I Wanna’ Move to the Pocket

I want to move to Manatee Pocket.   We are here:

Manatee Pocket is where I work. It is just above the “B” bubble.  Look at the sandbars at the entrance. You can’t see those from the water.  looks easy to get beached.  We are also concerned that it might not be deep enough for our 6 foot draft, but we recently were told that they dredged it to 10 feet.  If that’s the case, yay for us.  You can anchor there though the authorities don’t like it. Otherwise you have to find someone to rent a private dock from.

At Sunset on the US1 we are surrounded by millionaires on vacation. On their motor yachts they have the same amenities as a house. – Full size refrigerator, air conditioning, showers, micro waves, hair dryers etc… I can’t even take a shower without walking through heels, ties, and smokey eyes fondling cocktails on the dock in front of the restaurant on my way to the showers.  I wheel my laundry through them too.  I haven’t mentioned the restaurant at the end of D dock.  It is wildly popular. So much so that there is a valet service to park the cars in the marina’s parking lot.  They have about half of the parking space they need.  Like the live music, valet parking used to only happen on weekends. Now that we are in The Season live music blasts 7 days a week and the valet is there 6 days a week.  When I return from work I have to wait in a line of cars, then wait for a valet to move a Porsche or Maserati so I can park my ’98 Mazda truck. I have a marina sticker so they have to give me a space.  That’s right, they move expensive cars move for me nearly every day. I’m the VIP in my dirty mini pick-up truck.

We could hear the live music on weekends in the mooring field perfectly clear. Back then it was guitar drum and base Pretty Woman, Wonderful Tonight, Sweet Home Alabama, Play That Funky Music White Boy.  Now it is a lot of the same but with keyboard, acoustic guitar, saxophone, and back up singers.  And a female to sing new radio songs like “This Time Baby.”  It is our nightly cover band sound track.  10-20 trains come by all day and at all hours of the night. The bridge opens at least once an hour.  People escort their friend and dates to the restaurant via water in their sport fishers blaring their gangsta music to drown out their 400-1000hp engine/s. It’s a hoppin’ place.

But aside from the marina’s odd situation, the number one reason I want to move to Manatee is that it is within a few miles of everywhere we need to go, including work.  We currently have to commute 30 min by car to do anything.  We have to take US1, the 6 lane divided highway that requires an absurd amount of time and gas money just to turn around. I dont even go to the grocery store on the way home from work because it is on the wrong side of the road.  It is endless miles (the entire east coast of FL) of strip malls repeating international chains, McDonalds, Home Depot, TJ MAX, Chilli’s, Wal-Mart, Denny’s, Burger King, Storage, etc..etc..Big signs rising higher and higher than the others. parking lots. Parking lots, None of the parking lots connect!! It’s hideous.   This landscape makes me very very depressed.

Manatee Pocket is a two lane road community. If our boat was in Manatee we could go everywhere we need to go on foot or by bike. I could go to the grocery store  without ever having to get on the highway. There is a vegetable stand down the road.  There are even a few independent restaurants there. Real food at reasonable prices.  Who knew. The industrial district where AJ works and where we do most of our boat errands is also a bike ride away. Being there would save us so much time and money. It would put us in an environment more conducive to daily life not daily survival.  And it just might save my sanity.

Manatee Pocket:

I work on the narrow southern finger of the Pocket right at the bottom of the pic where you see the yellow highway. The view out the back of my office:

There is a straggly haired man who never wears a shirt, and whose shorts have seen better days that lives on one of those boats.  He has that crazy Florida – I’ve never worn a shirt or sunscreen – tan.  I want him to be my neighbor.

We just need an engine. We need an engine to anchor, we need an engine to move.   I think we are going to abandon the Mercedes. It is 43 years old and there is only one place in the world to get parts for it. It has not run in a year now. It is a pity we showed up during the rainy season because perhaps it could have been spared if it had ever stopped raining in Sept/Oct.  For the long haul we need a Yanmar, which has world wide parts support.  Instead of putting anymore time and money into the museum piece we are going to wait for the right used Yanmar and the right price to pop up on Craigslist or ebay. Yay tax return.  We need to prep the boat in such a way as to to make life cheap for years to come. Which means taking our time now to do everything right. The other thing we need to do on the dock before moving and before the rainy season returns is make the boat water tight. The chain plates, windows and cockpit leak. We have to re-grout all the teak in the cockpit, install new chain plates, remove the old ones and seal the deck where they were. Replace the windows – which means replacing the rotting wood panels around them or replacing that with fiberglass board so it doesn’t rot again. Then we should not have constant leaking come rainy season. A dry boat would be nice.

I just want to move. But I would miss this guy. I got another pic of our Heron.

And here is a new fellow hanging out below the gate, and blending into the rusty wall bizarrely well. 

And this is my pic from my weekend in Ft. Lauderdale. 10-16 hours a day for five days is just too much time to spend with your boss.  I malfunctioned. But maintained. This was across from our hotel. Love. I took the pic because of the cars but then realized that the scene was so fresh and  lovely to me because it had a few things I have not seen in a while. Nostalgic construction and young men.  Doing young man things. Like making machines beautiful. I think I miss my demographic. 

The Great Blue Heron

A Great Blue Heron returns to us every night to fish off of our dinghy.  The birds in Florida are huge.  Nothing like the tiny song birds of Arkansas.  Everything is bigger in Florida. The flowers, the leaves, the birds. Everything except for the ants, which are tiny. Teeny-tiny. Itty bitty ants that like to get inside electronics.   The first night the Heron showed up I could have reached out and touched him from the cockpit.  I sat and watched him fish for quite some time. He did not seem to notice my presence, or just did not care. I tried to get some pics a few nights later but it was just too dark for anything to come out, and I did not want to use the flash and startle him. But I accidentally  took one with the flash anyway and he was unfazed. So I tried a few more. He did not even look over at me.  City bird is used to all the lights.

New Page

I added a page to the blog about the boat titled S/V Robin.  It has the specs for our boat as well as the floor plan and diagrams.

It can be found at the top of the page above Venture Minimalists.  I can’t find a way to change the text color so it is light gray and barely noticeable.

