narrows. We had the sea to ourselves for most of the way.
Transiting the Tacoma Narrows on a flood tide
Guest Moorage in Olympia
We called ahead for two nights of moorage at Swan Town Marina, though we would have been fine just showing up. Swan Town Marina lies on the east side Port Peninsula, a 15-minute walk into town. During our stay, the majority of guest slips remained empty. There were boats in about half of the guest slips when we arrived, but the most were unattended during our stay. I guess the marina must permit longer-term moorage in their transient slips during the off-season because of low demand. Guest moorage is on A dock and the entrance to the marina which makes for straight forward docking.
Swan Town Guest Dock
Percival Landing is another small marina that offers first-come-first-serve guest moorage on the west side of Port Peninsula. This smaller marina is more convenient to shops and town (about a 5-minute walk to town) and offers very affordable moorage rates, but we opted for Swan Town because we could secure reservations. We visited Percival Landing during our stay and found just one lone sailboat occupying the dock. Good to know for future off-season planning.
Olympia Highlights
We packed our NineBot folding electric scooters on the boat for this trip which turned out to be a fun way to get around. We found ourselves darting all over town on them. We enjoyed a fantastic meal of oysters on the half shell, seafood and steak at the Chelsea Farms Oyster Bar on Market Street, and good pub grub and microbrews at Fish Tale Brew Pub on Jefferson. You really shouldn’t visit Olympia without stopping for a bite or drink at the veritable McMenamin’s Spar Cafe. You’ll be happy to know that the pool table and shuffleboard table are still there in the back. We love that place.
We missed out on the Farmer’s Market this trip as we didn’t stay through Saturday, but it was nice to know that it operates in winter.
Our two days and two nights flew by quickly. We need to put Olympia on our regular rotation of winter (and summer) cruising here in Puget Sound.
Flat water as we depart Olympia
Eagle Island and Harbor Seals
On our return trip north, we stopped at lovely Eagle Island for the night so we could catch the ebb tide through Tacoma Narrows the following morning. The five-acre state park island sits on Balch Passage between McNeil and Anderson Islands, putting it about dead-center between Vashon and Olympia.
View from Eagle Island
This spot is a favorite destination of mine, having moored here many times when we owned our sailboats. The view of Mount Rainier on a clear day is breathtaking. The island is also known for its population of harbor seals which frolic on the beach at low tide and make very creepy sounds as they surface and swim in the water. Here’s a 30-second audio recording of these night-time encounters.
It was a moonless night, so we couldn’t see the seals as they swam nearby in the darkness. We tried to spot them with a flashlight, but they all disappeared under the water with a hilariously loud splashing sound once we aimed the light. Fortunately, Indiscretion has a FLIR camera which allows daytime like visibility from the pilothouse. Turning the camera toward the island, we were astonished to see close to 40 seals in the water near us and sprawled out on the dark beach. They seemed quite curious of the boat, communicating with one another in their particular way. We have a three-foot swim-step at the stern of the trawler which would seem to make a comfortable lounging spot for one of these massive beasts. I waited for a lurch of the boat as one clambered aboard, but they kept their distance. We made off early the next morning to catch our tide through the Narrows and home to Quartermaster Marina.
Consider Pointing the Bow South
Like many other Northwest boaters, we have tended to forget about the south sound in our cruising plans. The greater Seattle area and the San Juan Islands are far more popular destinations. But exploring the southern end of Puget Sound has many charms. For us, it’s just an hour more to get to Olympia than Seattle, and there are so many spots in between to stop for the night or spend a few days: Lakebay and Penrose, Longbranch and Filucy Bay, Joemma, Jarrell Cove, Hope Island … We’ve been poring over our Waggoner’s Guide to plan out a more complete return visit to this under-appreciated section of Puget Sound.
I stood mostly naked near the bow of the boat in the early hours of a Thursday morning. The sun hadn’t risen, and it was damp and chilly in my underwear. I hoped other boats anchored nearby wouldn’t witness this act of indignity. Desperate times require desperate measures, I told myself, as I contemplated the orange traffic cone standing before me atop a square yard of fake grass.
It was our sixth day into a month-long cruise aboard Indiscretion, and neither of our two dogs had availed themselves of this onboard privy, despite long passages and persistent coaxing by captain and crew.
On walks back home, they’d let go great streams on every one of these we encountered, barely sniffing it first. Even at the end of a long walk with bladders long emptied, they would find a way to dribble urine at the base of these bright orange beacons. They could not resist.
This gave us the brilliant idea for of a “Porch Pottie” for the dogs to relieve themselves without the hassle of shore leave. We even bought an aerosol spray to mimic the scent they most desire before the act.
“Maybe you should pee on it first,” Lisa suggested on the second day of the cruise. We had chugged along for 14 hours our first day out, with many fruitless trips underway to the traffic cone with the dogs.
“There is no way I’m doing that,” I said. “They’ll figure it out. They’re smart dogs.”
Thus, every morning began the same way. A persistent urging for the dogs to do their business at the traffic cone just beyond the Portuguese bridge. Zero interest. They wouldn’t even smell it. Tugging them to the cone with the leash felt like pushing the wrong ends of powerful magnets together. After ten or twenty minutes with both dogs looking at us like we were crazy, we’d relent and go ashore in the tender.
By the fourth day at anchor, the dogs took sport in the morning routine. If they humored us long enough with confused looks and a strong aversion to the orange cone, they would get to go for a walk afterward. Joyous barks and yips erupted once I began futzing with the tender. They had won again.
“You need to pee on it,” Lisa encouraged. Like that would make any difference.
Cruising with dogs is very popular. I’d say most trawlers we meet have a dog aboard. The necessity of frequent trips ashore means we explore beaches and inland areas of the anchorages while other boaters might stay afloat. Dogs warm up a cold sea berth and stand watch with you on blustery evenings at anchor. Even on our smallest sailboats, we had a dog along. I can’t think of a better way to travel or vacation with a dog than on a boat.
We didn’t know how good we had it with Bouncer, a small Boston Terrier that traveled with us on every cruise we took aboard our sailboat. Bouncer seldom barked. She slept a good part of the day and night. Her bathroom duties were carried out without fuss: she would step carefully into the dinghy in the morning, taking in the watery surroundings as we rowed or motored along, her front paws up on the bow of the inflatable. We had a leash for her somewhere rolling around the bottom of the boat, but we rarely needed it. She would jump out as soon as the dinghy touched the sand, trot about ten yards and pee, then poop. She took no notice of other dogs. She was usually back in the dinghy before I had a chance to properly tie up, ready for breakfast, and then snuggle back into a berth with one of the kids.
Bouncer on a kayak
“I miss that little dog,” I muttered, feeling sorry for myself as I stared at the traffic cone, and thought about how different our life is now aboard the trawler with Franklin and Preston.
Franklin is a four-year-old Puggle, a cross between a Pug and Beagle, and the only dog we’ve owned that can’t be trusted off-leash. Should our front door be left ajar momentarily as you carry in the groceries, this sly little bastard will dart between your legs and race to freedom, looking over his shoulder with a look of delight and mischief before disappearing into the woods. Calling him is pointless. His brain is routed through his snout, and the outdoor smells are much more interesting than our shouts to come back. We’ve tried chasing him, but he sees this as a terrific keep-away game, his eyes flashing with mirth as he darts in and out of reach. Eventually, he grows tired or hungry, and trots home, clearly pleased with himself. It’s hard to be mad at him when he loves these romps so much. We live in a rural part of Vashon Island, so there’s not too much trouble this little fella can find here at home. However, afloat and in strange ports, we all worry about what might happen if Franklin were to escape on one of his adventures. One hand for the ship, one hand for Franklin’s leash.
Franklin
He did escape in Roche Harbor, leaping in a flash from the cockpit to the narrow port side deck, and then down to the dock. In his excitement, he took a wrong turn down a dead-end, but soon reversed course and galloped at full speed toward the dock entrance and freedom. It was blind luck that Connor and Lisa intercepted him on their way back to the boat. We might still be looking for him had he made it to dry land.
Franklin defends our home against would-be intruders with a combination bark-howl that you have to experience to understand. It’s impressive. He employs this howl-bark to repel the UPS truck when it visits our home. Franklin runs from door to window, making a god-awful ruckus for a good three minutes until, sure enough, the truck decides the danger is too great and drives off (after leaving our packages and shaking his head). This near-daily occurrence has reinforced Franklin’s belief that if he barks and howls as loud as possible, the dreaded enemy will eventually retreat.
