Sounds like a plan!

It was another ground hog's day of travel, only with fewer barges to pass. There was a ferry crossing, something we haven't run across in a while. And it included the (apparently) required two hour hold at the lock added to the planned seven hour day. At least it was the last lock we will run across on this trip. There are none on the planned route for tomorrow.

The day started out at 5:30am with the Harvest Moon

We are also on the last planned anchorage for this trip. Somewhere along the Illinois river between its East bank and a chunk of land called Willow Island is where the hook hit the bottom. It is kind of a desolate looking place that is very, very quiet and very still. Generally those are two good qualities for an anchorage but it is also very hot and muggy. I suspect mosquitoes will be our main companions for the evening. It is kind of a narrow channel as well so, in other places this tight swinging would be a concern. But there is just enough river current running though the channel to keep the boat pointed in one direction. All in all not bad for the (planned) last night of the trip. Why the parentheses? If there is one thing we have learned since putting First Light in the water at Duck Creek Marina on November 3^rd 2022, it is that what is planned to happen and what does happen can be two, very different, events.

Six hundred and eighty five days ago I didn't have a pacemaker stitched into my chest. Deb didn't have a plate and screws holding her wrist together. We had not spent months traveling with Grandson Eldest. First Light didn't have near as many new parts as she does now. The boat had not been dropped in the Big Chute Railway, nor had we come near to being run down by a couple of barges. None of those events, as notable as they are now, were in any of our plans.

The planned events, Delaware Bay, New York, the Hudson River, Canadian Waters, Great Lake Waters, and rivers this far from an ocean, were rarely, if ever, what we expected them to be. Some were far more spectacular and fun than we suspected. Others were far more difficult and uncomfortable than we expected. That is usually the way it works when one goes a-wandering.

Tomorrow's (planned) last day of travel to our new home marina of Alton, IL is just shy of 40 miles and a bit over 5 hours. So, somewhere around noon to early afternoon, this little foray into being river sailors on “Motor Vessel First Light” should draw to a close. I am guessing it will take a few days to get relocated back to the apartment in St. Louis, with grandkids (6) once again nearby. Pretty much everything we own has to be packed up from its rightful boat place. Then loaded up, hauled over the bridge, unpacked, and put back in its rightful apartment place. I am guessing it will take more than a few days to get used to being land dwellers again. True, we have only been gone for 5 months or so rather than the near six years we were on Kintala. But I still expect to wake up at night a few times, concerned that the boat wasn't moving and wondering if we had run aground somehow. Or have the thunder wake me into scrambling to get the hatches and ports shut before the rain arrives. Good habits on a boat that make one feel silly on land.

Our Looper friend Doug and his trusty sidekick Sailor on Galactica, a McGregor 26

But, for tonight and in this place, I will simply enjoy being on a boat that is riding gently to its anchor. No shore lights, no traffic noise, just sky, trees, and water. The good news is, even after getting settled in to land living again, First Light will be near at hand and ready to go out for a day, a weekend, a few days...whatever we can work out and whenever we feel like doing it. We might take a couple of days and motor right on back up here for a visit, hopefully with a few grandkids aboard. Sounds like a good plan to me.

The LaGrange Lock and Dam

After 2 hours we finally get our turn!

The State of IL must have a ton of this ugly green bridge paint laying around. There were so

many bridges painted with it and it's really hideous in bright sunshine.

Another moving day...

After several enjoyable weeks of taking up residence in Daughter Middle's basement, being a day-in and day-out part of the family, and taking full advantage of having Grandkids (6) near at hand for games, music, and general mayhem, the day arrived that the lease ran out for the traveling nurse who was renting while we were on First Light. It was the day for moving back into our over–the–garage “granny flat”. 

The Landside Cockpit

I love living on the boat. I like the the travel and (most of the time) challenges that come with that lifestyle. I love seeing new places and anchoring out far from civilization's lights and noise. But as I stepped through the apartment door with my arms full of stuff only one thought filled my mind...”HOME”.

