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.

A is for...

Well, it happened again. I knew it would, it does every time we meet non-American cruisers: that "I Am So Out of My League" feeling. The embarrassment began the minute we introduced ourselves--in English as we always do, as we must because it's our only language, but the second, third, or fourth language for whomever we are meeting. Linguistic survivor's guilt, I call it. Directly after introductions, there is the de rigeur ice-breaker, the corollary of "So, what do you do?"  For sailors and world travelers it's, "So, where are you coming from?" This invariably elicits an enviable enumeration of countries that either makes perfect geographical sense or otherwise begs questions with ultimately intriguing answers--if, that is, one knows where in the world anything is to begin with.

A Time and a Place

Just a few of our many mental declutterers

When we started, many aspects of this lifestyle were foreign to us and that has made for a very steep learning curve. Any skill set from our former life that transferred has been an enormous relief. One such set is organizational acumen. I am loathe to think how much more daunting adapting to this would have been had we not been such well organized people already. It really has made all the difference.

Our boat specific organizational strategies have withstood being field tested for almost a year, we feel it's time to share them. They are few in number, but comprehensive in scope.

1. Lists
We are big list makers. We were long before we were cruisers. List making is one of our most frequently employed tactics in our overall strategy for reducing clutter, specifically the clutter in our heads. Compile a list and then it's not only permissible to forget the items on it, it's smart. Do or get everything on the list and then throw it away. Very satisfying emotionally. We have the obvious ones: grocery, boat chores, boat projects, boat repairs, things we'll get for the boat after we become wealthy from monetizing this blog. We even make lists of lists we should make. 

2. Logs
Logs are new to us. We have only become log keepers since becoming boat owners. Logs, we have discovered, are really the other half of a solid mental decluttering program. The way in which lists and logs work together for us is simple. Lists are temporary; logs are ongoing. The difference is clear from the names of the activities themselves: list making versus log keeping. Logs record what's been done and when it will need to be done again in the future. We are not quite as good at logs as we are at lists, it is true. We're actually good at making logs also, just not at keeping them. This has inevitably resulted in a reduced ability to remember all the logs we've made. When we have time (see below), we will make a list of all our logs.

Le Faux Pas (Troisième Partie et Finale)

Click here to read Part 1.

Click here to read Part 2.

Jasmine (L) and Makendy (R)

Makendy paddled out to us at just before six, although, at the time we thought he was almost an hour late. We had gone back and forth several times over whether or not Haiti observed Daylight Savings Time and ultimately came to the wrong conclusion. Truth be told, the longer past (our) six p.m. it got, the more strongly we suspected--hoped, really--that he'd forgotten, or something. We would have only partially minded. I went out to the cockpit with cash to pay off our balance and collect our meal.

"Hi, Makendy. Uh, where's dinner?" I asked, looking down into his boat, empty of everything but water. He requested that we meet him at the dinghy dock and he'd walk us to dinner. "Oh," I said, trying to try to hide my disappointment, "I was hoping we could get it to go, you know, here at the boat, for tomorrow."

"That will not be possible" he answered. Makendy's English was pretty good so I had to wonder how my request had gotten messed up in translation?  Or, had it gotten messed up? Perhaps he had never intended to be a "meals on keels" operation. More importantly, from what as yet unplumbed emotional depths were we going to get the energy to make it through a dinner, I wondered. There wasn't any politeness or curiosity or civility left between us.  Our plan had been to spend the evening curled up in as close to fetal positions as it was possible to get in our salon while watching downloaded TV shows on our laptop. But that was out now. An invitation was being extended to us and payment aside, it was a magnanimous gesture, we knew. We pulled psychic selves together as best we could, lowered our dinghy, and met Makendy at the dock.

Le Faux Pas (Deuxième Partie)

Click here to read Part 1.

We had the majority of the work yet to be done: Jasmine on dinghy cleaning, Harold on beer delivery, Colby on carpet runners, Pepe and Keke on boat cleaning, Edisson for a walk through his village to the other resort hotel and Makendy on dinner to go. It was going to be a long day.

