Throwback Thursday - The What and the Why

This post is for any of you that are considering the cruising life, but are still stuck in a cubicle on land. We still had our starter boat, Nomad, and were a year from buying Kintala.

The what and the why

Posted by TJ

Saturday March 20, 2010

There is no way to avoid it, we spend a lot of hours working on little Nomad. Much of the work is pretty serious stuff, engine cooling systems, electrical charging systems, bottom paint, re-bedding life line supports and bow pulpits; the kind of stuff that makes the boat work better and sailing her safer. (Though I tend to play it down a bit, it is possible to get seriously hurt on any sailboat, even on our little lake.) Jobs like replacing the step carpet, water damaged and moldy side panels, head hoses, and headliner, keep her cleaner and dryer and a more healthy place to spend one's days. New interior lights make her cabin that much more inviting. And all that teak work? That just makes her pretty.

We spend a lot of hours working on the boat, but not near as many hours as we spend working at jobs to support the boat, and the house, and cars and bikes... We enjoy all of those things but sometimes I wonder about the "degrees of separation" between what I am doing and why I am doing it. When I work on the boat there is no separation at all between the what and the why. My hands are in direct contact with my goal, get the boat in the water and enhance my experience of living on her for the weekends. When I'm at work, sometimes, I am not at all sure just what I am doing sitting at this desk, and I sure as stink sometimes wonder why.

Living on a boat, I imagine, is not the only way to have such an intimate connection with a life. A farmer might pull it off, a rancher, maybe a mountain man. But I have never been any good at making things grow, I don't really care for animals, (particularly ones that are much larger than I am and can kick me into next week) and there are no mountain men any more. I do machines, and have a killer case of wanderlust. At the end of a "boat-work" day I can pour a Rum & Coke and sit right down in the middle of what I got done that day. And then, if I want, I can pull up an anchor and head off somewhere else. (Unless we are on the hard!)

I suspect I am more than a little out of step with my world. From our first days at school we are taught to find our place in a complex society where the bit we learn to do can be added to the bit someone else has learned to do, all the bits added together, run through an even more complex medium of exchange and distribution, and somehow it adds up that most of us can pay to have a roof over our head and food on the table. It works pretty well too, modern society taking better care of more people than at any time in all of history. (Well, recent history might be an exception. The bits aren't adding up as well as they used to.)

But sometimes my bit doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, and how all the bits add up to credit card bills and house payments, a little vague. The bit I do this morning will be forgotten by lunch, the bit this afternoon lost in the haze before the drive home ends. Come evening I am not exactly sure what I spent the hours doing, or why it was worth one of my allotted days. In fact I can't think of anyone, anymore, who works for the shear joy of doing what they do. And that may be the saddest thought I have had in a while.

But it also explains my fascination with working on Nomad. I love working on our little boat, and not just to get her back in the water. I enjoy making her work a little better and look a little nicer. And when she does splash and make her way into the lake once again, she will be a tiny spec of form, function and joy moving across the water. In fact, I am of the opinion that every boat that hoists sails makes that day a better day. In the scales of the world having a good day or a bad one, a set of sails pulling hard in the breeze offsets a lot of ugly.

First Love

Your first boat will always hold a special place in your heart. When we found Nomad, we really couldn't afford to buy her but we risked it and reaped the rewards. She was sturdy, stout, and oh so forgiving of our stupid newbie tricks. She patiently taught, we slowly learned.

When the time came for new dreams, Nomad moved on. She stretched her wings to a huge lake in Idaho, plenty of room to romp the way she loved, flouncing her drifter skirts with no shallows to worry her keel the way Carlyle Lake did. Her new owner was happy, and we were happy she had a good home.

That owner recently fell on hard financial times, and once again Nomad was looking for a new home. I received an email this week from her newest owner and it seems that Nomad's string of good fortune is unbroken. She has found a devoted, skilled, caring owner with plenty of time on his hands to care for her. She sports a new roller furler, a beautiful new cabinet in the galley, and some loving small improvements throughout. 

The time to send her on her way was definitely at hand in 2011, but we will always remember her with fondness, and we're so happy her trail of Good Kharma seems to be unbroken.

Fair Winds Nomad, and treat your new sailing partner well.

Nomad's New Home

Nomad's new owner was kind enough to send us this picture of Nomad on her new lake in Idaho.  She made her land journey safely and now has a 10-hour sail to get to her new marina on the lake.  It looks like she'll be quite happy there and we're very pleased to have someone take her that will care for her as well as we have.

Bon Voyage!