The leaves are starting to turn, the temperatures are near perfect, and a gentle breeze wafts through the two rooms of our land side home. We will do uncounted loads of laundry, try to remember exactly where things went or find better places for them to rest. There is a new djembe drum that needs to find its place. The Ukes have been freed from their boat side gig bags and rest in their brackets on the walls once again. Two of them, the U-Base and the Guitalele, went away the day after the move as they were not missed while we were on the boat. The U-Base just isn't my thing. The Guitalele, with its six strings, is two more strings than my mangled left hand can handle. That would have left two empty spaces on the wall. But we stopped at a new-to-us music store on the way home and, wouldn't you know, they had the perfect Baritone Ukelele just begging to be restrung as a low "g".  Along with the guitar Grandson Eldest left behind when he bought a new one, there are no empty spaces on the wall. So all is well in my musical world.

I find myself wondering about my attachment to two completely different “homes”. I am utterly content on the boat, not really wanting to be anywhere else when I am there (but still missing family). I am utterly content with my land side apartment (but still missing the water environment). Maybe it isn't an issue of having multiple homes? This earth is my home, our home. This span of history is my home, our home. And though I have to admit to being a bit baffled, if not out right appalled and confused over what a lot of people do, the human race is my family. Many of whom are, admittedly, like a wack-job, drug-addled relation that you would just as soon never hear from again. When the news arrives about their latest disaster or conflict one can only shrug and hope they don't think they have been invited to dinner. 

No matter how you feel about here and now and the people who are in it, we are all in this thing together. So getting too bent out of shape about some of the (admittedly horrible) things going on doesn't do anyone any good. Indeed, it might be ramping up the ugly just that little bit more. As much as we might wish differently, there is absolutely nothing most of us can do about any of it, and nothing we can do to avoid it. As the stoic Marcus Aurelius suggests in Book Six of Meditations, “Meditate often on the interconnectedness and mutual interdependence of all things in the universe.” A thought echoed by another stoic teacher Seneca, when he wrote, “All that you behold is one—we are the parts of one great body.” It would be nice if a larger part of the human family incorporate that idea into whatever religion, philosophy, nation, race, or tribe to which they happen to pledge their allegiance.

What I see is what I get. Dealing with it is the only option. No matter where I am I will try to enjoy it as much as I can for as long as I can, all while trying not to make things any worse for those who are sharing this space and time with me. If I can can I'll even try to make things for them a little better. 

As for today? We are home. And it feels pretty good.

Land side...

Daughter Eldest and family (sans Son-in-Law who could not get out of work) were in St. Louis to reunite with Grandson Eldest after the months he spent helping us move First Light. That part of the clan headed out a few days ago to return to their boat in Florida. Though the live-a-board lifestyle comes with more than its share of goodbyes, this was one of the harder parting moments we have had. There is simply no telling when we will be together again. As their van disappeared around the corner I went "for a walk". You know, it's good for my heart.

We could not have moved the boat without Grandson Eldest's help. It must be admitted that any teen-aged grand son is likely to come complete with a few (slightly) irritating habits. And I am sure the same can be said for any mid 60 year old Grampy T. We jostled and joked our way up the ICW and to near the north end of the Chesapeake Bay. We practiced music together. Along the way he discovered Deb's guitar and picked up what is likely a lifetime habit of guitar playing. He also figured out how to dock and undock a twin-engined 42' trawler, did a good deal of boat work, and played a bit of poker, (for plastic chips only). It was the kind of trip the stories of which will likely to be passed along for a generation or two. The guitar habit had him looking for an instrument of his own to purchase before heading back to FL with his family. That had him and I checking out the local music stores. He found his guitar. In spite of his urging I didn't add anything to my Uke collection...but I did add a djembe drum to the electric drum kit, table-top electric kit, and pan drum collection. The table top, pan drum, and new djembe will go with us back to the boat. The electric drum kit stays in St. Louis.

It is likely to feel like a long winter. In addition to living with grand kids again and maybe working (if the shop will have me back) having a new kind of drumming to delve into will help keep me busy. Unlike the others, the djembe is played without sticks or mallets. 

Since the family's departure, we have worked on settling into land life again. It took me a few minutes to remember what buttons needed pushed in our car to get things set up. Unlike when we first came ashore after Kintala, this stint of living on a boat has came with quite a few road miles. So it wasn't much of a shock being back out on the highway. Which is not to say that St. Louis drivers are any less crazy than they were when we left. The house is far more insulated from the weather. It is pouring rain right now, but you wouldn't know that without looking out the window. I suspect the wind is gusting as well, but you can't tell that from this chair. The ice cream in the freezer isn't soft. We don't count how many times we flush the "head" and no one worries about running the water tanks dry. But there are no dolphins or pelicans, no spectacular sunsets or quiet anchorages either. 

