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.
Looks like you guys are having a great time.; glad to see that you are out using the Nordhavn!
We routinely fouled our watermaker prefilters while cruising the Northwest. I found that they could be cleaned with the saltwater wash down up to around 20 times before being so permanently clogged that we’d get an alarm every 30 minutes and it was time to dig out the spares.
My theory is that it is all the organic material and runoff in the water up there that causes the short life of the filters. Making water in clean water off shore the filters will last for weeks or even months without clogging enough to cause a low pressure condition.
We’ve been enjoying reading your posts. Enjoy the summer!
Thanks Dougal – very good to know about the watermaker filters up here. Hope all is well down south!