A New Life of Indiscretion

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

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

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

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

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

Summers on the boat, winters in Arizona

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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