As before, everyone showed up bright and early and everyone asked how we'd slept. Jasmine took the dinghy off a few yards so he could clean it in the shade of the mangrove trees by the shore of the harbour, Pepe had, the prior evening, delivered the rags, cleaned and folded but before he and Keke could get started, they needed to get fresh water, so we sent them off in Keke's mango wood boat with our water jugs and 300 gourde. Makendy had also paddled out the night before to take our dinner order, and to ask if we wanted music with dinner. I wasn't sure how he intended to accomplish that, include a flash drive with the baggies of food? Too exhausted to makes sense of it though, I just told him it wouldn't be necessary, we had lots of music on the boat.

With our dinghy gone and Pepe and Keke moving all over the deck, we were feeling as trapped as we had been in Marathon when the SALT technicians were working everywhere at once. Only this time without a handy tiki hut under which to escape. Needless to say we'd never been more happy in both of our lives put together than we were to see Edisson when he came to rescue us at noon.

Learning as We Go

¿Comprende?

It's not often that I get to report on a success with anything related to our engines, so far it's not ever.  But I am pleased to finally be able to say that all the time (and money) I've spent watching diesel mechanics work on them has actually paid off.

To recap: our generator broke down, was fixed and broke down again in Marathon, FL--all within a week.  The starboard engine started overheating somewhere in the Bahamas, we don't recall where or when exactly.  So it was only a matter of time before our port engine demised in one of the eleven thousand four hundred and seventy-nine ways a diesel engine can. It did warn us, I must admit. It lost the use of its ignition stop button a couple of weeks after the starboard engine lost the use of its button. So it came as a shock to neither of us when I turned the ignition key this morning in order to power up the batteries in order to start the inverter in order to boil water for coffee and it only went "click, click, click."

"Creo que tengo un brazo roto." (Segunda Parte)

I am using one of Ean's big pirate bandanas as a sling.  Under the sling, my arm is bare. Our extensive first aid kit, painstakingly prepared especially for our sail around the world, includes 14 assorted sizes of band-aids (some waterproof), three tubes of anti-bacterial ointment, and a half-roll of Tums, but stops short of really sophisticated medical equipment, like ACE bandages. 

It's been about 30 hours since the twist-crack (read about it in la primera parte); we are docked at Marina Santa Marta, and we've started the check-in process through Dino the agent.  It will take a few days to complete all the customs and immigration paperwork, but the very helpful and kind Dino tells us that we are unofficially cleared to enter Colombia.  Welcome to Santa Marta!  We avail ourselves, first, of a Colombian ATM.  And now, finally, we are ready to take care of our "emergency."  It is just before noon, and we take a taxi to La Clínica Prada, which we've been told is open on the weekend for las urgencias.

This...or This...or...This Is the Way We Wash the Clothes

At least we don't live in a trailer.

The day is not particularly important; it is the time of day that matters and time is critical to the management of The System. The System relies on visual clues. The System is time-dependent. It is, by name, "The Scivvy System." The Scivvy System was not designed; it occurred spontaneously. Its purpose: to alert the laundry that I am out of underwear.  Jane is the laundry. Jane provides clean clothes on a Just-in-time basis. The red pair of underwear in the hamper is the signal. Jane does the laundry when she sees the red pair. 

...and then we moved onto a boat.

Tatter Tale

You'd need one big-a** altar

Somewhere between three and seven lifetimes ago, I hung with a bunch of pagans, or neo-pagans as they are more properly called. Neopagans teach respect for one another and the planet and that's cool. But the thing that really hooked me was that they use things in their rituals and I have a thing for things. Being a nature-based religion, Paganism personifies four elements, air, earth, wind and fire as sentient forces. (Pagans refer to these as THE four elements, but being a devotee of the Periodic Chart of the Elements, I take umbrage at this kind of blatant reductionism.) Each of the elements is associated with one of the four cardinal directions: earth/north; air/east; fire/south; water/west. And each of these pairs is symbolized in some way on an altar. Traditions vary, of course, but typically north is symbolized by a bowl of earth (known in urban areas as "dirt"), east by incense in a holder, south by a something which will burn (preferably inside something fireproof), and west by a chalice of water. (Note to my Unitarian Universalist friends: I'm pretty sure this makes the lot of you symbolic Southwesterners). As religious rites go, Paganism's are fairly straightforward thus easy to reconstruct if one forgets the finer points. Another point in its favor.

