Still in one piece

Hurricane Irma. Image from NASA.gov

So, for what is apparently no reason whatsoever, the baddest hurricane in Atlantic recorded history rampaged its way past Tampa without leaving so much as a scratch on my family. When we hurried back from PA last week to help prep boats and get the kids out of harm’s way, the prospects for such an outcome seemed slim. For a while, sitting in the hotel room in Atlanta and watching Irma track further and further to the west, there seemed little chance that we could come away unscathed. In the last few hours before reaching the Tampa area the storm wobbled north instead of north by north west. That sixty miles, in a storm that measured hundreds of miles across, was the difference between us spending the rest of this week getting things back to normal, and spending it trying to figure out how to rebuild our lives. A strange week, provoking some odd thoughts.

I have, after more than 5 decades of miscellaneous adventuring doing this or that, had my fair share of close calls. This one was different. My normal brushes with disaster normally have nothing to do with losing stuff and everything to do with me not being around to enjoy the stuff any longer. They also tended to last just minutes, sometimes seconds; not days. The profound sense of relief after this close call is balanced with being a bit embarrassed at being so relieved. It was, after all, only stuff that was at risk.

We ran north in a compact rental car filled mostly with clothes, electronics, and a few odds and ends. Next time I think I’ll take some tools along…just in case. Had things gone the other way it would be difficult to replenish the cruising kitty and get our feet back under us based on just my good looks and sunny disposition. A few screw drivers, a handful of wrenches, and a hammer or two wouldn’t take up much room. They could also have ended up being the most useful things still in my possession.

We may be hanging around the Tampa Bay area longer than we thought. Key West, Marathon, Biscayne Bay, and the Dinner Key marina took a real beating. There are stories of sunken and lost boats with navigation markers missing in pretty much all the water that surrounds Florida. We often think of Biscayne Bay as our “US home”, and Dinner Key is one of our favorite places. But those are all places that will be a long time recovering, and really don’t need us in the way until they do. So it may be a while before leaving the Tampa area via a small sail boat makes a lot of sense. And it may be a while before leaving a job fixing boats in the Florida area makes a lot of sense either.

A photo by Douglas Hanks as seen in a miamiherald.com article

I am not a fan of Florida’s Governor Rick Scott who, among his other policy failures, walks in lock step with the science-rejecting Republican party. Yet he relied on that very same science to track the hurricane’s progress, to anticipate storm surges and flooding potentials, and to estimate potential wind damage. He issued evacuation orders base on what the scientists were telling him without hesitation, and likely saved many lives in the process. He was relentless in his warnings about the dangers of this storm and was tireless in addressing issues like fuel shortages in order to get people the resources they needed to flee. He must have been instrumental in getting the hundreds upon hundreds of utility company trucks and crews flowing into the sate to restore power and repair infrastructure. It is too early to tell how he will fair now that the storm has passed and the long, and expensive, clean-up commences. But there is reason to hope he will look past his ideology and see the needs of people instead. A rare and wonderful thing for any American politician to do these days, Republican or Democrat.

Survivor’s guilt is a real thing. We know so many people whose boats were lost, who are still in shock just trying to grasp the enormity of the blow they have taken. Good people, the kind you hope your kids and grand kids grow up to be. Seasoned too, many of them; well aware of the challenges of living this close to nature, not easily caught off-guard and unprepared. But no one can stand up to a storm like this one. Luck, good and bad, makes the call. And yet, somehow, that isn’t enough to explain why some lives have been irrevocably split between "before Irma" and "after" while, for others, Irma will fade quickly from everyday thoughts.

The spike in fuel costs from Harvey and the fuel shortages in Florida in the face of an impending Irma have me rethinking the thought of buying a trawler. No gas, no go, no matter what. I know they shouldn’t…but they do.

The paint booth we fixed after the Monday morning tropical storm of a few weeks ago wasn’t up to this challenge. It caved in, part of it landing on the stern rail of a boat strapped down near by. That appears to be the only damage done. Maybe we should have left that rope tied to the tree?

We spent nearly 70 hours driving since leaving for PA, 70 hours in 12 days. I don’t like driving that much any more. If I ever do buy another car, it will certainly not be a Chevy Sonic. What a horrible little thing. I’m glad it belongs to Enterprise and not to me.

Weather in Pittsburgh was in the mid to upper 60s, low 70s during the day. Weather in Atlanta was upper 60s to low 70s. Here in Florida the forecast is for upper-upper 80s, some 90s…all the way to the end of the forecast period. Hurricanes, thunderstorms, (it turns out the boat parked next to us took a lightning hit which wiped out all of its - very expensive - electronics) floods, heat. The weather in Florida is getting old.

Backing Kintala out of the haul out pit to put her back in her slip reminded me that she still doesn’t reverse worth a damn.

But I am sure glad she is still in one piece.