A “Real” Job

Tags

Sailboat

I am officially employed. Well, I’ve had three jobs since arriving. Seamstress for a week (sweatshop), hostess for a couple weeks, nanny for a couple months, and now Secretary. Though, a secretary is an administrative assistant, which implies there is an administrator to assist. I assist no one. I am the administrator, and the accountant. I am the only employee of the company save the owner.  It’s kinda crazy.  I’ve gotten ahead of myself.

I was going to call the next post Cabin Fever. We had a rough couple weeks. We were agitated, claustrophobic, frustrated, stagnating, and depressed. Nothing was happening. Time to reevaluate everything again. Who am I? What am I doing? Why am I here? Where do I want to be? How do I get there?   The facts and figures of life seem to change so rapidly that we have to update and reboot about every two weeks. The plan today is never the plan tomorrow.

One change we decided to impose upon ourselves though,  was to finally quit smoking. I have tried to write since quitting, but have failed miserably.  AJ did not believe that I could lose the ability all together until I showed him my first attempts at writing a post without a smoke.  ”Damn, you’re right hun, this is really terrible.” he said with a confused look on his face.  But I’v been trying. Trying to focus.

Over the past couple weeks we had a lot of crazy talks about what to do and how long we would be here and why. We may just need to get comfortable and settle in. We have been on the boat for four months. In that time we have spent all of our savings, still don’t have a motor or rig, and have been getting by on odd jobs. It feels like eight months.. I can’t wrap my head around the fact that it has only been 4. Realizing that made me feel a bit better.  We spent 4 years saving money and waiting to get on a boat. Now that we have the boat it feels like we should be closer to the nomadic lifestyle we wanted. At 4 months we are freaking like our dreams have crumbled.  I think we had senior-itis. Restless and depression overtake you, you start skipping classes, and just hope to graduate. Being able to see the finish line is the most painful place to be.   So close, so far. But, according to the grapevine, no one preps a boat for long term voyaging in less than 9 months. 2-3 years is more common. So maybe we are right on schedule.

Last week I was snapped out of the funk when the game changed again. We called an electrician.  Our electricity situation was ridiculous. We have been running an extension cord half way down the dock while we are sitting on fully charged and charging house batteries (the solar panel and wind generator work fine). The only reason we do not have power is because a wire got disconnected when the engine came out. And there is a clusterfuck of 100 wires in there. The whole system is a fire hazard. AJ traced all the wiring but did not know which wires in the engine room to reconnect.  Rather than days of trial and error we finally called someone who would be able to give us an assessment of our situation. Like the transmission – sometimes paying for an hour of labor/advice is worth the kick start. The electrician said that re-wiring the entire boat would cost about $15,000. 30% labor, 70% parts. The price of copper is skyrocketing FYI.  Yeah.. don’t think we will be spending anything like that, or hiring labor.  But he did say, “I can give you power back right now though if you like.” He peeked in the engine room, put two wires together, and boom,electric light. It’s been three months since we had electricity. I scarcely know what to do with it anymore. I have yet to remember there is a bathroom light. I’m still stumbling around in the dark. He did not charge us for the consultation, or connecting the two wires.

But he asked if either AJ or I had a job. He told us that he had to fire his secretary. She never showed up for work. He started telling me about the job and said that if I worked for him he would help us with our boat for a major discount. He talked about it like he was trying to convince me to take the job and start tomorrow.  I already had the nanny gig, but it was only 20 hours a week so I had to consider the switch.  But when I said, yes, ok, I’ll do it, he backed off with “Well sleep on it, sleep on it, we all need to sleep on it.”  I called him the next day as he had asked me to, and he talked to me on the phone for a really long time about how there was something about me that made him uncomfortable, but also something about me that compelled him ask if I needed a job. He seemed to be experiencing some serious internal conflict about hiring me, and was telling me about it for some reason. He asked to meet me for lunch. His main problem with me is that my current life goal is to leave town. I’m most likely going to quit any job with-in the next year. I can’t guarantee anything. Legitimate reason to not want to hire me.  I get it, and was ready to walk away, and not have to continue to be present for all of his deliberating.   But then, upon his prying, I mentioned that I was TEFL certified. Me being an English teacher of sorts was the sign he was looking for. He seemed to think that there had to be a reason he was compelled to tell me about the job. He had acquired a stack of 20 overqualified resumes only 24 hours after listing the $10 an hour position. And for some reason, despite his hesitations about me, I was the number one candidate and he didn’t know why. I didn’t know why either.  I am terrible at selling myself,  but I did manage to keep from saying out loud, “Yeah, I really don’t know why you want to hire me either.  I can’t help you resolve that issue.”

He is French-Canadian US citizen and wants to improve his English. Me being an English teacher was the answer to his prayer – a reason to hire me despite the fact that I live on a boat that could slip off into the night.  For him, there has to be purpose in all things, and he had found the purpose of our meeting. Now I will have a full time job and have to live up to the responsibility of being a blessing with a purpose to fulfill in his life and business. What this really means is I will have to spend the few hours I have at home in the evening preparing to tutor him and brushing up on my grammar, and not get paid for it.

But, I pressed onward in the interview and was careful to not to entirely self sabotage.  I have such anxiety with interviews and about just about everything in general that part of me does not want to be liked or hired.  I want to run away. But I did it.  We need cash influx time now. This guy wants to pay me and save us money on our electrical system. Having an electrician for a boss can’t hurt.  And it’s is a job in the marine industry. I will get to know marine suppliers by their first names. Everyone I talk to will be a supplier or a cruiser. Connections never hurt. I just had to tell myself, “Take the money. You can do this.”  You are good enough, you are smart enough, and gosh darnit people like you.  Right? I have no idea.  I have been entrenched in solitude for the last 5 years. I have have been waging a serious battle with social anxiety since I got back from Germany.  I was struggling before, but livnig in a country where you don’t speak the language really cuts down your conversation/interaction time.  It’s easy to slip into invisibility when you can’t really talk to people anyway. And I could not work in Germany. I am seriously out of practice after three years away.   When I find myself in a social situation unexpectedly I get a fight or flight shot of adrenaline. When you have a hard time talking to people already, being on a stimulant makes it so much worse.   That’s the thing about stress/anxiety disorders, they can strike when you think everything is fine, all the sudden, without warning you become a crazy person.  After it happens you feel devastated. How could I be fine and functioning one minute and have absolutely no control the next? That just adds to the anxiety. What if I do crack?  I had to put that from my mind. Maybe what I have really needed all this time is a job. Maybe all of that time spent alone was the catalyst for my heightened anxiety in the first place. Being a paranoid hermit seems like a strange personality trait for a traveler to have.  I feel like I am becoming the old man that sits on the porch with a shotgun in the middle of the woods.

