Frank---
The weather in the PNW changes constantly, with rain, overcast, and wind being the norm most of the year. So I would strongly suggest selecting a boat configuration that gives you the maximum usable space regardless of the weather. In the trawler category the best configuration in our opinion is the Europa with its fully covered side and aft decks that can be enclosed aft when the weather turns really windy and damp. This gives you a great space that lets you be "outside" while not having to be outside.
My wife and I personally prefer a pilothouse configuration with a covered aft deck--- boats like Krogen, Fleming, etc. We have found we have no use for a flying bridge when we're underway. It's a nice place to sit once we get somewhere and the weather is conducive but we run the boat exclusively from the lower helm. So I think an aft deck space that's usable in any weather and a good, user-friendly, good-visibility, enclosed lower helm-- be it in a GB-type trawler or a Fleming-type pilothouse boat--- are prime considerations for selecting a PNW boat.
You would also be well advised to get a boat with a good heating system on it unless you're planning to use the boat only in the June-September timeframe. Air conditioning is not necessary. Our boat spent its whole life in San Francisco Bay until we bought it so it never had a heating system of any kind installed on it. It still doesn't since a decent one runs $6,000 to $8,000 installed, but we use a portable propane heater when we reach our destination and moor or anchor. In our home slip we use electric oil heaters. We plan to add a good heating system someday but not until we are able to use the boat for longer trips in the fall, winter, and spring.
In terms of electronics, while a lot of people from the original native tribes through Capt. Vancouver to a whole lot of salmon fishermen got everywhere they wanted to go with either no charts or paper charts, a good GPS chart plotter is a must I think. There's a lot of stuff to hit in these waters, and while much of it is constantly on the move like the logs, deadheads, and eelgrass mats, there are more than enough rocks, reefs, and shallow bars to keep you constantly on your toes. The tidal range varies from 8 to 15 feet in this area and much more up north. By the same token, a good radar is also a must in my opinion. There are lots of islands, lots of marked rocks and reefs, and so lots of navaids, plus a lot of boat, ship, and barge traffic.
Putting a lot of emphasis on having a long-range radar is kind of a waste--- the islands preclude you from seeing much more than three to six miles except on the few big bodies of water like the Strait of Georgia. Far more important is having a very sensitive radar that can pick out things like the crab pot buoys 100 yards ahead of you in the fog, sport fishing boats and ferries, and other close-in stuff. We have a relatively new Furuno NavNet VX2 and while it's a 36 mile radar we have never taken it over 6 miles and we usually run it at ranges of 1 to 3 miles. You also want to be able to work the radar at very short ranges--- in some of the narrow passes we go through on a regular basis we take the radar down to a half or even quarter mile range when the visibility is poor.
As to the number of engines, it's a matter of preference. Singles and twins both offer advantages and disadvantages. When we went shopping for a GB36 we didn't care if it was a single or a twin. The GB we had chartered was a single with a bow thruster. As it happened, the boat that best met our requirements and boating budget eleven years ago was a twin. We have needed the second engine four times in the last eleven years, three for different raw water cooling problems that made an engine shutdown the prudent action and one due to my misunderstanding of the fuel system that permitted an engine to pull a slug of air during a fuel transfer. Had the boat been a single, we would have completed the three cooling problem runs on the end of a very expensive rope while the fuel starvation would have required me to bleed the engine with the boat pitching and rolling around in rough water.
I fly a single-engine floatplane with an engine made in the 1940s and have taken it up and down the Inside Passage more times than my wife and I can remember. I just spent a week hanging around lobstermen on PEI whose hard-working 44' boats are all single engine with no bow thruster, and their maneuvering makes most operators of recreational twin-engine boats look like uncoordinated twits. So I have no argument against a single-engine anything. However my wife has stated that she is a lot more confident with a spare engine under the floor, and I've found that having a confident and happy boating partner is WAY more important than one's own preference for singles or twins. Besides, I like operating engines, so the more the merrier.* I'd have three of them if I could. But that's just me
Moorage rates in Puget Sound are on a sliding scale based on their proximity to Seattle-Tacoma. The closer they are, the more expensive they are. Last I heard, a typical monthly moorage rate in the Seattle area is $10 to $15 a foot depending on the marina. Moorage rates in Anacortes, Bellingham, and Blaine are not much more than half that. Plus if you have a slow-ish boat and are not retired, keeping it in the Seattle-Tacoma area usually means you'll have the time to get up into the islands-- the San Juans and Gulfs-- perhaps once or twice a year on vacation. We keep our 8-knot boat in Bellingham, and my so-called 9/80 work schedule gives me (in theory) an extra day off every two weeks. In 3 to 3-1/2 hours we can get to many of the places we like to go in the San Juans. So, winds and work schedule permitting we can get into the islands every two weeks or so for three days at a time on a year-round basis. It's exactly 95 miles from our house east of Seattle to Bellingham, so we can make the drive in about an hour and a half at 35 mpg, as opposed to a day and a half at 5-6 gallons per hour if we had the boat in the Seattle area.
However..... as Carey said, the waiting lists are long in all the marinas around here. I was told recently that for a 40 foot slip, the wait in the northern marinas is at least two years if not longer. It's probably even longer in the Seattle-Tacoma area.* According to a boat broker friend, boat (trawler-type) sales are starting to pick up again after a pretty abysmal last year.* So there are not many slips going vacant due to owners bailing out of boating altogether as we first thought there would be when the economy started to slip.
When a boat is sold in most of the marinas up here the slip does not go with it. So unless the person selling the boat is not going to be replacing it with something similar in size and so would be willing to sublet the slip for a year (the maximum limit in most marinas), you'll have to find another slip for your boat when you buy it. You can sublet from owners who are taking their boats out of the area for a season, and sometimes if a marina knows you want to become a full-time resident (I don't mean liveaboard) they may have some commercial fishboat slips they will let you rent for a specific amount of time. It took us two years to get a permanent slip in Bellingham--- we sublet for two winters from a fellow who moved his boat to Vancouver Island for six months out of the year (tax break), sublet from a fellow going north for a summer, and the marina found us empty commercial slips the rest of the time. This was eleven years ago--- I don't know what the situation is today.
-- Edited by Marin on Monday 6th of July 2009 11:58:27 PM
