capnmorgan
Active member
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2025
- Messages
- 30
- Vessel Name
- Aweigh Message
- MMSI Number
- 368443430
About Us
We are a Washington-based family of four: Chris (engineer), Lisa (retired engineer), Isaac (14, athlete), and Eliza (11, equestrian/D&D fan). We are new to overnight cruising as a family and took delivery of our 2026 Solara S310-SB Aweigh Message in October of 2025 after ordering it at the boat show in February 2025. Our home port is currently Swantown Marina in Olympia, WA. Since we took delivery, we’ve done short weekend fall/winter trips to Poulsbo, Port Orchard, and Port Townsend, as well as a few day trips in the South Sound to visit the Point Defiance Zoo and get our 20 hour service & bottom paint done. Our biggest trip prior to this one was a 4 night trip to Kingston & Alderbrook (in Hood Canal) for Thanksgiving, where we were joined by fellow Solara owners @Mike and Sarah of Reel Salty Bliss. Our longer term cruising goals include visiting Desolation Sound, exploring the west side of Vancouver Island, and seeing the glaciers in Alaska.The Overall Trip
With a break in the baseball schedule, we planned our first Canadian cruise to practice customs clearance, weather navigation, and marina exploration. We planned to eat out mostly while refining our boat organization.We targeted Victoria and Port Sidney. Edmonds served as our northbound staging point to preserve our routing options based on weather, and Bell Harbor in Seattle was chosen for the return leg to catch a Mariners game.
Highlights included perfect Canadian weather, easy NEXUS customs clearing, and great crew coordination. New gear like packing cubes (thanks @Submariner ) and a CordProXL improved organization, while solar panels handled our power needs in Victoria.
Apr 5, 2026
Departed Olympia at 10:50am. Encountered whitecaps (strong ebb against a northerly wind) in Colvos Passage before reaching Edmonds.2.8 hours on the motors, 65 gallons of fuel.
Lunch at Rory's and dinner at Niles Peacock before an early night to prepare for the Strait crossing.
Apr 6, 2026
Fueled in Edmonds at 7am, trading fuel cost for ride comfort. The Strait was dead calm and there were relatively few boats around, so we made 30+ knots the entire way across, clearing customs by phone (thanks NEXUS!) dodged logs just outside Victoria and arrived in the Inner Harbor at 10:30am. We radioed GVHA on 66A (the first time we’ve used the VHF) and got transient moorage at Wharf Street on D dock since our Causeway moorage wasn’t available yet.2.8 hours on the motors, 57 gallons of fuel.
Toured Miniature World, then moved to the Causeway Floats (G dock). Solar power sufficed despite lacking a shore power connection. Long walk to showers. We don’t currently shower onboard, so if we go back to Victoria, we’d stay at Wharf Street instead.
Enjoyed playing catch on the lawn of Parliament, Haunted Manor Mini Golf, ice cream at Chocolats Favoris, and a family D&D session. A midnight gale made for a restless night on the floats.
Apr 7, 2026
We woke up to Lisa’s birthday. Eliza and I headed to Milano Coffee to get cookies for the kids (breakfast of champions) and some coffee for Lisa and me.After a lazy morning breakfast and coffee enjoying the sport bridge on Aweigh Message and watching the Coho depart for Port Angeles, we all walked over to the Royal BC Museum, which was a fun couple of hours. We then took a water taxi up to Chinatown, where we enjoyed some fried dumplings and other small bites at Dumpling Drop. We all walked to Chocolats Favoris again for ice cream, and then we walked back to the boat in separate groups so Lisa could use her Lululemon birthday gift card and Isaac and I could play catch at Parliament again.
Stayed at the Marriott for a "real bed" and pool. Enjoyed Korean tapas at Cera for a celebratory dinner.
Apr 8, 2026
I didn’t do a good job of zooming out on the chart plotter to check AIS before firing up the motors, so as we untied and departed, we saw the Victoria Clipper, a whale watching catamaran, and a floatplane all entering the inner harbor at the same time. Once we navigated that, we headed out of the harbor.As we slow-boated north towards Sidney, one of the CCG vessels kept shadowing us, making me wonder if we were doing something wrong until we heard them over the radio asking for the vessel that was testing their EPIRB to identify themselves. They eventually left us alone after realizing it wasn’t us, and we got up to cruising speed just north of Ten Mile Point with the goal of arriving at Port Sidney just in time for our 1pm reservation.
