West Coast winter

[Stray Cat]

This is part of my reply to Jim, who suggested:

"spring is coming and you can ..... enjoy your boat again"

Actually we west coast folks leave our boats in the water all winter, we don't have ice in the harbors until you get well into Alaska anyway. Many of us use our boats through the winter too. The fact that the hulls don't plane to any appreciable extent and thus the bows don't rise very much enables PDQ power cat owners to drive in extreme comfort (and style) in really crummy weather. The planing monohull cruisers generally have to go particularly slowly or drive from their flybridge. Many don't even have a main deck steering station. Thus, lots of folks here have completely enclosed their flybridge in rather a bimini on steroids, with flexible plastic windows that provide imperfect visibility and are a pain in the petunia to care for. It's particularly chilly up there too. And lonely. Consider that the layout of these monohull cruisers never matches the airy open feeling inside our powercats. Also they have much bigger engines to enable them to plane, hence much more noise as well as terrible fuel economy, particularly at their higher speeds.

The Admiral and I are big opera fans, and the presence of a great public dock two blocks from the Portland opera house means that we can have a nice boat ride from our marina; make a lovely supper aboard, with the very perfect wine (nobody is driving anywhere); dress aboard and enjoy a leisurely stroll to the opera. We pass by several tempting restaurants and bars enroute, and don't have a car to park. The late drive home is replaced by a romantic stroll back to our yacht. We always sleep well aboard, and a fine breakfast is often followed by some therapeutic shopping and a nice stroll through several nearby galleries before we have to take yet another boat ride. Ahhhh. Weather has been fine for all the operas this year. Our season tickets to the theater "force" us to walk about nine blocks from the boat for that.

Winter weekend cruising is great here. The anchorages are usually empty, dock space in all the river towns is plentiful, and if the weather is too sloppy or cold we can happily stay inside for virtually the whole trip, except line handling or anchoring of course. A favorite trip is to simply anchor in a quiet spot and enjoy reading, cooking and watching the wildlife. Wonderful therapy. Going offshore in the winter is usually left to the fishermen and Californians, but we Columbia River boaters have tremendous cruising grounds available (same for the Bay area, Puget Sound, Inside Passage etc.).

I guess you could say we are really enjoying our boat.