The crew of Indiscretion achieved a matrimonial milestone this month — our 25th Wedding Anniversary. This is remarkable, not only because our marriage has lasted far longer than the statistical average, but also because our friends all expected this spur-of-the-moment marriage to dissolve within six months of our elopement in Greece. There had been a large quantity of Ouzo consumed the night before we wrote out marriage vows on a rocky outcropping on Skiathos, so even we wondered early on how this would all work out.
We decide to celebrate our anniversary at Alderbrook Resort and Spa on the southern end of Hood Canal. We could have driven to this beautiful resort from our home on Vashon Island in about an hour, but what would be the fun in that? Instead, we would travel there by boat, which requires voyaging about seven hours north to the entrance of Hood Canal, and then heading south for another seven hours. Such is life at seven knots.
I spend a lot of time with my nose in a book. Last year, I read 61 books, and I'm on track to read that many again in 2021. Yet, as fast as I read, I can't seem to make a dent in my To-Be-Read pile. So many books, so little time. Sometimes it feels like I'm running on a treadmill with an ever-increasing speed.
Lately, I've been questioning whether this strategy of gulping down so many books is wise after all. When I scan down the list of the books I've read so far this year, a few stand out, but many are already a blur. I hover over a few on the list — wait, did I actually read that?
For the past ten years, I have been on a mission to eradicate paper from my work and home life. I can now access information more quickly and from anywhere, whether at sea or at the Apple Store where I need to produce the invoice for a dead MacBook Pro. And yet, one hold-out refuses to go gently into that dark night of paper annihilation: my Field Notes notebooks. These pint-sized memo books with their quirky designs and durable paper still travel with me just about everywhere. I sometimes wonder at the irony of using a $1,000 iPad Pro as a lap desk to scribble in a $4 notebook.
With everything else in my life so digitally focused, why do I still fill one of these 48-page Field Notes every three or four weeks?
In my office, I keep an old photograph of the Buckaroo Tavern in the Seattle neighborhood of Fremont. The photo truly captured the character of the place: two chrome-festooned Harley Davidson motorcycles parked up on the sidewalk out front, bright orbs from the lights hung over the pool tables, and an outstretched arm and pool cue of a patron poised in mid-shot. I spent many nights at this dive bar as a young man. My eyes burned from the cigarette smoke, and the rough-looking biker crowd that congregated at the bar would often chuckle over their beers at this clean-cut accountant toting a pool cue case, but I loved the place. I had the photograph framed when we first moved to Vashon Island. It hangs between a picture of Mark Twain standing before a pool table considering his next shot and a signed photograph of Jack Dempsey in his famous boxing stance. But, it’s the tavern picture that has caught my attention lately as I think back on that long ago life before kids.
On a boat, the most basic conveniences of life — like running water — require forethought and attention. In this post, we explore how we manage water aboard our Nordhavn 43 trawler.
Ample fresh water aboard Indiscretion is one of the many extravagances we enjoy aboard this expedition trawler. Our Catalina sailboat had just 50 gallons of fresh water, which we stretched to six or seven days of cruising with careful dishwashing and quick cockpit showers for the kids. The trawler holds 300 gallons of fresh water with onboard water-making capability that, in theory, provides us with an infinite supply.
One of the great joys of anchoring out in a beautiful bay is the free time you have to focus on lingering boat projects. When you’re away from the boat, these issues seem to stack up until a later day. But here in Hunter Bay in the beautiful San Juan Islands? I had plenty of time.
My focus of the day: a wiring problem lurking somewhere in the pilothouse that randomly kept flipping our Maretron system circuit breaker. This happened when I opened or closed the ship’s service panel door, so I suspected a loose wire somewhere.
With most of my nautical life spent on sailboats, marine electronics has never been much of a focus area. Our most well-equipped cruising sailboat carried just basic navigation equipment: an autopilot, a chartplotter, and instruments for speed, depth, and wind. I knew that more sophisticated systems were available; I just didn’t see the need for anything more complex, though radar would have been a welcome addition with all the fog we have here in the summer.
