Can we really work from the boat?

Jess has an idea. We should take the boat out for the month of July. Hmmm … we can’t really take a month off work, but can we work from the boat for a whole month? We decided to give it a try with a one week trial before committing to a whole month. We departed Semiahmoo on Sunday, May 17. We figured we would just go to Sucia and stay there for the week. It is a beautiful spot and there are lots of hiking trails. Then on the weekend we planned to go to places new to us.

Heading out of Drayton Harbor and there isn’t much wind and, as is usually the case, the wind that we do have is coming directly from the location we want to sail to. If you know sailing, you know you can’t sail directly into the wind. This means that with light wind coming from Sucia if we wanted to sail we would be tacking back and forth and not getting much closer to our destination with each tack. We could have turned a 3 hour motoring into a full day of barely moving. I am pleased to report that we are getting much smarter about the currents! We usually time our departures to take advantage of the currents these days. If we had tried to sail, eventually the current would have turned against us. The point of all of this is that we were just motoring. It happens.

As we motored along we noticed that the bilge was running more than it should. We had noticed this the last few times we took the boat out, but the rate that it was running was definitely increasing. Jess was brave and he checked the bilge water to determine if it was salty. Salty would be very bad indeed. The good news is that it wasn’t salty, but that means the bad news is that we knew we had a leak in our fresh water system. With our water maker currently decommissioned (not because it doesn’t work – just because we don’t need it to run while we are sitting at the dock), pumping fresh water overboard is not ideal. As we watched the water pump overboard, Jess noticed that the water was steaming. A clue! A very helpful clue because he checked our hot water tank and found the leak right away. It was the over temp valve. Our temporary solution was to turn off the pressure for our fresh water system. The result is that the only access to fresh water would be with the single foot pump we have a the sink in the galley. This is not a big deal and doesn’t not count as suffering.

The anchorage at Sucia in Echo Bay was wide open. It is still early season and Echo Bay is a very large anchorage so there was plenty of room. We got anchored, made dinner and watched a movie. Mostly we were happy to be on the boat in a beautiful spot. To be fair, the boat is moored in a beautiful spot too. It would be challenging for us to find a spot in the islands that isn’t beautiful. This place is amazing! We tested our Starlink set up to make sure we were ready for the work day. All systems go.

I won’t bore you with the details of the work days. Suffice to say that Starlink worked for us (with one exception when the router needed to be re-booted and tech support was still asleep). Jess did so much work on the boat to install new lithium batteries, which gave us more capacity to run two computers and Starlink. Working in close proximity was also no problem. We sit in separate rooms when we work from home, but it was a fairly easy adjustment to sit together. Jess works from the nav station and I work from the table. I was even able to take a break at lunch, move the table and workout in the boat.

After being anchored at Sucia we decided that we should just take the boat to Friday Harbor and get the hot water tank fixed. Jess called to find out if they had the part we needed in stock and they did so off we went to anchor in Friday Harbor. It didn’t take Jess long at all to get the new over temp valve installed and everything back up and running normally.

After a few working days we thought we should strike out for new pastures and decided to investigate Deer Harbor – a place we had never been. It was a delightful place and an easy place for us to find a place to anchor. They even have gourmet pizza – which was absolutely delightful. The weather was quite fortunate. Unfortunately, the next day, we got some sad news about my father-in-law. He had passed away that morning. It wasn’t unexpected – but you are never really ready for news like that. This was on a Thursday so the rest of the day and Friday it was hard to focus on work. Friday night we moved the boat to West Sound on Orcas and found a spot by Victim Island. It wasn’t our favorite spot because it seems to have a rocky bottom which made us worry about dragging anchor. The weather was settled and everything was just fine … but one does prefer a nice muddy bottom.

Saturday we decided to head to the most northern part of West Sound. We thought we would go for a hike. When we got up there and anchored the wind was blowing about 15 knots and the waves had fetched quite a bit. I am sure that we could have left and gone for a hike and everything would have been just fine … but we are still relatively new to all of this and Nootka is our baby … so we couldn’t leave her like that. We sat in the cockpit for a while and then decided that we should take advantage of the strong wind and test our ability to sail upwind and out of the sound. The sails came up and off we went. The wind was quite gusty and I was disappointed to find that Nootka is not immune to a strong gust. She tips over like any other sailboat, just not as quickly. Jess was delighted that we were able to sail upwind and out of the sound. We decided to look for a spot in Blind Bay on Shaw Island.

Blind Bay was well protected and it was much calmer in there. We found a good spot and anchored in mud. From there we watched a ketch sail back and forth in the bay. Then we decided to check out the general store on Shaw Island at the ferry dock and it did not disappoint! It was a small store but they seemed to have absolutely everything. Very impressive. And very popular as it seems the store is a hot spot for everyone to come get ice cream. We also found a small taproom there and we sat at a table and watched people coming and going on the ferry and sat in the sun people watching. It was a really nice way to spend an afternoon.

Sunday we figured we would head to Sucia but while underway we checked the forecast and decided that we would be better off going all the way back to the marina. We even got in some nice sailing on the way home. The weather turned Sunday night and Monday and we were very glad that we weren’t trying to dock in high winds. Overall, we decided that we would have no problems working from the boat for a month in July and we are very excited to give it a try. Jess is hoping to get solar panels installed on top of the dodger by then. Can’t wait to get back out on the water.