My Love-Hate Relationship with Dinner Key

Coconut Grove, FL is one of my very favorite places. There are beautiful parks to walk in, shops and restaurants set in landscaped nooks and crannies, loads of free or extremely inexpensive transportation options, a fantastic dinghy dock, a brand new marina complex with very nice and also very clean bathrooms, and a skyline view that is second to none, complete with awe-inspiring sunsets.


Unfortunately for us, it means being in the Dinner Key Mooring field to access it.

Don't get me wrong. There are many things to like about Dinner Key. The marina staff is great (especially Susan on the shuttle), and it's like cruiser central for meeting people, sharing ideas, and happy get-togethers. But the mooring field is horribly exposed and every time we come here I'm queasy half the time. Unless it's one of those very rare Biscayne Bay calm days, I can't do much of anything but lay around on the settee and read or play solitaire but, if it's like today, and if I have to put a huge load of provisions away while Kintala is bouncing around in 2 foot waves and creaking and groaning on her mooring lines, I'm going to have a vicious headache in less than 10 minutes and be down for the count in half an hour. It also makes for a very wet ride into the dinghy dock in the dink. Every time we dink into the marina, I look with envy at the Coconut Grove Sailing Club moorings in their protected harbor, all sitting calmly in flat water. We're excluded from those moorings because of our length, but one can dream.

Tomorrow we meet up with a bunch of fellow cruisers for breakfast, run our propane tank to get filled, get our pumpout from the pumpout boat, and get ready to head back over to No-Name Harbor to stage for a crossing to the Bahamas. I'm torn, because I really, really love this place, but the calm, protected waters of No-Name are calling me.

What a Great Day for a Sail

Miscellaneous Pics Underway

Just a few miscellaneous pics I had on my camera for your enjoyment this Saturday evening.

Our friends' Bristol 38.8 Skimmer leaving the anchorage at Middle River

Sunrise at Middle River as we left the anchorage to head for No Name Harbor

A section of the almost continuous skyline between Ft. Lauderdale and Miami

We were heeling so hard that I was looking way up in the sky from the low side of the boat.

One of several races along the coast. This one was just north of the lighthouse by No Name Harbor in the background.

Miami skyline from our mooring ball at Dinner Key

Bare feet and short sleeves

A few posts ago I mused about bare feet and short sleeves still being off in the distance. Kintala has covered a bit of distance since then. Well, a bit of distance at sailboat speeds anyway, and has settled into No Name Harbor for a couple of days. My feet are bare. My sleeves are short. We have even retired the heavy quilt, taking it off the the v-berth and storing it away. The rising temperatures, mostly blue skies, and definitely clearer water, have done much to lift the mood on our old Tartan. Sometimes it is hard to tell just how deep the hole is until one has climbed much of the way to the top.

We are, as has become the routine on this journey south, waiting out the passing of another cold front. There are hopes this one will slip by without the drama of tornado warnings and 60 knot wind gusts. The last one caught the weather gurus so flat-footed that they are being very careful with the forecasts. The Deep Weather discussions are full of debate, it is kind of fun to read. Here are experts, people as deeply steeped in the discipline of weather as anyone has ever been, who are smarting a bit from having be slapped around by their own hubris. Something that should happen to everyone once in a while.

It is a regular occurrence for sailors and pilots. Both routinely see their plans fade away in the face of oncoming weather. It is hard to boast that “I am the master of my fate” when one sits for a couple of days waiting to get across Biscayne Bay, or a couple of weeks before getting a good window for crossing the Gulf Stream. (We could cross Biscayne Bay, but would rather sit out the weather in the protection of No Name than riding it out in the exposed Dinner Key mooring field.) A touch of humility and a dash of humor goes a long way toward making life easier. Both are gifts that kind of go together, ones we can enjoy ourselves and share with those around us at the same time. They are the opposites of arrogance and sarcasm, which also kind of go together, and are the more likely to be shared for those of us who live in the US of A.

Bare feet and short sleeves, humility and humor...they all seem to go together pretty well in the world of blue sky, clear water, and warm temperatures.

It is good to be back in Biscayne Bay.

Miscellaneous pics

An awesome oyster boat from 1884 that used to be a sailboat and was converted to steam and now diesel. The guy brought it all the way from Mystic, CT down the ICW.

There was an influx of Man-of-War jelly fish into the harbor yesterday. It was bad enough that they had a warning posted at the gate of the park.

This guy (girl?) is here in the harbor all by his lonesome. He sleeps in the tree right next to our boat.

This last one was from Dinner Key right before we left.

On you mark …

Get set.

Go!

No ... Wait!!!

Kintala is in the final stages of staging to the Islands. A few minor tasks remain to be finished come daylight. By late morning off the mooring ball and across the bay to anchor outside of No Name. We would anchor inside No Name but it is pretty sure to be full of boats who are staged for the Islands. In or out it looks to be a one-night stand. Sunday looks like the day. Maybe Monday. But this evening a weather check brings different tidings, and the fun of being a cruiser and completely responsible for making these kinds of decisions has begun.