After lunch we went to his office to test my computer skills. I was worried about the fact that I had not touched Excel in 5 years. But when he exclaimed “Do you have multiple websites loading at once?! And the search results are still open? How did you do that?!” I stopped worrying about that.  Wait until he sees Cntrl C and Cntrl V, and Cntrl F.  That went well enough for him to hand me the keys to the office.

It’s my turn to be the breadwinner.  This job means AJ can focus on the boat and not on making money, which is a more pragmatic solution for our situation. Poor guy needs a break after 11 years of Army. I have worked 10-11 hours a day for the last seven days save Sunday.  So far I have not cracked yet. Not at work anyway.   The electrician is out on boats from 9-5, and I am in the office by myself. The only time he can train me is after 5, hence the 10 hour days.  I am working again this Saturday. Then I have to spend Thurs-Sat of next week in Ft. Lauderdale at the boat show. Hotel and everything.  My first business trip. It is on this trip that I am supposed to correct his bad grammar habits and fulfill his purpose for hiring me. I don’t think I’ll get a break till mid February.

Right now we are smack in the middle of “The Season”.  January and February are the busiest months of the year for the marine businesses of Florida. For every business really because so many people come down here to escape the cold. So all of this overtime and extra business should fizzle out in a couple months.  This is my first week in the office and I think this is going to work well for me.  I was kind of freaking on the first couple days trying to hold down the fort alone. But then I realized that not knowing what is going on is probably normal on the second day. I stress too much. He said that I was already much better and faster than his last secretary and that he’d give me a raise in 3 months.  Maybe keeping all suppliers and customers happy, and the accounts in order, will turn out the be the real blessing for his business.. not the English. I don’t want to do homework. I’m tired.

The New Year

Tags

Sailboat, sailing, Travel

I wanted to have a world map somewhere in the cabin. For Christmas my mom sent me the map I found online that would just barely fit on the bulk head wall. It is made of Tyvek, which feels like paper, looks like parchment, and is water proof. I was pretty thrilled the map came in such a material. Who knew they made such a thing and that it would be the cheapest kind. On New Years day we moved the shelf from under the oil lamp to under the clock to make room for it. We put small grommets around the perimeter and screwed it to the wall through the grommet holes with finishing washers.

Now I can stare at the geography of the world to my hearts content. Maleop, Choiseul, Lambok. All sorts of places to know about. The map is a constant reminder of why I am doing what I am doing. When I look at it the annoyances of the moment melt into day dreams of the future that I have to create. It helps me maintain a broader perspective which is always beneficial to my moment to moment emotional state. When I am pissed about hitting my knee on the table again, with a glimpse of the map I am distracted by the thought that the majority of the human experience does not include winter. Most if humanity lives in perpetual summer between the thirtieth parallels. Winter is a somewhat unique human experience.

Speaking of winter, a cold front moved in on January first with a low of 42 degrees. I did not think I would ever get to say “Brrr” in Florida. We even had to light our propane Cozy Cabin Heater. It keeps the cabin about twenty degrees warmer than outside. The cabin, not the V berth. I was ecstatic to get to put on jeans a couple weeks ago. I did not know how much I loved jeans until I got to slide them on after months of weather too hot for them. I never want to have to wear anything else ever again. If it is too hot for jeans it is too hot to wear anything at all. And you can’t do that. So you see my point. But it’s summer in most of the world, thus my life for the next five to twenty years will be spent without seasons. That is so strange. So I relish these moments in jeans and boots and my favorite hoodie. Oh happy day.

It was in the forties at night and in the sixties during the day for a week. Some great things about cold weather besides jeans are that the necessary activities of daily life improve comfort rather than detract from it. Cooking on a 95 degree day heats the cabin to well over 100. I’d rather not eat. Cooking on a 55 degree day makes your cabin nice and cozy. Produce stays fresh, we can buy cheese, the head does not stink. Hard work makes your warm, not stinky. I think I am alone in Florida in my sentiment, but this is freaking awesome. I was feeling great, that is until six days ago when I sprained my ankle. I spent the last week stuck on the boat with my ankle wrapped trying not to move around much. I can limp around a bit now, but I need to stay off it for the most part for another week.

Three days ago AJ threw his back out. He has residual issues with a collapsed disc in his lower back. So now we are both hobbling around. Now, as in January 10^th, the same date that is in the upper left corner of this post. I am excited about that. And about the fact that I have had the map to look at while I am boat ridden. We are in an internet dead zone and there is not a lot for me to do in this condition. So I am dreaming about the route we will take and passages we will make. Dreaming may be the keyword here, but without the dreams that lead to goals we would go nowhere.

Right now the goal is to be out of here by May. It is currently Caribbean Cruising season. Cruising season ends and hurricane season begins in April. We expect to be equipped to leave Florida by April. We won’t be able to go south because it will be the wrong season, and we do not want to stay in Florida for another summer anyway. Not to mention FL is as much in hurricane alley as the Caribbean islands. So we will go North. North up the Eastern seaboard to Nova Scotia. Stopping in DC and NYC etc.. Then cross the North Atlantic to Ireland or France in May. June July and August visiting Newcastle, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and the like. Go down the west coast of Europe to France, Spain and Portugal, pop into the Mediterranean for October – December. Cross the Mid Atlantic from Portugal/Morocco to the Caribbean in December, ( the middle of cruising season) bop around the nations there, be in Panama ready to cross the canal by March/April. Then head out to the Pacific. We could start with the South Pacific, Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Australia, Indonesia, then north to Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, India, Sri Lanka. Then there is a choice to make. We could go to the gulf of Aden and chance hosting Somali pirates to get to the Mediterranean. But why? We will have been there. We can go to Madagascar and South Africa and cross the Cape of Good Hope in in the wrong direction and shoot across the Southern Atlantic to South America. Maybe we will be such salty adrenaline seeking seamen by then that crossing the Cape backwards will seem like a necessary accomplishment. Or, it will be an easy “F” that. Who knows. The third option would be to turn around. I would like to cross the Indian ocean from India and see Madagascar and South Africa. But instead of continuing west past storms or pirates, go back across the Indian east and go North to Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan. We have to go to Japan because I want to swim in the hot springs with the snow monkeys. So we have to work Japan in somewhere. Who would not want sail into Tokyo harbor? And who in their right minds would not want to make the acquaintance of these citizens of Earth?