With First Light safely on the hard for the winter and little interest in going to work on the boat with snow in the forecast, boat related projects will be curtailed to not much more than trying to figure out how to get the boat to St. Louis next year. Given how plans for this past summer worked out? Well, we will just take each day as it comes. 

Flu, Falling Leaves and Falling Snow

All the years we lived on the boat, we would come back to St. Louis to visit and we would get sick. Didn't seem to matter if it was winter or summer, although the holidays did garner their share of extra virus bugs. This year it appears that maybe it's a virus that most of the family has been exposed to some time previously, as so far the only ones to succumb are the baby, the 4-year old, and me. It may be that it's a flu or just a really horrific cold but, either way, it's knocked me flat for almost two weeks as it traveled from my sinuses to my throat to my lungs. Thankfully, the wage-earning member of our household hasn't come down with it yet.

Just before the onerous bug took up residence in my body, we were enjoying the amazing two weeks of fall weather we usually get in St. Louis. We were riding our bikes in the parks, and going on long walks, and sometimes were just simply sitting outside with our faces turned into the sun. If there is one thing that living on the boat taught me, it was to enjoy beauty whenever and wherever you find it. Being terrestrial dwellers again has accented the importance of this in so many ways.

From early November through the end of March, St. Louis is not known for its colorful vista. Most of the trees have dropped their leaves, the grass is faded, the sky is gray, and houses are all painted variants of the same taupe or gray color as the surroundings. After living in the Bahamas and Florida for so many years, the lack of brilliant colors is perhaps my biggest challenge. The time change this year even prompted the purchase of one of those Seasonal Affective Disorder lamps that are purported to help with winter blues. Time will tell if the claims are justified. In reality, I think that the leaves that I picked up along my walks in the parks and coated with polyurethane will yield similar results.

Even after I was sentenced to a few days' rest on the couch, I found beauty in the reflections of the tree branches blowing in the wind on my living room wall, oddly reminiscent of the water ripple reflections that used to dance on the headliner of Kintala's  interior.




So I'm clinging to the beauty that I've collected in my mind these last few weeks in an attempt to get through these winter months. In the meantime, Bean the Boat Bear is sitting in his windowsill watching the early snowfall, 3" of fluffy white stuff accompanied by 30 kt gusts, all the while plotting his escape to the crew of Blowin' In The Wind down in sunny, warm, colorful, Stuart Florida...

The long crawl

A member of the Women Who Sail Facebook group asked a while back if anyone missed the simplicity of living on land. It sparked a great discussion among the members and got me to thinking more in depth about the contrast I've experienced in our departure, years of cruising, and subsequent return (hopefully temporary) to land.

Image from Wikimedia Commons via the National Park Service

Our original departure involved downsizing from a four-bedroom, 3-1/2 bath 3-story home to a smaller condo and then to Kintala. It involved an unfathomable amount of sorting, discarding, selling, packing, and transporting; the sheer workload of all of it was a bit shocking. We had no idea what we would actually use or want to keep while cruising, although in the end we did pretty well in making the decisions, mostly because we lived on Kintala part-time on the lake before we left to go cruising. There was only a limited amount of things that we ended up getting rid of after a year or two of cruising.

The original departure was a conglomeration of emotions - excitement about the realization of our dream; nervousness about the unknown; concern about finances, the boat transport, the rental of our house; sadness at leaving grandchildren; and a certain amount of doubt at whether what we were doing was even possible.

The first year of cruising was complicated, the learning curve extremely steep. Learning our way around the practical issues of shopping, laundry, water, fuel, boat maintenance, navigation, weather, currents, tides and anchoring was a task that was anything but simple. It's the reason behind the failure of so many cruising dreams, the inability to understand that you have to get through the first year before you can even begin to think about being comfortable or confident. Too many people give up after only a few months, often just as the easier life is on the horizon.

