Odd Days

When you first think about going cruising, your focus is intense.  You have a goal, a plan, and a list of things to make it all happen. If you're fortunate, like us, you're rewarded with a couple years of intensely beautiful experiences - sunsets, new friends, dolphins, manatees, and an occasional moonlit passage.

After a few years, you might find yourself stuck on a dock working to replenish the cruising kitty like we are, and things are suddenly different. You're not cruising, but you're not really landlubbers either. You're stuck in this odd, fuzzy time of endlessly hot days, feeling a bit like the floating experience when coming out of general anesthesia - one foot in each world but not fully in either one.

The past six months on the dock have been odd days like this - floating - but not focused. Days meander by, but no thought is given to where we go next. No boat projects are being done because the need to have them completed is just too far away to think about.

The last week or so, though, the weather has made a decided shift toward Fall. For the first time in months we dipped below the 90° mark for a high. The breezes have picked up, announcing the approaching cold fronts. Something smells different in the air, a hint of dry leaves (although there aren't many trees that shed them here), and an occasional sniff of a wood fire somewhere takes me back to my days in Pennsylvania where the first fire in the fireplace signaled the change of seasons. It was just enough to break me out of the fog and start me thinking about what needed to be done to Kintala before we could leave the dock.

As I sat at the nav station working on a list, I could no longer ignore the weather station that resides just under the switch panel that has been inop since Spring. A new set of batteries, a spray of contact cleaner and a few wipes with emery cloth, and the weather station sprang to life once again. It took about 30 minutes, including the removal and reinstallation, a piece of our normal cruising life reinstated. While it might seem like a ridiculously small thing, that one little thing did much to lift my mood and put a smile on my face.

If you find yourself having to stop cruising for a while to replenish the cruising kitty (and most cruisers do at some point unless they are independently wealthy), there are a few things that I've learned these past two summers and I thought I'd pass them along.

• Nurture your dream while you're dock bound. Remember why you wanted to go cruising in the first place and find fellow cruisers to spend time with who can encourage you.
• Enjoy the little things. For me this past summer, it's been time spent getting to know three of our nine grandchildren. In the past few years we've only visited occasionally and there is no substitute for the day-in, day-out contact we've experienced the last few months.
• Find something to be thankful for every day. Your health, your friends, your supportive spouse, your home.
• Take care of yourself. Walk, ride a bike, eat well, read a good book.
• Connect with old friends and distant family members.
• Get lots of sleep.

Although I'm working part time now at a sail loft in town, I'm finding a few hours here and there to start on our project list which is mercifully short this year. All of our exterior teak needs refinished, our wind instrument needs repaired or replaced, our head plumbing needs the addition of a system to empty the holding tank at sea, and an errant leak needs chased down that dared to mar my new headliner from last summer's project list. These projects will be tackled while we await grandchild #10, due in mid-December, after which we'll start creating the possible routes to wherever we end up going this cruising season, a lot of which will be dependent on the condition of marinas along the way.

For now, here's a hodge podge of photos from the last few weeks, glimpses of sunlight through the fog.

A sail I'm restitching at my part time job with Sunrise Sails Plus. It's off a 65 foot ketch rig.

There's always time to climb a tree around here.

He was pretty happy with this coconut which he rescued from the water just outside the marina.

About half of the toe rail is now sanded. Next boat has metal toe rails...

The Coast Guard and Florida Fish and Wildlife have been raising these sunken boats to be hauled out and trucked away in a combined effort to clean up the local waterways. Some of them have been sunken for years, others fell prey to Irma

This was somebody's awesome power boat at some point

Cockpit time

One of the real joys of living on a boat, at least for me, is time spent sitting in the cockpit. The best cockpit time is evening and night while riding to the hook in a quiet anchorage. Mornings are good too, though I am not normally much of a morning person. The boat moves gently, pitching and rolling easy, swinging slow to light winds and changing currents. With a bit of luck dolphins or manatees will wander near while pelicans wheel by in close formation, wingtips just off the surface. If the water is clear enough to see the bottom, one has the feeling of floating above the earth and resting off the shore at the same time. After a few minutes the boat itself gets absorbed into and becomes part of the scene, then the cockpit, then its occupant. My guess is that land dwellers spend a lot of money on pharmaceuticals and counseling, or a lot of time sitting in bars or cathedrals, or all of the above, seeking just a hint of what one can find sitting in a cockpit of a sailboat, resting easily in the world.

In these parts though, there hasn’t been much cockpit time the last few months.

Except for the occasional passing hurricane / tropical storm / tornado, this summer has passed as still, hot, and humid. There was a day or two where it was just barely comfortable enough to sit in the cockpit at the end of the work day and down a cold beer. But even on those days a cool shower called and, soon enough, the insects would go looking for their evening meal. Florida can be a tough place to live in the summer when one is living this close to nature and filling the cruising kitty by working outside. Except for the time spent riding out Irma on the hard, Kintala has spent the last many months hemmed in, surrounded by pilings, with a boat tied close to her starboard side and a dull gray metal shed inches from her port side. There isn’t much to see, looking out of her ports.

