Boot Camp

Mike chopping firewood.

Each year we stay at our cabin on Decourcy Island we make ourselves sore. We accomplish this by marching up the approx. 100ft./30 meters from our 15 sq. ft. dock up to the house. Every day. Multiple trips. Usually, we’re carrying groceries or propane canisters(1). Or fishing or prawning gear. For fun, we also walk from our house through the provincial park and back, a 1.5-hour light hike. I also get sore from hand-washing all the dishes and cooking. Mike, especially, does the back-breaking work.

We knew that staying at the cabin for a longer period than a 2-week vacation would challenge us in multiple ways. One way is to make us stronger and healthier. No more sitting all day. This is a primary retirement goal we share.

Check out these graphs from my My iPhone. It’s informing me of how much my activity has increased. My retirement began Oct. 1. Our stay at Decourcy began in mid-March.

Note the increases in activity to the right of the “O” (October) after retirement. And, coming to Decourcy in March, the “M” second from the right.

The increased work began with moving boxes and luggage. There’s a lot of lifting goin’ on. Our Nordic Tug is too big for our little dock, so we’re temporarily keeping it in a slip in Pirate’s Cove marina, a 15-minute round trip walk. We have a vehicle(2), but the marina is so close we opt to smell the fresh air and walk if we don’t have anything heavy to carry. I’ve embedded myself with our wonderful, resident yoga instructor. That’s a 50-minute roundtrip walk to her beautiful house. When we get groceries in town we walk one half to a mile round-trip from a marina to the grocery store. There are doggie walks in the park. You get the picture.

I probably could have increased activity similarly by moving to New York City. 

Soft, mossy trail through Pirate’s Cove Provincial Marine Park on Decourcy.

The second retirement goal relates to challenging ourselves. Mike has challenged himself with many projects in the last few weeks. I’m gushing with pride for him. He has:

- Replaced the seized old metal wheels under our sliding glass door with shiny new ones. Did you know these can be replaced?

- Installed enough lithium batteries and an inverter(3) to power our Starlink system(4) and computer. And a TV. And charge hand tools like Maggie’s hair razor.

-Chainsaw basics: safety, maintenance, sharpening, and bucking(5) wood. All this courtesy of our neighbor, the resident expert and retired chainsaw professional.

-Created a burn pit(5). Digging and lining with heavy stones. It’s great entertainment to watch a bonfire. Can’t wait to have a weenie roast with guests during the burn season.

-Replaced our broken VHF antenna on the Nordic Tug. 

-Installed a fog horn in case we encounter fog.

-Fixed our tug’s water level measurement system.

-Replaced our broken septic line.(6) Many of you heard the “shitty day” story we experienced last August. This is the happy ending. Knock on wood.

Mike installing 3 lithium batteries and a 3KW inverter/charger.

The new burn pit! Mike spent a whole day digging and lining it with heavy rocks.

Neighborhood experts and YouTube are enabling us to challenge ourselves to be as self-sufficient as we can be.

Holding back nothing from you, I sprained some upper back muscles when we were in Bellingham. It’s slowly getting better—slowly because I can’t escape all the lifting, I think. 

We drop into bed each night exhausted. And satisfied.

Footnotes for Fun Fact Fans

(1) The canisters are identical to the ones you use in your bbq. We use propane to power our fridge, heat our water, cook, and heat our dryer.

(2) Our cabin came furnished with a vintage 1980s Suzuki Samurai. There are a few on Decourcy. 

(3) Mike learned about inverters and safe wiring by doing this on our boat a few months ago. It enables us to use a few plug-in AC devices. Our existing solar/battery 12-volt system has a limited capacity (250AH). We use it for low energy-drawing LED lights, water pumps and USB charging. The battery-to-inverter-enabled system is charged by running our gas-powered generator for an hour or so. We plan to have a more robust system in a few years. 

(4) The Starlink system is a major game changer. With Starlink, we have an internet connection all day. Streaming TV feels like cheating around here, but so be it! Without Starlink, our cell phone connection is undependable at the cabin.

(5) Bucking wood = chopping it up into wood stove-length pieces. Then Mike swings an axe to reduce the bucked pieces into firewood. We feed one modern wood stove to heat the cabin. 

(6) Our black water system is a sewer pipe that runs to large, buried, 2 covered 50 gallon barrels that have holes. It works. Will likely modernize this system eventually.

Auspicious Exit

The vista from our deck at DeCourcy Island.

We made it to DeCourcy Island. How does one bring a 34-foot boat with an 11-foot beam from the SF Bay Area to an island in British Columbia, about 1500 miles? 

You can pilot[1] it, but considering the harrowing tales we heard from others in our Nordic Tug group, we opted for the easier method of hiring a trucker who trailers it. Enter Rick, the oversize boat trucker. He built a custom trailer for boats like ours.

We packed all our remaining possessions and two months of clothing in the boat and our F150 truck--everything that we didn't already U-Haul up to Decourcy. On Monday, March 13, we said bittersweet goodbyes to our son and his GF, my sister and friends, promising to see them again in September, then piloted over from our South Beach Marina slip to our haulout spot, Berkeley Marina, to spend one last night. 

Unfortunately, Tuesday turned out to be an unusually rainy and windy day (25-knot[3] winds gusting to 50 knots), the worst weather possible for hauling out a 15,000 lb. boat. It was an easy call; we put it off for a day. 

We called Jeanne, asking for another overnight in her guest room. So much for bittersweet goodbyes. 

Was the poor weather on an auspicious day an omen? Are we superstitious? Kinda. But our retirement dream outweighs possible omens.