Nomad hits the road...

... a figure of speech of course; at least I hope it turns out to be a figure of speech. The rig she left town on didn't look quite up to the task of hauling 6500 pounds of sailboat some 1700 miles to the northwest; but then I don't know too much about trailering boats. Should she make it unscathed she will find a glassier lake some 70 miles on one leg by 30 miles on the other, 1500 feet deep in places, as her new playground. A bit more room to roam than Carlyle.

Last night yet another round of serious weather pounded the lake, hanging around well into the morning hours. Since Nomad's new owner was on a tight schedule we crawled into foulies to start pulling rigging, sails, and what-not from the deck, the occasional lightning bolt dancing along the bottoms of the clouds as we labored. (It was far from the smartest thing I have done lately.) With just a stick left standing the new owner asked if I would motor his boat across the lake to the waiting travel lift while he drove the truck and trailer around the long way. Doing so would save him an hour. (Schmitty is in the BVI somewhere with a goodly number of the normally assembled. Not only does that make for a quiet weekend here in Boulder, it means there is no one around to operate our travel lift.) I was glad to do it so long as he understood that, when it comes to a certain Com-Pac 27/2, I am not the one insured any longer. Such details covered Mark and Bill jumped aboard with me and little Nomad motored out of Boulder for the last time. As we moved out onto the lake the clouds finally gave way to some sunshine, and we had the place all to ourselves. Not a bad way to bid a fond "fare-thee-well" to a good boat.

The day's efforts to get Nomad on her way left Kintala mostly looking out for herself. Translation? Not a lot of work got done and we didn't get to go sailing. Since, starting tomorrow, trips of the high-altitude sort will fill the rest of the week, Kintala will be a few days before she gets under sail for a second time. Even as we hope to sail more, items needing the "laying on of hands" continue to accumulate. The relentless rain was apparently too much for the main hatch over the saloon table. Moving about to start my day the boat heeled over in the wind and a big dollop of cold water spilled off the corner and right onto my sleepy bald head, landing re-bedding the hatch at the very top of the "do this next" list.

I feel kind of bad...

...that I don't feel kind of bad.

Though it's only Friday evening we have already been at the lake for a couple of days. After a quick, 1-day, trip south in the jet (and a seriously fun time shooting a GPS approach down to a few hundred feet in the rain) the rest of the week was kind of slow. But another corporate type airplane driver was flying into St. Louis on Wednesday with a full day to spend before heading home on Friday. He lives in OH, used to sail on Lake Erie, is looking to get back on the water, and was hoping to take a look at Nomad as a way to make that happen. I have a couple of vacation days to spare so Dan and Mark (it takes two to make most jets go so Mark had a day to kill as well) picked me up at the house and we headed to the lake. Deb had gone on before to open up the little boat and get her ready to show.

Once at the lake our guests were suitably impressed at the near record high water levels, and seemed equally impressed with Nomad. There was a nice breeze blowing out of the south so we offered Dan and Mark a chance to go sailing. Mark bowed out. It seems last week they were waiting out a day on a coast somewhere and went deep sea fishing. Turns out Mark spent more time feeding the fish than he did trying to catch them, so he was content to stay on the docks.

It was a pretty nice sail. We romped across the lake flying the working jib and main sail while just missing making 6 knots a couple of times. Dan spent a good bit of time on the helm and Nomad did herself proud. We haven't gotten an offer yet, but as I stepped onto the pier after the sail hand ended, I realized we might have taken Nomad out for the last time. And I was a bit surprised at how okay I was with the thought.

I expected to be a little more attached to our little Com-Pac, but the reality is we always knew she was our "practice boat". And she has been a perfect one. I hope she finds a good home. One where she can point her bow out into the Great Lakes would be nice as well, she deserves a chance to sail bigger waters than Lake Carlyle. But what ever happens, the time has come for her to sail off in one direction, and Deb and I to take another.

Dragging bumpers...

To a sailor "dragging bumpers" probably describes heading off with the fenders still dragging through the water. (Little Nomad suffers this indignity once in a while, her deck monkey occasionally forgetting that chore.) But I am still more pilot than sailor, and "dragging bumpers" is pilot speak for drag racing a thunderstorm to an airport. When I do it in the airplane I have a huge speed advantage ranging anywhere from 60 to 340 nm/p/h. I have onboard weather radar. And I usually have continuous weather updates from approach control and the tower. Doing it in a sailboat is a little different story.

