Monthly Archives: March 2020

Quarantine Cruising Weeks 1+2: Life on the Hook

We’re one to two weeks into quarantine cruising, and not really cruising as much as just living at anchor. We “cast off” this year on March 20, a little earlier than normal – accelerating our plans due to the coronavirus spread in Seattle.

In the cities, the fear and anxiety was palpable. Now that we’re out on the water, that’s fading away – routine on the water is ruled more by weather than the news cycle. Outside, nature is still proceeding as normal. The sea is still the sea, the birds still the birds, seals still seals.

After finishing our haul-out on March 20th, the choice was between either living at anchor (“on the hook”) or in a marina where we’d be crowded closer to many more people, having more surface contacts and also paying a lot more for moorage. For these reasons the choice was easy – we like life on the hook anyway.

A few things have made it more difficult this first week though: weather (cold and rainy – it’s still March after-all) and the closure of WA State Parks (to all uses including hiking), and the San Juans to all transient overnight moorage.

We had planned to spend a week at Blake Island, but the closure of WA State Parks threw out that idea. That was a big loss because Blake Island is one of our favorite places and has great hiking for exercise in dutifully socially distanced manners (we usually see more deer and raccoons on the trails than people).

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2020 Plans: Slow Sailing to Alaska, Possibly, Maybe?

About a month ago I wrote a draft post of our 2020 plans that included aspirations for sailing to Alaska. Now those plans have been thrown into doubt by the coronavirus pandemic that has shut down the US-Canadian border to non-essential traffic. We’re beginning our 2020 cruising season now, but don’t know when we’ll be able to get into Canada. British Columbia represents over 75% of our cruising grounds, so it would be really disappointing if we lose access for the next 6 months.

Things are changing day-by-day, and hopefully the world is in a much better place in a month, but if it goes on much longer it would mean we wouldn’t have enough time to get that far north during the season. The good news is we’re fully stocked and cruise ready now, and living on a boat is the perfect social distancing tool (in anchorages we practice the “200 foot rule”!). On a boat we’re actually much more socially isolated than almost anyone on land – we also go through constant quarantine in between towns / ports.

These are unusual times, and there’s no doubt this year will be quite different. This is our 3rd year since “casting off the lines” and like prior years (2018, 2019) our plans are never written in stone anyway. The following is the original plan, the aspiration. It may change, but that’s always the case with cruising plans anyway – our 6-month plan is an outline, and we re-evaluate day-by-day.

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