We hoped Franklin might be less possessive on the boat. Not so much. He soon learned that if he sits on the upper pilot berth in the back of the wheelhouse, he can enjoy a near 360-degree vista surrounding the boat. A fellow trawler captain dared to slowly cruise by and wave - to Franklin’s shock and outrage. He launched into howl-bark mode until the trawler was out of sight, saving us yet again. Ugh. He also defends the boat from kayakers, paddle-boarders, and any form of bird, in particular, the tame Cackling Geese we encountered in large numbers at Sucia Island. These, it turns out, are Franklin’s arch-enemy; his Moriarties. No amount of treats or admonishments could convince him otherwise.
Dog number two is Preston, a five-year-old Boston Terrier, the same breed as our beloved Bouncer, yet so, so different. He’s massive, tipping the scale at 35 pounds which is an outlier for Bostons, yet all muscle and gristle. He’s a rescue dog with extreme anxiety issues. He warmed to Lisa and the kids right away after we adopted him, but he wouldn’t come near me, especially if I wore a baseball cap. After a few months he decided I was OK, and now loves us all unconditionally. Other people or dogs outside our family unit, however, are Not OK. He has nipped more than one of our house guests and has a complete fit should another dog have the nerve to meet us on a walk. He’s a bundle of nervous energy that no amount of love, or CBD, seems to diminish.
Preston
Also, he has poop anxiety. He must have been abused as a puppy, for he refuses to poop while in the presence of others. This is a problem on a boat. On a cruise last summer, he went three days without pooping. By day two of the trip, his eyes appeared even bulgier, and his butt was definitely puckering, but he refused to go. Finally, after a long trek on the third day, a volley of poops shot out of his bum while he carried on down the trail. He did not squat or even stop. They just flew out, and he kept walking, apparently making the case that the impossibly large pile of poop on the trail came from some other dog. He’s done better on this trip, but it’s still a celebration when Preston has a bowel movement.
While Preston has his issues, he is without question the smartest dog we’ve ever owned. His understanding of English is unrivaled. He communicates his intentions and desires very clearly and responds with joy once you finally understand him. He runs circles around Franklin’s somewhat dimmer intelligence. Should Franklin have a toy that Preston wants, he runs to the basement door and barks until Franklin races down the stairs, through the doggie door, and outside to our fenced yard, seeking out the intruder. Preston then takes the dropped toy for himself. Franklin falls for this every time.
Franklin’s whimpers had commenced early this morning. I nestled further into the blankets to block out the sound, which repeated just often enough to reawaken me.
“The dog needs to go ashore,” Lisa informed me from her side of the berth. Her voice contained a trace of accusation as if peeing on the damn cone would solve all our canine issues.
“Aah ump,” came my muffled reply.
As sleep faded, I began to think through the sequence of events that must soon unfold to stop that dog’s whimpering. I would get up and dress. I would get the dogs ready for sea: collars, leashes, doggie life jackets. I would bring the tender around to the stern and warm up the engine. Our anchorage doesn’t include a dinghy dock, and the tender is too large and heavy to beach, so I would need to deploy an anchor. I would load the dogs into the tender and head for land through the chop. About 20 feet from shore, I would hurl the Anchor Buddy over the stern, goose the engine a bit, and quickly raise the prop, so it doesn’t hit bottom. I would lash the leashes of the dogs to the rail while I leap off the bow into the frigid water to pull the 800 pound craft up near the shore. Wet and sandy, I would secure the tender and hoist the dogs out on to the beach to do their business.
This assumes, I mused, that the beach at this early hour is empty. Meeting another dog would spell serious Trouble.
Each dog comports himself reasonably well alone, but some pack chemistry born into their genes a millennia ago transforms them into would-be killers when they meet another dog together. On a quiet walk up the dock, they are angels, taking in exciting smells, jostling each other good-naturedly, smiles apparent on their canine mugs. Yet, the second we encounter a dog - a Poodle or, heaven forbid, a German Shepherd, the fangs come out, and pandemonium ensues. Restrained by their leashes, they often set upon on each other, snarling and biting. Folks emerge from their boats to observe the carnage, and dog people along the docks look on in dismay. I know that feeling. I’ve been there with my docile dog, wondering what in the hell is wrong with those awful dog owners who can’t control their dogs. And yet I am now that guy, tugging ineffectively at the leashes of two gnashing demons, blood-lusting for the nervous Poodle, the tail-wagging Lab, the puzzled Shepherd.
As a result, one person cannot take both dogs anywhere we might meet another dog. Two humans must form an escort to maintain any semblance of order.
“You’ll have to go with me,” I told Lisa as I came fully awake.
“Why won’t you just pee on the damn thing?” She moaned back.
And so, it finally happened. In the growing light on this Thursday morning at sea, I let go a great stream of piss, covering the cone, grass, and a bit of my bare left foot as I misjudged the strength of the breeze.
Did it work? Did the dogs finally grasp the purpose of the great orange cone after their alpha dog modeled the way? No. If anything, they viewed the apparatus (and me) with even more mistrust.
I cleaned most of the sand out of the tender from another morning expedition with the dogs. I was finally ready for that first cup of coffee.
And still, despite the hassle of frequent trips ashore at ungodly hours, and the anxiety of what might happen when we invite friends with dogs to the boat, we wouldn’t consider cruising without our canine mates. They’re part of our family, after all. And they bring us joy in their own peculiar ways.
“I can’t believe you did that,” Lisa said, smiling at me. Both dogs were fast asleep on the settee beside her. “I didn’t really think it would work.”
We’ve been back ashore now for a few weeks, home from our month-long trip aboard Indiscretion in the San Juan and Canadian Gulf Islands. We spent the majority of our nights at anchor or tied to a mooring buoy, enjoying the onboard accommodations and tranquility.
I expected to run into some form of mechanical difficulty on the trip, having checked and double-checked our spare parts inventory before departure, and thinking through the various fall-backs and redundancies we might employ should a significant failure occur.
But we were blessed with completely trouble-free operation of the vessel throughout our trip.
We cruised these Islands for years aboard our sailboats, so this trip wasn’t about exploring new ports of call, though it was nice to see our old cruising grounds again. Instead, this trip helped us get our sea legs aboard a trawler and figure out the intricacies of multi-week voyaging and ongoing sea life without getting too far away from civilization in case we ran into trouble. Call it an extended shakedown cruise as we set our sights on longer, more remote expeditions in the summer of 2020, and ocean-going travel down the west coast in 2021.
In this regard, the trip was a tremendous success. We had good practice with anchoring this larger vessel in small crowded bays. We learned about how long we could go at anchor before needing the facilities and services of a dock (about a week). We got very good at planning our routes around weather, tides, and currents. We maneuvered and docked this big trawler in a variety of tight marinas and wind conditions without any trouble which was a welcome confidence booster.
We also established a nice cadence in our morning ship routine: generator started up, coffee on, laundry and watermaker started, battery charge status checked, a quick run into shore with the dogs for their morning constitutional, and finally a hot shower. I can’t say enough about the therapeutic benefits of a real shower on a boat. Lisa and I would then relax and enjoy that first delicious cup of coffee together around the pilothouse settee, taking in the watery scene around us and talking over our plans for the day.
Most mornings we would touch on a familiar topic: could we live like this full-time?
In just a year or so, our big family home on Vashon Island will become an empty nest as our youngest child, Connor, goes off to college. We purchased Indiscretion with the idea that it would become a much cozier and adventuresome home for the two of us as we reinvent life together without kids. Marriage 3.0.
So, along with testing out our seamanship and systems aboard the trawler, we also got a sense of what living aboard a 43’ vessel would be like for the two of us.
By the end of the trip, we each agreed that this little ship was plenty spacious enough for the two of us to live very comfortably for extended periods. For me, there’s a zen-like comfort that comes with the compactness of a boat; everything has a purpose and a place. To quote E.B. White: a cruising boat is “the most compact and ingenious arrangement for living ever devised by the restless mind of man.”
We also agreed that our two devil dogs are a pain in the ass, causing all sorts of mayhem ashore and afloat, but that wouldn’t change no matter how large of a vessel we owned.