They seem to have things figured out.

From Japan maybe go a little farther North to Russia, then the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, Canada, California,then just keep going south, Mexico, Central America, Peru, Argentina. Cross cape Horn the right direction. Who knows. The first part of the plan, crossing the North Atlantic, depends of completing the boat in the next three months. Tick tick tick. We’ve got to reassemble and install the engine, restore the 12 volt power, install new chain plates, patch the deck from old chain plates. Find, make, or buy a Mainsail. Build the carbon fiber boom and mast, replace/reseal the windows, bottom scrape and paint. I think we can do it. Some things could be done while while going up the east coast. There is nothing like the threat of tropical summer weather to motivate me to make it work. We will be out of Florida by May. Whether we will be ready to cross the Atlantic, or miss the window and continue to equip until the next optimal season on the Northeast coast, I don’t know. We just have to be nomadic by April. That is what matters. That is when the life we want begins. The ability to stay on the move is all we really need to be happy. Being stuck here takes a toll on our sanity. The point of this lifestyle choice is to be nomads with a mostly self sustaining, debt free-micro home that can take us anywhere in the world for almost nothing. You don’t have to pay for the wind or the sun or the fish. Just port fees, diesel, and propane. And those can be of rare use. All we want is the freedom to roam. We are so ready to get out of here.

Christmas Visit

Tags

cruising, dinghy, open dinghy, sailing

AJ’s parents arrived late the evening after Christmas.  AJ inherited his interest in sailing and wooden boat building from his father. AJ’s dad, Phil,  trailered an 18′ open daysailing boat he built while AJ was in college all the way to Stuart to take it out sailing on the river. It had been out of use since he raced it at the Texas 200, a 200 mile long open boat cruise on the Texas Gulf coast. First thing the morning after their arrival, we launched it at a park down the road and motored over to the courtesy dock at the marina.

Once at the marina, they came to see our boat in the daylight.  AJ’s nephew Dean immediately looked around, plopped down in the cabin and exclaimed, “This is miserable.” I cracked up.  Still do everytime I think of it. Also, while AJ was pumping our sink’s foot pump to fill up his water bottle Dean asked “What are you doing!?” AJ explained that in most houses, city water is run through a series of big pumps and/or towers that pressurizes water to come out of the faucet at home, but since a boat is not hooked up to the city pressure system, the water must be pumped somehow, so we had a foot pump.  To that he replied, “That’s terrible.” Maybe the boat life is not for him, though he did seem pretty impressed with the 100 foot mega yacht just down from us.

After taking the daytime tour of SV Robin, we all boarded Andrea Christine, Phil’s 18′ dayboat, and headed towards the bridges that lead to the inlet. The mast was too tall for the first bridge, and we did not want to call for it to open, so dad dropped the mast while underway, we motored under the bridges and raised the mast again once through.  Oh to have that sort of flexibility with Robin!  We sailed down the river towards the St Lucie inlet. The wind was strong and Phil is apparently quite the boat designer, as his old-style standing lug rigged 18 footer sped away from just about every sailboat out that day, even with a reef tied into the sail.  Dean wanted to go to the beach and we were going to try to sail there, but three hours in we realized we would not be able to make it there and back before sunset and had to turn around to return to the marina.  No beach that day, but a (mostly) WONDERFUL day of sailing.

It had been warm that afternoon but on our return the clouds started darkening and we got caught in a hard but brief and cold rain. Dean and I wrapped ourselves in a towel. AJ was at the helm and decided to stand up, take the brunt, and make a game of it.

We arrived back at the marina cold and wet and hungry and stopped for dinner.  Andrea and Phil went to take the trailer back from the park to their hotel and Dean came back to our boat. He had seen our fishing poles and wanted to go fishing. AJ took him to the bridge where people often fish just behind D dock.  Dean cast the fishing line into the water, waited about five seconds, reeled it back in, cast it out again, waited about three more seconds before stating “Man, fishing takes a lot of patience.”

On the second day we went to the beach as Dean was promised. It had been in the 80′s the previous week, but that day it was in the high sixties.  Luckily, the water temp was still in the 80′s so one could swim, but  Dean was the only one who ventured in.

We got back in time for a quick sunset sail around the mooring field to check out the boats that had arrived this season.  This boat is a warship just off the line when the Korean war ended.  IT never saw service, and was going cheap. A couple made it their home and now use it to cruise the Mediterranean and Caribbean.

A house boat on anchor in front of the mooring field.  Gin palace, Floating trailer, Keys Condo, whatever you want to call it, I still think they are kinda cool if voyaging is not your thing.

The mooring field

On the third and final day we sailed up the river the other direction. Water front homes line the river’s edge, and we just casually looked in their back yard, lounged about and nibbled lunch over the course of a day of sailing.  What I enjoyed most about sailing in an open boat of that size was that I got a sense of the physics of sailing in a less anxiety-inducing way.  In our small dinghy you are not so much sitting in it as on it.  As expected of a 7.5 foot boat, it heels dramatically and bounces violently in wakes. We sat inside the 18 footer and could feel the heel of the boat and get a sense of when and why it moves without feeling like you are going to fall out. The only other sailing option we have is the big boat. Also an anxiety-inducing ride considering you are dealing with such a large vessel and your home. So I thoroughly enjoyed the day trips up and down the river in that happy medium, small enough to be able to see and understand everything that was going on, and stable enough to let you pay attention. 

After the last day’s sail, Andrea and Phil hopped off at the marina to grab the trailer while AJ was entrusted to bring the boat back to the park to be tailored and prepped for the trip to Arkansas.  Dean seemed to have adapted to the slower pace of sailing by the third day, when AJ offered, Dean was excited to take the helm. After piloting for a while he said “I like sailing.”  Dean was an impressive skipper for 10 years old.  I think the three days may have changed his mind about sailing and speed of life in general.  We were glad to finally spend some quality time with our nephew and parents, and glad also that Phil brought the right tool to do so.

