All-Years Cruise Totals (through 2023)

The table below shows the end-of-cruise numbers from our log sheets for the thirteen cruises through 2023.  Most of the tallies are self explanatory but some comments about the methodology of my logging:

• As a practice, I don’t include the last travel day of our cruise back to our home port in the “@ Dock” numbers for where we spent the night. Consequently the sum of where we spent the nights is generally one less than the length of the trip. The year 2020 is an exception because we did an overnight run without stopping to speed our transit through British Columbia during the Covid lockdowns.
• The engine hours are taken from hour meter at the lower helm and reflect the time from starting the engine in the morning until the it is turned off at the end of day.
• The distance is captured by the Coastal Explorer (CE) navigation app running at the navigation computer at the lower helm which records our position every one-tenth of a mile.
• I started recording our “Time Idling” in 2014 when we started to do more fishing activities that required us to idle while stationary or while trolling.  I did this so that my “average speed” calculations (distance traveled divided by engine hours) weren’t distorted by the time we were fishing or sightseeing (e.g., in Glacier Bay).and not actually trying to go somewhere. It is guestimate and not recorded with any rigor. Time anchoring or docking are not included in idle time.

	Year	# of Days	At Anchor	At a Dock	On a Buoy	Distance Traveled	Engine Hours	Gen. Hours	Time Idling
	2010	129	57	66	5	3,221	517.1	40.4
	2011	115	81	33		3,465	577.4	31.3
	2013	151	99	50	1	3,667	630.0	53.3
	2014	141	86	48	6	4,052	720.8	34.8	48.5
	2015	104	67	31	5	3,580	629.2	28.7	42.4
	2016	141	99	39	2	3,979	700.0	51.9	68.6
	2017	140	91	46	2	3,817	656.5	62.2	51.1
	2018	112	71	40		3,170	528.6	33.9	38.2
	2019	118	82	35		3,816	649.5	16.3	56.6
	2020	63	42	12	6	2,527	399.7	32.8	11.5
	2021	110	81	26	2	3,317	554.0	66.0	27.5
	2022	139	88	47	3	3,584	613.6	19.5	42.9
	2023	139	84	54		3,024	510.4	36.0	33.7
	Total	1,602	1,028	527	32	45,219	7,686.8	507.1	421.0

The map below shows all of the places we have stopped overnight during all our cruises. It is similar in style to our yearly cruise maps except that when the marker for a particular spot is selected, the data for the spot is the total number of times we’ve stayed and in which years.

Ship’s Dog

With the passing of our last cat, Maggie, we took a one year hiatus from having a pet on board while cruising. Having had a cats for 35+ years, we now have taken a leap and gone to the “bark” side by adding an Australian Labradoodle to our crew.

Born in November 2019 as a part of a litter of five males, we picked up Drake (as in “Sir Francis” but formally recorded as “Fur Fantastic”) from the breeder in January 2020.  Knowing how formative the first few months of a puppy’s life are to its adaptation, we drove immediately from the breeder in Medford, Oregon to the boat for a 3-week introduction.  We returned to Arizona for another six weeks before escaping back to the boat as the Corona virus pandemic accelerated.

So far, he has been a trooper and coped perfectly well with marine life and not been phased by the sound of the engine, bow thruster, walking on dock grates, steep dock ramps or, very importantly, doing his “business” on the deck at the bow of the boat. Descending the steep stairs from the pilot house to the staterooms below are beyond him now so we carry him down. Drake isn’t likely to be more than 25 pounds so even if he never descends the stairs we can easily handle him.

While Marcia had a dog 40 years ago, Kurt never had a dog.  Every day we are reminded by how different cats are from dogs.

About Us

We, Kurt & Marcia, are a couple of fortunate baby boomers who were able to achieve the retirement lifestyle they planned and worked towards. We split our time between living on our 50-foot steel trawler, Alpenglow, based out of Puget Sound and a winter home near Tucson.  During the late-Spring & Summer we cruise the Inside Passage to/from SE Alaska.  When the inevitable grayness creeps into the PNW, we head south to Arizona, where we hike & bike while luxuriating in the space that a home gives over a boat.  We find the two, very different, climates, landscapes & life styles mesh well, keeping both of them fresh and interesting.