I discovered something important about myself once I got home. I felt tired and went to bed early, falling into a dreamless sleep of the dead. I slept in until late morning, which I rarely ever do. For the first night in a month, I wasn’t up prowling the pilothouse in the wee hours, checking on our anchor, or investigating a strange sound in the night.
It dawned on me that I was maintaining a constant level of nervous energy while awake or asleep on Indiscretion. It took a night at home to realize I had struggled to fully relax aboard the boat, thinking and worrying about all sorts of shipboard issues:
Did we set enough anchor rode? Too much?
Are we too close to that sailboat anchored off to port of us?
Will the anchor hold if the wind picks up tonight?
Will we have trouble docking in that tight marina tomorrow?
Where are we going to get provisions next? How far of a hike into town is it?
Will the gale force winds forecasted for the Strait of Georgia make trouble for us as we head north?
I believe this nervous energy will eventually subside with time. My confidence as skipper will grow with every week and month afloat. Still, it remains an uncertainty as we ponder full-time cruising. Will I find a way to wind-down and relax through the constant motion and commotion of long-term voyaging? I’ll have to work on this.
So, we’re home again for a while. I’ve scrubbed away the salt and crud of a month of cruising, and Indiscretion gleams once more in her Quartermaster Marina slip. We’re busy making plans for fall and winter weekend cruises around Puget Sound and potentially a longer excursion up north for some off-season cruising in the islands. And very happy to have the memories and experiences of this lovely summer trip with the promise of many more to follow.
We are tied up to to the guest dock at the Causeway Marina in Victoria Harbour with a front-row seat of all the bustle and glamour that waterfront Victoria provides.
We've cruised all over the Gulf Islands these past ten days, revisiting some favorite spots and exploring some new ones. We decided not to head further north to Desolation Sound since we were enjoying ourselves here in the southern part of BC and had planned to meet our daughter in Victoria this weekend.
Before sharing the pictures and highlights of our cruise through these beautiful Gulf Islands, I thought I might provide some more comparisons to sailing now that we're nearly three weeks away from the dock.
On Parlez, our 32' cruising sailboat, we took two month-long trips up to the San Juan and Gulf Islands and various multi-week trips over the years as a family. We had some incredible adventures, but I recall a sodden feeling around the end of the third week. Laundry had piled up, we all badly needed showers, and a dampness pervaded the boat from so many wet clothes, towels, and jackets stowed below that never really dried. One of the cockpit lockers was usually cram filled with trash. We had a small water tank which made showers impractical and dishwashing an art of using just enough water to wash, and the bare minimum to rinse. On rainy days, we crowded into the salon or retreated to sleeping berths. We took it as a good thing that our thoughts turned to heading south around this time - a mark of a good vacation when you start thinking of home.
We're at that same three-week mark here on Indiscretion, and times have certainly changed. This little ship was designed for long-range expeditions, so these weeks of short passages and island hopping have hardly taxed her abilities. Likewise, the crew seems fresh and eager to carry on. If I had to pick a single word to describe the difference, I'd choose sustainability.
First, we all take showers every day. I can't tell you what a joy it is to emerge from your stateroom fresh from a shower after a day of cruising and a night at anchor. With a 300 hundred gallon water tank and onboard watermaker, we don't worry too much about water consumption. I never fail to smile as I come into the wheelhouse, squeaky clean, ready for a hot cup of coffee.
We run the generator every morning and evening to charge up our batteries. This gives us plenty of energy to power anything we need on the boat. While the generator is charging the batteries, we run the watermaker and do a load of laundry to load up the generator. Indiscretion has an Italian all-in-one washer/dryer unit, the Splendide 2100, and it washes and dries a moderate-sized load of clothes in about two hours. I am impressed with this little machine. My performance expectations were low after reading a few negative reviews online, but our experience has been fantastic. And all our clothes are clean.
Indiscretion has a good-sized galley, two half-refrigerators, and a larger freezer than we have at home so that we can make great meals for an extended time. The galley also has a trash compactor which sounds weird to have on a boat but is really useful. We can compress the equivalent of five sailboat trash bags into one pretty small bag in this compactor, saving a lot of trash-storage space.
Finally, we have lots of living and lounging spaces on Indiscretion, so no one feels cramped or confined. There's the salon where we eat our meals and watch movies at night; the pilothouse with its settee and helm chair (where I'm writing this now); the cockpit where we sip coffee in the morning; the flybridge with its two comfortable chairs high above everything where we take in the sunsets and the watery world around us; the boat deck platform provides outdoor dining or lounging when the tender is in the water; and two large staterooms provide comfortable privacy for reading or sleeping.
All these creature comforts make long-term cruising a reality for many, and a very happy summer cruise for the crew of Indiscretion. I long disparaged these hulking powerboats when we were active sailors, but now that we've crossed the bar, I wouldn't go back. Trawlers are great.
Cruise Notes
Our first stop in Canada was Bedwell Harbor to check in by phone with Canadian Customs. We've done this a few times before, and it still feels like a strange process. We decided to take a slip at next door Poet's Cove Marina for a couple of days to explore the area and enjoy the resort.
Lisa had a spa day while Connor and I and the doggos went for a walk around nearby Greenburn Lake. It's about a three-mile hike there and back from the marina, but be warned, the trails on the north side of the lake were a challenge. Beautiful scenery for the intrepid hiker:
From Poet's Cove, we made our way to an old favorite, Montague Harbour on Galiano Island. Lisa injured a rib a few days earlier after falling onto the swim step from a kayak, so we spent a couple of days healing up in this lovely harbor.
We headed north to Ladysmith on Vancouver Island. Ladysmith is without question the friendliest destination we've visited so far. We took a slip at the Ladysmith Community Marina and explored the town. It's a bit of a hike to the main town center, but well worth it. Along the way, we encountered wild rabbits - not something we ever see on Vashon.
At Ladysmith, Indiscretion moored next to a Nordhavn 47, MV Sea Cairn.
We got a chance to meet her owners, Keith and Kathy, and swapped tips and stories. Nordhavn owners are the best. We watched this lovely trawler back out of the skinny fairway like a pro, and I learned a few things about using thrusters to navigate in reverse, which I was able to immediately apply as we departed. Thank you, Keith!
From Ladysmith, we headed back south to Ganges Harbour in time for the famed Farmer's Market held on Saturdays. It had been at least ten years since we visited Ganges, and to me, it seemed a lot more crowded. I'm not a big fan of crowds, so after about ten minutes of wedging my body between the masses of shoppers, I found a park bench in the shade and let Lisa carry on. She persevered and came away with all sorts of great produce, fruit, and baked goods. God bless her.
[caption id=“attachment_520” align=“aligncenter” width=“525”] Smiles on the way to the Saturday Market[/caption]
After a couple days and nights on the hook in Ganges, we headed to Brentwood Bay, deep inside Saanich Inlet. We had to transit Shute Passage which must be the super-nexus of BC ferry traffic. On the chart, a dizzying array of ferry courses were splayed across the chart. Sure enough, as we approached the nexus, the BC Ferry Coastal Celebration appeared on AIS, traveling at its cruising speed of 22 knots, and coming up fast. I adjusted course to hopefully allow this mammoth ship to pass me to port.
The radio crackled: “Motor Vessel Indiscretion, this is Coastal Celebration, do you copy?”
I gulped. Being hailed by a ferry can’t be good. To be honest, I’ve never been hailed by a Washington State Ferry before, though many of them have certainly gone off course to try to run over me when I was sailing.
“Coastal Celebration, this is Indiscretion,” I responded.
“Indiscretion, we’re the large ferry vessel behind you. We were just wondering what course you were steering so we can safely pass you. Over.”
“I was planning to hold this course and let you pass me to port, over,” I replied in my most captainly voice.
“OK, roger that, Indiscretion. Passing you to port. Have a nice day. Out.”
The Coastal Celebration passed us to port going off course by about 200 yards to give us more sea room. I was dumbfounded. Canadian ferry captains are so much nicer than our Washington state counterparts.