In the second year, things got a little easier. We were often revisiting places that we'd been to before, so getting in and out of marinas and challenging places on the ICW became a little easier. By this point we had the routines figured out for shopping and laundry, we'd discovered what needs to go where in the boat storage, and we'd met enough new friends along the way to be feeling an integral part of the cruising community with all the emotional and physical support that entails.

It was in the third year that we really began to experience the realization that we were living our dream. We were comfortable, the boat was working well, we were cultivating some of the best friendships we'd ever had, and we were back in the Bahamas, our favorite cruising grounds. Our days were filled with daily tasks, reading, making music, and sunsets.

Unfortunately, the fourth year was the year that we realized we were not going to have enough money to live this life through until we got to Social Security age, and we didn't want to start taking money out of our retirement funds that early. We docked the boat and Tim worked two seasons in a boatyard to make enough money to keep cruising. By the beginning of year six, when it was becoming apparent that he didn't have the will to work another season there, we had the fortune of being offered a job near 7 of our 11 grandchildren, a job that would get us through till Social Security and allow us to continue to cruise for as long as we were able. The move back to land commenced.

I admit readily that I wasn't sure I could even do the move. The sea has become so integral a part of who I am that I wasn't sure I could live without it. And I confess that if it wasn't for the grandkids here I doubt I would have made it this far.

The first few months were full of the practicalities of moving: finding an apartment, a car, getting insurance straightened out, buying furniture and winter clothes and all the necessary things of living on land. For me as well, the first six months were full of a new diet and exercise routine to attempt to shed the many pounds gained while cruising. Now that we're pretty settled, though, I've had some time to think in greater depth about the transition and the quality of life in both places.

Is life on land more simple than life on the boat? The answer is much more complicated than a simple yes or no. Certain things are more simple for sure. Having the ability to do laundry right in the apartment without having to haul it anywhere in a dinghy is huge. Having a full-size refrigerator that holds ice and a week's worth of groceries is an unbelievable first-world privilege, right along with a toilet that flushes with clean fresh water. Having a supermarket just five minutes away via an air conditioned car ride is pleasant. 

But the comforts of land life come at the cost of the complications, the exact ones from which we attempted escape in the form of cruising. The noise level on land is astonishing. The noise from traffic, radios, television, news, news, news, billboards, commercials, news, unhappy people, and Facebook, assaults you from every side nearly every hour of the day. The bureaucratic requirements of land life are also hugely demanding in the form of car ownership, registration, insurance, drivers' licenses, and local and state taxes.

The simplicity of life on land is experienced in the practicalities. All of the daily tasks are easier to accomplish on land. Boats, on the other hand, live in a harsh environment, are inconveniently designed for the most part, and require copious amounts of maintenance. The living spaces are small and everything takes at least three times longer to complete than it would on land. For a lot of people, the complexity of the daily tasks on a boat is a deal breaker. 

Where the simplicity of life on a boat is experienced, is in the emotional, philosophical, and communal aspects of living. Once you get through the first steep learning curve, there is a deep-seated settledness that takes place in your soul. There's a sense of belonging to the natural world, living within its rhythms; a companion sense of disconnectedness from the consumerist lifestyle which typifies life in the modern world begins to become established. Even once we returned to land, this sense of settledness and disconnectedness still remained. It's impossible to emphasize how fundamentally living on a small boat with the sea changes you.

One of the most remarkable ways in which the sea changes you is in learning to live each moment for what it is, not colored by the past or the future, but only by the deepening golds and reds of the sunset. Mother Nature teaches you pretty quickly that human plans are completely futile, that every moment will be what it is that she has planned for you. It's that learned characteristic that we live with now: enjoying the time with the grand kids we have here and enjoying the ease of the practical life while we build up cruising funds to continue with our adventures.

If you're yearning for a simple life, then you must define simplicity for yourself. For some, the simplicity of the practical makes it possible to enjoy life. For others, the complications that accompany that simplicity aren't worth the cost. For now, we've managed to have a really terrific blend of the two, but there will come a time when I'm ready to give up the simplicity of convenience on land for the simplicity of the peace in my soul that only the sea seems to bring.

Image by Matthew J. Gutt from the National Park Service website

Off to see the Wizard

I suppose that announcing I’m “Off to see the Wizard,” when headed out the door gives away my age. (Extra points if you know who said it first without going to the internet.) It also, usually, offers an ironic outlet to my inner skeptic, who suspects that all the wizards left town with the wise, making it unlikely I will actually see either one. This morning though, the quip dripped a little less irony than usual.