Sunday early is lumpy north bound Gulf Stream due to still fading south and west bound winds. Picture two enormous freight trains, thousands of miles long weighing uncountable millions of tons, running in opposite directions on parallel tracks … tracks that are too close together. As they pass the trains bash and bang into each other, bending bits and sending passengers flying. That is the Gulf Stream with a north wind. That is tonight and tomorrow, tapering off on Sunday. Monday is quiet seas and light winds, the trains running the same way at the same speed. Minor bumps but hardly noticeable … the calm before the next batch of weather.

Such weather is now forecast to arrive in Bimini sometime Monday. Maybe Monday night. And maybe Monday midday. Monday early midday is high tide at Bimini. Bimini is the kind of place a boat like Kintala needs slack water to get on and off the dock. (It being the place, last year, where I bashed the dock getting out, bent our new Mantus anchor and Kintala's anchor roller, and splintered one of the marina's pilings a bit.) It is also the kind of place where one does not go in on an ebb tide with a west wind. Don't be late as the weather will likely be at the inlet before the flood tide returns. If the wind directions sound confusing its because the forecast has them swinging nearly 360 degrees in the space of barely a day.

Going in the weather window of Sunday means bashing head long into the waves and wind for 10 hours. Going in the weather window of Monday means motoring. Motoring means putting the WesterBeast to work. In our case it means betting missing a beating on the WesterBeast running flawlessly throughout the trip. If it doesn't we will be sitting ducks in the Gulf Stream as the winds turn to north - the freight trains running in opposite directions again - and the weather ramps back up to ugly. Back in my old life I often bet the farm on a single engine. It sort of comes with the territory of being a night freight driver in single engine airplanes. I didn't like it much, but it was the only way I had to pay the bills. And it was a long time ago when I was young and bold. I'm not so young anymore. Not so bold either. And I don't much like betting the farm on the WesterBeast.

It is 2020 in the evening and the plan is still to head across the Bay the morning. But I wouldn't bet on it.

Note: Night freight single engine airplane drivers had a check list should the engine quit deep in the darkness. Slow to best glide speed. At 200 feet off the ground put the landing gear down. At 100 feet off the ground turn on the landing light. If you don't like what you see, turn the landing light off.

Re-thinking solar …

More than a year ago, back when we were still reeling from stopping the boat from sinking, rebuilding the rudder and steering system, and replacing the standing rigging, there was a short debate about getting electrical power on the boat when she was away from shore. You know, out where we were thinking we wanted to live. (A thought that that turned out to be completely righteous. May it be many a moon before Kintala is attached to dry land once again!) I crunched the numbers every way I could. Putting even a modest amount of solar collectors on board came out considerably more expensive than buying the Honda 3000i and feeding it a little gas now and again. So the Honda took up residence and Kintala went on her way. Since our journey started out with weeks of motoring down the ICW, taking the internal combustion route seemed even smarter. As our first year unfolded we found ourselves dockside for months at a time. Solar panels were for out-island explorers and we had yet to make that grade. Solar power was kind of cute, green, touchy-feely, and got good press. But the hard core math of using dollars to fill the batteries with magic juice could not be denied.

The unfolding year, for all of its trials, also brought the chance to dabble in some solar harvesting. Kintala found her way half way to the modern age. The cost of our install added up to several hundred dollars, but included rebuilding the Bimini frame to support the weight of the collectors. The cost of the panels and controllers has fallen dramatically in the past year plus. Those residing over our cockpit and the fancy bit of electronics mounted in the aft cabin that controls them, can now be had for less than $400. The Honda cost just shy of $1000, so the material costs of Soichiro Honda vs. Ra now come out slightly in favor of the Sun God.

Total installation cost may still tilt the balance the other way for some. I don't know what the labor costs would be for hanging and wiring panels on a boat. Back in my old life projects like that usually costed out at one half labor, one half parts. So adding $1000 plus of labor to the cost of a solar system still favors Mr. Honda's technology in the cost-effective power battle. There are other thoughts come to mind when considering the balance as well. Powering up the boat with the Honda 3000i is shoe-tying simple. Plug in the shore power cord. Pull on the Honda cord. Done. Mr. Honda's little generator has been stone cold reliable and when it is carrying the boat all of the AC circuit is powered up as well. Charging an assortment of computers, iPads, phones, spot lights, radios, and other communications gear, is done out of hand. And it is done out of hand day or night, rain or shine … so long as there is a little gas in the tank.

The solar takes no cord plugging or pulling. It works its magic all by its lonesome and without the noise and vibrations Mr. Honda brings to the task … so long as the sun is shining. Charging the computers is not part of Kintala's DC capabilities at the moment, and we have just two ports available to juice up the aforementioned iPads, phones, etc. Something is usually missed in the rotation, making whatever that something was inoperable just when one reaches for it. At some point in the future the computers will have an inverter available to feed them their daily requirement of magic. It is on the boat, just not wired in. Even when it gets integrated into the electrical circulatory system, rumor has it such things just honk down the battery power. The Honda doesn't even notice the added weight of carrying a computer or two, so these are things to be sorted out after the deck monkey gets around to installing the thing.