Dock Life

Tags

keelboat, Minimalism, Sailboat, sailing

The morning of December 12th we were towed to the dock by the marina’s skiff.  D dock is the farthest dock out from the mooring field and Marina office.  It is next to three bridges, two car bridges and a rail road bridge.

View from our boat:

Our boat is side tied between a motor yacht and sailboat that are for sale.  Across from us is an inhabited motor yacht .Just up form us is a 100+ foot mega motor yacht.  Our boat had not had it’s decks washed in the nine months it was on the ball.  Being surrounded by all the gleaming fiberglass enhanced this fact rather dramatically, and we found ourselves deciding the outside of the boat needed to be tended to first.  The influence and pressures of having neighbors was back in life.

The day after we moved to the dock the engine was hauled out of the cabin with Marks engine hoist and taken to his shop. They pulled it out while I was at work. So that evening I returned home to step from the dock to my deck, through the empty cockpit, through the unimpaired companionway, to descend the stairs into the cabin. Stairs!  I forgot there were stairs! And they have a paper towel holder built into them! Convenient access AND secure and out of the way.  I stood in my cabin for what felt like the first time and spun in circles. The settees were still piled to the ceiling with all of our stuff that had been moved on but not been able to be dealt with.  But now I could finally start sorting it all out. Finally move in. 

That first week I was crazy pumped. Infinite tasks laid before me. I could wake up and get to work on something immediately. It was all so easy. Step on, step off. Toss my laundry to the dock and wheel it to the laundry room and walk back to the boat to work while it washed. Plug in a vacuum, turn on a hose. After months of stagnation I could see visible progress every day. We found out AJ’s parents and nephew were going to come visit us on the twenty-sixth so we had a definite deadline to get the boat presentable. We hoped to get the engine back in before they arrived but that was unlikely. For the next two weeks I was busier than I had been in years. I did not manage to write a single e-mail or make a phone call, If we still had the netbook I might not have dropped off the earth but we don’t, so internet time is harder to come by these days.

In the mornings before work I worked on the cabin or the engine with AJ.

Ready for it’s final cleaning and multi-step prep and paint

After metal prep and ready washPOR -15 epoxy paint:  We applied the thin silver paint with small paint brushes

Final Paint. AJ used an automotive touch up air gun to apply the yellow final coat. He chose High-po Yellow.

The parts I wire brushed, rust reformed, primed and enameled. They will all go back on the engine block.Every day I got the inside closer to a clean functioning home. I sorted through the piles, filled dry bags with seasonals and stashed them away in the storage compartments that I had vacuumed and scrubbed. I scrubbed mildew off the ceiling, wiped down leaky chain plates best I could.  I found a place or solution for everything until it was all gone. By December 25^th we had settees, a table.,books on a shelf, a pantry, a home.

What is behind some of that pretty teak

We also power hosed the decks and cabin roof and scrubbed them with deck cleaner. Still dingy but greatly improved. The teak in the cockpit was rough, grimy and in bad shape after having so much crap piled on it through rain and shine for months. We vacuumed, then swept, then hosed, then gently washes it with teak cleaner. When they dried they were clean, soft and smooth.

We scrubbed the water tanks with nylon brushes and mold and mildew celaner

This is how

AJ began scrapping the boats name off so we can put the new name on it

Christmas Day was our first real day off together in weeks. We would have nothing to do that couldn’t wait until tomorrow. We were going to sleep in and have a lazy day. Or so we thought until our neighbor invited us to Christmas morning coffee. Since the marina was going to be closed and not serving coffee he figured he would take it upon himself to serve coffee for everyone at his boat. So at 7am on Christmas morning there would be tons of people standing right outside our boat chatting away. So much for a morning in bed either.  We did not get up for the coffee and stayed in bed and laid low anyway.

While the dock is invaluable for the work we are doing, luckily for our pocketbook there are cons do being docked that won’t let us get too comfortable or doddle. Namely the complete lack of privacy. People are walking past the boat morning noon and night. There is no sound barrier. Depending on how high you are floating you can see through the windows into the cabin. If you are outside on your boat at all you will get talked to by every passer by. If we were not in such a rush I would not be as perturbed by this, but being on the dock has me seeing my life on dollars per day. With us both working jobs every moment on the boat has to be utilized. So when I have a couple precious hours to work on the boat and half of that time is taken by inquiries, I have the emotion of being on a pay per phone and you are running out of minutes and you know you can’t afford to buy more. I have actually not been prevented from having time to eat lunch or shower before work due to folks wanting to chat. I’m on a tight schedule, they are on vacation. AJ and I have both ducked and hid from the shouts of a strangers voice “Hello? Are you home?” and remained still until their footsteps disappeared.. Neither of us have the propensity to be dressed appropriately enough to answer the door when we are at home, particularly when doing work. So, responding would also require frantic dressing and trying to remain out of view . No one walks up to your window in your house and starts yelling questions at you or looking to see if you are home. But such is the etiquette of dock life. So apologies to all for my curtness of late. I’m poor and on the clock. We are odd little hermits with a deadline.

Moving from the mooring field to the dock was like moving from a country house where you occasionally wave at a distant neighbor as they drive by, to the highly populated noises and bustle of the city. Aside from the constant chatter and footsteps, we can hear the car traffic from the bridges. A train goes by a couple times a day. Airplanes fly low overhead. The nearest bridge opens for passing boats a couple times an hour. There is a long loud bell followed by an announcement on a loudspeaker before it opens. Men fish off the same bridge a stones throw from our cockpit. We can hear their conversations. One night the conversation was in Russian. Sometimes it’s Spanish,sometimes it’s redneck. While it is a lot of commotion, there is something charming about being able to hear a train, automobiles passing, an airplane overhead and a bridge opening all at the same time while sitting on a sailboat. It kinda makes me feel like I’m in a cartoon with all forms of transportation moving around me. Like the opening credits of Futurama. with less future.

AJ ran into this guy blocking the gate

On December twenty-sixth after two and a half weeks of non stop work we were ready to receive our first guests and take a break.

