Anti-Inspirational Poster #004

We did it!  Relentless, unmitigated positivity for 24 hours.  Phew.  (Read about the 24-hour + challenge here.)  Truth be told, we had a lot of fun with it.  Laughed more in the past day than we had over the past week.  It was like a mini-vacation to Optimist Island - and absolutely we are bringing some of that vacation vibe back home to our every-day life on JOY.

But - I've already owned up to this - we actually like our little niche in the blogging/cruising community.  We are the "is it too late to get your deposit back?" counterpoint to the Happy People.

Honestly if I see that Mark Twain quotation one more time - you know the one - 

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
– Mark Twain

- I'm going to vomit.

So we found our own Mark Twain quotation.  Without further ado, we present to you the fourth in our series of Anti-Inspirational Posters:

Stupid stupid stupid everything

Ean and I have been sniping at each other lately.  I know, right?!  Us? The happy couple?  The smiling, laughing pair who put the JOY in More Joy Everywhere!?

Things have been going wrong.  Family tragedies, broken boat, ticking clock, draining bank account.  Disaster.  Delay.  Depression.  Disappointment.  Debby Downer?  Yep, that's me.

So this morning, after a couple of - shall we call them "verbal exchanges"? - I say, "Let's make a deal.  We won't say anything negative about the boat or each other for 24 hours."  Ean says: "DEAL!"

A half-hour later I am sorting through a bag of items we purchased during our last trip to the hardware store. We had MEANT to purchase a deep socket wrench and a socket set, which we need, we think, to fix our generator.  It was the primary purpose of our visit to Novey's.  We found the guy with the spiffy blue Novey polo shirt and the key to the display case, and he fished out the bits we wanted.  We already knew, from our other shopping excursions 'round these parts, that if it comes out of a locked case, you can't just stick it in your cart - it gets walked up to the cashier, and you pick it up and pay for it on the way out.  Off he goes, up to the front, while we nod and wave and then finish our shopping.  Only, by the time we got up to the caja with our other odds and ends, we forgot about the wrench and socket set. (It could be noted that if we would have remembered the tools, we wouldn't have known any words to help us get them from behind the counter, but probably wild exaggerated gestures would have done the trick eventually.)

As I'm emptying the Novey bag this morning, I say, "I can't BELIEVE we forgot the wrench and socket set.  How could we be so STUPID?" And without missing a beat, Ean replies sarcastically, "REALLY?  You can't believe it?  You can't believe that we would be that stupid?!" It dawns on us.  It is 11:52 a.m. We are Nattering Nabobs of Negativism.

I say, "Start over!"

Ten minutes later, Ean is engaging in his new favorite hobby: the door to the starboard head, which is still off its hinges - hinge-less, actually, to be more accurate.  You can read about how we got help to fix the port head door here.  Ean is tackling the starboard door on his own, but I am his trusty, if half-hearted, assistant. (I suggested we just throw the door away and put up a shower curtain.)  He broke off a drill bit in one of the holes for the hinge screws, so he asks me to bring him The Big Screwdriver, which is one of our favorite tools, because it is so multifunctional.  I say, "If it doesn't work on the screws or the broken drill bit, maybe you could just beat the door into submission."  His lightening-quick response: "Or I could just STAB myself."

Image borrowed from the cheery, ever-optimistic Livia
(SV Estrellita 5.10b -pfffftt, what kinda goofy boat name is that?)

Oh dear.  It is now 12:08 p.m. and we are resetting the clock again.

Sometimes CRUISING SUCKS.  People will tell you it doesn't.  But.  Really.  It.  Does.  And now it is 12:31 p.m., and NO, dear reader, I am NOT going to reset the clock.  I didn't say it out loud - doesn't count.

Tune in tomorrow (or maybe the next day?) to see if we manage to get through 24 hours of relentless POSITIVITY.

PS.  I just realized that I wrote this post on one of our many technological devices from which we cannot access the internet while on board.  And this particular device (an iPad) doesn't have a USB port, so I can't transfer the file anywhere unless I go ashore and find a wifi connection.  So. HOW COOL IS THAT?  An excuse to get lunch at Mi Ranchito, which is super close to the dock, and they're really friendly, they have free wifi, and good food - the most awesome papaya-melón smoothie - mmm hmmm....  Life is good.  (phew.  I turned that right around, didn't I?)  

PPS. And now it's 3:15 p.m., and we had a VERY nice lunch, and the Batido de Papaya y Melón  was AWESOME.  We have now been positive for 3 hours and 7 minutes - and counting!!!

Oh, JOY!

getting ready for the big blue

This is a test post.  When we get underway, we will post to the blog via email using our sat phone - Insha'Allah.  We will also send quick updates to our facebook page through the inReach.  Ahh, I love technology (except when I hate it).

