The Journey
Why: In 2013, I went on a standard Alaskan cruise with my wife and other family members. It was a whirlwind cruise that whet my appetite for the area. Particularly for a place called Glacier Bay in central coastal Alaska. A dream to revisit the area in a more leisurely manner was born. In 2023 my father died and left me just barely enough money to realize that dream/bucket list checkoff.
Needed a boat. Decided on a sailboat. I did take a 5 day aboard, sailing course in the mid 1980s and remember enjoying it. That's about all I remember about sailing. Hadn't sailed since then. Oddly enough; nobody or no company would rent or lease me a decent or otherwise sailboat for this trip. Had to spend about 5 months looking for a suitable boat to purchase. Found and purchased SeaScape and did some repairs, customization and familiarizations. The plan was to leave Vancouver in early April, 2024 to give us plenty of time to get to Glacier Bay Alaska and back before " the witch of November comes stealing". Everything boat related seems to take way longer and costs more than it should. Ended up leaving Vancouver on May 6, 2024.
When I return I will probably sell SeaScape. All of my sailing friends say that it won't be easy because I will love the boat and sailing so much that I will find a way to keep her. On my pension......probably not. I do fantasize about taking her down to the Sea Of Cortez in Mexico and spending a good portion of the winter on her. Intriguing and I guess a remote possibility. Time will tell.
I decided to do this travel blog to; keep friends and family updated on our progress but mostly to give me a way to remember the trip whilst sitting in some not too far off, old age home with challenged memory, between watching repeat, repeat, repeat episodes of Gilligans Island on the TV. Had to install a StarLink system on the boat to do that easily. A week or so into the voyage it does seem to give us good internet service. It was also a must for Laurence and her freelance translation business. She apparently needs to work to support her husband's boating expenses for OUR sailboat, though she likes to pretend it is strictly; "my problem".
So......on this "The Journey" page, I think I will just ramble on, from this point on. Voyage thoughts, opinions, observations and general stream of consciousness shit. Hey, you are warned. No intrinsic need for you or anybody ( except me) to return here. I am still struggling with how to make and update this website/blog. The stream of consciousness ( and voyage events) photo gallery (on this blog) will have corresponding photos. If I can figure out how to do that.
TBC
So many things that need to be figured out on this journey. How long will Laurence and even Pi, hang in there? Will the StarLink internet work consistently? Will the fridge be big enough or cold enough? Will oil changes and motor maintenance be straightforward, as expected. How long will the water last. Will the batteries and solar, motor alternator and backup Honda 1000 generator; keep the juices flowing to keep the StarLink, fridge, lighting and heater fan happy? How much and how difficult will the sailing be? How long can we go between shopping for the essentials and of course; the luxuries? Will Andy's navigational or lack of skills, get us lost or washed up on some reef or rocks. Maybe he should have taken the multitude of navigational courses offered by the national boat safety organization? Celestial Navigation, Charting And Planning, Weather and Marine Weather Interpretation, Tidal and Current Navigating, Chart Interpretation 101, Anchoring 200 etc. etc. Will the little 30hp engine be strong enough to get us through the multitude of currents and winds that we will be faced with? Did we bring enough cloths, tools, spare parts, cooking and eating utensils, books and manuals and entertainment or too much of some? How much of a challenge will it be to have enough fuel for the of voyage? various legs of the voyage. Will it be too boring or too stressful or would "Team LAP get on each others nerves and mutiny or worse impend? Will the boat turn out to be too small and cramped for such a long trip? Will sailing be fun or stressful or both? Will Pi adapt to using the stern "poop deck" or would she prefer elsewhere on the boat or will I just have to make a shore trip happen, when needed? What about bears and wolves on shore and homicidal whales in the waters? So many questions. Hopefully the answers will come in a favourable package. Time will tell. BTW: whose sadistic idea was it to have white floors and decks in sailboats?! I knew a guy once who sponge painted the exterior and inside floors of his old motorhome, in a black white and various shades of grey, with the odd sparkle of blue, just to keep it interesting. Dirt and even bird shit just blended in. Why not on sailboats? So here we are, at the beginning of August 2024 sitting in Bull Harbour at the northern end of Vancouver Island. Halleluiah! We made it this far and a lot of the preceding questions have been at least, partially answered. As follows: So.......charts. They cost about $30 each are from the Canadian government and are all supposedly available at most well equipped marine stores. The last I heard......."I see nuthing" most boaters are required to have them for the area you plan on operating in. That would be about 40 charts from here to Glacier Bay. Who has room for that? I do have about 7 or 8 mostly for the gulf Islands. I never refer to them. My Lowrance Hook 7 Fishfinder with GPS mapping is all I ever needed. with chart screen. Even better though is my Navionics App on my Iphone 13 Pro Max. Good to have two.....just in case one goes down. The Navionics App is great. It even gives currents ( on the paid version) and some tides. I did buy a Ports and Passes 2024 Pacific Northwest Tide and current guide. It is pretty complicated to use. My Tides App is much easier and quicker. I also bought several guide books with suggested anchorages and boating guides. The Waggonner 2023 Cruising Guide for Washington, B.C. and Southeast Alaska is my favourite.