At first light, Mike and Rick the trucker removed the tall bits from the Lido deck, like the radar mast, and declared it ready to pull. Rick backed up the trailer into place. The team at Berkeley marina slowly and carefully pulled a bulbous-looking Unwined up, over, and down until Rick was satisfied with the placement. 

Unwined up...

Over...

And down onto Rick’s specially-made trailer.

With barely a “see ya later,” Rick was off in his Ram 3500 with our precious Unwined in tow. The weather was clear and cool for the two-day drive. 

After a too-short overnight at my sister's house in Beaverton, OR, and a visit with my Aunt Evelyn, we drove all the way to our dropping-in point, Bellingham, WA, which is just a 30-minute car drive to the Canadian border. Rick was waiting for us at sunset.

We decided to slide Unwined in at daylight the next morning. It so happened that when we arrived at daylight, we were surprised to find Unwined already in the water, tied up. Rick placed it by himself. They remounted everything previously removed and Rick was off to his next gig with his rig.

Next, we checked I see if anything came loose or broke. There was a panel that moved in the bilge and the depth sounder[2] was working intermittently. Mike remedied the two items fairly easily. Amazing that that was it. Oh, and Mike spent a couple of hours scrubbing off exterior bugs.

When I had a few moments I took Maggie the dog for a walk around the marina. Just looking at all the boats in the marina, I was overcome with happiness. There were dramatic differences between here and our old marina next to the SF ballpark. It's all about the boats. The boats look kept, like they are loved and used. And I was in awe of the sheer volume of sturdy-looking power boats in the harbor! Going to Alaska from here is not such a wild idea... it's more like a fortunate opportunity. 

As we unloaded everything from our F150 truck into Unwined, littering the dock with bags and boxes, a passerby asked, “are you coming, or going?” It seemed like a loaded question! 

Unwined stayed at Squalicum Harbor for 3 nights, and we spent 2 nights away with old friends in Redmond, WA, and my cousin's family in Edmonds, WA. We hadn't gone down memory lane in the Seattle area for years. Like the SF Bay Area, there are lots more people. It still has all the charm we remember; the spectacular snow-capped mountain views, townies busting outside on sunshiney days, imaginative restaurants and water seemingly everywhere, begging to be enjoyed by boat.

We left our dependable F150 with my cousin for at least the summer. So now we are completely car-less.

Pushing off from Squalicum Harbor was also another unexpectedly emotional event. Being back in the Salish Sea[4] felt right. Nordic Tugs are manufactured nearby in Burlington, WA, and she moved through the water comfortably at our standard and slow trawler speed of 8 mph. The water was strangely calm for March, for our 8-hour cruise to Decourcy. There was one hiccup. The VHF[5] radio received power but wasn't receiving signal. We have a handheld model as a backup, so for now, the backup stepped into the job.  

Back in the Salish Sea

We stopped about halfway overnight in Port Browning, North Pender Island, for a nice meal, a short walk to a grocery store, and, as it turned out, a lovely sunset and walk along a pebbled beach, before adjourning for an overnight stay at the marina.

Lovely restaurant at the marina at Port Browning.

 The final 4 hours to Decourcy the next day were decidedly relaxed, in familiar waters. It was a stark contrast to how we boated through these waters for the last 15 years. We keep an easy-to-launch and maintain 20-foot open boat, a rigid inflatable, at Decourcy. It provides a 25 mph, hair-whipping ride. 

We spotted a huge and noisy flotilla of stellar sea lions on Ruxton Reef, directly South of Decourcy Island. Some say they are waiting for a herring spawn, which would be a spectacular event to witness.

Although it's usually quite mundane, coming around the red marker U38 into Pirate’s Cove at Decourcy, this time in our tug, it was decidedly exciting. We slowly slid next to the dock on a windless and sunny day and safely tied down Unwined. As I walked the five minutes from the marina up to our cabin, I always love re-experiencing things like the smell of cedar and pine needles in the sunny spots, hearing the occasional croak from a toad, seeing the sway of 20-foot+ arbutus trees, and walking along dirt roads and trails. 

After multiple loads of stuff to the cabin in our circa 1980s Suzuki Samurai (it came with the house), we began the process of sorting and unpacking. We welcomed living at our own house again.

A few days ago, we accepted an offer on our CA house. This was the lynchpin in our retirement plan. Next is to get settled in the cabin and prepare for our boating trips.

Footnotes for Fun Fact Fans

1. While “sailing” a power boat is correct English, “piloting” is a more accurate term.

2. A depth sounder measures the distance from the sensor attached to bottom of the boat hull to the bottom of the sea floor. A critical electronic item.

3. 1 knot = 1.15 miles per hour = 1.85 kilometers per hour. The term knot dates from the 17th century, when sailors measured the speed of their ship using a device called a “common log.” The common log was a rope with knots at regular intervals, attached to a piece of wood shaped like a slice of pie. Mariners would lower the wood piece into the water and allow it to float freely behind the ship for a specific amount of time (often measured with an hourglass). When the time was up, they would count the knots between the ship and the piece of wood, and that number estimated their speed.

4. When we last lived in Washington, we boated in “Puget Sound.” Quite interesting that the powers that be changed the name to the Salish Sea. More info about the change here.

5. VHF radios are used by mariners for communication. We monitor channel 16 -- that's where someone can call us and vice versa. The Coast Guard monitors 16. Some channels are used just for commercial marine traffic, for instance. The drawback to using VHF is it only works for “line of sight” which is about 20 miles depending on conditions and the height of our antenna. Go here for more VHF fun facts.