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.
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:
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.
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.
Love you M/V!!!
On the topic of the genny how much power are you consuming to be running the batteries down so much as to need the generator 2X a day? Any solar aboard? Didn’t recall seeing what your house battery configuration was? You’re not doing laundry every day (or making water) I would assume.
Thanks, Gary. The main power drain stems from the Sub-Zero freezer and two refrigerators. There are other odd systems, TVs, etc., but refrigeration is far and away the biggest user of power. We make water and run the washer/dryer every day, but only when the generator is running. Our generator is oversized for the boat and needs to be loaded to at least 50% capacity to avoid carbon build up, hence our daily watermaker and laundry (and HVAC and underwater lights and anything else we can think of to turn on!). We do not have solar, but there’s a perfect spot for a panel above the flybridge cover. That’s on my list to address at the end of summer. Two Lifeline 8D batteries make up our house system which seems light to me, but is the standard for the Nordhavn 43. These two batteries are about five years old and may be near their end of life which could explain our generator run times.
Bob, thank you for the informative discussion about switching from sailing to life on a Nordhavn.
Fantastic log and awesome adventure Bob!!! Thanks.