We stayed a night at the Brentwood Bay Marina to charge batteries, take off the trash, and have a bite at their resort pub. The docks here are a little tired with a startling sign about midway down the marina:
[caption id=“attachment_521” align=“aligncenter” width=“525”] Beware of Rocks![/caption]
We then took the short passage to Tod Inlet, a beautiful little bay just south of Brentwood Bay. We anchored in about 20 feet of water close to three nearby boats. We're always amazed at how close other boats look from the wheelhouse, but far away from the tender or ashore. There were about twenty boats in the little bay during our stay but learned from a local that upwards of 200 boats squeeze into the harbor on Saturday night to watch the Butchart Garden fireworks. Local boaters avoid the place on the weekend for this reason. "You can basically step from boat to boat," he laughed. Yikes. I'm glad we were here during midweek.
[caption id=“attachment_522” align=“aligncenter” width=“525”] One Particular Harbour …[/caption]
Tod Inlet has a dinghy dock and a beautiful network of trails. It's a short dinghy ride to the back entrance of Butchart Gardens. We took the dogs for a whirlwind tour of the garden, admiring the beauty of the place, but vigilant to avoid other dogs. Ah, the stress of boat life.
After two restful days and nights at Tod Inlet, we motored back up Saanich Inlet and down Haro Strait to Victoria. The weather was blustery, and we had a chance to put Indiscretion through her paces in some larger seas. Stabilizers worked well to remove the side to side roll, and her heavy displacement and full keel took the four-foot waves in stride. Here's a short video from the stern during this stretch of water:
We navigated the crazy maze of Victoria Harbor - wow that's a busy port - and found our slip at Causeway Marina. A police boat sped over to us with lights flashing - uh oh. The policeman yelled over to ask if we knew our AIS reading shows us as 390 meters long. He guessed a massive cruise ship was making an unannounced entrance to the harbor. I apologized and said we were still learning the systems on the boat but would fix that. He laughed and waved, shouting "beautiful boat!" as he pulled away.
We've thoroughly enjoyed Victoria, though logistics didn't work out for our daughter Mallory to join us here. We will meet here in a few days back at Roche Harbor.
Boat Notes
We're running the generator between five and six hours a day while on anchor to keep the batteries charged which seems like a long time. We're tracking our generator time and battery statistics on the trip to share with a marine technician when we get back home to see if our Xantrex inverter settings need to be tweaked, or if a second battery charger would make sense to add to the system. The sailor in me still cringes at running a generator for so many hours, but the sound insulation on these Nordhavns is genuinely amazing. You can barely hear it outside the boat, so I doubt we're bothering anyone.
This for me is what’s great about boating. Anchored in a small bay surrounded by wilderness, birdsong, cackling geese, a faint cooling breeze. Far, far away from bustle and strife. Fellow boaters passing by in dinghies with smiles and waves. A sense of shared fraternity that we all found this magic place.
Our first week in the islands was a blur. It usually takes about three days for us to lose our landward ways and find our sea legs, but our entry seemed easier this time. The pace of life on a trawler forces you to slow down, let the stress fall away - very much like our years under sail, but with so much comfort!
We’ve spent the week hopping around our favorite spots in the islands: Spencer Spit on Lopez Island, Fossil Bay on Sucia Island, Roche Harbor on San Juan Island and Reid Harbor on Stuart Island. It’s been ten years since we’ve seen these places and it was good to visit again.
The time underway on Indiscretion continues to be a marvel of luxury compared to our sailing days. I spend most of the time seated in the pilothouse in a Stidd helm chair which must certainly be the most comfortable chair I’ve ever used. I’m surrounded by windows providing terrific visibility forward, laughably better than a sailboat with the sails blocking practically everything foreword (a good reason to give sailboats the right of way!). Below the windows lies a set of navigation screens that provide amazing detail of the geography and vessels around me. The engine is a soft rumble down below in the engine room, a comfortable, powerful sound. Various gauges let me know the rate of fuel burn, the coolant temperature, the oil pressure - all vital statistics to running the ship. The Furuno autopilot steers a way better course than I could with the wheel, so most of the time, the boat steers herself. I turn a little wheel to adjust course every once in a while. We have a Bose sound system throughout the boat so I can play music as we ply the waters. All in all, it’s a delightful experience to be underway. We’re all looking forward to longer and longer voyages as we continue our travels.
Sucia Island is an incredible place to visit. We usually anchored in Echo Bay but decided to try Fossil Bay to take advantage of the dinghy dock for the dogs. A beautiful place.
We decided to turn on our underwater lights and do some night fishing. We expected the bright lights to attract fish, or maybe shrimp. What we didn’t expect is some alien life form to circle around the lights looking for some ingress in the boat to invade and kill us, one by one, Alien style. Here’s a video of these sea creatures which we now know are called a Polychaete (thank you, Steve Mitchell, for the ID!). Still very creepy:
From Sucia we made our way to Roche Harbor, probably our favorite destination in the islands. We arrived on the opening day of crab season in the islands and limited out on huge Dungeness crab after an overnight pot soak. I have a secret crab pot spot in the harbor that I was excited to try. Connor was doubtful about this, but after pulling up twelve huge Dungeness crab in our single ancient pot, he is starting to believe.
Connor and I tried our luck fishing from the tender outside of Wescott Bay, but only caught Dog Fish. Still fun.
We spent two nights at Roche Harbor, resting up and charging boat batteries. We enjoyed a fantastic dinner at the Madrona Pub and lolled around the resort. By coincidence, we were docked two boats away from our sistership, MV Curiosity, another Nordhavn 43.
We departed Roche Harbor with full water tanks, charged batteries, and a rested crew for Stuart Island, literally a hop, skip and jump away. We took a mooring buoy in Reid Harbor and enjoyed a beautiful evening on the boat deck, cracking our big crab harvest. Reid Harbor has a dock with a ramp to shore which we enjoyed with the dogs.
It’s been fun to put this capable ship through her paces here in the San Juan Islands. Tomorrow we cross the border into Canada and explore the Gulf Islands.
Boat Notes
Knock on wood; we’ve had zero mechanical or system issues on the trip so far. We had our first Watermaker alarm tonight, but cleaning the two pre-filters did the trick. I was making water in Reid Harbor, which must not be the cleanest of bays. One of our watermaker filters was severely fouled. Yuck.
I’m writing this in the red glow of the wheelhouse courtesy lights on this calm night at Spencer Spit on the northwest side of Lopez Island. Lisa and Connor have retired to their respective staterooms, bushed from a long day of sea air. I’m tired, but I want to capture some of this experience while it’s fresh in my mind.
I’ve dreamt of moments like this. All around me is calm water. A half-dozen other boats float nearby at anchor. All is silent except for the small sounds of the ship: a creak from somewhere as the boat gently rocks, a soft slap of a wave. The waxing crescent moon provides a shimmering runway of light from the boat to shore, ever changing in the ripples, mesmerizing. I smell the faint odor of a campfire on the beach and something else - a primordial salty smell that reminds me of beaches and seaweed and boats. I am happy.
Spencer Spit has long been a favorite spot of ours in the San Juans and it nice to be back here early on this trip. Sandy beaches, driftwood forts and walking trails make this a fun place to visit with kids. The protection is surprisingly good, even with a frequent ferry that runs through Lopez Pass. The scenery is breathtaking. Here’s a view south over the spit from the flybridge:
And here’s shot of Indiscretion looking north. What an incredible backdrop to take in. You can see why this part of the world is a favorite for boaters.
Spencer Spit has no dock, so we’ve used our anchor buddy to keep the heavy tender floating while we go ashore. I’ve been wanting to try this out and it’s dead simple to use. I’m kind of amazed that it works so well. We’ll see how I feel about it tomorrow at six in the morning when the dogs need to go ashore.
Our voyage has begun! We cast off the dock lines in the wee hours of Saturday morning to catch the ebb tide and are now comfortably anchored in Hunter Bay on the Southeast part of Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands.
The ninety mile trip from Vashon Island took eleven hours, about two hours less than we planned due to the benefit of favorable currents through Admiralty Inlet. A small craft advisory was in effect for the Strait of Juan de Fuca for the afternoon. This trawler can handle most any weather and we were looking forward to a little excitement to start off our big trip. Despite the warnings, the wind was a no-show and it might have been the calmest afternoon crossing we’ve ever made.
We’ve made this passage aboard sailboats many times, but there were a number of new experiences that are worth sharing. Here are my “firsts” for our trip so far:
First single-day passage to the San Juan Islands without laying over in Port Townsend or other stop-over ahead of the straits.