Much of my current “seat time” at the shop is spent acting as the Right Seat Pilot (RSP), sometimes called the Pilot Monitoring (PM), who used to be the Pilot Not Flying (PNF), though that was after being the First Officer (FO), who, before that, was know as the Co-pilot (Co). Push a lot of buttons, read a lot of checklists, do a lot of communicating with ATC, and don't do anything that makes the person in the other seat work any harder than they already are. The RSP is also the one that can reach the magic handle that drops the landing gear when multiple hydraulic systems go kaput at the same time, something the airplane can’t do for itself. A second magic handle will deploy the Ram Air Turbine when all of the DC generators pick the same moment to stop generating direct current electricity. The airplane is supposed to know when to do that for itself since making power is, literally, a matter of life and death; thus making a manual back-up prudent. And yes, we call it the RAT.

The person sitting at the Sim control panel, the Instructor of Record, is in total control over the kind of flying day we will have. Since this is training deliberately aimed at prepping line pilots for the worst possible kind of days, we get to do several years worth of “worst possible day” crammed into a few, very intense, hours. This is particularly true when the training is “recurrent” as opposed to “initial”. With the best of pilots it becomes a game, adding to the flashing lights and aural warnings until keeping the defecation from hitting the ventilation requires a near herculean effort. It is very easy to forget that the Sim really can’t kill us. It is also damned near impossible to do a "perfect ride" until you have done it a few hundred times, and made a few hundred mistakes. I'm not there yet.

This kind of training isn’t actually all that useful, at least insofar as day-in and day-out flying is concerned. Imagine if you had to retake your driver's test every 6 months. Get in the car, drive it around. Killer boring, right? But now imagine that six month "ride" involves race tracks and skid pads. Would that make for better drivers? Sure. Would it make for safer roads? Maybe, then again, maybe not. It depends on what the drivers do with their skills, and if they ever run across any race tracks or skid pads on the way to work. (Okay, maybe for some people that wouldn't be a bad idea. Around here many drivers have, apparently, forgotten what the word "STOP" means while acting like every highway is their own, personal, race track.)

Recurrent flight training goes the race track / skid pad route. It  does give those already experienced in the airplane a chance to do something different for a few hours, polish their skills, and add a few magic spells to their box of tricks. Spells that, in all likelihood, will never, ever, be needed.

A few weeks ago I was PM for an Instructor of Record while he endured his own recurrent training and check ride. (Yes, it is like requiring the college professor to sit through his own class.) We finished off all the required maneuvers in pretty short order, leaving some time that simply had to be filled in order to keep the regulators happy. For people who teach this stuff every one of their working days, even fire, smoke, multiple system failures, and jumping wayward pick-up trucks becomes routine.

So, when asked what else he wanted to do, and to keep the boredom from becoming terminal, the pilot I was with asked that the Sim be moved to Aspen’s mountain runway. Once cleared for takeoff we started doing touch and goes. He was making the circuit too quickly for me to keep up with updating the take off and landing speeds with the Flight Management Computers. It didn’t matter; he didn’t need them. That got boring pretty quickly so he shut down an engine and kept going: single engine touch-n-goes at Aspen. That got boring after a couple of times around so he asked that the WX be reset to 1/4 mile vis, indefinite ceiling, snow, and at night. The moving map display coupled with the Synthetic Vision system was enough for him to find the runway surrounded by tall piles of granite. And when that got boring he started doing some things with and to the airplane that discretion suggests be left inside the sim.

It is rare, as in near impossible, to impress me much when it comes to pilot things. My own collection of “And there I was…” pilot tales checks most of the boxes. About the only one I don’t have is joining the Caterpillar Club, riding a parachute to the ground rather than going in with a crippled airplane. (Had I been wearing a ‘chute one particular day I would have gotten my membership card but, given no choice, barely managed to get back to Mother Earth on a flight whose memory still gives me the willies.)

Being a part of this crowd, however, is like becoming a part of some wizard's council. The "magic spells" of abnormal check lists are memorized and honed over and over again. I still get them out because; a) doing so is the first line of the spell and, b) I don't have all of them memorized yet. It will take a while to be on equal footing with some of these folks. But I suspect flying with them every chance I get will allow me access to the table one of these days.