Our Garmin route was going to take us up the inlet west of Sidney Island, but after seeing a huge number of crab pots in a fairly narrow channel, I decided to go around to the east before calling Port Sidney on 66A and getting assigned slip H7, which had beautiful views to the north but was approximately 500 meters from the office, showers, and restrooms.
2.4 hours on the motors, 27 gallons of fuel.
Lunch at Small Gods Brewing, followed by five-pin bowling at Miracle Lanes and dinner at the Surly Mermaid.
Apr 9, 2026
After a quiet night on the dock we woke up around 7:30am to start the day. We caught an Uber for about $35 CAD to Butchart Gardens from the marina after a 7 minute wait, and enjoyed a coffee before a 2 hour stroll through the gardens. We grabbed some ice cream, did a video call with my mom for her birthday, got some souvenirs at the gift shop, and got another Uber back to the Shaw Center for the Salish Sea in Sidney. Lots of awesome volunteers, and 12:30pm-1pm seems to be feeding time for all the animals, which was fun to see.Isaac chose Riva as our lunch stop, where he had the spaghetti bolognese which he proclaimed was “as good as Gramma’s”. Eliza had the steak frites, which had a great peppercorn sauce and some of the best garlic parmesan fries we’ve ever had. Lisa had a burger and I had a chicken sandwich. All of the food was good but it was one of our pricier meals.
More bowling (Lisa won!), followed by playing catch at Beacon Park and another D&D encounter. Planned to refuel at Kingston en route to Seattle.
Apr 10, 2026
We woke up and got coffee and breakfast from the nearby hotel cafe. As I fired up the Garmin, I realized that the 115 gallons of fuel remaining meant that we’d have close to 50 gallons remaining when we got to Sidney assuming everything went well. Knowing that the Garmin was an estimate based on how full I managed to get the tanks on the last fuel stop, I decided to fuel up a couple miles north at Van Isle Marina. Fuel was a bit more expensive than Kingston ($6.29/gal US), but the pumps had much higher throughput, so we were on our way again very quickly. Be aware that you have to turn off all onboard electronics when filling up with gasoline there, and the attendant will happily untie your lines and push you off the dock before you’ve even re-fired your motors.As we worked our way across Haro Strait, we were forced to reduce our speed (and thus our fuel efficiency) due to the chop, making me thankful that we refueled ahead of time. Crossing the Strait of Juan de Fuca was uneventful, and we got into the shelter of Port Townsend where I put the boat in Stay Point outside the channel while I reported our arrival via the CBP ROAM app. After a quick video chat with the officer, we got our clearance and continued south. We hit a big wave that launched our Keurig into the air just north of Kingston, but otherwise pulled into Bell Harbor (where we were asked to tie up to the charter dock instead of our original reservation on C-dock) without much fanfare.
3.6 hours on the motors, 85 gallons of fuel.
After we got tied up, we realized there was no water on the charter dock to rinse the boat down so we got checked in and headed to Old Stove Brewing in Pike Place Market for a late lunch before the Mariners game. The garlic fries got rave reviews from Eliza. We went back to the boat to change (and realized it might be a rocky night based on how the waves reflected against the seawall and back into us on the charter dock) before we caught a Lyft to T-Mobile Park.
During the ride, we were able to stream NASA’s coverage of the Artemis II splashdown, where Lisa pointed out the various rockets and thrusters on the vehicle she had worked on in her time at Aerojet Rocketdyne as we all held our breaths during the communications blackout and breathed a sigh of relief as the parachutes opened successfully. We got to the stadium, collected our Ichiro replica statues, and settled in to watch the Mariners win a pretty ugly game. Back at the dock, the boat was indeed rocking, which made for a restless night for me as I woke up to double-check lines repeatedly, but everything was fine in the end.
Apr 11, 2026
As I prepped the boat for departure in the rain, Lisa picked up breakfast from Cafe Opla in Seattle. I got a massive (but bland) breakfast burrito and she had a tasty banh mi sandwich. Elliott Bay was rough out to West Seattle, but Colvos Passage (and the rest of the familiar South Sound waters) was back to its normal calm state. Upon arrival, we had great teamwork getting the boat unloaded and cleaned in record time.2.2 hours on the motors, 49 gallons of fuel.
