Last year, Bayliner Magazine interviewed us for a story about our travels and experiences aboard Dirona, our Bayliner 4087 (article). Soon we will take delivery of a Nordhavn 52, and turn the 4087 over to new owners.

We are, of course, eager to have the Nordhavn, but are not desperate to get off the 4087. Dirona has been a wonderful boat, far exceeding our expectations. We would not sell Dirona if it weren't for our desire to get into longer range cruising. For coastal cruising, it's near perfect. At 7.75 knots, it burns only 2.2 gallons per hour, making it even more economic than many trawlers. The basic design has been ideal, with sufficient space to allow rigging for comfortable and independent cruising (Dirona specifications and features). It’s been our home for the past year (Living aboard: one year later), and has taken us to some amazing places over the past decade. Since purchasing it new in 1999, we’ve put 4,100 trouble-free hours on the engines travelling between Olympia and the Alaska border, including the West Coast of Vancouver Island, the Outside Passage, and Christmas trips to Desolation Sound, Princess Louisa Inlet, and the Broughtons. We have used the boat in all of the research for Waggoner sister publication Cruising the Secret Coast, and our published articles.

While both our families had boats, it wasn’t until we bought the 4087 that we became seriously hooked on boating to the point where we have sold everything that won’t fit aboard, and can’t imagine life without a boat. Dirona has had a major impact on our lifestyle and future plans, and it is with some wistfulness that we prepare to leave it behind.

We've been living aboard for just over a year now, and are absolutely loving it. What started out as an experiment ended up with our selling the house and car and becoming permanent liveaboards. We had a number of infrastructure issues to solve when we first moved aboard, and most solutions will carry forward to the new boat.

Connectivity was our first challenge. Bell Harbor Marina, where we moor the majority of the year, does have WiFi. But connectivity is intermittent, even with a large WiFi antenna. We instead purchased Clearwire. The 3G bandwidth (up to 2 Mbps) was workable, but not close to WiFi speeds (6-10 Mbps). A recent upgrade to 4G WiMax (3-6 Mbps) has improved speeds considerably. And Clearwire works throughout the Puget Sound area, so we've got reasonably connectivity for local cruising as well.

We'd been planning to buy bicycles when we got the new boat, but decided to get them right away that first week at Bell Harbor. We wanted something that would work well around town, but also that we could take on logging roads along the coast. We spent ages talking with Aaron at the excellent Velo Bike Shop in Seattle and left with two Giant FCR 2s. The lightweight aluminum frames make them easy to lift and carry, and their 27 gears are ideal for travelling around hilly Seattle. The bikes have been invaluable for living without a car. We can easily travel throughout the city, either completely by pedal or by bus using bus bike racks. James rides his bike to work downtown and Jennifer rides & buses to Redmond. And with bike racks installed, we can carry a huge amount on them. Some of the crazier things we've brought home include a full-sized dehumidifier and two 600' spools of line.

Pump-out was next on the list. We opted for PumpMeOut.com and continue to be happy with the service. We'll definitely be using them with the new boat.

For mail, we rented a large box at the UPS store in downtown Seattle, about a mile from the marina and on the way to James' office. This gives us a regular street address, not a P.O. box, so couriered items can be delivered. And someone is always there to sign for a parcel, which is a nice plus. And we get lot of parcels--with no car, we rely heavily on mail-order. Amazon Prime has worked out particularly well for us. With free two-day shipping, it's barely less immediate than going to a store. Our initial plan was that James would pick up the mail on his way home, but with the bicycles, either can easily do this. To reduce the amount we had to carry home and store aboard, we opted for paperless billing and statements wherever possible, and requested that any mail-order companies we used stop sending catalogs. Initially, we just forwarded our mail from the Post Office to the UPS box, but changed our address to the box once we decided to move aboard permanently. We've just renewed the box for another 15 months.