Learning and teaching

There are now two Ukuleles living in our little apartment. The original Blue Soprano gifted me by Daughter Eldest and Family nearly two years ago, and a new wood Concert Uke with a finish as deep as on any good teak work. It is a pretty thing, with a slightly deeper tone and offering a little more room on the fret board on which my mechanic’s hands can fumble. I play them both, with Blue being my companion when I’m out on the road. That doesn’t happen very often, but it went with me to Dallas last month and will likely go along when I head to Orlando in a few days for another week of classroom work. In addition to plunking away at the strings, the urge to actually learn some music theory came over me…and I thought the theory of flight was confusing. But I think its good to keep learning new things.


Stumbling up to bare competence in Basic Ukulele with the goal of someday actually playing passible music keeps me on the student side of the student / guide equation, making a good balance to teaching in the jet. Though the people I work with are far from amateurs, their learning experience is a compressed, drinking-from-a-fire-hose marathon of classes, tests, Sim time and check rides. It is a high pressure learning environment.

Any learning curve is jagged, filled with slumps, valleys, and plateaus. Instructors need to remember that and, more importantly, remind students of this inescapable fact. Serious learning is never easy and never goes smoothly. Another fact is that mastering the rationale behind a physical skill is one thing, perfecting the skill quite another. Learning the physics behind and the complex relationships that form a musical scale helps in understanding just how the music should sound. But there is no escaping the fact that the fingers have to play that scale a thousand times before it sounds good enough to be included in a song. It was the same learning to sail. Classroom time spent learning the basics was time well spent. But no one becomes a sailor, or a pilot, in the classroom. No one becomes a good instructor sitting in a classroom either. Standing in front of one? Sure. Sitting in one? Not so much.

Which is the one tiny frustration I have right now, not doing a lot of teaching. Though I have worked with a couple of crews in the GFS, most of my time is still spent on internal training, with the class coming up being focused on meeting the requirements to teach European crews. I also get to spend some time as the right seat pilot for other FSI instructors doing their own internal training. It is all good stuff, adding to my own store of knowledge and offering up some good practice time. But I am really looking forward to more time spent working with those learning to fly a machine new to them.

And though it seems a little odd, being a student of the Uke helps make me a better instructor in the jet.

Ed Note: If you have always wanted to play the ukulele but feel like you're too old to start, read Tj's book, Learning From a Uke, available on Amazon.

Never ignore the good

London City Airport, England, identified as EGLC in the aviation world, is an interesting place.The single runway is 4948 feet long with the ramp area on the south side being less than half that length paralleling the west end.  There is no parallel taxiway for the length to the east. Aircraft landing east pull into a loop at the end of the runway to turn around and back taxi to the ramp, nose to nose with the inbound traffic. Because it lies among the city’s buildings the approach is steep, 5.5 degrees as compared to the standard 3.0 degrees. Departure corridors are equally steep in order to accommodate both safety and noise concerns. They fly airliners into the place. It takes special training and authorization to operate there, specific to the type of equipment being used.

Photo credit: Ercan Karakaş

Innsbruck, Austria is another interesting place. The airport’s field elevation is 1907', nestled in a picturesque valley and noted for the world class skiing on the surrounding mountains; mountains that are just shy of 10,000 feet tall. Approaches into that airport start letting down into the valley as much as 27 miles away, then wind their way to the airport with mountains framing the inbound path. Landing to the east, the point of the final turn that lines one up with the landing runway (known on the chart as WI005) is just 2.6 miles from the approach end. The runway itself slips into view a few moments before reaching that point. It is also a place that requires specialized training in any airplane one wants to fly into the place while the weather is down on its face.

America has mountains, skiing, and its own interesting airports, with Aspen, CO being among the most notorious. The Aspen airport elevation is 7837 feet with the surrounding mountains touching 14,000 feet. The RNAV (GPS) - F approach boasts a descent angle of 6.49 degrees, which is easily topped by that of the VOR DME - C approach with its ear popping angle of 9.61. Being in the US of A, home of the rugged individualist and cowboy loner, there is no special training or authorization required to saddle up and head to Aspen. The prudent, however, heading that way in a $20 mil jet loaded with VIPs, like to take a peek before jumping into the deep end. (An attitude much approved by insurance companies.)