After two days of pretty tame sailing and the season's first raft up Deb and I awoke this morning to the weekend's best winds. Knowing we had to keep and eye to the weather as storms were forecast, we headed out enjoying a really fun sail on a nearly empty, and quiet, lake. (The power boaters were out in droves this holiday. For most of the weekend all we could hear was the roar of motors turning dinosaur juice into noise. If my bike made that much of a racket they would throw me in jail! Early this morning though, they were apparently still nursing hangovers and had not yet taken to the water.)

We were about 3 miles south of the marina and on the other side of the lake when we decided that the clouds were taking on the solid look of approaching weather. Mid-western T-boomers can flash to life in surprisingly few minutes. Time to turn for home.

At first it was a struggle. The growing storms seemed to be sucking all the energy out of the sky. Wing on wing for a bit put us on a bad heading. A deep reach just shy of a run had us pointing better, but the GPS still showed only 1.6 knots on the VMG. This put the slip nearly 2 hours away. I wasn't sure we had two hours, but hey, we are (or are trying to be) sailors. Do the best you can with what you have and hold the diesel for last resort kinds of things. But as we watched the sky darkened and the first outlines of a wall cloud started to take shape. The VMG was up to 2.2, but we really had to make a decision on the engine. Best motor speed is about 4 knots. If we could catch a bit of wind we would do much better on the sails; I decided to hold off just a little longer.

It was a textbook example of getting it perfect. The wind freshened, Nomad leaned against the traces and soon we were making 5.8 knots directly for the "No Wake" buoy. Lightning danced behind us, thunder rumbled in an almost continuous song, waves danced, and the rain started to fall. But we had done everything we could think to do should we get caught flat footed in a gust front. The boat was closed up tight, the Bimini was folded up and secured, the fenders were deployed, we even had a plan for spinning up into the gust and blowing the halyards. That proved unnecessary as our timing was spot on. The incoming weather was pushing a huge ridge of air in front of it, and we rode that ridge right to the harbor inlet.

As we closed in on the marina, (us and a slew of others running for cover) we turned just enough to blanket the jib and dropped it to the deck. Even with the jib gone Nomad was making nearly 6 knots flying dead down wind on the main. Near the point we tacked the boat into the wind, dropped the sail neatly onto the boom and swung the bow for home. Friends waited for the dock lines as we coasted into the pier and I didn't quite get the last of the teak covers on before the deluge arrived.

I know I am a deranged individual. But riding that wind, playing right on the edge of an ugly gybe to keep the main sail full of push, making plans to cover possible contingencies like a massive gust or the engine failing at a bad moment, and working with Deb to get the things done we needed to get done, was some of the best minutes of sailing we have had so far. I love sitting at a quite anchor, swinging gently in my hammock and sipping a sundowner. I love rafting up with friends and splashing around with the kids in the lake. I love those easy tacks where everything seems to be on rails and you look up from your book once in a while just to check on traffic. But I really love it when you look to the sky, your boat, the water; read the weather, make the plans, and do it right. There is a whole bunch of stupid in the world and I contribute my share. But not today.

A 10-Isobar weekend

For those of you who might not be pilots and therefore might not care about such things, isobars are lines of equal atmospheric pressure drawn on a map. The closer they are, the steeper the pressure gradient, the stronger the wind. Yesterday we looked at the Intellicast Wind Cast and there were 11 isobars in the state of Missouri. This makes for a very windy day. The winds were 20-25 gusting to 35, the boats were heeling in the marina with not a stitch of canvas out, the hallyards were clanging away on the masts, and no boats were racing in this, the first race of the Boulder Yacht Club 2009 racing season. Here's the map for tomorrow, just so you have an idea of what I'm talking about:

The Boulder Yacht Club still had a productive day, sold many items at the club garage sale, and ended the day with a fantastic fish fry / potluck dinner. The fish had been donated by the fishermen who fish off our docks all year as a gesture of thanks for allowing them to use the facility.

By the end of the dinner the wind was dying down enough to make a night sail so 10 of us squeezed into Dennis' boat and took off. We made it all the way to the dam and back posthaste with a favorable wind and only 2 tacks (well there were a couple "accidental half-tacks" entirely attributable to the potency of Captain Morgan's 100 proof rum and entirely too many skippers in the cockpit.) Tim and I found the foredeck to be the safest place to be and we stretched out and enjoyed the stars. The evening was brought to a close with the most amazing display of sailing skill as Barry sailed the boat all the way into the slip without the engine, a feat that is completely beyond my skill at this point.