--

There's an App for That

Yes, we're still here in Panama City but our To Do list gets smaller every day, despite the fact that we keep getting things done that aren't even on it (and then have to add them just so we can cross them out). It's hard to believe we're about to make our way across some 4,000 nautical miles of water, more distance in one enormous puddle jump than we have done altogether so far. Hard to believe also, that a little over eighteen months ago, we girded our loins to make our very first passage.

By most cruisers' standards (including our own, now) it wasn't much of a passage, just out of the

South River at Edgewater, Maryland, into, very briefly, the Chesapeake, and then back into the West River to Galesville. Ten miles in total; none sailed, just motored. Had it not been for the late October bite in the air, a harbinger of much colder things to come, who knows how long it might have been before we cast off the docklines that first time.

Or, more truthfully, the first time without "adult supervision." About a week after moving aboard, our broker, Tommy, taking pity on us, took us out for an afternoon sail to run us through the basics. But still... What if we... or... or... The one thought that kept impressing itself upon us was how improbable it seemed to successfully move a boat from one point to an intended other knowing as little about how to do it as we did. But every morning was chillier than the one before.

Heads Up

So how many times has this happened to you? There you are, transiting the 8th (or 11th or 5th depending on which list you consult) wonder of the modern world with people you've never met before and people you barely know. You've planned and prepped for days to make a good...no, a stellar, impression. You want people to look back and remark, even years later: "Do you remember that time we crossed the Panamá Canal in that boat 'More Joy to All'.. or, 'Lots of Joy for Everyone', or whatever it was and it was so awesome? Man, those guys sure knew how to throw a canal crossing party! I've been through the canal 9 times since then on other boats and none of them were anywhere as much fun as that More Joy Something boat."

an una-door-able situation

And thanks to all your planning and, yes, very generous spending, you pull off an excellent, once-in-a-lifetime event.  Flawless, really, except for one small technical difficulty: the head door comes loose from its "hinge" (by design, a piece of plastic covered wire running its length) causing your translucent door to dangle precariously and leaving the unlucky occupant to wonder at how he or she could have misunderstood so egregiously the operation of a door. But they are an exceptionally hardy bunch and all is forgiven, if not forgotten and, after all, the rest of the transit does go beautifully and you arrive at your anchorage and your anchor sets perfectly on the first go and all is well.

"See You on the Other Side"

At Shelter Bay, we hear it alot. It conjures unnerving images of people in matching tennis shoes and large batches of Kool-Aid. But, no, no cult activity implied or intended, just a 47 or so mile trip up three locks, across a lake and a cut and then down three locks to the other side (in our case, the Pacific side) of Panama.

Ready to go!

Hard Ship

JOY, sitting on her bare bottom.

Last weekend we were motoring across Gatun Lake with our friends Tim and Cath aboard s/v Helena May. The weather was, well, Panamanian, but it mostly didn't rain. We even got to have a wee bit of an escapade when we went to shore after having bid our "Panamanian Cruise Directors" safe travels and fond farewells. Our stay at the Sheraton was a slice of paradise. Tim and Cath: we thank you kindly for your unparalleled hospitality, but you are just not equipped to compete with unending hot water, a mini bar and room service. Short of ironing our t-shirts we availed ourselves of every amenity the Sheraton had to offer. Emboldened by our night of luxury living, we successfully navigated our way through the wilds of the Panamanian bus system and to top it all off, DID NOT get mugged in Colón in the dark in the rain waiting for a taxi.

And then we were back at the marina and our "palace in the clouds." Life on the hard, it turns out, isn't that much different from living in a hotel. True, there's no hot water unless we walk the two blocks to the marina showers, which we might as well do since that's where we have to go for a toilet, anyway. We wash hardly any more dishes than we would staying in a hotel since it leaves a big, dirty puddle under the boat which never dries. There's no room service, but the marina restaurant is closer than the bathrooms and the food is almost as good as the candy bars and potato products we prepare at home. But, what we do have that our hotel room did not is a maxi bar. No college dorm sized fridge here. No sireebob! We have cases and cases of beer and bottles and bottles of spirits and the best part is that we don't have to walk down the hall to get ice; it's right here.

And, of course there are always projects with which to distract ourselves. I'm waiting for a beetle to die that I trapped under a tupperware container several days ago. I've just deleted 205 tv shows I've been storing on my Mac. (It was so full I couldn't open Photoshop and anybody who uses Photoshop knows the magnitude of such a disaster.) And while her partner Jaye is on vacation, Jane is singlehandedly turning The Monkey's Fist into a lean, mean blog collecting machine. And just today we discovered that ants have discovered us, so I'll need to annihilate them periodically. So it isn't as though we're just waiting for things to get done around here.

We'll be up here for about another week or so. The paint on JOY's bottom has to dry, of course. Once they apply it, that is.  We need to replace the propeller that got mangled when we went aground plus a few odds and ends. Then we'll be back on water to tackle the rest of our repairs.  If all goes as planned, we'll be bored of this whole refit thing in a few weeks and we'll leave to embark upon our own Panama Canal cruise. South Pacific, don't go anywhere, we'll see you eventually!