Work Work Work

Tags

Minimalism, Sailboat, sailing

AJ got back from the yacht delivery October 23^rd. We then cleaned the engine and engine room.  I sat squashed behind the engine with cans of degreaser and scrubbed away at the engine for a week. It had so much build up that I felt like I was rescuplting it, finding all of it’s dips and channels and carving them back out. I went through 3 cans of degreaser, a box of que tips (only thing small enough to clean out all the grooves), about 12 rolls of shop towels, and numerous brushes. At then end of the day I was covered head to toe in grease. The clean engine with the greasy tarp finally removed from beneath it:     No more grease feet!

The engine room was a hell hole of awkward balancing and reaching. Covered in years of sludge build up. We shoveled and scraped and scrubbed it until we could see the fiberglass.

A week or two later, starting to see the fiberglass floors and walls.

AJ had to order fuel injector pipes and gaskets and random small bits from Brittan. There is one guy in the world selling parts for this engine and he is in England. While we waited on those AJ continued to get parts tested and sandblasted. Aside from cleaning the engine there was also tons of parts to clean and derust sitting in the cockpit. I wire brushed rust off iron and oxidation off aluminum. Metal on metal scraping is not as horrific as nails on a chalk board, but it is in the same family. I don’t care for it. But when I brushed around parts of the bell housing it created a resonating sound that sounded like the violin section of an orchestra warming up. That was a nice change.

We slaved away in the grease pit but we were really running out of funds. We had to find jobs time now. By the middle of November we were both working. When I was looking for employment on Craigs list I came across something that sounded like it would suit AJ. The add was looking for extra hands in a composites shop, and rebuilding a small aircraft. AJ loves building and had always wanted to build a plane. AJ contacted the guy and went to work for him immediately.

We could not have even dreamed of a better place for AJ to land. I still can’t say for sure what AJ’s employer does per se, but he has a carbon fiber composite shop and makes prototypes of boats and small airplanes and a all sorts of things. He is an engineer and inventor. AJ started going to work from 8-5 for Mark.  Mark is making a trimaran that will use a 42′ mast. The exact height we need our mast to be. Mark said that if AJ would make the mold for the mast he needs then he would let him make a carbon fiber mast for himself for cost. His cost. Which is virtually nothing. In exchange Mark got a mold he could use again and again. This would mean lack of cash flow but what we would get in return would be worth so much more than he could ever make.  Our mast problem is solved. Mark is also letting AJ make the boom he wants too. The time frame for completing this is unknown, as while the mast and boom molds are on the list, Mark still has other things that need to be worked on in the mean time. But it is worth it for a carbon fiber mast and boom.

For three weeks we rarely saw each other as we scurried to our jobs and back. We had bought another rowing dinghy from someone at the marina for cheap, so we were able to come and go as we needed separately. Funny how you don’t notice certain stressers until they are gone. The independence the second dinghy bestowed greatly reduced my overall stress levels. We no longer had to synchronize or get stranded. The weather was cooling off by the middle of November and increased activity became easy. Life became easier. I rowed back and forth multiple times a day. I rarely vistited the lounge because rowing back to my own home on a two hour mid day break no longer meant getting soaked in sweat.  It was now the season in Florida, and the marina was filling up. There were people everywhere.  Parking spaces on the dinghy dock were becoming scarce. I was becoming good at rowing and maneuvering the dinghy around all the other boats.

The sun was starting to set earlier and earlier though, and without electric light there was not much we could do after dark.  We had less and less time to work on the boat.  I would often forget to start looking for the flashlight before the sun was setting and thought about how creating such a habit after 29 years of flicking light switches with no knowledge of the sun’s position might be a challenge. But then I remembered that we would have electricity again. I had forgotten that power was even going to be part of life on a boat, and was resigned to it.  This is the good part of living like this. Instead of being pissed every time you don’t have power, you get to become excited and happy when you do. I don’t know anyone who get’s a mood boost from turning on a light, or plugging in their cell phone charger. Being pissed when things don’t work has been replaced with a sense of luxury and happiness when they do.

Cooking by headlamp light:

Mag light set in the engine ropes for the evenings

The weeks were going by and we were never home to work on the engine or improve our living arrangement. We were still without power and water and still having to climb around an engine.

When we finally got a weekend to dedicate to our boat it rained. And rained, and rained. The parts were getting wet again. We could not do anything. And I had dropped the netbook in the rain water in the dinghy. Our last and only modern convenience, a crappy wifi signal, was gone. No living space, no power, now no computer. To make matters worse AJ had found out that fuel injector pump and the spare were both bad, and one had to be rebuilt. We were dreading that verdict as the rebuild is not cheap. We felt defeated and AJ was really depressed. He talked about abandoning this engine all together. Finding a used engine that would fit pulling out the credit card and calling it done. But the more we talked we decided our engine had to be finished. There was too much sunk into it already and it was really close to done, we just did not have the proper time or space to do it in. Work took up most of our time, but life on the ball took all the rest leaving us stagnating.

Crisis, depression, drastic re-evaluation and deconstruction of your situation. That Saturday we sat on the boat in the rain and started from scratch. Why are we here and what are we doing? We decided we had to move to the docks. It is more expensive than the mooring ball, but we finally realized that time is also money. And in our predicament, more money than the dock. We would be able to do so much in so little time that it would save us a few months on the ball. On the dock we would have access to a power supply and water hose. We could use the hose on the engine room and the deck.  Water would no longer be a limited resource, as we could fill up our sprayer right there on the boat with the hose, saving a 30 min trip for every 6 gallons we bring on board. We would be able to plug into an outlet with an extension cord and use power tools. We could toss anything off the boat and out of the way when needed. Taking out the enormous amounts of trash accumulated during projects would be as simple as stepping off the boat and tossing it in a bin 4 feet away. We could actually utilize the time we did have.

We also needed to get the engine off the boat. If it had not been in the cabin for the last two months then we could have been working on other projects, any and all of them. But as we were we could do nothing but wait for the engine to go back in. We probably should have moved to the docks day one and powered through the other than engine projects. But you live and learn. AJ called his boss and asked if we could use his engine hoist and take it to his shop for the rebuild. He said sure, so we went straight to the marina office to inquire about getting a spot on the dock. And to find out if they would tow us to it. Yes and yes. They had one spot left on D dock. We woke up depressed and hopeless and went to bed with the boat ready to be docked in the morning. Ready to whip the boat into shape. It was December 11^th.