The wind today was even worse than yesterday with frequent gusts to 40 so we spent the day sanding and varnishing teak and finishing up my gelcoat repair project. As promised, here are some pictures of the finished instrument pod and our newly overhauled compass, just returned from Viking Instruments who did a tremendous job.

The completed project:

The shelves for the instruments are mounted to the bottom of our drink holder:

The overhauled compass. They put a new glass on and fresh compass fluid so we can actually see the numbers now!

Freshly varnished teak:

Acetone mixer

It has been a while since I regularly worked in chemicals; I had forgotten the exquisite case of heart burn that comes with sniffing Acetone. Add a belly full of Cheez-Its and a warm Coke burp and you will swear that life as you knew it is coming to an end.

"And what," you might ask, "were you doing sniffing Acetone, munching on Cheez-Its and drinking warm Coke?"

And I would answer, "Working on little Nomad." Of course.

Through a happy set of excuses I ended up spending the day at the marina with a box full of parts, a bag full of tools and a squawk list nearing twenty items. Items 1, 2 and 3 on that list were: Replace the head hose, fix the water pump wiring and re-seal the porthole in the head. Items 1 and 2 killed most of the morning. I started item 3 by pulling the clamping plate off the outside of the porthole, a task that proved pretty easy. The years had turned what had been sealer into something more like dust, which was no match for some Scotch-Brite and Acetone. Me being me, I figured the rest of the portholes could use some sealer work as well and so I just kept going. By porthole #3 I was getting kind of hungry. I hadn't packed a lunch and didn't what to stop long enough to drive into town, so I raided the snack locker and came up with Cheez-Its and Coke. About half way though porthole #4 the Cheez-Its and Coke were well mixed by my constant motion and started some kind of bubbling action that was distinctly uncomfortable and produced a whole range of low frequency noises. By the time I got to pulling the nuts and screws out of porthole #5 the Acetone was joining the fray. I have to admit to being somewhat distracted while working porthole #6. I haven't lit my insides up like that since a long ago night that included too many tacos and just enough Tequila. Every time I had to lean over to do something it felt like the fire was starting at my navel, flowing up my throat and leaking out my nose. It was a relief to finish torquing the last screw and start the task of cleaning up. I sat kind of straight up during the ride home and by the time the Arch hove into view I was feeling more or less human again. Deb had Mexican Bean Dip ready for my dinner. It was pretty good but I was careful to drink a lot of milk.

Cruise to Indie

The forecast for this weekend was rain rain and more rain so we decided to use the opportunity to take a little road trip to Indianapolis to see Grandson #1. Although Tim and Melanie have seen him a good bit in the last few weeks due to their frequent trips to Pittsburgh, I have been homebound and hadn't seen him in almost a month. Mom, Dad and baby are all doing well and Christopher even blessed Grandma by skipping his normal evening meltdown. In fact, we had a rather pleasant evening rocking and walking and chatting about all things baby. Some pictures:

And oh so suave in his little hat!

And what sailing blog would be comlete without a picture of the future sailor, complete with sailing overalls...

We did stop by the marina on the way home to install our freshly overhauled compass. I will post some pictures later. It was just too rainy to risk the camera. Hopefully next weekend we'll get some drier weather so I can get the gelcoat repair done and we can start on the porthole leak-fixing project. For this weekend, though, the cruise to Indie was just the thing.

2009 Shakedown Cruise

Aaannnnnndddddd.....we're off! (like a herd of turtles)

    

After a whole lot of engine work over the past few weeks, including oil changes and fuel filter changes and impeller changes and coolant bleed work, we finally got to go on our shakedown cruise for 2009. Most of the other folks at the marina that went out yesterday did so a lot earlier in the day, but we were determined to finish two of the projects (the new bilge pump installation and finishing the instrument installation) before we went out. We finished late afternoon and had just enough time to cross the and return, a good thing, since the wind was due out of the north which makes thi the preferrable trip anyway. No speed records today, but just as well since the 58 degrees while sitting sheltered in the marina is a whole different experience than out in the middle of the lake in 16 knots of apparent wind. We got to see quite a few of the migrating terns diving for their dinner, and just before we made the marina channel we got to see one of the last lines of white pellicans heading north for the breeding season.

Boats are being splashed a few a day, so Margaritaville (our dock's name) is filling up and the population of the marina is growing day by day. It's good to see friends from last season and meet a few new ones, but in a way I'll miss the quiet of the winter marina and the company of the emboldened wildlife. One of the liveaboards at the marina was getting ready to take off for his parents' home for Easter weekend yesterday and he made a comment that struck a chord. He said, "You know I'm getting in my truck to go "home" to my parents' for Easter but I feel like I'm leaving home to go somewhere strange". I so know what he means. Since it's too windy to sail today I find myself dawdling around looking for small projects that will prolong our time here. Anything to keep from having to go "home" and back to work on Monday...