Part three: After a rough start (part one) and a nice passage north (part two), we concluded our three weeks of island hopping through the beautiful San Sun Islands, enjoying mostly fine weather and deserted anchorages.
Jones Island
After a blissful three days on Stuart Island, we plot the seven-mile course to Jones Island. A strong current flows against us between Speiden and San Juan Island, so we decide to take the northern route above Speiden to see if we could make better time. This turns out to be a mistake. An even stronger current slows us, and worse, a series of tidal eddies have us spinning this way and that as we make our way eastward through New Channel. At the narrowest part of the passage between Speiden and the Cactus Islands, I marvel at a flock of floating birds spinning on the water like they are riding an invisible merry-go-round. Moments later, we enter this vortex to hell ourselves.
Part Two: Having quickly resolved our hydraulic system problems, the crew of Indiscretion heads north for the San Juan Islands.
After departing Shilshole Marina, we arrive at Port Ludlow and spend the night at anchor to cross the Strait of Juan de Fuca with the tide in the morning. Weather on the Strait can be unsettled this time of year, but we have a nice window before a storm arrives on Sunday. This is our second visit to Port Ludlow and each time we wish we had more time to explore this lovely, protected bay.
Part One: The crew of Indiscretion sets out for an open-ended cruise through the San Juan Islands in early spring, but their voyage is in jeopardy within hours of departure.
The San Juan Islands are some of the most beautiful cruising grounds in the world. More than a hundred named islands and reefs with numerous state parks, anchorages, and destination marinas are scattered throughout this archipelago spanning the waters of northwestern Washington state. While currents can sometimes be tricky to navigate, the San Juans are perfect for slow boats like trawlers. The islands are close enough that your next anchorage is usually just an hour or two away, even at seven knots, and there are almost an unlimited number of harbors and inlets to explore.
With a welcome change in the weather, the crew of Indiscretion made immediate plans to cast off our dock lines. We unloaded a dock cart full of too much food, topped off the water tank, and set out for a much-needed winter cruise through central Puget Sound.
I could see the problem from the very start. This complicated trawler yacht with all her engines and systems required more attention than I could possibly dedicate on nights and weekends. She needed a full-time captain and engineer to keep her Bristol and ready at a moment’s notice to cast off and make for remote destinations.
I’ve kept a personal journal for most of my adult life. These journals have helped me wrestle with every significant decision and manage through the many stresses of everyday life. Last month, I put down my millionth word in over 40 years of self-reflection.
I’ve written about the reasons to keep a journal, and by far the most frequent question I receive from readers is how to establish a regular habit of journaling. Many find it easy to start a journal but much more challenging to keep it up.
About a month ago, I started using a new Mac/iOS app called Craft to help me make sense of books I read and organize ideas and content for my own writing. I was intrigued by the potential of bringing all my disparate notes into one friction-free digital home, enabling new connections and insights from all these books and ideas. The inspiration for this came from reading Sönke Ahrens’ book How to Take Smart Notes, which introduced me to Professor Luhmann’s famed Zettelkasten system.
The crew of Indiscretion has fully embraced the Apple ecosystem. It doesn’t seem very long ago that the Mac was the underdog, but now, Macs, iPads, iPhones, Apple Watches, Apple TV's, and even the underwhelming HomePod have found their way into our lives. We use this technology in the pilothouse for music, audiobooks, our maintenance tracking system, backup navigation and our ship’s log.
Fall weather in the Northwest can be pretty iffy. Rain and wind are the norm for this time of year, which took its toll on our boating time back when we sailed. Unlike my more hardcore sailor friends, the novelty of freezing my ass off in the cockpit lost its appeal some time in my mid-forties. Each year, as fall turned its gaze to winter, I would grudgingly decide to put the boat away. Off would come the cushions and bedding to avoid mildew. Three or four dehumidifiers would decorate the cabins of the darkened boat to soak up the winter moisture. Dock lines would be inspected for chafe ahead of the winter storms to come. Sadness would creep over me as I walked up the dock, perhaps for the final time of the year, already pining for spring.
