2022 Wrap Up

Upon returning to our winter moorage, we are often asked what was the highlight of our cruising season.  I think this year the ability to leisurely cruise the British Columbia coastline stands out.  The previous two years, 2020 and 2021, were races up and down the coast between the BC-WA border and the BC-AK border.  In the Covid years we did those routes in six long days with only four or five anchorages along the route.  This year, it was 12 days/11 stops northbound and 36 days/35 stops southbound. 

Another highlight was the number of new (to us) places we visited. We went to 14 new anchorages, one new mooring buoy (Bailey Bay on Behm Canal) and one new marina (Port Browning on Pender Island).  Many of the new anchorages were on Southeast side of Kuiu Island. Its nice to know that without much effort, we can visit places we haven’t been before.

We are getting totally accustomed to cruising with our ship’s dog, Drake, on board. While he is a good trooper, has never been sea sick (yet) and knows exactly where on the boat to do his “business” (the bow near the windlass where it is easy to clean), it is absolutely clear from his joy when we drop the kayaks to paddle to shore or tie up at a dock, he’d prefer that we never leave the dock. His explanation is that we could then play with him and his ball several times a day. We’ve reached a compromise and now try to spend an extra day at the dock beyond what our shore tasks might require.

The final numbers for the trip are 139 days/138 nights out (88 nights at anchor, 3 nights on mooring buoys, 47 nights at the dock). We were fortunate to have the solitude of being the only boat in the anchorage 41 nights.  We traveled 3584 nautical miles and put on 613.6 engine hours.  Of that, 42.9 hours were idling associated with fishing or sightseeing.  We only had to run our generator for 18 hours.

The map below shows all of our stops this last cruising season. Clicking on one of the “drop pins” will pull up some information about the stop. At the top right of the map is an icon which will open a separate window that may be easier to navigate.