Wham Bam we are almost up to speed.

Some pretty Pics of November:

Dinghies Sparrow and Sunshine sailing at sunset

Bird on our Mooring Ball

Batten Down the Hatches a Storm’s a’Brewin’

Tags

Minimalism, Sailboat, sailing

It was now October.  We had made a friend at the marina who was our age and living on a Choey Lee Bermuda 30 on anchor. He  would disappear for weeks at a time to do cruise ship renovations or First Mate a Mega Motor Yacht. He would come back and dump his earnings into prepping his boat for voyaging.   It was nice to have a friend who was doing the same thing in life.  The latest job he had landed was a yacht delivery.  He was to take it from Stuart, around the entire peninsula of Florida and up the West coast to Venice.   He asked AJ if he would like to do the delivery with him, for the experience and even a little pay.  AJ jumped at the opportunity. 

He felt bad leaving me on a boat alone on the ball with no power or water and a greasy engine in the middle of everything. But I assured him I’d be fine and he should not pass up the opportunity.  I really didn’t mind, and was actually wanting to spend some time alone on the boat anyway for a lot of reasons.   I really wanted to be by myself so I could get to know the boat better and have the responsibility to myself. His absence was going to more than double the amount of labor required to carry out daily life activities.  AJ always motored or rowed us to the docks for instance. Men drive, it’s what they do. They always get in the drivers seat without question or discussion.  So the only time I rowed was when I wanted to run to shore or back for something and AJ didn’t, which wasn’t often. Now, wanting to get to land, grocery shop, take out the trash, do the laundry, or anything at all would require me hauling everything on and off the dinghy by myself, and rowing back and forth. Not to mention maneuvering heavy bags and myself through the booby traps of my hatch and cockpit.

They set sail on a Friday. Darrin was against leaving on a Friday. Starting a passage on a Friday is like saying MacBeth in a theater. Superstitious or not, you just don’t do it. Also there was a storm that could blow in in a few days and he thought it more prudent to wait it out. But the new yacht owners were typically impatient and insisted. So on Friday the 14^th of October they set out and headed South.

The first three days were calm and hot. I spent a lot of time in the lounge, as there was really nothing to do on the boat in it’s condition. The cockpit was piled high with tools and rusty engine parts. So was the counter that was the only place to step to get inside. A fact which maddened me every time I entered. We had laid a tarp under the engine, and it was now covered in oil and grease. You really could not get to the sink or onto the boat at all without getting your feet black. So suffice to say I packed up a bag and the net book and rowed to shore for part of the day and the evenings.

Around the third day the weather started to take a turn. It became gray and dark. The wind picked up and the rain started.

If the wind is too strong or the chop too high or the rain too heavy I can’t row to shore. For two days I tried to protect things in the cockpit from the rain best I could, but it was really a futile effort. It was all just going to get rustier. I stuffed rags under the leaky windows and kept a close watch on the bilge. Since the power was disconnected so was the automatic bilge pump. I had to pump it manually, which is no easy task. Not for my girly arms. I rowed in when there was a brief break in the weather or I hitched a ride. Darrin had left his dinghy tied to our boat so I had two dinghy’s to bail a few times a day.  On the afternoon of the third day of rain it became calm.  I took the opportunity to bail the dinghy’s. After bailing Darrin’s I did not feel like putting in the effort of transferring back to our dinghy to row in. Darrin said I could try it out if I like. So I rowed his to the docks and left ours tied aft.

 

That calm afternoon was unfortunately not the end of the rain but the calm before the storm. A couple hours after I got to shore it got nasty. White out rain came pelting down with wind that made the boats in the mooring field bounce around like plastic toys. I stared out the lounge windows and tried to see the details of my boat. We were on mooring ball 1 so we were on the row closest to shore, even still it was hard to make out much through the water and darkness. The dinghy was bouncing around like a ping pong ball. Later it looked as though our dinghy may have gotten swept under the wind-vane. But I could not tell for sure. The rain did not let up for hours, and I was getting anxious. Around midnight not knowing was driving me crazy and I had to go see what I could see. I put on my rain coat and rolled up my pants and walked down the dock barefoot to the closest point I could get to my boat. I walked bent over to stay balanced against the wind. When I reached the closest spot to our boat I tried to shield myself against the rain to see. The dinghy had gotten sucked under the wind-vane and was still bouncing and slamming around with the wind-vane beating against it the inside of it. I feared for the dinghy and the wind vane. Being so close and feeling like you can almost reach out and touch it only compounds the feeling of helplessness.  I also was trying to make out the water line. I was freaked about the bilge filling up and had no idea how much water had gotten in. Not being on the boat was driving me crazy. The waterline line is dark blue so it was hard to tell where the sea ended and the blue line began in the blackness but it looked to be floating high enough. I could not help but just stand there, staring, stumbling in the wind and replanting my feet over and over and over again. I could not take my eyes off it.  With lighter rain I felt a little better about the boat not sinking and started back to the marina.

Around 1 am the rain had calmed to a heavy drizzle and many of the other stranded folks to start motoring back to their boats. I was offered a ride. Once I was aboard I sqeezed between the engine and the counter pulled back the tarp and awkwardly removed a floor board from under the swinging engine so I could see into the bilge. It had a lot of water in it, but we were not sinking yet. It is hard to see the bilge in daylight as it is 4 feet deep and 10 inches wide.  All I had was the shittiest of flashlights that gave a dim flicker and had to be shaken every 10 seconds; ”luckily” the water was high enough to see easily…  I climbed back out into the cockpit and pulled off the bronze lid to the manual bilge pump in the cockpit bench. The first pull was met with great resistance. Thank god it did not have to be primed this time. Pulling on the handle feels like lifting wights at the gym. It takes 1-3 seconds to pull it up.  I began pumping it as fast as I could with my right arm, but soon it become a two handed job with a foot braced on the bench to muster up every ounce if strength even from my toes. Pulling up up up, and slam back down. Curses to my 100 lb frame and puny wire arms. My curses were sucked up by the wind as quickly as they left my mouth. If i had been lifting weights there is no way I could have lasted that long. But in such a crisis adrenalin says it can be done. The labor of the pumping the bilge became my existence.   I had no other function or independent thoughts of a self to distract me. I was a bilge pumping machine. Nothing else.