Trip Recap: Against all odds we survived and lived; not only to fight another day but to tell the story and remember it; Andy fondly and Laurence; not so much. After about 2 weeks of being aboard Laurence was having serious doubts about "cruising life". She missed her city routines, especially getting regularly to the gym and getting enough exercise. I gave her the opportunity to fly home on many occasions when the opportunity presented. She however, mysteriously, felt obligated to help keep me and the dog safe by being a moderating influence. As if Pi and I had some wild death wish!? She did insist that; if she was going to stay; we should get back to Vancouver promptly and safely. I agreed, because she was so miserable but only after we made it to Glacier Bay, if we could make it to Glacier Bay. So.....instead of being a leisurely 5 or 6 month trip it was reduced to 4 with too few side trips, dalliances and explorations.
The trip, by numbers:117 days ( May 6, 2024 to September 31, 2024), about 2200 miles ( about 2000 miles motoring and 200 miles sailing). 18 rainy days. 66 days of; mix of sun and cloud and occasional shower. 32 sunny days. 27 days in port. 90 days at anchor. 11 non travel days because of inclement weather. 4 days in port waiting to get a dripping engine water pump serviced.
It was a long trip. About 2200 miles at an average of about 5 miles per hour. At this time of the year the Inside Passage is not very windy and if it is, it is likely a head or tail wind as the winds seem to follow the direction that the narrows take. There is often not much room to tack in the narrow channels. The most fun and interesting times for me was the actual sailing. Unfortunately not much progressive sailing opportunities showed. I had an unfortunate fall while below on the boat just before we left on May 6. My left shoulder was torn up and a bone cracked. I choose to grin and bare it and adapt to being more or less; a one armed skipper. The actual sailing and working the sails was tough with one and a half arms, but doable. At the beginning Laurence had to assist me getting pull over jackets and sweaters on and off. SeaScape was easily enough managed solo and I seldom had to exit the cockpit. Laurence was not interested in “learning the ropes” or steering under anything close to challenging conditions but on almost a daily basis she would take the helm for a 30 minutes or so, for me to go below to take a break and grab a meal. Occasionally I would let the auto pilot take over as I dashed below to grab something or take a quick toilet break. I would only consider this when the conditions were right and we were far from shore with no flotsam or jetsam on the horizon. Hitting a log was one of my most prevalent fears. Seascape’s previous owner had hit a large semi submerged log, out of Nanaimo. The drive shaft was bent and the prop destroyed. She was in a ship yard in Nanaimo for 7 months waiting for a new shaft to arrive from France, during Covid. We did hit the odd chunk of wood in choppy seas during the voyage but a 5 miles an hour; no damage was done except to Laurence’s confidence in her skipper. Apparently the noise of hitting a piece of wood was distressing to her and her lap warmer Pi, when below. She spent a lot of time below. She is still a working translator and spent an average of 5 or 6 hours below, working online, everyday. The Starlink system that we purchased specifically for this trip worked even better than expected. We had high speed internet service throughout the boat, virtually without interruption for the whole trip. It did a time out on two or three occasions but a relatively simple reboot was all that was required to get back on line. It was amazing that Laurence could work on her laptop down below, in her “office”, even during somewhat rough sea conditions. Without the internet Laurence would not even have considered going on this trip. She does and did spent 7 or 8 hours online daily; working, socializing and being entertained. The Starlink system uses about the same power as a 70 watt lightbulb. That is well within the capabilities of the SeaScape batteries and charging systems. Only on 4 occasions when anchored in the rain for several days did I have to hook up the portable generator to give the batteries a boost.