First time I’ve enjoyed a hot shower while underway. Even on our largest sailboat, cruising accommodations were spartan and cramped. Having a full-size stand-up shower aboard is a wonderful luxury.
First night-time departure. Indiscretion has a FLIR infrared camera which provides a near-daylight view of the water ahead and around us, even in complete darkness. We could make out individual wavelets and any debris in the water quite easily as we made our way through the crowd of anchored boats in Quartermaster Harbor.
First full-day passage where I wasn’t cold or wet for long stretches. Comforts abound within the pilothouse of a trawler, regardless of the weather outside.
First time I’ve encountered sustained 11 knot speed over ground in a vessel under my command. Love those strong currents when they’re in our favor!
First time I’ve shared the helm so much. Lisa steered for a large portion of the trip, letting me shower, rest, and just enjoy the comfortable ride aboard a trawler. I love sitting in the shelter of our stern cockpit, watching the wake and miles roll away.
It was a good day.
This morning, we’re anchored in about 16 feet of water in Hunter Bay on the Southeast side of Lopez Island. The harbor is a popular stop-over spot for boaters needing to cross the strait, or like us, a protected place to anchor after a crossing. There are about fifteen boats anchored in the bay this Sunday morning with room for many more.
There is a public boat ramp with a dock which we’ve used with the dogs to do their business. The area is primarily residential with private beaches, so there isn’t much to do ashore, though it’s been a perfect spot to rest up and recharge before heading further North.
Boat Notes
We’re testing out a new WIFI/internet system on the boat. We purchased a MOFI 4500 WIFI router which accepts cellphone style SIM cards for internet service. We signed up for a $60 per month plan from OTR-Mobile which provides high speed unlimited data throughout the U.S. This seemed a little too good to be true, so we were anxious to test it out. We had spotty coverage as we crossed the Strait, but otherwise has worked perfectly. Here on Lopez Island we have faster internet than we enjoy at home. Go figure.
One of the things we’re still trying to learn is proper power management. Indiscretion has a lot of power-hungry systems which will quickly sap our batteries without recharging them via generator. We have an oversized generator that will develop issues if we run it just for battery charging. So, every morning and night, we run the generator to recharge the batteries, but also hunt for things we can turn on to put more load on the system. Last night we watched TV, turned on the air conditioning, and made 40 gallons of water with our watermaker. This morning, we’re doing laundry (my sailing friends are rolling their eyes now), heating the boat via the HVAC system, and making more water. Coming from a sailboat with very few systems and no generator, this has been a challenge to accept.
We have a new blog for our adventures aboard our Nordhavn trawler, MV Indiscretion. We’re leaving soon for a trip through the San Juan Islands, the Canadian Gulf Islands, and up through British Columbia to Desolation Sound in two weeks. We’ll post stories and pictures from our voyage on the new website. Hope you will check it out!
I’m writing this tonight from the settee of Indiscretion’s wheelhouse — one hell of a place to put down words. It’s just past twilight now, and I’ve turned on the red courtesy lights that provide just enough glow to see my surroundings, but not enough to spoil vision while voyaging at night. Ahead of me lie the helm chair, the ship’s wheel and the wrap-around pilothouse windows that look out over the bow and Quartermaster Marina.
From my perch, I can take in a wide swath of the lighted marina as it shifts from the gusting north wind that buffets the stern and starboard quarter, twisting and turning the boat so that the view is endlessly moving, as are all the other boats ahead and around me. A loose halyard slaps on a sailboat’s mast off to starboard. Waves lap along the hull. Indiscretion’s dock lines creak and groan from the pressure of the wind, the sounds softened from the heavy insulation of Nordhavn construction. The slapping halyard somehow beats in time with the rhythm of the country music playing on the radio.
When I was ten, my new step-dad took me out on a commercial fishing boat, the Nushagak, which had a roughshod version of this pilothouse. Wires dangled from above the helm and giant charts covered the navigation station — more like Hemingway’s Pilar than this modern trawler. I remember a feeling of complete enthrallment aboard her, the unique smells aboard a fishing boat, the steady vibration of the engine felt through my feet, the swells making my movement unsure, and the dawning recognition that we could point her bow further offshore, chugging along inside that windowed world, and leave the world of land life astern.
On the hundreds of nights we spent on sailboats, we stayed belowdecks on the hook or at dock. But in a trawler, the promise of adventure tugs at you day and night from the beckoning pilothouse windows. It would be so easy (and comfortable!) to slip the dock lines and go. Or stay and plot out the next passage or port, while taking in the beautiful surroundings, and dreaming of more distant ports.
In all my years of sailing, I rarely felt the same sense of belonging as I do on Indiscretion, particularly here in the wheelhouse, like coming home and discovering an unfound door of childhood dreams.
When we purchased Indiscretion late last summer, we knew we needed help in getting to know our new vessel, the systems on board, and in particular, maneuvering her 60,000 pounds around docks and other boats. Coming from a smaller and lighter sailboat, operating this trawler was a whole new experience for us.
To our delight, we had the best teacher possible: Don Kohlmann from the Seattle office of Nordhavn spent a full day with us on the water, showing us first hand how to operate the boat, along with a detailed review of all its systems. Don is a terrific teacher and an all-around wonderful person. I don’t believe I’ve connected as quickly with another soul - part mentor, brother, and best friend. Getting to work with Don is one of the fringe benefits of buying a Nordhavn trawler.
Indiscretion has bow and stern thrusters — joysticks at the helm that magically allow you to turn the bow or stern in the direction you want to move. From my sailing days, I admit I was entranced with the notion of these thrusters. It felt like cheating to be able to spin the boat in this way after all the years of gliding a sailboat into a slip on momentum and prayer. And backing a sailboat in any direction was always an adventure. I certainly could have used such a thruster system a time or two over the years.
During our sea trial and later on-the-water training, I noticed Don seldom used the thrusters, trusting instead the prop-walk and prop-wash afforded by the ship’s propeller and rudder.
“Why not use the thrusters?” I asked as we left the dock and again as we returned, eying the beautiful little joysticks at the helm.
“You don’t need them, and you really shouldn’t rely on them, especially with this trawler’s big propeller,” Don counseled.
I heard none of this. This new trawler had bow and stern thrusters, and I was going to use them, dammit.
You might sense where this is going.
Once we had the boat moored at our home port of Quartermaster Marina, we were keen to take trips before summer finally ran out on us. With all of us aboard and all systems ready, I would confidently back the boat out of the slip. Any strong wind, which would tend to blow our light sailboat around, had little effect on this big trawler, giving me a greater sense of control and confidence. But then the damnedest thing would happen: as I turned the wheel to port, intending to back that way, the boat would turn to starboard.
“Wow, this boat has a powerful prop walk to starboard,” I said to myself from my perch on the flybridge. Our last sailboat had a similar issue, and it was almost impossible to back to port. “No worries,” I thought. “I have thrusters,” as I pressed the joystick, spun the stern around, and headed on our way. This same sequence repeated every time I left our marina.
A few trips later, I found myself backing out of Dock Street Marina in Tacoma. I was looking forward to this maneuver because it required backing to starboard — clearly the boat’s preferred backing angle. It was a windy morning, and I was a little nervous as a new captain, noting the wind waves on the water and the flags flapping along the quay. Everyone climbed aboard, the dock lines were retrieved, and I backed out of the slip into the fairway. People seem drawn to these Nordhavn trawlers, and a group assembled on the docks to watch us depart. I turned the wheel to starboard, smiling to myself, and the boat started turning to port. What the … ?! I gave her a little more throttle, and the boat turned faster to port, heading in the wrong direction with the wind soon pushing her further off course.
I quickly started firing thrusters, both bow and stern, like phasers and photon torpedos on a starship under attack from the Klingons, and eventually positioned the boat to safely exit the fairway, but not without first rubbing a neighboring dock and suffering the scorn of a handful of fellow boaters standing out on their bows, clearly nervous at my wayward meanderings. My confidence at docking this boat was severely compromised.
I downplayed this to my first mate Lisa, suggesting the wind was just a little too much that day, but I was concerned.
The holidays came and went, and there were a few opportunities for winter cruises that I found reasons to skip. In each case, the marine forecast showed too much wind, and I was worried about docking mishaps, especially when such basic maneuvers as backing to port or starboard seemed to elude my capabilities as skipper. I hated having to rely on those damned thrusters, which honestly aren’t that great when the wind is blowing. Since these trawlers are meant for serious open ocean passages, I knew the problem lied with me; I must be doing something wrong.