But wait. There's More!

Every so often, when my self esteem is in danger of reaching a psychologically healthy level, I threaten to start a "broke log." Similar in function to the maintenance log I will probably never get around to making, the purpose of my broke log is twofold. Primarily it is to help me plan my days. Variety, as we all know, is the spice of life and that, I have discovered, is also the secret to rewarding boat repair work. So rather than tackle similar types of repairs in succession, I like to mix it up a bit. If I fix (OK, fail to fix) a plumbing issue one day, I'll usually opt for, say, a carpentry or electrical problem to fail to fix the next.

I Am Shocked by How Little I Understand Electricity

As ardent followers of this blog well know, we now have lots of power on JOY. You know this because I've said so repeatedly. We know this because the guys at SALT said so repeatedly. Our solar panels generate 654 watts, our house battery bank has or is or is rated at or generates or stores over 1500 amp hours...of something. On top of that, we have (had) a 5 kilowatt diesel generator. Doubtless, it will be a generator again someday. It currently serves as a 392 pound stern weight, handy in the event a whale or some other leviathan runs up JOY's butt.

There's No Place(?) Like Home...

We have broken an anecdotal record here at the Marathon Marina: most packages ever delivered to a slipholder.  In another post, I'm taking up the issue of hobbies for live-aboards.  One of Jane's, we realized the other day, one that has carried over from our land lubbing days, is online shopping.  Since we can only get packages while in port, Jane buys all the items she's been putting into her online shopping cart for the past however long.  It's like Christmas morning meets Groundhog Day.

The day before yesterday, we got a clear acrylic tray which we're using as a spice rack.   While cleaning off that thin film of grease that always coats the tops of spice jars, I let out a quick chuckle.  To Jane's query regarding what I found funny about wiping off spice jars, I said with what felt like a sad smile, "spice jars always get that coat of grease on them, even on a boat.  It's something familiar.  So little is here."

The guys from SALT, who have been on JOY for so long now, they're practically crew are pretty much finished now.  They would have been finished sooner but we kept adding back those last few things on our original list.  Yesterday, our iPod integrated marine stereo arrived.  We were going to toss "install new stereo" onto the tail end of their list, but a potent combination of impatience (the stereo that was on JOY when we bought her didn't accomodate iPods, so the 626 song "boat track" we so lovingly compiled before we left has been shelved all this time)  and chagrin (it's embarrassing to own a boat and be so inept at all things electronic) inspired us to give hooking it up ourselves a go.

What's in a Name?

Today, not unlike the last going on four weeks worth of days, we are in Marathon, FL waiting for our JOY to receive transplants of most of her "organs."  Marathon, as evidenced by its one road, the Overseas Highway which connects all the keys to the Florida mainland, is a drive-through town.  This is not only our opinion, but also that of the several residents I've surveyed.  Even they say that there's not a lot to do here for fun; for fun there's Key Largo and Key West.  Marathon's draw is its affordability.  Live here, play somewhere else.

our home and our home away from home

This begs the question of what we do here day after day while JOY remains barely inhabitable for the want of innards.  We got lucky with our slip assignment.  Jane asked for a spot as close to a wi-fi antenna as possible which also happened to be next to a spacious tiki hut.  Most of our days are spent here.  Jane orders things we need, keeps up with her facebook pals, writes posts to our blog and to Cruiser's Forum, and keeps track of things political--all with her iPad.  I mainly work on our website.  One day we moved our pc, our mac, our printer, our scanner, and our new portable refrigerator out there and got a lot of "officey" things done.  Well, Jane did.  I mainly worked on our website.  We affirm our love for that tiki hut daily.