Going with the Honda was the right thing when we did it. But now, if I was outfitting a boat, the Sun God would get the nod and solar power would be high on the “this makes life easy” list. With cost now falling to where it is, going without sun power doesn't make near the sense it once did. I would go with Ra and the boat's engine as back up if money concerns forced a choice between Ra and Mr. Honda, though keep in mind that only works if labor is personal effort and not cost out of pocket.

So the current evolution of my “magic boat” is DC generating capability out the kazoo. Solar, wind, and lots of battery bank. (Wind … I wish the wind generator people would get the memo on falling cost per watt.) AC power needs would be kept to a minimum, with a truly magic boat being able to thrive without any shore power capability at all. Indeed, my “magic boat” is never tethered to dry land, so a shore power AC system would be a waste anyway. (Besides, how many boats have been lost by fire caused by AC / shore power faults? We have heard of several just in the short time we have been out here.)

My conversion to sun power is complete. It is cost competitive with the Honda, needs no gas, and makes no noise. But it does need daylight. Lots and lots of blue sky daylight. Those who dream of high latitude cruising, (a dream I understand but don't see in Kintala's future) may need to take a different look. For tropical dwellers though - even those on a tight budget - big black panels gazing at RA is the way to go. Not to mention it's a bit more friendly to our turtle neighbors.

One Half Magic …

… is so much better than no magic. We know people who have magic boats. Sitting quietly at anchor or on the mooring they suck all the energy they need directly out of the passing light of the sun or the gently moving currents of Mother Earth's atmosphere. It is all very cool and futuristic.

4:00 in the afternoon, sun almost down, still 4.8 amps going in!

Kintala makes her magic the old fashioned, internal combustion, way. Kind of stone aged, but it keeps the lights on. Or she did, right up until 1211 this afternoon. At 1211 a breaker was closed that allowed 200 watts worth of magic to flow. Two-hundred watts is probably not enough to carry the boat without an occasional jolt of internal combustion juice, but one half the magic is still pretty amazing. Truth to tell I wanted to just sit and stare at the amp meter for a while, mostly to convince myself that this project is finally done. I'm not sure what it was about the solar panel install that made it such a relentless grind. The salon table took much longer and was much more work. Rudder repair, keel joint repair, wind vane install, work bench / tool storage, not to mention the original blowed-up V-drive disaster; there have been so many serious projects that one would think something like installing solar panels is just another in a long line. But it wasn't. The solar panels were tied up with the summer of The Bear. The Bear crossed time lines with the Thing in PA. Somewhere in my subconscious little brain this project was more of the same, another bruising bit there was no avoiding.


At 1211 this afternoon it felt like 50 pounds slipped from my shoulders and disappeared into the bay. The sun shown brighter (On newly installed solar panels!), the air was cleaner, the wind blew gently, and the boat rode easy. For the first time in weeks, maybe months, maybe many months, life feels like life fits again.

With the solar panels doing their thing, Old Friend Alex of Yacht-a-Fun (newly met just today) offered a ride to the LPG tanks topped. Routine. But it is something one must do when getting ready to head to the Islands. Indeed, the only thing standing between Kintala and Island Places East Of Here is some provisioning and a weather window. It feels like we have caught up with the tribe, taken our place with the others “waiting to cross”.

Kintala's electrical system may be just half magic now, and maybe she is carrying just a half store of cruising magic. After all, the magic is mysterious stuff, impossible to measure, and doesn't often hang around long. But it has been a while since the crew of Kintala has felt its touch at all, so tonight is a good, good night.

Departures

In our 43 years together we've experienced many departures. As pilots, we're very experienced with the term, a term that requires a huge amount of work in trip planning, weather planning, traffic avoidance. We've done too many of those kind of departures to even count. Then there's the departures from the multiple places we've called home over the years, also aviation-related since they always involved job changes in the ever-so-fluctuating aviation job market. Then there's the infamous departures related to our move onto the boat - leaving Boulder Marina, leaving Carlyle Lake, leaving Oak Harbor and leaving the U.S. But by far, the hardest are the departures from family and friends.

Some can't do it. Some find after a bit of cruising that they just can't tolerate the goodbyes, and they call it quits. It's maybe the most frequent question directed at me, that of how I can say goodbye to grandbabies that will be almost unrecognizable the next time I see them. It's a tough and justifiable question, and one I have a hard time helping people to understand.

For 38 years I gave nearly all of my available time and most of my money to my children and their children. It was a good run and my life is the richer for it by immeasurable amounts. But my children have their own lives, carved from their desires and, hopefully, from the opportunities we made available to them. They need the time to grow their families and shape their adult lives, lives that I am an inherent part of, but not the whole any longer. Cruising is my chance to spend some time making my life richer and more meaningful, crafting stories and memories to share with my grandkids, and finding opportunities to share this deeply satisfying lifestyle with them. It's a chance for me to be both more relevant and intentional in my living, a chance to stand true to my beliefs about society and our integration into it.