Laundry was another big challenge. Bell Harbor Marina was designed for transient boaters and has no laundry facilities, and none are nearby. The only laundry capability our current boat has is a hand-wringer. While this works well for us when we're on extended cruises, doing laundry by hand while working full-time was out of the question. And even if a laundromat were nearby, a weekly laundry trip wasn't appealing either. We eventually found an excellent solution with University Laundry Center. Every Monday morning we put out a big, red bag of dirty laundry, and every Wednesday that bag is returned with the laundry washed, dried and folded. They charge $1.10 per pound, which for us works out to a reasonable $120 per month. The service and results have been excellent, and is wonderfully convenient. But being an industrial laundry, it is a bit tough on the clothes, so we are looking forward to the washer and dryer on the new boat.

Bell Harbor Marina does, however, have excellent shower facilities. But we prefer to shower aboard. Our 10-gallon hot water tank limits the water consumption, but we still need to fill our 77-gallon water tanks twice a week to support that usage. This so far hasn't been too much of a hassle. We could attach the hose permanently to the boat, but we're not confident that the bilge pumps could keep up should we have a leak. On the new boat, we'll have sufficient bilge pump capability that this would be less of a concern, but we may just continue to run off the tanks anyway.

Cleaning dirty dishes is one of the few problems we didn't find a good solution for. As with laundry, we generally don't mind doing them when we're out cruising, but it's more of an imposition when we're working full-time. We could use disposable place settings, but that would generate a lot of garbage. The marinas supports paper and plastic recycling, but everything else, including food waste, goes in the garbage. So we currently wash the dishes by hand and the new boat will have dishwasher, so that problem eventually will be solved.

For groceries, we initially shopped at the Pike Place Market and Kress IGA in downtown Seattle. We purchased two Ortlieb bicycle panniers and brought them home full almost every week. The IGA has a good selection, but we did miss a number of products that we purchased at QFC, notably Boddington's ale. Jennifer's bus stops near the QFC in lower Queen Anne, so we began shopping there instead of the IGA. After a few months, AmazonFresh began delivery to Belltown, so we primarily use that service and supplement with QFC for those few items that aren't available or come in larger quantity than we want. And we still shop regularly at the Pike Place Market as well.

Filling the propane tanks is about the only thing we've not been able to manage by bike. For those few times that we do need a car, we've joined Zipcar. We've only needed to use it a few times, but it's worked well.

Following Hong Kong, we stayed two nights in the Li River area, the first at Guilin and the second at Yangshuo. The area had long been famous for its dramatic karst topography of jagged peaks, sheer cliffs, and complex limestone caverns.  We spent much of the time taking in the scenery from the water, in two different boat trips, but also underground and from atop a mountain.

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One of the many advantages of boating in the Pacific Northwest is that we can cruise year-round. While many boaters here do winterize their boats, they typically don’t have to do as much work as northeast coast boaters. Seaworthy, the BoatUS Marine Insurance & Damage Avoidance Report, often carries stories of winter damage claims where ice and snow-covered boats either sunk at the dock or were seriously damaged. These boats typically are in the central and northeastern United States, where winters are cold and long with plenty of snow. In Who Needs to Winterize?, however, they report that state with the their highest number of freezing-related claims was California. Because winters aren’t as harsh, people don’t take winter preparations as seriously, so cold snaps and storms pose a greater risk.

The article provides tips for winterizing a boat and concludes with a recommendation to stow or remove biminis over the winter. The bimini provides no protection, and can be destroyed or age prematurely. This is good advice to follow no matter where you keep your boat. An extended bimini acts like a sail in strong winds. A few years back, a winter storm destroyed the bimini of the boat moored next to us at Elliott Bay Marina, and we’ve seen others damaged as well.

Seaworthy documents real claims and discusses how they might be prevented, in order to improve boating safety. Like Safety Digest, it is a publication every boater should read. Learning from the mistakes of others is much cheaper and safer than learning from your own.