Season Starter

We did get a short sail in yesterday after all. The winds were modest and out of the north so we managed just a short sail across the lake and back. Our newly mounted instruments gave Nomad's max speed for the outing at 4.5 knots and the engine ran as smoothly as it ever has. So the boat worked pretty well.

I, on the other, was more than a bit rusty. The sails went up, the lines got coiled and stashed, the fenders (all but one that I somehow completely missed) got stowed in the lockers; but nothing seemed to flow smoothly. I didn't do much better getting us back in the slip. Fortunately our slip mate has not splashed his boat yet so I had a little extra room. Even with that I managed to come up a bit short and a big step away from the dock. Nomad made the last few feet to home by being hauled in on lines. Still, it was a good weekend. We got several projects finished, made notes of some things we need for other projects, and got in the first "shake down" sail of the year. We spent the evenings having impromptu parties full of good food and even better stories. And we are now just four weeks or so from the Catamaran class.

Anticipation

Anticipation... It is raining like mad outside, thunder and lightning. The list of boat work is kind of long, (it took four trips to load the truck with stuff this morning; parts and bits and tubes and pumps...). I hope to actually get off the dock for a while this weekend but I am not holding my breath. Between the weather and the work it may be another weekend in the slip.

But I am still looking for an excuse to leave work early and head to the lake. I'll get grubby, collect a few more cuts on my hands, probably swat at an insect or two, mutter a few choice words at boat designers and their ancestors, enjoy a few cold ones and sleep soundly at night. There is something magic about sailboats...

More Vertical

I am about finished doing the flight planning for a trip going out tomorrow. At first we were going to Ft. Lauderdale over night, home on Wednesday. Late last week the trip got changed to an overnight in Detroit. This morning the trip got changed again, back to Ft. Lauderdale for the day with a late evening run to Biloxi for the night. Home Wednesday from Biloxi rather than FXE. Constantly changing schedules is one of the reasons business people find their own plane useful and cost effective. (You can't get from St. Louis to Ft. Lauderdale to Biloxi via the airlines in one day, let alone change the trip a few times in a few days. Well, you can, but you wouldn't want to pay for it!)

On a related subject I have been reading the blog of a guy named Robert Watson. He lives aboard a Leopard 40, the exact boat currently at the top of Deb's and my "wish list." (He named his "Changing Spots".) In addition to his boat his playground is the same we hope for; the East Coast and the Islands. In fact he has spent time in Cape Cod, Annapolis, Charleston, St. Augustine, and a whole list of other places I hope to sail to some day. His schedule changes pretty often as well; sometimes due to weather but more often (it seems) because he is really enjoying some place where he has thrown out an anchor and then finds it hard to leave. He seems a man completely content with his life.**

And I have to admit to a certain small bit of envy, of which I am also a bit embarrassed. After all I am already one of the luckiest people on the planet, doing pretty much what I love to do and making a good living doing it. But with a couple of weekends spent working on Nomad, the promise of warm weather to come (though it was snowing this morning) and our chance to learn about sailing catamarans coming up in about 6 weeks, I find myself thinking less about being in the sky and more about being on the water. Can a person who is already content be "more content?" Or is that like being "more vertical?"

**Ed Note: Robert is currently in Malaysia and is a frequent contributor to Noonsite

A note from a boat

I'm sitting inside Nomad at the moment, the rain is falling outside, the heater is running at my feet, and I am about as content as a person can be. Before we leave this afternoon I have to winterize the engine again. (Freeze warnings!)

We worked pretty hard on the boat yesterday, making headway on the cooling system and running the wiring for the instruments. That turned out to be a huge job. I think I jumped in and out of the cockpit lockers about 100 times but with any luck we can finish up the instrument install next weekend. With all the rain we have found some leaks in the boat, two in particular are pretty noticeable so they have moved to the top of the "FIX THIS NEXT" list. Leaks or no, with the next nice day we get we are going sailing. (How else can we check to see if the motor is really working?)

The best part of the weekend was the group of people in the marina. Spring prep work on the fleet is in full swing. Yesterday boats were being put back in the water, bottoms painted, masts stepped, rigging rigged and in the evening an impromptu dinner party to share food and knock back the Marina's stash of various wines, beers and spirits. Well, there is some thunder about so I need to get off line. (I'm sitting next to 35 feet of solid metal lighting rod!)