A flight instructor working in a full motion simulator bolted to the ground in St. Louis gets to fly into all three. (It is a bit of a jolt to climb out of the Sim after a few hours of "flying" around London, then climb into a car to take I70 east to St. Louis.) I’ve been to Aspen for real. The London “flight” happened a day or so ago and I’ll be “heading” to Innsbruck, again, in a week or so. This plane has a special system's mode for steep approaches, one that raises the approach speed while allowing full spoilers to be deployed along with full flaps; a configuration not available during more normal approaches and landings. The procedure isn’t overly complicated, but it's always more comfortable to not try something new while “on the fly” at 200 knots.

Seeing new places, even if through view-screen “windows” looking out at a synthetic world, helps with making the transition to living a land-bound life. Outside of the Sim life is traffic, bustle, the constant barrage of propaganda, advertisements, and the relentless noise of civilization. It is a frenzy now ramping up to insane levels with the incoming national political campaigns beginning to unfold. (Those living on the water and off these shores should rejoice at being well insulated from the madness.)

Photo Credit: Andrew Jacob Byrnes (@jakeofsaltlake)

We have found a nearby bar that has not a single TV anywhere to be seen, a rare find nowadays. (It would be no surprise if some future civilization categorizes our fascination with TV as an addiction; and a fatal one at that.) Walks in the nearby parks, having a bit more resilience to life-threatening weather, and the endless joy of having grand kids around are more than just balms for the stationary soul. They are treasures in their own right, things to be cherished and celebrated. I miss the open water life, but life is rarely all bad or all good. No matter where life leads, one should never ignore the good while emphasizing the bad. Something I am still learning to do.

Ride the training train

Training goes on, and on, and on… I do get to work with clients once in while now though, so far, it has all been in the GFS. I’m looking forward to an eventual chance to take a crew into the Sim, but I have no clue when that might happen. Getting the approval to work the class room appears to be many weeks away yet.

Some of the training did bring on a fun bit of coincidence. The Europeans came up with a new requirement for upset training to be included when anyone is learning a new jet. Since I am to (eventually) train EASA pilots, I had to take the training. An old acrobatic pilot being forced to toss a $20 mil simulated jet around a simulated sky? Sign me up!

The coincidence came in the form of my training partner for the Sim session. He was one of the clients I had worked with in the GFS, had just passed his type ride, and this was the last bit of training he had to do before heading off for home. It doesn’t get much better than flying with someone you helped train (even if just a minor bit of help). We did a total of three hours together, doing all kinds of things that will near get you dead in an airplane; massive wind shear hits low to Mother Earth on both take off and landing, wake turbulence rolling the plane to knife edge just a few hundred feet off the ground, and traffic conflicts with intruders both above and below. Even with all that we had a little time remaining in the Sim.

Sim time is rare and expensive so we generally don’t let any of it go to waste. Without warning or a pre-brief, the instructor failed both engines with the airplane 5000 feet in the sky and just barely within gliding distance of a usable runway. Since that is an altitude prone to being filled with migrating feathered friends, this is one of the more likely scenarios one might see out in the real world. No time for checklists or setting up an approach, fly-by-wire system gone and flight controls degraded with only one hydraulic system left, and no hydraulics for gear extension or brakes. Take your best guess at the runway you can reach, eyeball the rate of descent, call for flaps and gear when you think you have the runway made, and make it work. I think the Europeans are on to something with this training requirement, though the bird hit / all engines inoperative exercise wasn’t part of the deal.

This week is something new as well, teaming up with one of the program’s more experienced instructors to make up a crew for the GFS. The reason? We will be practice dummies for the program’s newest instructor. Since I went through the same thing not too long ago it should be interesting to be on the other side of that exercise. I also had a chance to sit in with a bunch of other instructors while representatives of the manufacturer of the airplane updated us on the latest support news. It was a very technical discussion which dug pretty deep into the minutia of system functions, approved procedures, and documentation. It might not be rocket science, but it isn’t tying your shoes either. It is rare to find myself in a room full of people who are more than equal to my inner airplane geek. I also got my hands on the maintenance training manuals for the airplane, pleasing my inner mechanic geek as well.