While some goodbyes are surely permanent and will leave a hole in our hearts, we view most cruising goodbyes as temporary. We visit family and friends and Skype or Facetime beckons for those in-between fixes. We have sundowners in the cockpit and share meals with good cruising friends and weeks, months, or years later we run into them. With the interconnectedness of the cruising community, there is always this feeling of belonging. If you participate, you are always part of that whole.

This morning our good friends Bill and Tricia of Island Bound departed for places South. Since they were on a mooring ball right behind us, we had the opportunity to spend some quality time with them, to get to know these long time blog followers personally, to share some food and drink over sunsets. Next to them, blog followers Alex and Diann of Yacht-a-Fun are moored who we have yet to meet in person due to family travails. Behind us a few mooring balls are Paul and Deb of Kelly Nicole and over two are Keith and Katrina of Happy Dance. These are the type of friendships that you just don't say, "Goodbye" to. "Seeya later" was the sendoff of choice because, whether we actually ever do or not, these good folks will be such an integral part of our cruising community that we will actually see them in the face of every new cruiser we meet.

Goodbye? No. Fair Winds guys, and Following Seas. See you soon.

Liberty Ships

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Between 1941 and 1945, 2710 Liberty Ships were built to haul combatants and supplies to the battle fields of WWII. Those ships must have made up a large percentage of the guesstimated 1,768 Merchant Ships lost to war conditions. There appear to be no accurate records of Merchant mariners lost, but another guesstimate ranges toward 10,000. Mass produced, pressed hard in service, with an expected useful life of just five years, nothing about the Liberty ships hinted at glory or glitz. Theirs was a theater of unrelenting hard work and terrible risk offered in the service of their namesake … Liberty.

I sometimes think of Kintala as a kind of liberty ship. She doesn't carry the honor of service and sacrifice those sailing the stormy waters of a World War earned, but she does offer her crew a taste of personal liberty that is increasingly rare in this world. Sundowners and conversations shared with multiple fellow cruisers since we abandoned land living suggests I am not the only one who looks at my little floating home this way. We, as a tribe, take our liberty seriously. It is the thing most attractive about our little gypsy band.

Sometimes though, during amazing and enjoyable conversations, it seems that, as good as we are at living a liberated life, we are less good at recognizing what lies behind this life. The common idea seems to be that liberty is something we grasp and hold onto, by and for ourselves. An idea that plays well with the rugged individualist, Master of our Fate, ethos of America. But that isn't really true, and thinking that it is can put liberty at risk.

Liberty isn't a condition that we make for ourselves, it is a gift we accept from a community. It is, in fact, a rare and precious gift rarely offered in human history, and is only available to those who live in a society that cherishes the idea of personal liberty. Only in such a society are people protected from the power of the elite, of religion, of land owners and overlords. Only a society that actively and strenuously protects the civil liberties of all can offer the gift of liberty to any. No individual can wrest liberty from the mob, the crowd, the tyrant, or the oppressor. The lone “free spirit” is only as free as the community he or she lives in will allow.

Only in such a community can the gift of liberty be offered. Each individual is responsible for accepting that gift, unwrapping it and applying it to living as each sees fit. It is a gift we offer to each other. I can accept the gift of liberty offered to me by the whole. I can be part of the whole that offers the gift to you. But I can't offer it to myself, by myself. Liberty is a community thing. It is, at the risk of goring some oxes, a gift offered exclusively by enlightened, progressive, liberal societies that cherish the idea of civil rights being protected for all and offered to all.

When any society, group, or tribe abandons that responsibility, when people neglect to protect the liberty of their neighbors, the gift is lost for all. It is the scourge of this modern world. Here in America, mass media and our political elite have propagandized liberty, defining it as my right to tell you how to live, how to love, who to worship. Liberty is confined to allowing one to add as much as possible to some corporate bottom line, free only to consume as much as one can. A large part of the rest of the world has dismissed liberty as being of any value at all. Toeing the community line, be it religion, ruling party, or commercial interests, is the only consideration. (As in America, those three interests are often wrapped into a single, crushing, weight.)

The cruising community lives in quiet protest to the death of liberty, holds on to the gift, offers it to any who chose to come this way. Each of us goes our own way when and how we see fit. Some are world travelers, though there are parts of the world they can't go because the gift is not offered. Some, like the crew of Kintala, don't stray as far. But near or far we husband the gift for others, sharing information and skills and support so others of our tribe can continue on their way, when and how they see fit. And they husband the gift for us. It is a shared responsibility and, in a world increasingly hostile to the very idea of living unencumbered, light footed, and considerate of the world around us and the people in it, we are doing a pretty good job of holding on.

I think those who crewed the original Liberty Ships would be proud of what we have done with the gift they labored and sacrificed to protect.

The Bear floats away ...

The Floating Bear has found a new home. Daughter Eldest and Family did all they could to find their way back to a life on the water, but it just isn't to be … for now. Regardless of what their future might hold, the idea of The Bear sitting alone on the mooring doing a slow decline to “abandoned boat” status, was too sad. The Bear deserved better and Daughter Eldest figured out how to make that happen. So today Deb and I helped the new owner find his way around the boat.