We have no children but share our lives with a “pampered” (not spoiled) miniature Australian labradoodle. Drake (short for :”Fur Fantastic Drake”) joined us in early January 2020 as a 9-week old puppy. Drake follows in the paw prints of our two calico cats, Annie and Maggie, that accompanied us on our cruises until 2018.

Besides this blog, we maintain a blog documenting some of our older, non-boating trips at oldtripsremembered.blogspot.com.

Maggie-Cat – In Memoriam

At the end of the 2018 cruising season we could see that it was Maggie’s last voyage.  The chronic kidney failure that claimed her sister, Annie, two years earlier was taking its toll on Maggie.  She ate specialized prescription cat food and was medicated with an appetite stimulant, anti-nausea and Calcitriol, but her weight loss continued.

In recent weeks the weight loss increased.  She had lost over 20% of her weight since we arrived in early November.  She became not much more than fur, skin and bones.  Her gait was wobbly and her jumps to laps or chairs uncertain.  Rather than have her suffer any further, we decided today would be her final visit to the veterinary office.

Both Maggie and and Annie joined us in 2002, adopted through Purrfect Pals.  Maggie (short Magellan) was always more adventurous than her sister.  She was the kitty who would sneak into any “forbidden” room or area if the opportunity presented.  More than once, we’d search through the house calling her name, getting no response, only to find her tucked quietly in a closed drawer or cabinet than had been opened briefly.

Being an indoor cat, the out of doors, were a particular attraction.  Fortunately, she did not have a strong hunting instinct.  The few times we took her outside, she was content to find a bit of greenery she could munch on.  We grew many containers of cat grass which she thoroughly enjoyed (often to excess based on the number grassy “urps” we’d find afterwards).

She was first introduced to boating in 2006 on our first boat.  Since then, she has traveled with us on virtually every boating trip longer than a few days.  While initially fearful of the loud noise of the “monster” in the engine room, later that sound would signal her to head to the pilot house anticipating the lap that would appear for her at the helm chair.

Even on our drives to/from Arizona, she became a good traveler.  While she had a large enclosed “den” in the van, most of the time she rode shotgun style, curled up on the front-seat center console.  She was comfortable enough with car travel to use the litter box while we drove.  Even the motel rooms became an opportunity to find a new hiding spot.

The 2019 cruise will be a quieter and lonelier voyage without our ship’s cats.

Annie-Cat – In Memoriam

We had been expecting and dreading this day since this last rainy Memorial Day weekend in Petersburg when it became pretty apparent that our cat Annie was failing on account of kidney failure.  We visited the vet with the expectation that she would be euthanized that day.

Instead, with the encouragement of the veterinarian, Dr Ken Hill, we started a program of subcutaneous infusion of Ringers Lactated Solution for hydration.  It made a dramatic improvement in Annie and she ably completed this seasons cruse.

But all along, we knew it was only postponing the inevitable.  Her weight continued to drop (our Bainbridge vet thought perhaps lymphoma was in play as well) and she was no longer tolerating the regular 2 to 4 minute subcutaneous infusions we tried to perform.

For any pet owner (or whatever the more current euphemism might be) there comes the time to recognize that additional care is not really increasing the quality of the pet’s life.  After 4-1/2 months of care since that rainy weekend, we decided that Annie was failing rapidly and the best course was to euthanize her.

We had Annie (short for Annapurna) since she was a kitten over 14 years ago.  She accompanied us as one of two ship’s cat (Maggie was the other) on every significant cruise we did on our boats.  She was always affectionate, fastidious in her litter habits and had the world’s softest fur.  We’ll miss her very much.

Old Trips Remembered

One of the challenges I’ve taken on in retirement is organizing the thousands of photographs I’ve taken since the early 1970’s when I bought my first SLR camera.  Pretty much everything since I bought my first dSLR in 2004 has been digital.  Before that time, most everything were slides (“don’t take my Kodachrome away”) which require the extra step of digitizing.  But just having a digital images isn’t enough, the hard work comes from adding metadata about the where, what and when of the image (I won’t even worry about the “why”)

I’ve made a pretty good dent in the numerous boxes and trays of slides but I keep getting distracted and slowed by looking at the slides and remembering the wonderful trips and beautiful places they capture (or at least try to capture).  I’ve now concluded that the main function my photos now serve is simply to help me remember.