You Should Have Seen the (half of one) that Got Away!

Threw a hook in the water on the way to Bimini just to see what would happen.  Look what happened!

I think a 'cuda ate half my fish.

That's what I get for being skeptical.  By the time I realized I'd hooked this kingfish, somebody (I'm pretty sure a barracuda) took a huge bite out of it.  

Then I threw out another hook and got this guy in two minutes.  Go figure.

Eat half my lunch, will ya?

JOY fishing

First fish

Fish CLEANING, lesson from Phil with Klitzer looking on

Big Excitement on JOY - a fishing expedition. Phil was our teacher and guide.  Sally, his wife, made the best Wahoo salad you'd ever hope to eat, along with some awesome cookies.  Phil and Sally brought their good friends, houseguests from Germany, Klitzer and Karen; and Max, my mom's friend, also came along.  What a fun day.  Great weather and great company, even though the fish weren't biting.  But, hurray for us, we didn't return empty-handed.  This is Ean's FIRST FISH EVER.  It is a Bar Jack, they tell us, and after Ean got his lesson in fish cleaning and Karen shared her cooking secrets, we had a very tasty meal.

Pete's 18th Annual 50th Birthday Party: A Pilgrimage of Sorts

We have sailed to Little Harbour to attend a party in honor of Peter Johnston's 50th birthday.  We have never met Pete, as far as we know, and it's not really his 50th birthday and the whole affair is just an excuse to raise funds for a charitable organization known as "Every Child Counts."   ECC is a philanthropic organization which, without benefit of governmental funding, seeks to provide educational opportunities for children with developmental disabilities.  Pete's "birthday" is one of several annual fundraisers they hold.

We're that much more happy to attend the party knowing that the proceeds are going for a worthy cause, but it is not really the reason we're going.  We first discovered Pete's Pub in the summer of 2008.  We'd decided to rent a car and drive the length of Abaco just to see what there was to see.  Pete's Pub and Gallery was listed in the guidebooks and online as a not-to-be-missed stop and so, we didn't.  At the time, vehicular access to Pete's Pub seemed recent.  Something about the 2+ mile extension cord which T'd off the main highway and provided electricity to the pub, gallery and the rest of the Little Harbour community.

Congratulations, it's a Girl

This evening it dawned on me that "Joy" is our version of having a baby.  I suspect we are like that
couple who discovers they're pregnant unexpectedly. We bought and moved onto our boat before we really knew as much as we should about any aspect of cruising and like expectant parents, we reassure ourselves that there really is no perfect time and that we'd never be as prepared as we think we should.  And here she is, this boat that I love but also live in dread fear of. Every unfamiliar sound it makes might mean something that needs attention, maybe something serious.  What will I do when--not if--something breaks?  Will I figure out how to fix it myself?  Will I have to call in a specialist?  Will one be available?  Am I already remiss in taking care of her?  Is there something I should be doing that I'm not and will this have deleterious consequences in the near or distant future?  Any moment of every day something could go bad.  Eventually something will.  Sooner or later, she'll come down with something.  What then?

Oh, sure, fix it or get it fixed.  But what if we (and by "we" I really mean I) suck at it?  I thought I'd be good at home remodeling and what a hash I made of that.  What if I just can't figure anything out?

There's really only one way to do this and remain marginally sane (an aspiration I frequently hear both new and not-so-new parents utter): Learn not to expect from us more than a day's worth of good intent and honest effort each day.  So at the end of days like today, when I nearly burnt out the fresh water pump because I was preoccupied with other matters and only peripherally aware that the washer had been on the same cycle for three and and a half hours because it kept calling for the pump to send it water which the holding tanks had none left to deliver, and then later dropped the BRAND NEW tool we bought to get the old name off the boat into the river before I'd finished the job, I have to console myself with the fact that at least we didn't sink our baby, so all in all, we're doing OK.