So to answer the questions posed on the Journey Page: SeaScape’s fridge is a chest style, 12 volt. It doesn’t seem to drain the batteries much and we had no need to turn it off daily to save power. The freezer section is a small portion of the chest. It is quite small but large enough for two small ice cube trays (very important for cocktail hour) and several one litre bags of frozen items. The rest of the chest was large and deep. It held more than enough perishables etc. to last us for at least 2 weeks without a resupply. We did find that we could find suitable shopping venues along our route, every week or so. We did not want for much in the food or drink dept. and seldom had to dig out the canned goods that we had stowed away.
The little Yanmar diesel engine seemed perfectly suited to SeaScape. Unless waterskiing was on the menu. It started easily every time and only consumed about 3 litres per cruising hour. We cruised at an average of about 5mph at 2800 rpm ( max 36 rpm). Oil and filter changes were done by me before every 150 hours. I always did them when we were in a well serviced marina, just in case something unexpected was needed. Once in Prince Rupert I needed to take a tight filter housing into a marine shop to have them loosen. I didn’t want to risk breaking it with my hammer approach. Near the beginning of the trip the automatic bilge pump came on for a few seconds. I found that there was a slow drip of salt water coming out of the raw water pump on the engine. The next port we were headed to was Port McNeil on the north end of Vancouver Island. There was a diesel repair shop in town but they couldn’t get to me for 3 or 4 days. The Yanmar Service Manual, that was aboard showed me how to disassemble and replace the seal on the pump and I had YouTube for backup. Port McNeil was a nice small town and the marina was excellent and not expensive. We decided to let the pros do the work and they did so in 3 days. The mechanic sold me on buying a new pump rather than repairing the old one. He said the cost to me would be about the same either way. SeaScape has an auxiliary fuel tank to go with the stock fuel tank for a total of 215 litres of diesel which gave us about 70 hours of motoring. We had no range worries which was nice.
We did make sure to stay parked if the marine forecast was at all worrisome. We decided not to venture on if the winds were forecast to exceed 20 knots (23mph). The marine forecasts, weather forecasts and the wind apps for this Inside Passage seemed to be very accurate. None the less we did encounter some rolly polly seas on occasion. SeaScape handled very well and surprisingly; the Gravol was never used. Pi did throw her cookies on two occasions though and she pissed below decks once. Try as we might; we could not get her to use the rear transom (the poop deck?) to piss or shit. We could get her to go down there without too much problem. But not “go” down there. We had a small artificial grass mat and even tried scenting it with some grass that she had pissed and shat on. No dice. She liked her daily chauffeur to shore and was not going to compromise. Fed lightly twice a day and taken for a “walk” once a day worked. At least I didn’t hear any persistent complaints from her?
Another pleasant surprise was the warmth below decks even in glacial waters. We seldom were running around in shorts and bare feet but were never cold. There are two heaters. The main one is a forced air diesel one that does use 12 volt power. The second smaller one can operate without using electricity. We never had the need to use the smaller one. Generally; a day of motoring, water heating and cooking kept the main cabin quite comfortable. In the morning and the later evening, if the air was chilly we would turn on the main heater for an hour or so and we would be toasty. A few hours of motoring would give us enough hot water for doing dishes and a couple of short showers if needed or desired. There are two drinking water tanks in SeaScape, each about 100 gallons. We seldom had to worry about running out of water. Filling up at marinas and fuel stations was usually free and we used an inline water filter as a precaution.
There are two separate sleeping cabins aboard. We choose to sleep in the forward V berth because it was a little airier and it was easy to mount a TV screen for watching DVDs or Netflix in bed. The down side of the forward berth; close vicinity to the anchor chain. I had a few sleepless nights hearing the chain rub against rocks on the bottom as the boat swung about in the wind or current (thinking that we might be dragging our anchor). We never did. It turned out that we only used the TV on half a dozen evenings. Laurence was happy watching, reading and surfing on her tablet before “lights out”. The aft cabin was used mostly for storage. We brought way more clothing, kitchen accessories etc. than we needed to. A lot of stuff that we never even used.