So in keeping with that purpose, I’ve created another blog, http://oldtripsremembered.blogspot.com/, in which I’ve written a brief description and pulled a couple dozen images of some of the trips I’ve experienced.  Unlike most blogs which are a contemporaneous chronicle of events and thoughts, this new blog looks back and records my current memory of the trip (which is likely a bit ragged) and what I now feel about the trip (which is probably shaded to the “rose” end of the spectrum).

I as I write this, I am certainly not done, but I’ve made progress.  I just hope this isn’t my personal “Nine Billion Names of God” and that once complete, I can continue with new trips and beautiful places.

Executing the “Plan”

When we started down the path of regular summer cruising in Alaska, we concluded that owning a home in the Pacific NW had more negatives than positives. After considerable time, effort and money on deferred maintenance and enhancements, in December 2012, we successfully sold the home in which we had lived for nearly 23 years.

The next step was then finding a home in a locale with winter weather that was better than in the PNW. We focused on the Tucson area for both its weather and its recreational opportunity. We don’t golf but we do hike & bike. Additionally, the mountains that surround Tucson provide vistas which we enjoy. After considerable Internet research and two trips to the area (“boots on the ground”), we found and purchased the home we think we’ll enjoy.

Of course, the first step of our new home ownership was to secure it for the summer as it is time to get ready for the 2013 cruising season!

April-August Roll-Up

Before it gets even more embarrassingly tardy, I need to update our activities over the last five months. First, no cruising with the exception of a 5-day jaunt to Anacortes in May to attend Trawlerfest.  Our big activity has been to first get our house ready to sale (April through June) and then (since June 30) keep it looking good while it has been on the market.

At the end of April we started subletting slips at Shilshole Marina and move on board Alpenglow. That got us out of the way of the contractor while work was done on the house and spared the cats the trauma of being confined to a small area while scary noises happened around them. Now that the house is on the market, remaining on the boat keeps the house cleaner and eases the showing of the house by the realtor.  It does mean we commute regularly from Shilshole in the Ballard neighborhood to the house in West Seattle.

Living in Shilshole has been fine. It is a big marina (3,000 slips) but since a maximum of 300 slips are for live-aboards, except for weekends and sunny weekday evenings, it is pretty quiet.

Ballard has a strong Scandinavian heritage (especially Norwegian) and a statue of Leif Ericson stands prominently on marina grounds, staring to the northwest and keeping watch over the moored vessels.

Our sublet at Shilshole runs through the end of August. Hopefully we’ll do a little cruising before settling back in for the winter at our yacht club’s Winslow station.

A Change in Scenery

Up until recently, we have been wintering the boat (i.e., the September through May we aren’t cruising) on Lake Union. That site was convenient from our house, an 8 or 9 mile drive, but noisy and dirty (it was almost directly underneath the I-5 bridge crossing the Lake Washington Ship Canal).

In early February we were fortunate enough to be offered a winter moorage slip at our yacht club’s (QCYC) outstation docks in Winslow on Bainbridge Island. The winter moorage is available from mid-September to mid-May which accords perfectly with our planned cruising schedule. Additionally, the outstation is everything the Lake Union site wasn’t (i.e., clean, quiet and secure). While it isn’t as convenient to our house as the Lake Union site, once we are living on the boat, that isn’t an issue.

Below is a photo from the stern of the boat of our new neighbors.

Our current plans are to remain here until the end of April at which time we will move to a slip in Shilshole Marina on the Seattle side of Puget Sound we are subleasing through August. This will give us the convenience of living on the boat (not really an option at the Lake Union site) with good access to our home as we prepare and list it for sale.

Sad News

This is certainly off-topic from a cruising blog but this is my blog so I get to decide what to write about.

Last Saturday, May 14, my mother, Vida Hanson, passed away. She was 94 years old. Her death was sudden in that she had no major chronic ailments and the cause of her death was not a sudden acute event (e.g., stroke, heart attack, etc.). My best description is that her body wore out. 

In a period of barely three weeks she went from good health, to bronchitis resulting in two ER visits, a nine day hospitalization, a week of 24 hour home health care, 2-1/2 days at a rehabilitation center, a readmission to a hospital and finally two very short days at a hospice care.  During all that time, her family stayed on top of her care and continually planned and acted on where she needed to be next. Her mind remained active during this time and if anything, she knew her body better than anybody else and the ultimate outcome. Her continual refrain was she was “weary.”

In the end, it was her time.  She died with all of her children present and we all miss her very much.