He is a young licensed Captain who works here in Dinner Key, and The Bear is his first boat. He went out of his way to help Daughter Eldest and Family the months they lived here and is a good friend of the clan. All said and done the Family can face a future that does not include the constant financial drain of owning a boat, and a young Captain has his own piece of life on the water. Not the desired outcome, but not a bad one either. The next time you are sitting in the cockpit, sundowner glass cold in hand, have a good thought for The Bear and her Captains, both old and new. May they all find the wind at their backs and following seas.

Living on the water has taught me that we are much more like flotsam and much less “The Captain of My Fate” than we, particularly us strutting Americans, like to admit. Daughter Eldest and Family are safe and warm while awaiting the arrival of Grand Child Newest sometime in May. The Bear is in the hands of an enthusiastic new owner. All is well with the world. Except I'm not there yet. For me a lingering sense of failure surrounds the Saga of The Floating Bear. By any rationale I can manage, two parts of my family have taken nothing short of a massive flogging. Floggings that, no matter how many insist otherwise, happened on my watch. My best efforts only managed to make things worse. When the family needed at least a marginally competent Captain, I managed flotsam. The Universe was playing Master Level Chess. I came to the board sucking my thumb and clutching my Blankie.

Still, there is a thing about flotsam that most of us miss. Regardless of how rough the sea, flotsam just keeps on floating. Towering waves? No matter. Giant breakers rolling massive ships on their ear? Passes almost unnoticed. Sink a bit of flotsam deep as you like, it pops to the surface ready to go on as far as the wind blows or current runs. Indeed, flotsam goes on long after the Captain has met his match and taken up residence in Mr. Jones' Water Side Hotel.

I doubt I'll ever be flotsam enough to shrug The Bear off completely. There will always be this nagging feeling that I got that one wrong. But maybe I'll be flotsam enough to keep going anyway.
 

Cheers!

LBC (Life Before Cruising) meant very little free time. Tim and I both worked. A lot. When we were home, our time was filled with tending to the business of life outside of work - cooking, cleaning, laundry, yard work, vehicle work, and the endless list of errands that accompany land life. It also meant that we had very little time for friends. It's a good thing that we happened to be best friends because we didn't spend much time with anybody else.

LAC (Life After Cruising) has been another story. We've met more people in the 18 months since we pulled out of our home slip than we had met in the 20 years prior. Maybe it's because we have more time to spend in the quality kind of discussion that builds relationships. Maybe it's because that discussion is not hampered by scattered concentration that is thinking about the million things that need done before the next work day. Maybe it's because we all share the same love of the water and of this unique lifestyle, a common ground of experience that paves the way for easy friendship. Whatever the reason, we're endlessly grateful for the many deep friendships we've forged around our life of cruising.

We got to spend the evening on Kelly Nicole, our good friends Paul and Deb's Morgan 44 Center Cockpit, telling stories and talking about their impending departure for places South. They will likely beat  us out of here and, since they are heading to the deep reaches of the Caribbean and we are not, we will likely not see them again for some time. It was a good evening filled with excellent food and lots of laughter and as we climbed into the dinghy I realized that even if we don't see them for a couple years, when we are again reunited, we will pick up right where we left off. It is the way of Cruisers, and one of the things I most cherish about this lifestyle, this sense of belonging to a group of like-minded souls who really care. As tired as the song is, I still keep humming this bit of the Cheers theme:

Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name,
And they're always glad you came;
You want to be where you can see,
Our troubles are all the same;
You want to be where everybody knows your name. 

Cheers!

Taking it easy ...

The plan for today was to ease back into life on the boat. Deb is still sore from having America's health care system prove to itself that she did not have a life-threatening disease. I am suffering from the post-daughter-post-grand kid visit blues. I admit to being more suited to life on the water than with the steady drum of a house full of children quickly overwhelming my senses. That doesn't mean that being far away from them doesn't make the heart hurt. It will take me a few days to remember the smiles without remembering the good-byes. In any case, the goals for today were pretty modest: get the dink leak fixed, launch it and get the motor running and, maybe, do a little more clean-up work in the inside of our little floating home. 

(Ed Note: The dink leak deserves a special comment. When you have water working its way into your inflatable, don't automatically assume it's a leak in the body of the dinghy. If you have one of those drains in the transom that swivels open and closed, take it apart and replace the diaphragm. The diaphragms on them are incredibly flimsy and tear easily. It's worth a couple bucks and 10 minutes of your time.

I am on record as having nothing good to say about the little Merc outboard that shoves the dink on its way. It has been a constant pain since we first brought it into the family. It has never responded well to sitting and now it has been sitting for a month, untended, unused, and unloved. No telling what kind of fit it would throw at being called back into service. Anticipating the worst I turned on the fuel, eased though four pulls with the ignition off just to limber things up, set the choke to full, took a breath, and gave the cord one more genteel yank. The Merc fired up and settled into an easy idle like it had been running all day. I'll be a son of a skeptic, one freaking pull! No one can ask more of an outboard than that it start up first pull and run like a top.