That, fortified by a good cigar and a few shots of JD (moms and dads, don't try this at home) helped me commit to put in another day's worth of effort and intent tomorrow.  Let's see how that goes...

Old Dogs, New Tricks

In the past couple of weeks, our beloved Floey-dog has died, and we have passed the one-year anniversary of my dad's death.  It's been hard to write about an exciting future when I've been thinking about the past.  Linnea has lost her old dog within the last few months as well.  Both Harriet and Floey had long, good lives (14+ years), and they both were "put to sleep" in the end, instead of being left to struggle through to their last ragged breaths.  For both of us, these more recent losses have re-surfaced our feelings about Dad's death, with thoughts of how much harder it was for him.  Ean and I were with him in his last hours, and although I can hope that he was not aware or in pain, his BODY struggled and struggled on.  The nurse told me that I should hold his hand and tell him it was all right to "let go."  I hope the part of him who could have understood that message was long gone by then.  We felt the hanging on, more than the letting go.  The end of a life is a sad thing to see, however it might be accompanied by relief, or love, or happy memories, or gratitude.

One of my favorite pics of Floey - Sunset Lake

But I haven't been immersed in sadness.  Ean and I have been engaged in some impressive change efforts.  Old dogs ourselves, learning some cool new tricks.

Strictly Sail Chicago

I'm sitting in a weather seminar, speaker is Lee Chesneau. He is making me feel d-u-m. Ean is in the diesel maintenance session. Hope he's having more fun than me. We went to George Day's ten things they didn't tell me about cruising. Good stuff. He and his family circumnavigated in late 80s - similar route as Andante, some of the same ports. It feels like I FIT here.

We toured a Hunter 50 - big and beautiful, with a jacuzzi under the master berth, for pete's sake. And, they say, a walk in closet - but really it's more like "edge in sideways" closet. As Ean commented, if you want to walk in, you better not put any clothes in there. But who are we to talk. Boatless dirt dwellers. Wish there were catamarans here.

We're having trouble with PATIENCE. But as I continue to do my executor duties, the money is becoming more real. And as the money becomes more real, so does the boat. Spending the inheritance on a big fat cat. Pretty crazy. But better than a big house, better than a bunch of stuff, better than traveling on airplanes and staying in luxury hotels, better than keeping it invested in the stock market for "a rainy day." So by process of elimination....

But my dad left me something more important than the money. He left me with the idea that we can do this, because he did it. He picked up and changed his life and had a grand adventure. He left me with the impression that The Boat Trip was the most important thing that he ever accomplished - a guy who started and ran a successful business, built launch pads and airports and all manner of buildings that still stand, made lots of money... He considered our time on Andante as the best time of his life.

WE CAN DO THIS. Lucky lucky us. And as we just heard from George Day - it's better to be lucky than to be smart.

Becalmed

Waiting to start my swimming lessons, waiting to go to Strictly Sail in Chicago, waiting for all this to get underway, we spend hours poring over pictures of cats online. We're pretty sure our first boat will need to be 36 feet or so, have two staterooms (no more), and two heads with separate showers. We want the galley up, non-slanted windows, no louvers.

Of course finding out things like who makes reliable engines, or fuel pumps, or water pumps or light bulbs or any of the other innumerable things that makes boats "go" isn't often listed, or if it is, I still don't know what to look for. So, more reading of more books on basic sailing, more discussing how we'll finance this wacky plan, more getting excited about ebaying all our possessions and sailing into the world. We talk about weaning ourselves off coffee (have even started on this), weaning the cats off kitty litter and onto sand, (not this yet), and how impressive we assuredly will not look pulling our boat away from the marina for the very first time (that should make for a delightful future post).

We really are moving into this life and moving out of our old ones as well--Jane, less so than me as my current schedule has enough commitments to make it impossible to look for or learn how to operate a boat for more than two years. We can't wait that long; our "real" lives fade behind us as this not-as-yet-real-life becomes clearer all the time.

I try to be patient and make do with what progress I can. At least I'm making headway on one of the items on my list...