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.