Snow flakes, Snow Geese,and Whipping Wind

The past week we've had flowers blooming on our trees and warm sunshine abundant. Old Man Winter, in a toddler tantrum similar to my granddaughter's, decided to show us who's boss this weekend with one last bout of winter ice and snow, just enough to kill all the daffodils that were cheerily swaying on warm breezes just 3 days ago. Unfortunately timed, this fit of his, with the only days off Tim and I were to have together on the boat. In spite of the fearful forecast projected for Saturday, we headed out to the marina Friday anyway, because a bad day on the boat is still better than a good day elsewhere. We were the only ones who challenged the weatherman's warning and after dinner in the marina clubhouse we spent a half hour bundled up in the cockpit enjoying the lack of human noise and the announcement by the local frog chorus that they had returned and were open for business.

Morning came with the decision that Tim would head to Pittsburgh earlier than his planned Monday morning departure, to relieve his sister from hospital duty (their mom has been ensconced in the hospital for 2 weeks after a fall) and give her a much-needed rest. The decision of stay or go home for me was made rather easily. I figured if I was going to learn to live on a boat full-time, then I should expect to learn to live on a boat in cold, windy, icy, gray, nasty...well you get the idea...weather.

Since it was too cold and wet to accomplish any of the boat projects I had on my to-do list, I spent the day puttering around the marina, building a wine rack for the clubhouse, a project I'd been putting off for some time, and chatting occasionaly with the marina office manager. Toward the end of her shift she asked if I was staying all night to which I answered yes. "All by yourself?" she asked. "Why would you do that? You're nuts!" I wondered about this myself as I braved the 35 knot wind and 40 degree temperatures to head back to the boat after my canned chicken soup dinner. I wondered why I was actually doing this when I had a perfectly warm house with a functioning fireplace just an hour and ten minutes away. Just then I rounded the corner at the end of our dock and found myself face to face with a great blue heron who hadn't heard me coming due to the howling of the wind and hadn't seen me due to the bulk of the houseboat moored at the corner slip. We eyed each other, he assessing the threat, me soaking in every detail of his perfect beauty before he would finally muster the strength to draw his 7 foot wing span into the heavy wind, leaving me with that prehistoric, garbling cry reminisent of his ancestors. I stood there for a moment longer, oblivious to the wind and snowflakes whipping around me, and said out loud "That's why."

For some, a boat is an end. For them it's about speed, or the latest model, or the race trophies, or the tinkering, or the horsepower. For me, the boat is the means. The boat gives me the excuse to be on the dock at the exact same time as the heron, or the sky full of snow geese, or the ball of fire sinking in the western sky. It gives me an excuse to curl up in the V-berth wrapped in the boat quilt and read a sailing yarn cover to cover without the guilt of undone laundry on the closet floor. "But the means to what?" you say. "All means have an end" The end for me is to sit in my rocker when I'm too feeble to sail any longer, and know that I experienced more than the three walls of my cubicle. And if doing that requires a rough weekend in freezing, icy, wind gusts, then bring it on, Old Man Winter!

Projects

There was a light sprinkle or two last night. It is hard to describe just how satisfying it is to lie snuggled under the quilt while listening to the rain hit the overhead hatches. If you have ever spent a night dry and warm in a tent while the rain fell outside, you know the feeling. Now add the gentle movement of the boat, a line or two slapping lightly in the wind, and the creaking of fenders against the dock, and you get a hint of just how well we slept.

This was a good day after a good night, though we spent it at the dock. Engine work filled most of it for me, putting stores on board was on Deb's "to do" list. We also ran up the main sail for a clean and check, mounted the Bimini, ran a couple of lines and straightened up the dock box. (Dock boxes are like garages. No matter how hard you try they fill to overflowing with stuff you think you need but never seem to use!) Tomorrow I hope to run the engine and start hunting down coolant leaks.

A few others are working on their boats as well, but for the most part the marina has been a quiet place this weekend. I am looking forward to the friends and fun of summer, but if there is a better way to celebrate the first weekend of spring then having a marina mostly to yourself with a boat to sleep on at night and play with during the day, I can't imagine what it would be.