Feeling pretty good about the world, our reworked Bimini frame caught my eye. We hurried to get the solar panels mounted before heading to cold country, and some of the support tubes I added were just wrong; odd angles, weird aesthetics, funky looking … wrong. Gazing at them in the glow of Merc magic the fix to making them right was obvious. Even more surprising, it actually worked out mostly as envisioned. The only down side was working in stainless. Tubes needed re-cut, a task plus when one is hacking up a lung while cutting with a hack saw.  Also, I don't much care for the Allen head lock screws that are supposed to hold the tubes in place. They are okay so long as the loads are all in compression, but under tension? Under tension I am much happier to see blind rivets instead. That way, pretty much no matter how hard the wind blows, tubes can not be pulled out of fittings, thus letting the Bimimi flap its way into the wild blue. But that means drilling stainless steel tubes and installing stainless steel blind rivets, neither of which is particularly easy when one is working with hand tools in the small cockpit of a cruising boat. (Wood workers have no idea how good they have it when it comes cutting, drilling, and fastening.) Though the job was pretty “easy” it still took the better part of six hours, with wrist and arms now complaining about wrestling steel all day.

Deb, being barely a week out of surgery, was going to take it even easier today. A small load of dishes needed done which is a pretty easy job, so long as the drain actually drains. Kintala's didn't. Deb, knowing that I was elbow deep in steel bits, just dove in and started taking the drains apart. The first I knew about it is when she came up the companionway ladder to show me a drain line completely blocked with some evil looking, vile smelling …. something. A couple of hours later she had the drains fixed and the dishes done, finishing up about the same time I was putting the last rivet in place. So, tonight, Kintala's Bimini frame is much improved, her sink drains are much improved, her dishes are clean, and her crew – in spite of being a bit worse for the wear – is pretty much back into the swing of all things cruiser.

Tomorrow we are going to take it easy. I may even get back to estudiando un poco de español.

Really.

Home is …

... where a body can thump around the deck barefoot, on Jan 15, without having toes freeze off and fall into the water.

... where the funky aroma of boat greets the nose as the hatch slides back, leading to a couple of hours of mold patrol even before the bags get unpacked.

... where one tosses the dink in the water, not to get back off the boat, but just to clear the forward hatch so it can be be fully opened, the inflow of salt air pushing some of the funk out the companionway.

... where the tiny solar panel keeps the batteries near full charge and the generator, brought to bear for the first time in near a month, runs just off idle even with the 'fridge working hard to make cold again.

... where Biscayne bay lays quiet, giving a pair of returning sailors a chance to regain the use of their sea legs.

Our neighbor's boat from the cockpit

Daughter Youngest dropped us at the airport at O-Dark-Thirty where the final “good-by” lingered. Just after sunrise, Southwest Flight 288 rolled onto runway 30L, spun up the turbines and turned thousands of pounds of refined dinosaur juice into thunder and thrust. Before half the day was gone the flight crew dropped the jet gently onto 27R at FLL. Friends Bill and Ann provided the ride past the store and back to the marina, then fired up their dink to haul me and a pile of stuff out to the mooring field. Deb followed a few minutes later, taking the shuttle after checking in at the office and picking up packages and mail.

Once aboard we found a box of cookies and a bag of coffee sitting on the nav station, beside a note welcoming us home. By evening we were sitting in the cockpit watching the lights of Miami wink on as the sun faded out. The transition from winter in St. Louis to Kintala in southern Florida is a jarring one.

Tomorrow we will pick up where we left off, try to settle into a routine once again. I want to get back to working on Spanish, getting a bit more exercise, and getting Kintala that much closer to being the boat we want her to be. We made it back, but the visit north looks to make for a serious heading change. Plans for “next” are completely undetermined, but coasting easily into the sunset is no longer among them. Perhaps it was unreasonable to ever think that is was.

No matter. We stand on a deck once again, not a floor. Forward is the bow. Ports and hatches open to let in the air and the sunshine. Land is a few hundred yards away. Gulls and pelicans fly overhead. Dinner was in the cockpit and soon the v-berth will rock us gently to sleep.

Home.

Figure it out ...

Deb has let spill part of the tale of our Holiday trip to the center of winter's abode. There is nothing like ice and snow and sub-zero temperatures when one has been living in the sub-tropics for more than a year. (Note to self, schedule visits North in spring or fall, Christmas notwithstanding.) There is nothing quite like starting the year with a cancer scare, a migraine, and the worst cold / respiratory infection I can remember. And there is nothing like taking a second, or third – depending on how you count – major financial hit since starting this cruising life. We are now pretty deeply into the land of, “What do we do now?”

I have been hit by a truck and can say with some authority that these past few weeks have not been as bad as that experience. But they have been close.