We took the boat out for an afternoon a few weeks ago for the sole purpose of figuring out this weird backing problem, something we should have done in our first week. I backed out of the slip and turned the wheel to port. The boat slowly turned to starboard — not the direction we needed to go. I took a breath and turned the wheel to starboard, gave her some reverse throttle, and she gracefully turned to port.
So here’s the thing: in all my years of sailing, I know that backing a boat is tricky. You need to have a certain amount of luck and gumption and physics to make it work, particularly in strong winds. One certainty on a sailboat is you must turn the rudder in the direction you want to go. If you want to back to port, you turn the rudder to port. This is as basic as which way you rotate the handlebars of your bicycle or the direction you unscrew your gas cap.
And yet, in this new trawler universe, the physics of backing is somehow reversed. Starboard turns to port, left becomes right, and Spock is evil and wears a beard. My brain hurt.
I motored out into the middle of Quartermaster Harbor and stopped the boat. I practiced backing the boat and confirmed what I had begun to suspect. Putting the helm hard over to port and backing down, the boat will pivot to starboard. She will equally rotate to port with the rudder hard over to starboard. In fact, with a little jockeying of forward and reverse, the boat will spin in a tight circle, in either direction, though in an opposite way from my years of experience aboard sailboats.
Don’s first-day advice came back to me as I continued these maneuvers, eventually heading over to Dockton Marina where I practiced approaching the public dock from different angles. If I gave up my preconceived notion of which way to turn the helm in reverse, the boat performed flawlessly.
As usual, Lisa got the idea more quickly than I did. “Just steer the bow,” she yelled up from the cockpit. With this mindset, it all clicked, and maneuvering became dead simple. I found that Indiscretion’s large propeller and rudder provide amazing slow-speed maneuverability, even better than thrusters. Near the dock with the stern kicked out, turning the helm to port with a burst of throttle in forward gear (“steer the bow!”), the stern will pivot as if by magic to starboard.
I realize now I should have spent more time listening to Don on that first day on the water. In later discussions with other trawler captains, I’ve learned that the force of water from the big propeller against an angled rudder creates a powerful sideways thrust that is incredibly helpful when docking or maneuvering. I used this new-found knowledge on a recent trip and found my new mastery of this ship near docks and other boats damn satisfying. And relieving.
Once I accepted this change in the laws of boat-steering physics, it made me wonder what other deep-rooted beliefs I hold about the world that are patently untrue under a different set of circumstances.
I recall driving in Ireland when everything seemed backward. I sat on the right side of the car, with the stick shift in my left hand, while driving in the left lane of the road. Even the brakes on bicycles in Ireland are reversed. Talk about a challenge to long-held preconceived notions.
I think the lesson here is two-fold: first, I recognize I still have a lot to learn as a new captain of this beautiful trawler, and I will do my best to continue my crawl up this steep curve. And second, I need to be more open-minded and flexible in my thinking, both afloat and ashore, to make sure I don’t turn into an older dog that can’t learn new tricks. Life can surprise you at just about any age.
Indiscretion, our Nordhavn trawler, has a Maretron onboard computer system which monitors most of the vital components aboard the vessel. From a display at the helm or master stateroom, I can review the wind speed outside, fuel, water and holding tank levels, state of the batteries, engine temperature, rudder angle, water depth, etc.
The system even has cell service and can text me when some parameter falls outside of normal, like this text I received at 2 am, indicating a low battery:
Let me say this first: I think it’s damn cool that my boat can send me a text. Second, I’m a heavy sleeper, and I didn’t receive this until I woke around 6 am. By the time I arrived at the boat 15 minutes later, the batteries were critically low.
I spent all morning checking shore power connections, contorting my body into various electrical cabinets and lockers, trying to figure out why the boat wasn’t connecting to power. I started the generator to charge up the batteries to buy time. I searched the internet and the Nordhavn owners group forums. I calculated how long I could run the generator before running low on fuel. I began to grow desperate.
Lisa called at noon.
“Did you figure out what’s wrong?” She asked. Her voice sounded perky and rested.
“Not yet. Did you need something?” I wanted coffee and answers — not more questions.
“Did you look in the owner’s manual? They have some pretty good instructions on the electrical system,” she offered.
“Yes,” I said. “Of course I looked at the manual. And the Nordhavn Owners Group. And I’ve searched everywhere on the internet. I don’t know what’s wrong. The damn charger’s probably broken,” I sighed.
“Do you want me to come down there and help you?” She asked.
“No.”
She could probably hear me banging a cabinet door shut, and sensed I wasn’t in a talkative mood. She let me go.
To be honest, I hadn’t looked in the owner’s manual. Who does that? Since I had run out of better ideas, I pulled out the thick binder from its resting place under the pilothouse settee. I flipped through the book until I found the electrical section, and my eyes were drawn to a bolded typeface section describing a set of A/C breakers in the master stateroom’s medicine cabinet. One of these breakers was tripped. I would never have found this hidden panel in my haphazard search. Once reset, everything came back to life.
I had a couple more late night texts from the boat over the following week, each easily resolved, but I still didn’t know what was tripping the system. It turned out I had plugged our winter space heater into a different outlet during a cabin cleaning session which had trouble handling the voltage and would intermittently trip the breaker. Once I changed outlets, the texts stopped coming.
Lesson: read the manual. And buy your first mate flowers.
Lisa and I attended a training session at Northern Lights in Ballard, the company that manufactured Indiscretion’s engine and generator. This one-day “Captain’s Course” is taught by Bob Senter, a respected authority on practically everything within the engine room of a trawler.
It was a pleasure to meet Bob and take in some of his knowledge throughout the day. We also got to meet about a dozen other captains, many of whom owned Nordhavns.
Lisa was the only female in a large group of middle aged men, but never hesitated to ask questions or engage with the discussions. Here she is changing a fuel filter on a Diesel engine near the end of the day:
As a CPA and finance professional, I must have attended hundreds of training events in my career, but I swear none were as enjoyable or engaging as this engine class. Partly this was because I was learning something so completely new to me, but really I think these other fine captains made the day so great. Almost immediately, I found myself among fast friends with common interests, all with a thirst for adventure — so refreshing in a training event.
We have a two-day follow-up training session in May to soak up additional engine knowledge from Mr. Senter and meet more of our fellow trawler captains. We chose to hold off on this more intensive engine training until we had a chance to muck around on the boat and get a better sense of what we needed to learn after operating her for a while. This turned out to be a good idea as we have learned a lot these past six months, some of it the good old fashioned hard way.
Lisa and I have celebrated 22 wedding anniversaries. For at least the past dozen years, we haven’t exchanged gifts beyond small tokens like flowers or chocolates. Instead, we go out to dinner, just the two of us, to celebrate the occasion. This year we celebrated at May’s Kitchen, a Thai restaurant on Vashon that is so good, it is worthy of special occasions like anniversaries. As we were heading out the door on our way to the restaurant, Lisa surprised me with a package.
“Wait, what’s this?” I asked with apprehension. She was breaking tradition. “I didn’t buy you a gift.”
“Don’t worry. It’s for both of us. It’s a marriage saver,” she replied with a cryptic smile.
I opened the box and found a pair of Eartec wireless radio headphones. These are two-way radios used by crews of larger yachts to talk to each other during critical boat maneuvers like docking. I can don a set of these up on the flybridge and Lisa can wear a set down in the cockpit and we can talk to each other without raising our voices. A marriage saver.
Eartec UL2S UltraLITE Wireless Radios
I had wanted a set of these, but couldn’t quite justify the cost, and honestly, admit to the implication that the two of us needed to improve our communication skills afloat. But I was delighted to have them as a gift and over dinner brought up the prospect of geeky code names we could use while docking.
“We’ll definitely need code names when we’re on the radio,” I ventured. “Let’s see, how about we go with fruit names? You can be Blackberry and I’ll be Pomegranate,” I suggested. I had already given this some thought on our way to the restaurant.
“Blackberry? I’m supposed to be Blackberry? Where did you come up with that name? I don’t want to be Blackberry! In fact, I don’t want to use code names at all. We have enough to think about when we’re docking, I can’t remember a code name for you. Plus it’s dumb.”