This morning dawned just a bit cooler, with a breeze blowing hard enough to keep the insects grounded. Our neighbor to starboard left for a sail down to Key West, where they plan to spend a couple of days. No one has moved the shed, but it does help block the afternoon sun. If I hold my head just right, looking aft and slightly to starboard, the binnacle blocks the view of the nearest piling, it is a good several hundred feet across the basin, and the occasional pelican soars past. The local family of manatees poke their noses out of the water, blow and snort, and drift back down to the bottom to do whatever it is that manatees do to pass the time. There is no seeing the bottom and the boat moves gently right up until one of the mooring lines checks her up but, hey, I’ll take what I can get.

Though future plans are still vague, next week we will be heading out for a couple of weeks of visiting in St. Louis. The hope is that, once we return, the Florida summer will have broken enough that the air conditioning can be removed from our deck. It will be November after all. Friends north are already talking about freezing temperatures at night and daytime highs in the 50s. With the last of the hurricane season fading away (hopefully), we can bend on the sails as well. Kintala will be a sailboat once again, and Tampa Bay is just a around the corner. There is no reason we can’t spend a few weekends out there. Maybe more than a few, depending on how long we end up staying on this side of the state.

Find a little quality cockpit time.

And rest a little easier in the world.

Imps

I have an Imp in my life. She is the right size, though the bleached blonde hair and dancing blue eyes, instead of bat wings and tiny horns, tend to mask her Impish nature. However, when it comes to mischief and the determination to being the center of attention, no Imp is her better. Which makes perfect sense. Why shouldn’t a near endless flurry of pure joy, boundless curiosity, and fearless adventurism be the center of attention? A touch of the mischief just comes with the territory.

A couple of weeks ago, a small lump appeared in the middle of my Imp’s little tummy. It was coy, sometimes noticeable and sometimes not. Every adult in her life immediately moved right up to the edge of panic and hovered there. Her Doctor insisted there was no real reason to worry. Our Imp was eating and sleeping well, never complaining of feeling bad, or showing any sign of being in pain. Still, he couldn’t say what the lump was was, only what is wasn’t. And what it wasn’t was a (rather common place) hernia. He scheduled an ultrasound for several days later, allowing that it could be canceled depending on what he learned from further research and conferring with other doctors.

Ultrasounds are moderately expensive tests on toddlers, and the Imp is among the many in our country whose family can only afford health insurance that comes with a crippling high deductible. Which puts one in a weird state of mind, hoping that any looming medical bills remain as “out of pocket” expenses. Such could easily drive us into a financial hole so deep that climbing out would take several years, as happened with a cancer scare a few years ago. (One of the contributing factors to us being in Bradenton these last two summers.) But chewing through the deductible to actually get insurance support would mean entering that place from where the panic wells. Perhaps the Doctor would come up with something, and the ultrasound could be canceled.

The several days passed and the Doctor could not find any explanation for the lump that would negate the need for an ultrasound. So the Imp, accompanied by Mom, headed off to the hospital. Apparently ultrasounds are common procedures for those who ended up having reason to fear the worst. My little Imp was the healthiest one in the room. It was a thought that brought a deep ache to the heart and allowed the panic to edge in a bit closer. Why should fate smile upon those I love when so many, so deeply loved by others, dwell in the valley of the Shadow?

At the end of the test, the technician was nothing but encouraging. According to him, had the test shown anything of real concern, the radiologist overseeing the procedure would have admitted the Imp to the hospital forthwith. That she was sent home to await the diagnosis was a a positive omen. But, once again, though they got a bunch of “good” pictures no one would say for sure what this thing was, or even what it wasn’t. The panic edged away a bit, but it didn’t disappear.

Two days later came word, and the panic died. The Imp has a hernia after all, it just isn’t a very common one. Surprisingly, while spreading the good news to family, we found out my Sister was born with the exact same kind of hernia and has had it all of her life. Surgery was never required nor has the condition done her any harm. Good news made even better, but it seems there is still some room for debate. Word has it general anesthesia and invasive surgery have already been broached by the professionals.

When one climbs aboard an airplane the professionalism of those flying is assumed. There is good reason for the assumption since the crew, as the saying goes “will be the first ones in the hole.” They have skin in the game, and those in the back of the plane ride along on the crews determination to end the day in one piece. But it is difficult to make that assumption of the medical profession in the US.

Our medical industry is a profit center, not a health center. It would be far more lucrative for that industry if the Imp undergoes surgery rather than just going about her life. A stay in the hospital, specialists and drugs, doctors and nurses…what do you guess - $10,000 - $20,000? And the thing is, if something goes terribly wrong, no one in the operating room “will be the first one in the hole”. In fact, they will get paid anyway. Will they “feel bad?" Sure. They are human beings after all. But they have likely “felt bad” before, and will “feel bad” again. In the mean time they have student loans to pay off, mortgages to meet, and dinner to put on the table. American’s ratio of health care returned for dollars spent is the worst in the first world. Ours is also the only one based on making a profit rather than making people well. Are the two connected? Many insist not. Indeed, some insist that "market forces" will make for the best health care. I suspect (if you will forgive the pun) they are whistling past the grave yard.

It would be nice to think that we, as a people, have earned better than that. Maybe, much like a chain can be no stronger than its weakest link, a nation can’t rise above the level of its average collective wisdom. It is starting to look like this is the best we can do, the wisest we will ever be. This generation of America is never going to fix its health care system. We have reached the limit of our collective wisdom.

My hope is that such is a generational thing. There is a whole new generation of Imps out there. One of them owns a big part of my heart. She is fine. And my belief is she, and they, are going to be much wiser than we.

Assuming we let them live that long.