This article was previously written by Rachel Messerschmidt for and published by Vancouver Family Magazine in July 2021.
In the five years that we’ve owned and lived aboard our 40-foot sailboat, we’ve never had any visitors come stay on the boat for a weekend to experience boat life with us. Friends and family would come visit occasionally when we were living in the marina in Portland, and our parents have visited frequently since we moved the boat up to the Puget Sound. They would always get a hotel room for their stay or bring their own RV up for the duration.
Few people that we know from back home would have any desire to stay on a sailboat for any extended period of time. And that’s fine – we totally get it. It’s a small space. It moves in unexpected and unpredictable ways. There are inconveniences, for sure.
But recently, Brenden’s dad took a couple of days off work and joined us aboard for a long weekend of cruising. Not only did we enjoy the visit, but we also thoroughly enjoyed sharing the realities of our chosen lifestyle with him.
We’re cruising this summer in the San Juan Islands. Driving north from Vancouver, Scott, my father-in-law, parked his car for the weekend in Anacortes and, with just one bag and a rolled up sleeping bag, walked on as a foot-passenger to a Washington State Ferry to arrive on Friday evening in Friday Harbor where we picked him up.
Living aboard a sailboat is a constant dance of monitoring weather patterns and wind predictions. If we choose the wrong anchorage for a night, we might not get any sleep at all or, even worse, we might actually put our home in danger. And when you’re also working remotely aboard your sailboat, and you’ve got kids along for the ride, you’ve got additional considerations to make above and beyond those concerning the weather. Do we have cell signal and internet in that next place for work and homeschooling? Will we be able to go ashore for exercise?
It can seem like there are a million things that you have to keep track of when you live aboard a boat. But the trade offs are worth it, at least for us. We get an ever-changing water view and access to some of the most beautiful cruising grounds in the world.
So when we picked up my father-in-law, we had several places in mind that we were hoping to get to take him but the primary goal for the weekend was to get to share with him Sucia Island State Park. We spent our first night anchored in Park’s Bay on the south side of Shaw Island, just north across the channel from Friday Harbor. We were treated to a gorgeous sunset. Scott observed as Brenden and I discussed the wind predictions for the next 48 hours, trying to decide if we would be safe and comfortable visiting Sucia.
There are several different forecast models and, on this weekend, they weren’t in agreement on what the wind was going to do and when. There was possibility for some higher winds from the South but we decided that we could go and just keep an eye on it as the day progressed.
We were able to get a mooring ball in Snoring Cove, one of our favorite spots on Sucia. We went ashore and enjoyed an afternoon of hiking the island, finding fossils on the beach, and we even got to see a pod of orcas swim past the island from a high vantage point on the south-facing cliffs! What an amazing day!
As we headed back to the boat for the evening, we were noticing that the wind was picking up as predicted, but it was coming from a more easterly angle than expected. This, unfortunately, left us more exposed than we’d like and we started seeing strong gusts and unfavorable conditions build.
Our picturesque little bay turned treacherous as the boat jerked on the mooring ball with each gust of wind, close rocky cliffs nearby which could legitimately destroy our home if the mooring broke. After sunset, definitely not a time that we generally plan to be moving the boat around, we decided to leave our mooring ball and move just a short way around the tip of the island to anchor in Echo Bay. It seemed we would have more protection from the wind there and we trust our anchor more than an untested mooring ball. Plus, if something did go wrong and our anchor happened to fail, we wouldn’t instantly be on the rocks as was the case in Snoring Cove.
It was an intense few moments as I slipped the lines from the mooring ball and Brenden motored strongly into the wind and waves to exit Snoring Cove. We heard a glass break down below but had to ignore it for the time being. The waves outside had built up and the bow of the boat, where I sat holding on tightly, bucked and jumped in a pitching arc of at least ten feet up and down violently. I carefully crawled-slash-scurried my way back to the safety of the cockpit.
In a matter of ten minutes or less, we crossed a visible line in the water behind the protection of the island and calm returned despite what madness was blowing outside Echo Bay. Thankfully, the final light of the dying day gave us opportunity to pick a good spot and drop our anchor for a better night’s sleep.
The rest of Scott’s weekend visit was peaceful. We took him the next day to visit Prevost Harbor on Stuart Island, both because we like the place but also because we knew it was a good spot to hide from shifting winds that evening building from the southwest. It was a bit overcast and drizzly and, after the previous night’s excitement, we were happy to relax and play board games.
On Monday, we returned to Friday Harbor for Scott to catch a ferry back to his car and head home. I hope he enjoyed his visit, we sure did. And I think it was a pretty accurate representation of our lifestyle- the ups and the downs.
Rachel Messerschmidt and her family are Clark County natives currently living and cruising full time aboard their sailboat, Mosaic. In the Pacific Northwest currently, they are preparing to leave for Mexico in August. Rachel blogs about her life and journey at www.mosaicvoyage.com and shares her family’s adventures in a monthly column in Vancouver Family Magazine.