I decided to let this go for now, given the initial negative response. But oh yes, we will use code names with these cool radios.
We could have used them a few weeks earlier as we were docking in our own slip at Quartermaster Marina on a blustery afternoon. The wind was gusting to 20 knots as we made our approach, the strongest winds we’d faced in a docking situation so far on this trawler. At the most critical juncture of the procedure with our bow inside the slip, now mere feet from crunching into a dock or another boat, a neighbor fired up a circular saw. The loud piercing whine obliterated any communication from Lisa three decks below.
“What?” I yelled from the flybridge. “Port or starboard?”
I could hear nothing but the whine of the saw and an indistinct yell from Lisa. The visibility is great from the flybridge except for the immediate area close to the hull. Time was of the essence.
“I think she said ‘port’.” I pushed the stern to port with the thrusters, toward the dock.
Seconds later, as the saw’s shriek finally died out, the words “Starboard, starboard, STARBOARD!!!” came hurtling up from Lisa, clear as a bell to anyone within a mile of the marina, each successive command rising in volume and urgency, the last one a full-throated yell loud enough to wake the gods above.
Just as we were about to crash into the dock, I pushed the stern away with a mere touch of the thruster joystick. Disaster averted. Every return to dock without a fiberglass repair bill is considered a success, but you can see how we might have benefited from these two-way radios.
We tried out the Eartecs on our very next trip. We were docking Indiscretion at Poulsbo Marina for the first time and needed to back into the slip, a new maneuver for us.
The thing about docking a large trawler yacht that no one tells you is how slow the process is. About twenty minutes prior to arrival, we start preparing. Fenders put out on both sides of the hull, dock lines ready to cast over the sides, marina maps consulted, stabilizer fins centered, thrusters powered on, perhaps a call to the marina to confirm our slip is vacant, and for me, a shift of helm from the pilothouse up to the flybridge for better visibility. Meanwhile, as we get closer, we slowly drop our speed from seven knots to around two or three knots when we close with the marina itself.
The View from Indiscretion’s Flybridge Helm
We decided we would don our radios early since it was our first time using them. I clicked on my unit and adjusted the headset. The ear cushion is comfortable and the adjustable microphone juts out in front of my mouth, making me feel like a fighter pilot.
“Blackberry, Blackberry, Blackberry, this is Pomegranate, do you copy, over?” I said in my most serious radio voice.
“Stop calling me Blackberry!” came the immediate response, loud and clear. With these radios, everything is self-contained within the headset itself. There are no wires to clip on your belt, no buttons to push to talk. It’s very natural to communicate this way. You can also raise the microphone up to mute it should you decide you need to say something your mate shouldn’t hear. Battery life is a staggering six hours with these radios. I hope we never face that long of a docking process.
We made our slow progress toward the marina with me up on the flybridge and Lisa down below readying fenders and dock lines, yet now able to easily talk to one another.
When we were first dating, I got transferred to New York for a six-month assignment, so we spent a lot of time on the phone during our courtship. Lisa has a fantastic telephone voice and I’ve always loved talking to her on the phone. These ship radios reminded me of those times and I found myself flirting with my wife of 22 years while helming the boat. We also took in the sights together of a new harbor and commented to each other about various boats we passed. I noticed that she was out of breath a lot as she hauled out fenders and muscled the dock lines in place, while I sat comfortably at the flybridge helm, meditating on the ever-changing sea below. I will enjoy this division of labor for as long as it lasts.
Docking is my least favorite activity on the boat. I’m always nervous even after 20 years of damage-free encounters. Having flirty small talk with the love of my life as we made our way toward the slip helped relax me. I found myself smiling and laughing with her as we carried out the much-practiced dance of docking … stopping the boat as we came even with our slip, spinning the stern with prop walk and prop wash, gauging the impact of wind and current, backing down slowly, small adjustments as needed with the bow and stern thrusters, in and out of gear to slowly move her into the berth, then a touch of forward to bring her to all stop.
This was the point where Lisa was supposed to say “the package is secured,” as I had suggested to her multiple times beforehand. But no, all she said was: “we’re in. All good.” She has some practicing to do on our code words and radio spy talk. But in the end, a safe stress-free landing without shouting is good enough for me.
After two decades of sailing, we have crossed over to the dark side.
A few weeks ago we bought a powerboat, a Nordhavn 43 trawler, that we’ve named Indiscretion. She isn’t a typical go-fast stinkpot kind of powerboat. Her cruising speed of 7 knots isn’t far off from sailing. We won’t win any races. But she’s a stout little ship, with the displacement and hull design to withstand open ocean conditions, and an engine and fuel supply to take us from Seattle to Hawaii on a single tank of diesel. A sistership circumnavigated the world a few years ago. We don’t expect to cross oceans, but we do have plans to go places that require blue water passages, up to Alaska or down to Mexico, and going there in a boat that can handle just about anything provides real peace of mind.
I knew letting go of sailing would be tough. For a long time, my happy place was at the helm of a boat under sail. No matter what might be stressing me out at work or at home, it fell away as my hand grasped the tiller, the engine noise died away to a blissful quiet, the sails filled and the boat put her shoulder down into the waves and wind. There’s so much to do to sail well, it took my whole attention, leaving little room to fret about anything else. And the connection to the wind and waves and water was magical, particularly at night with with the feel of wind on your cheek for sail trim and the amazing glow of phosphorous lighting your wake.
Yet as the years piled on, I found that my aging body wasn’t quite as lithe and agile as it once was to cope with the physicality of sailing. Low back pain turned into something worse a few years ago and it literally pained me to go sailing, though my desire for voyaging remained strong as ever.
So we turned to a logical alternative for old sailors: the trawler yacht. It turns out trawlers and sailboats have some things in common. First, as mentioned, they take a leisurely pace in getting places, relishing the journey more than the destination. Second, they are both fuel efficient, at least for boats. A trawler nearly rivals a sailboat for fuel efficiency while motoring, and is laughably better than those planing motor yachts. Finally, blue water models are quite seaworthy with many, many ocean crossings under their belts. These similarities brought us comfort as we climbed aboard trawler after trawler over months of boat shopping. We knew we found our boat when we stepped aboard a Nordhavn. Overbuilt, incredible build quality, redundant systems, a track record of open ocean journeys and a terrific support network of existing Nordhavn owners. Our 43' version is on the small side for Nordhavn, but perfect for our needs. After a little back and forth, a sea trial and survey, we proudly became the owners of this beautiful vessel.
For our maiden voyage, we “steamed” Indiscretion from Elliott Bay in Seattle to our home port here on Vashon Island, getting our first opportunity to experience what trawler life is like. Conditions were superb, temperatures in the eighties and calm seas, hardly a challenge for this go-anywhere vessel. The coastline streamed by faster than when sailing. I’ll admit that making a consistent 7 knots in the direction you actually wanted to go is damn refreshing after years and years of zig-zagging under sail. The boat is 60 thousand pounds with a full displacement keel which makes the ride steady and sure. Hydraulic stabilizer fins work like ducks feet below the water serving to smooth out the side to side roll from passing boat wakes. The low-RPM diesel engine buried deep in the bowels of the ship’s engine room serves up more of a low rumble than the high-pitched roar we suffered on our sailboats.
There have been a few times when I’ve been out in the rain and wind in the cockpit of a sailboat and cursed aloud at these big trawlers as they passed, the captain visible behind the steamed windows in the wheelhouse, perhaps sipping a hot cup of coffee from his high warm perch, maybe taking pity on my miserable wet self. Now that I have held that same perch myself, I marvel at the comfort and ease of passage-making these big trawlers afford. Had I known then what I know now, I would have cursed all the louder out there in my damp misery.
It’s not all downwind sailing though. This boat houses the equivalent of a small municipality’s worth of systems to decipher, operate and maintain. There are three different diesel engines, each with its own peculiarities and needs, a watermaker which can magically turn seawater to pure drinking water if you know how to keep it clean and happy, heating and cooling systems, hydraulics, pumps of all sorts and sizes, electronics spanning two different helm stations … the manuals alone for all these systems take up a good size shelf. In our first weeks of ownership, we have had these manuals out on the pilothouse table, scratching our heads over all the new terminology (what exactly is a galvanic isolator fault?) and trying to inch our way up a very steep ramp of learning. We have already enjoyed the generosity of our fellow Nordhavn owners who actively participate in an online forum to help out rank novices like us. So far, every question or problem we’ve encountered has been addressed before by someone in this treasure trove of online help. I’ve been thinking I needed a new challenge in my life and I think I may have found it with the upkeep of this sophisticated vessel.