A typical “travel day” looked like this: I would be first out of bed, usually before 7am. I would turn on the Starlink ( we turned it off at night, when not needed, to save on battery power). Once connected (usually in 5 or 10 minutes), I would check the weather and marine forecasts to make sure we were good to go. Next up would be my breakfast which was pretty much the same every day. A half and orange and a banana, raw almonds, cinnamon and protein powder smoothy, along with some joint supplements, turmeric and vitamin D. I used a cordless immersion blender that worked great. After that I would fire up the coffee for Laurence and assemble; either some fruit or sweet bread or toast, for her. Occasionally if we had a longer travel day planned I would get up earlier and get under way before Laurence rose and she would be on “coffee detail” Once under way, I would be pretty happy at the helm for 3 or 4 hours before wanting a break. Sometimes I would listen to music, audio books or podcasts but mostly I would just listen to the hum of the engine, the water on the hull, the wind in the wires and ponder life and the passing landscapes. Laurence was usually on lunch detail unless we are stopped and drifted or have arrived at our planned daily destination. A salad and quesadilla would be a typical lunch. We would try and time it so that conditions were right for Laurence to man the helm and I would go below and have a sit down lunch, before or after she had eaten. A 5 or 6 hour motor/sail day was typical, trying to get anchored or tied up by around 3 or 4 pm. Once done; Pi for a “walk” and some exploring and then HH (Happy Hour) after Laurence finishes her work for the day, which usually entailed some sort of cocktails for me and some wine or beer for Laurence. Dinner would then often be my task. Fried vegies, tofu, pasta, various rices, steamed vegies, tofu, shell fish, fish, wraps would be usual fare often with some cheese and red wine. We seldom eat meat or meat products. After dinner and dishes; Laurence would usually read a book or get social or informed on the internet. I would pull out the guide books, charts, maps to plan the next days adventure. Google earth was fun and informative. Then I would struggle trying to upload the daily blog. All done; it would be around 11pm and time for me to have a face wash, tooth brush, feed Pi and head to bed where Laurence would already be asleep or reading. I usually slept wellish and hardly ever set an alarm to wake up in the morning. Laurence is blessed with pretty much always; sleeping long and well.
Highlights of the trip for me: I just loved just being on and near the water, all the time. Just getting into the Zen mindset of not being in a real hurry ( at 5mph, pretty much necessary) and enjoying the “now” whilst observing the constantly changing land and water scapes, was heaven. It did take at least a few weeks to attain that state of mind. The excitement of not knowing what was “around the next corner” made me feel truly alive. Getting close to the whales was “old hat” for me but still enthralling. A real tangible highlight was standing on the bow, underway on calm seas and having a pod of Dahl Porpoises escorting us just a few feet off the bow of the boat. Anchoring in small, idyllic, protected coves and being the only boat there was also very sweet. Those sunny HHs on deck at the end of a busy day were also very pleasantly memorable.
Lowlights of the trip for me: Having Laurence being so miserable and unhappy was definitely the worst part of the trip. Grounding the boat on two occasions was also very distressing to me. Luckily; there was no significant damage was done to the boat except for a bit of bottom paint scraped off the bottom of the iron keel. My pride and confidence did take a sad hit though
Highlights of the trip for Laurence: viewing the whales and porpoises, up close and personal. Helping her friend and soulmate attain a life goal. Getting home.
Lowlights of the trip for Laurence: not being able to get regular exercise and putting on a few pounds. The two boat groundings were also very distressing.
GRAND SUMMARY: An amazing 4 months. Too rushed though. There were many places en route that I would love to have explored or even just spent a couple of summer weeks or longer, enjoying. Glacier Bay was special but there a many alluring cruising opportunities and exploration opportunities closer to home, in B.C. waters. A very world experienced sailor that we met told me that even the Gulf Islands in the summer and shoulder months was better than most of the cruising destinations in the world. I believe him. Its too bad Laurence is not interested in doing any more cruising. Taking SeaScape down to Mexico was an impractical dream. Putting the boat up for sale is sad for me but unfortunately financially wise on my pension. On to new adventures!