Yet sitting next to me as I hash out the first draft of this post sits Grand Child 7, two years old and talking up a storm. We are going over the puzzle assembled earlier, pointing out ducks and sheep, cows and horses. He has learned the new word “silo”, but the tractor is still his favorite part of the picture. Earlier we assembled blocks, and before that he lured me off the couch and onto the floor so we could wrestle. Believe it or not he always manages to pin me after a bit of tussle, sometimes with the help of his brother.

We have spent time with Daughters Middle and Youngest, both doing all they can to make the last few days as easy as possible while waiting to see what turn life might be taking. We have gotten to know the Grand Parents of one of our Grand Children much better. Indeed, they offered their home as a quiet, fireplace-warmed port in a storm. One where Deb could rest for a couple of days after surgery. Bare acquaintances before, they have become friends to whom we are deeply indebted for their kindness. Others offered their homes as well, since it would have been hard to keep the Grandchildren (5) of Daughter Middle's home from jumping all over DeMa as soon as she walked in the door from the hospital.  Though we long to be home, the weeks added to our stay turned out to be all for the good.

We may yet catch up with a couple of friends dearly missed these past months, and have even latched onto a Realtor who is pretty sure he can sell our place come June, for a good price and in less than 60 days. I don't know if he can do it, but he sure thinks he can. Someone looking at our past month though eyes other than Deb's or mine, would see a remarkable human story. Hell, even Southwest Airlines got into the act, rescheduling our flight home a couple of times as medical needs dictated, and doing so with a minimum of fuss or hassle. (Take that Santa Clause!) And while we have been working our way through all this Kintala has been under the watchful eye of friends moored nearby. One less thing to worry about so, THANKS GUYS! When we get home sundowners will be on Kintala, and we can all talk of plans to head to the Islands.

Still …

… it looks like we will start our second year out beat up, scarred, sick, and limping. The cold of the ICW, engine failure in Oriental, the PA Thing, the summer of the Bear, and this past two weeks of dealing with the most expensive health care system on the planet, have added up to the hardest run we have faced since ... well ... since I got hit by a truck the first time around. Only two on that list were not the direct result of moving onto the boat, and those were much harder to handle from a floating base than they would have been from a fixed one. At the moment it feels like going forward isn't so much determination or choice as it is just force of habit. We live on a boat. Tomorrow is another day. Figure it out.

That is, after all, what life boils down to, figuring it out. How to live the life we want. How to see the things we want to see. How to face the things we have no control over which, as it turns out, is most of them. And how to look back and say, "That was a life well lived."

First though, is a couple of more days with wrestling matches, block buildings, and puzzles.  We are doing okay.

Cruising Intermission

When you're getting ready to cast off the dock lines, there's always that one point at which you realize it's a done deal, and you are instantly filled with doubt. It might be the day that your grandmother's china cabinet sells and is carried out the door. It might be the day that the for sale sign goes up in the yard. It might be the first day you walk to the grocery store because your Sunset Orange Nissan 350Z drove through the dealer's doors never to be seen again. Doubts plague you through the early months. Did you make the right choice? Are you capable of succeeding? Will you run out of money? Will you embarrass yourself? And the hardest, what if the reality of cruising doesn't live up to the dream of cruising?

When we boarded the plane to St. Louis to visit the kids for Christmas, it had been 423 days since we left the dock at Oak Harbor Marina. 423 days since I had been away from the boat, and the first time ever that we had both been away from the boat. It was not lost on me that we would be returning to our old stomping grounds, seeing old friends, and having an opportunity to evaluate our cruising life from a vantage point far away.

A couple days after we arrived we met with 30 of our dearest friends from our former yacht club and, without any doubt, the first question out of everyone's mouth was some version of "Are you glad you did it?" It came in the form of, "Are you happy?" and "Do you like it?" and "Is it hard?" but any way you slice it, they wanted to know if, after more than a year, were we going to be one of the many that quit and return to land, or one of the few that continue on.

There are very few statistics about liveaboards and cruisers in general, and even fewer about the sailing portion of that community. We're such a small number that we are statistically insignificant, so it's very hard to get a handle on how many people truly do succeed and how many people quit, and when. From our experience and conversations along the way, a significant amount of people who leave to go cruising never make it past the first year. I get that. The first year was not in any way what we expected or planned for. It was difficult, it was challenging. It was an unbelievably steep learning curve.

It was also rewarding. It was exhilarating. It was a life worth living.

Cruising intermissions are valuable to the cruising life. They give you time to step away from the difficult portions and see that it is, in fact, a worthwhile endeavor. This one has given me time to cuddle with my grandkids, to share boat stories with them, to listen to their laughter, to help them build towers and ships with blocks, to see the shine in their eyes as they decorate the Christmas tree. These are priceless memories I treasure. But I'm ready to go home and start the next chapter of our cruising life.

Am I glad we cast off the dock lines and went cruising? I wouldn't trade it for the world, and I hope someday soon that these bright, excited kids will come spend some extended time with us on the boat, finding out just why their DeMa and Grampy T have chosen this unconventional way to live out their golden years. Cruising intermissions are truly wonderful for reflection and new perspectives, but we hope to return you to your regularly scheduled programming

soon.