We keep the boat at Quartermaster Marina on Vashon. It’s a low-key friendly marina without pretensions. I find myself down on the boat a lot these days, poring over system manuals, contorting my body into strange positions within electrical cabinets or storage lockers, and sometimes just relaxing in the wheelhouse, listening to music or a Mariners game, enjoying the beautiful nautical space. During my time on the boat, many longtime marina friends have stopped by for a tour and a beer. The novelty of a new boat at the marina has a magnetic appeal and I’ve already met a lot more of my fellow boaters here at the marina simply by being aboard and welcoming a tour of the boat and a cold drink. As you should know, boaters are some of the best people on earth and our marina has more than its fair share of these kind souls.
While relaxing and socializing at the dock is fun, it’s the voyaging we truly love. So far, we’ve only taken short shakedown trips around Puget Sound: Blake Island, Elliott Bay, Penrose Point, all within a half day’s motoring. These have been useful trips as we learn the boat and all its intricacies. Last night we anchored off the port of Silverdale in Dyes Inlet for a couple of days of gunkholing. We’ll take more weekend trips like these through the fall and winter as we gain confidence. We’re talking about spending Christmas in Victoria aboard the boat, an absurd idea aboard our sailboat, but warm and inviting on a trawler. Then, next summer we’ll return to the San Juan and Gulf Islands to see what’s changed in our old sailing stomping grounds, with a bucket-list trip up the inside passage to Alaska the following year, and beyond that? We’d love to take this boat down the coast for a winter in Mexico. I know this boat could handle it. We’ll have to see about the captain and crew.
So that’s it, then. We’ve shed our sailing skins and are slowing finding our way in this grand trawler. This morning as I sip my first cup of coffee and look out over the quiet bay with the boat’s mirror image captured in the still water from my perch on the flybridge, it’s hard not to be moved by the amazing vista an anchored boat provides. Sailors, kayakers, fisherman, stinkpotters, 150-foot mega yachters, and us trawler types all share that same passion for water. Perhaps the salt content of our blood is just slightly higher than normal, pulling us back to the ocean of our long ago birth. I count myself a lucky member of that large seafaring tribe.
When I was starting out in public accounting, nearly thirty years ago, I got the chance to work for a new partner who had just joined our firm. His name was Joe Sambataro, an Italian-American from New Jersey, full of blunt honesty and character, and we hit it off right away. He became an important mentor and eventually recruited me to join a small staffing firm in Tacoma as a financial analyst when he joined as CFO. He would later retire, then come back as CEO. Joe is now the Chairman of the Board of this multi-billion publicly traded staffing firm.
Back when I first began working for Joe, he shared three wishes for me: Marriage, Mortgage, and a Boat. In that order. He figured that an employee with a spouse and a mortgage would stick around longer than a single guy with no ties to anything. The boat, he said, was just for fun. Joe liked boating and especially fishing off a boat.
I took Joe’s advice and in short order got married to my beautiful wife Lisa, and signed a mortgage on our Vashon Island home. I soon began looking for a sailboat.
In 1999 we bought our first boat, Wildfire. She was an Ericson 35 racing sloop that I dreamed of sailing around the world, but she was too much boat for a beginner. We had some crazy adventures, and learned a lot, but we soon downsized to an 18' gaff-rigged Marshall catboat that was much more manageable by a novice sailor, then traded up for a larger 23' model.
After a few more years as our family and boating skills grew, we traded up for a 32' Catalina sloop, a cruising sailboat we named Parlez that we took on month-long trips up to the San Juans and Gulf Islands. We made a lot of memories as a family aboard that boat: crab feasts in the cockpit, game nights around the saloon table, hard-driving sails in pounding waves and rain, and windless days where we barely ghosted along, the boat mirrored perfectly in the calm water all around, the sails gently flapping.
After six or seven years of actively sailing and cruising aboard Parlez, I began to think of myself as a real sailor.
As the kids reached their teens, the appeal of long summer trips in the islands lost some appeal; they preferred instead to stay closer to home, their friends and a high-speed internet connection. I found myself spending more time maintaining the boat than sailing, and decided it was time to sell her.
That period of boatlessness lasted about two months. I bought a beautiful 33' daysailor called Red Head that was perfect for summer daysails around Vashon, either alone or with a crowd in her glorious 16' cockpit.
I’ve never felt more alive than at the helm of Red Head sailing into a fresh breeze, tiller in hand, feet braced against the opposite side of the cockpit as the boat heeled in gusts, the water racing by, the mast and rig groaning in protest, a grin on my face as I took in the shape of the sails, the wind anxious to fling my upturned cap into the sea; and something else too: a healthy sense of fear as I pushed myself and the boat maybe a little too far, Adrenalin surging as I caromed through the bay, tack to tack. At those moments I became part of the boat, one hand connected to the tiller and rudder, as if by electric current, my free hand ready to trim the main or the jib, a living thing cavorting through the water, exuberant.
These moments of sailing bliss mostly outweighed the drudgery that goes along with a sailing vessel. The long periods of motoring when the wind has died or is blowing from an inconvenient direction, the cramped quarters below decks, and the exposure to the wind and elements in an open cockpit on a long voyage at just a bit faster than a brisk walking speed.
Over the past couple of years, substantial doubt has plagued me about my future as a sailor. Beautiful sunny days would present themselves only to conclude there was too much wind, or not enough wind, or my back was acting up and I didn’t feel up to the exertion of hoisting or trimming sails. Or worse, I would wish for calm days without so much wind to bother with, enjoying the sense of tranquility of Quartermaster Harbor on a still afternoon. These are not the thoughts of a real sailor.
My desire for adventure afloat hasn’t waned. As we approach that empty nest waypoint in our lives, I dream of voyages up the inside passage to Alaska, a vast section of earth mostly uninhabited and pristine. Or braving open ocean to explore the Pacific coast of Mexico to escape the rains and darkness that pervades the Northwest in winter. I’d relearn my Spanish from high school, and attempt to slow the following seas of time slipping by.
Even before we began a family, Lisa and I dreamed of such voyages. Sometimes the destinations were landlocked - a ranch in Montana or a flat in Madrid - but they always involved a departure from ordinary life, selling up, traveling light, vagabond shoes. Of course, a sailboat would be a logical choice for such an adventure, needing only the power of the wind to push us along, free and easy.
About four months ago on a beautiful February day, Lisa and I were out for a walk along one of Vashon’s country roads. We passed a section of road with a terrific view of Puget Sound, the water blue and ruffled with an afternoon wind on our first perfect day of the year.
“Why don’t you go for a sail this afternoon?” She asked. “There’s wind and the time on the water would do you good.”
It hadn’t even dawned on me that I might sail, and as I considered the water and wind waves, I shook my head. “No, I’m not really up for it today.”
And as I said these words, I realized with certainty that I was no longer a sailor. And for Lisa too, it seemed. We were both ready to put that chapter of our life astern, though neither of us were prepared to move off the water to become normal land people. As we continued our walk, the seeds of a new boating life began to germinate.
Maretron Anchor Watch
Anchor Chain Swap
Batteries stowed in Indiscretion’s lazarette. The far one on the other side of the rudder post was a bugger!
The easy ones …
Hauling up the old batteries, one at a time
Indiscretion after a night at anchor in Quartermaster Harbor
“What is all this stuff?”
iPad View of engine manuals in DevonThink
Captain Bob changing a fuel filter at a Northern Lights Owner-Operator maintenance class
The blown inverter fuse
Captain Bob’s new happy place?
Safe and sound at Eagle Harbor City Dock
Departing Quartermaster Marina
Transiting the Tacoma Narrows on a flood tide
Swan Town Guest Dock
Flat water as we depart Olympia
View from Eagle Island
Bouncer on a kayak
Franklin
Preston
Happy dogs on shore leave
Smiles on the way to the Saturday Market[/caption]
Beware of Rocks![/caption]
One Particular Harbour …[/caption]
Eartec UL2S UltraLITE Wireless Radios
The View from Indiscretion’s Flybridge Helm
Love Birds