Firsts

This is the first official day of spring. (Yay!) This is our first night on the boat for this season. (Yay again!) This is also the first time I have actually made an entry on our blog while sitting on the boat. (Ain't wireless neat?) I only wish I could say we were rocking gently at anchor where the water is blue, the beaches are white, the air is warm and I am sipping on a frozen margarita. But we are securely tied to our slip where the water is brown, the beaches are mud and the air is cool. As for the frozen margarita, well, a Rum & Coke on ice will have to do; as soon as I find a little Rum, a little Coke and a little ice.

Still, I am lucky enough to be on Nomad with Deb this weekend, which makes me lucky enough. The week just past was unexpectedly hard, even harsh. Those to come make no promise of being easier. But being on a boat helps me put things in perspective. The larger world of water and gulls, breezes and open skies, reminds me that all of us who share this little planet face similar challenges, shared hard times, common sorrows, and unexpected hurts. We take our turn in the drama of living. When a bit of luck comes our way we need to remember to smile and appreciate the moment. Cheers.

Road trip

This weekend Deb and I celebrated our anniversary by making an impromptu road trip to check out some sailboats. Such trips have been a staple of our 34 years married. Part of our family lore is having bags packed and at the ready, and nearly any excuse is good enough to get us out the door. This weekend we had a couple of excuses that were better than average; anniversary, nice weather, and a Gozzard 36 for sale at a place we had never visited. Green Turtle Bay is a very nice resort / marina a few miles south of Paducah, on the Kentucky and Barkley Lakes. It is deep in the area devastated by last winter's ice storm and we were stunned at the damage done. I have never seen anything quite like it; thousands of trees just knocked over by the weight; thousands more with limbs sheared or trunks simply splintered. For hundreds of square miles roads, rail roads, camping areas, homes, backyards, and fields were covered with uncounted millions of tons of debris. The songs of chain saws filled the day Saturday and will fill many, many more before the work is done. Even then it will be years before the forests recover.

The area around the lake, though equally damaged, is still a very pretty place. Pretty but a bit odd. It turns out Kentucky Dam lies in a dry county. (Two massive lakes in a "dry" county. Ours is a very strange language.) There is something fundamentally uncivilized about a place where you can't buy a Rum & Coke to go with dinner.

The Gozzard is (as regular readers here know) on our short list of mono-hulls. But we have never actually set foot on one so the chance to step aboard a real live example was not to be missed. As often happens with such trips serendipity played a part and the owner, (who actually lives only 5 miles or so from our house in St. Louis) was in KN this weekend as well. He was only too glad to give us the grand tour and share his stories of cruising the Gulf. It turns out he used to belong to the club in Boulder and one of his old boats, a 30' Catalina named Paradise, is tied to a slip not far from Nomad.

Details are details but the Gozzard may well be on a short-short list, though Deb and I both agree that 36 feet is about as small a mono-hull as we would like to consider for full time living. Even though a tad short it was a very cool boat with a myriad of well thought out little details and first rate workmanship. And "tad short" applies to just the inside. With a 6 foot bow sprite and dingy divots the overall length of the Gozzard 36, stem to stern as they say, is just shy of 50 feet!

 

After a night in a very nice one-bedroom condo overlooking the marina we headed back to St. Louis via Boulder and some time spent on Nomad. (We didn't mention the Gozzard while on board.) The winds were howling today, at times gusting past 40 knots. All the boats still in slips heeled over in unison; leaned on by the enthusiastic breeze. Halyards were set to clanking all over the yard. A friend's home-made boat box lid proved no match as it was pried open, ripped from its hinges and sent spinning into the water between the docks. I fished it out with a boat hook as it floated by since it has some sharp metal edges and I'd hate to see it gouge another boat. I'll return it later.

Deb and I did the normal stuff to care for Nomad while being careful to keep hats (and bodies) from taking a similar dip. Working around a rolling boat with lines strung all over to hold on covers; it would be easy to miss a step or catch a toe and end up wet, cold and embarrassed (or worse). At the end of the afternoon we kind of crashed in the v-berth for a while. It was pleasant indeed to be curled up together, safe on board while the winds whipped overhead, feeling our little boat rock against her lines and bump her fenders against the dock. In fact it felt like home.

Closer every day

...the season, that is. The Boulder Marina "No Boat" party was last Saturday at a hotel far from the docks. It was a good time for seeing everyone we have missed seeing at the marina over the winter. Lots of laughs, lots of stories, lots of cheer and maybe (just maybe mind you) some small indulgences in a bit of alcoholic beverage filled the evening.