Trawler life has changed all that. We no longer hibernate. Why would we? It can be freezing outside but still toasty warm inside the pilothouse and salon. In fact, fall and winter cruising on a trawler here in the Pacific Northwest is downright amazing.
Welcome to my third annual review of the personal finance software, Quicken for Mac. I have been using Quicken to manage my finances since 1989: first on the Mac, then a long stint on the Windows version, before switching back to the new-and-improved Mac version four years ago. I wrote about the process of switching from Windows to Mac here.
As I wrote then, I had very high expectations for the Mac version under new leadership, independent of Intuit, and the financial benefit of a new subscription-based business model. In this post, I’ll share an update on how it’s gone using the latest version, Quicken 2020 for Mac.
During our two decades of sailing, we held a particular disdain for powerboats and their noisy generators. On starlit nights, the chug-chug-chug of neighboring generators disturbed the quiet stillness of the anchorage. Back then, we could be smug. With the simple systems on a sailboat, we could go days and days on the hook, relying only on the small house battery bank for power.
When we purchased our Nordhavn 43 trawler a little over two years ago, we had big plans for the fall of 2020. We’d leave our newly emptied home and sail off to far away destinations — a longtime dream come true.
In fact, we did cast off, but not like we expected.
As a licensed CPA and long-time boat owner, I’m no stranger to the financial consequences of keeping a boat. People like to joke about how quickly money flows into a boat, like stuffing $100 bills down a bottomless drain. Or, how many “boat units” a particular upgrade or repair will be. Somehow, six boat units sound better than $6,000.
When we were shopping for our trawler, our yacht broker shared this financial rule of thumb: expect to spend about 10% of the value of the boat each year on maintenance, upkeep, moorage, and other ownership costs like insurance, taxes and fees. The rule worked on our $70,000 sailboat. We spent about $7,000 a year on boat-related costs. But surely, that math couldn’t extend to a $700,000 trawler. Could it?
Mornings start early on Indiscretion. Sometime between 6 and 7 a.m., one of our two trawler dogs will jump down off the bed and start issuing low whines I can’t drown out no matter how deeply I burrow into the blankets.
I complain a lot about having to take the dogs ashore in the morning, but to be honest, I love it.
Anchoring a boat has come a long way. On our sailboats, it always felt like a risky proposition. We'd make sure to set the anchor and watch our position in relation to a fixed point on land. I'd stand at the bow for a long time before turning in, feeling the pressure of wind on my cheek, wondering if I should let out more rode. Many nights I'd be up in a flash if I heard a strange noise or a shift in the wind, looking out for something familiar on the dark shore to ease my mind.
I'm told I say it every year, but today was certainly the best Father's Day ever. Being spoiled by my two children, and seeing how they've become wonderful adults has put me in a thankful, reflective mood. I'm sure every generation thinks this, but I believe what it means to be a father has changed a lot over the past thirty years. I had the benefit of having two dads as I grew up, first one and then the other. I loved them both, but I looked for other role models when I became a father myself.
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.
So many worries. Our future unknown and uncertain. Quarantine and isolation. And yet … these are the days we’ll remember for a generation: those dark times when we persevered and grew stronger as a person, as a family, and as a community. We made sacrifices, experienced heartfelt loss, and yet took comfort in the small things: our family suddenly reassembled from far-flung places, a dog’s warmth by our side, and maybe the music we played for each other to cheer and inspire …
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?
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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.
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.
The latest in a series of tips to help you read at least 50 books a year without feeling like you’re reading that much at all.
This tip may be an unpopular one. Many readers are devoted to a single book at a time, and would consider it is almost cheating to allow a second (or third) book into the relationship. I understand this view because I held it myself for many years. Yet, once I began the practice of reading several books at once, my completion rate started to climb.
Reading books is one of life’s great rewards, but in today’s increasingly distractible environment, it can be challenging to find time for books. In this read-more-books series, I’ll share tips and tricks to read at least 50 books a year without feeling like you’re reading that much at all.
Read more books tip #6: listen to audiobooks on your commute, while you exercise, or while doing chores.