Once it started sounding empty I slid back inside and shined the light into the deep dark narrow bilge. I could not see the bottom, but I saw a lot of hoses and pumps on the way down that were underwater before. It was time for bed. I used the rain to get the grease off my feet and tried to make it to the V berth unscathed. I laid in bed exhausted but hyper-vigilant from the adrenalin. I listened to the rain and bangs and creaks caused by the wind and wondered what they were and if I should be concerned about it.

The forward hatch is 3 feet above your head in the V berth. It’s view is straight up the mast to the stars.  The rain and wind are sometimes so loud it is hard to sleep, but generally I find it peaceful. The clanks and taps and thumps and creaks can be trying but if the noises are random I can sleep through it. But sometimes the noises conspire and get on a rhythm. The rope on the mast slaps the top at a high pitch then slaps the bottom at a lower pitch in even time. Thwack thwack, Thwack thwack. Then the dinghy reveals it’s treachery when it joins in with a Thud, th th th th th thud. then unidentified menaces finish the percussion symphony clang-idy clangs and tap tap taps. This makes me scream in my pillow. Luckily that night it was a chaos of bangs and creaks and howling of the wind.

AJ and Darrin were stuck in Miami through the storm. The delivery was delayed by 3 days anyway as Darrin had predicted. The 5-7 day delivery was already 6 days in and they had not made it past Miami. They ran into more trouble and delays every day. Guess they should not have left on a Friday after all. The boat was not as in as good as condition as stated on the survey. They had engine trouble and got stuck waiting for parts. By day 10 they had only made it to Marathon in the Keys. And they were going to have to be there a while getting work done. Darin told AJ he could jump ship since he didn’t know how long it was going to take, and he had already been gone longer than planned. I drove to Marathon to pick him up.

The farther south I went the better the radio stations got. Stuart’s stations play what my hometown played. The top 20 of yesterday and today. The songs you know all the words to but are not even sure who sings because you never bought the album and never listened to it on purpose. It’s like you have known these songs from birth. Programmed into your brain. I hate these songs. But the closer I got to Miami those songs were replaced with songs I did not know and genres I’d never heard on the radio. I hadn’t experienced such ear candy since Germany where the stations had no theme and the song progression would go something like: Nirvana, Meatloaf ballad, 50′s BeeBop, Lady GaGa, Michael Jackson, The Beatles, Bon Jovi, The Ramones, Abba, Sinatra, German Rap, DEVO, U2, German Pop, Patsy Cline. Anything from the last 50 years could come next. Anything. 

I arrived in Marathon late that night and spent the night on the boat they were delivering. The next morning we drove back to Stuart.  I proudly showed AJ that we still had a boat, and then it was time to tackle the filth of engine and engine room and try to salvage the weather damaged parts. 

Andrew’s Introduction

Tags

Sailboat, sailing, Travel

I first started hearing adventures of sailing in a  series of youth books, Swallows and Amazons, by Arthur Ransom, read to me by my father on rainy days and at bedtimes, and sometimes just because.  It was a story about the children of two families meeting each year on family vacation in the English lake district.  The four walker children sail a dinghy named swallow and the two Blackett daughters sailing a dinghy named Amazon.  The first book is set in 1929, so the crafts being imagined by the reader are romantic old wooden plank-on-frame working skiffs.  They spend their days sailing to island and new lake shores, camping, fishing, adventuring, making repairs on abandoned lake shores after running aground in shallow creeks, and generally having fun.  The romance in those stories, of young school children being free to roam local wilderness and sail a boat of their own during school holiday caught my fascination.

But it didn’t stop there, nor am I even sure it started there.  Dad’s book collection featured prominently on our bookshelf, and I had access to and browsed and read everything.  It may have started with Jack London’s “Sea Wolf”, a story of a soft aristocratic young writer who, through a ferry accident in the San Francisco harbor, ends up becoming a sea hardened sailor while stuck on one of the last great sailing whaling schooners for a season in the pacific with a brutal Captain “Wolf Larsen.”  Or maybe it was reading Robin Lee Graham’s accounts during his voyage around the world on his sailboat “Dove” as the youngest circumnavigator of the time.

But the technical books about rigging and sailboat hull design and boat plan catalogs interested me just as much…  Add to these the National Geographic global encyclopedias, charts, maps, watching Sir David Attenborough’s “The Trials of Life” and a couple other collections of books about global flora and fauna, plus a short wave radio that allowed us to hear global broadcasts of ocean weather reports or the atomic clock broadcast for synchronization.  I’m a nerd at heart, and all these inputs in my youth were soaked up with fervor.

By the time I was in high school I had assisted my dad in building a 14′ sailing skiff and we sailed it on the local lake.  I already realized that I would be sailing a boat in my life.  Secretly I began planning and making lists of what boat I would build and how I might equip it.  I shifted my reading from those earlier books of childhood wonder and inspiration to how-to books by low cost cruisers such as Lyn and Larry Pardey and Pete and Annie Hill who were out successfully sailing themselves, finishing the formula of inputs needed to ensure that there was little other option in my life, now it was just a question of “when?.”  I decided the answer was “as soon as possible.”

By college I was setting aside money and seriously considering boat plans and a place to build with my then-wife Hannah.  I joined the Army as an officer and continued to save and talk about our future on a boat.  After a couple years of marriage, she asked me “So when are you going to outgrow this phase?”  …  I could not believe my ears.  She had seemed into it when we met, but later she told me that was just because she wanted to seem “cool,” and she was now ready for her first child a career and our first house.  I said no, and unfortunately the relationship dragged awkwardly on for another year before we went our separate ways right as I was beginning a deployment to Afghanistan.

I would not be dissuaded, and was fully ready to exit the Army and begin sailing right after my return from Afghanistan in 2007…  The Army would not cooperate, and the plan was delayed another four years.  Luckily at the start of those four years, I met my high school sweetheart again and took her on a romantic trip to Amsterdam where we solidified both our relationship and joint dedication to the task of a life of sailing, and of course, our subsequent marriage… but you can read about that more in-depth in her blog entry titled “ How the Plan to Sail Away Began”  and “Detour to Germany.”  

-AJ