Sunday morning I made the run out to the boat. As it turns out I was the first official "customer" of the new boating season which, (so I was told) starts on March Uno each year. March or not I was dressed in 5 layers and it was still a bit too cold to spend a lot of time on the dock. As usual I checked the dock lines, charged the batteries, fired up the heater to drive out a little moisture, checked the bilge, and generally poked around while listening to a little Eric Clapton on the CD player. Though it was too cold, it was kind of nice to be on the boat without having to brush away spider webs, dodge dive-bombing wasps, or slap away hungry mosquitoes. Warm(er) weather is promised by the end of the week and it can't get here to soon for me.

When we first bought Nomad she seemed small inside. As the season went on, our little boat grew a bit bigger each time we were on her, finally growing to just the right size. Back on her last Sunday she seemed a little small again. My guess is in a few weeks she will be just the right size once more. Last season we only did two "nights out" on the boat, both raft-ups. This year I hope to make it a regular habit of sailing away from the dock Friday night or Saturday morning and not tying back in until Sunday afternoon. I also hope to do our first solo night sail this year. Just for learning's sake Deb and I also want to take a turn at "single handing" the boat; forcing the other to sit and watch while we try to sail Nomad by ourselves. (Deb may have to lock me in the head!) It should be a fun year.

The urges of geese

Last weekend Deb and I made the run to Indy. (I think weekend runs to Indy will fill a couple of otherwise on-the-boat-weekends this year.) On the way home we stopped by the marina to check on Nomad. Somehow we managed to leave town without taking a boat key with us. All we could really ensure was that she was still floating and tied securely in her slip. We also checked out the big river / house boat that has moved onto the dock down from Nomad. It seems one of the other marinas on the lake has seen a serious rise in slip fees. Rumor has it a lot of new boats will be tied up around our little Com-Pac 27 this year. The river boat was an impressive piece and one could surely live aboard in comfort; but I am pleased that Deb and I are looking to the sailboat / ocean route instead. The river boat just looks like a floating house. And rivers, if I am honest, don't get far enough away from land to tug at my wanderlust.

Wanderlust. A serious disease with no known cure. Mine has been smoldering, banked by a winter too cold to do much riding and an economy that has put mine (and a lot of other airplanes) in the hanger more often than I like. It has been weeks since I have been "on the wind." Chafing like a poorly tended line, working too hard at any project to distract myself from this inner irritation, I have become short-tempered and hard to live with, pacing about the place even as I enjoy what we have made. And then we saw the geese.

Thousands, 10s of thousands, of geese met us at the lake this weekend. They literally blackened the sky as they took off from the fields, jockeyed positions to fan out into long lines of formation flying, and headed off north east. Clouds of them lifted, looking for all the world like tiny thunderheads building over the dam and into the still cold sky. It was breathtaking, numbers uncountable, responding to an ancient instinct and rules of cooperation known only to animals on the fly. Those of us bound to Mother Earth were completely ignored by and of utterly no consequence to the airborne concert of noise and motion and spectacle. Geese respond to an urge they can't name and don't pretend to understand. They don't really make any plan. I suspect they have no clue of where they are headed. Maybe they have no idea that they are headed anywhere. Maybe being "on the wind" is simply the life of a goose. In any case they just go. It may well be that they can't NOT go. It is what makes them geese.

Afterward, during the ride to St. Louis, (with the heater cranked to high to fight off the cold) I got to wondering how it is I have never seen such a thing before? Surely geese have been collecting in such numbers for all of time geese have flown anywhere. Clearly the lake is a regular stop on their travels. For more than a decade I have lived barely an hour from that lake. Yet this was the first time I have experienced one of nature's more amazing displays. For all of my miles on motorcycles, hours in the air, nights in tents and time spent sitting alone in empty places in the world, this is one that I missed. And it was just outside of being in my own back yard. How many more utterly unsuspected yet astounding things are there to see out there? What surprises wait on an open ocean in a small boat? What is there to find along thousands of miles of coastline, poking among islands, anchored off of beeches or settling into new coves for a day or a week or a month? I don't know. I may never know. But I am fully caught up in the need to try and find out. I no more understand the need to try than the geese their need to go.

So now I'm a little bit better and a little bit worse. Figuring out how to go, working to be able to go, is also a part of the going. The only hint on the outside that we are on our way is little Nomad tied to her slip in a land-locked lake about as far from an ocean as is possible to be. But on the inside? The need to go is tied to a kind of thought that we have already left. How far we can get is not known. Maybe to where a boat is home. Maybe to where home is the East coast, or the East coast and the Keys, or the East coast and the Keys and the Islands. Maybe we can't get that far. But somewhere in the fever of my wanderlust I know the going is a thing in the past.