Longtime Sailors Explore Life Aboard a Nordhavn 43 Trawler
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.
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. Continue reading “Trawler Maintenance for the Mechanically Challenged”
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. Continue reading “Indiscretion in Heavy Weather”
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.
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.
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. Continue reading “Homeward Bound”
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. Continue reading “Canadian Gulf Islands – A Magic Kind of Medicine”
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! Continue reading “Wind in our Hair, Water in our Shoes”
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. Continue reading “Spencer Spit”
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. Continue reading “A Passage of Firsts”