Which is good because my inner sailing geek isn’t nearly as pleased. Kintala sits forlorn in a FL boatyard, waiting for someone to take her back to sea. I try not to think about her much. With it being the hurricane time of the year we should be pushing north. It has been several years since we were last in the Chesapeake Bay and, even as I write this, I can picture Fishing Bay and our friends at Oak Harbor. But, being on the boat as long as we were taught us many things. One of the most important was that there are many parts of a voyage over which we have no control. Navigating that bit of the passage is the only real responsibility we have, doing it well - or not - is what matters. The “where” and the “why” and the “how did we get here?” Those don’t really matter much at all.

Eyeball it, and make it work.

A Texas surprise

Another week of training but a different kind of training, this time in Dallas. For the first time in nearly 4 decades I got instruction on instructing. Though it started out with me thinking that this was going to be four days of my life I was never going to get back, it turned out to be time well spent. It wasn’t so much new info as it was formalizing things learned long ago and practiced for years. What was new was learning to be not just a fight instructor, but a representative for an international organization. Different rules apply when the student is also the customer and the customer is always right.

There were 8 in the class from 4 different Training centers. Five of the eight were straight up flight instructors, including one who teaches on one of the world’s most sophisticated helicopters. She had spent a good part of her career flying off oil platforms all over the world, did a stint with the Maryland State police, and is now joining FSI. She had some pretty good stories and was an absolute joy to work with. 

Another in the class teaches maintenance techs, one dispatchers, and the eighth ocean crossing procedures. On day one the class instructor had us count; there was roughly 235 years of flight experience in the room: airline, military, corporate, crop dusting, acrobatics, chopper, glider, up high, down low, going fast, going slow…everything but balloons and astronauts. I am still blown away by the depth of field employed by the company.  But it wasn’t all good.

Word has it ours was the third to the last group who will benefit from this class. The training we received is being replaced by something more cost effective but will certainly be of less quality. I say that for two reasons. The first is that our instructor was a uniquely qualified person with decades of experience instructing flight instructors. The second is that he is going to be replaced, to a large degree, by e-learning. For some reason the human family has decided that actually interacting with other human beings is of no intrinsic value. It is claimed that listening to a recording of a voice, or the disembodied voice of a person standing in a room hundreds of miles away, is nearly as good as being in a classroom. And, in today’s world, nearly as good is good enough, particularly if it allows those who already have a pocket full of coins to pocket a few more.

And yes, I realize that observation is being made by someone who prefers that interactions with his fellow human be taken in small doses. A classroom with 8 or 10 or a Sim / GFS with 2 is perfect, and likely one of the reasons I am enjoying this job as much as I am.

I was awarded another surprise on this visit, the making of a new friend. Mark is a hard core Texican, born and bred. He lives on 25 acres of hallowed Texas soil, owns enough weapons to arm his own little militia, and usually has more than one either on his body or within close reach. In fact I pretty sure there were at least 3 in the car with us, but he is so comfortable with the whole idea that he didn’t make an issue of, or boast about, his guns. Which made me somewhat comfortable with the whole idea as well. He listens to right-wing radio and loves him some Donald Trump and a pickup truck, though we did ride around in his Japanese 4 door. 

He sat next to me in class and, nearly instantly, we recognized a kindred spirit. We enjoyed two dinners together and spent most of the break time exchanging rogue smiles and skeptical glances over some of the things being said in the class. In spite of that connection I think, at first, he was also puzzled by and curious about someone who, though aware of what is going on in the world around, doesn’t really pay much attention. The fact that I can both; a) know something is vitally important but, b) dismiss it anyway because I know I can’t do anything about it, seemed kind of new to him. But I think he likes the idea. Anyway, I don’t make new friends that often, and have to admit to being a bit surprised that this trip to Texas offered me a chance to do just that. 

Throwback Thursday - Far From Home

Tim wrote this post while he was in Pittsburgh helping his siblings with the transfer of his parents from their home to a nursing home. It was a very difficult time for all involved. He was there alone; I was working on the boat in Miami for that six weeks. The observations are very applicable to anyone looking to cruise.

Far from home

Posted by TJ
May 14, 2014

I am back in the "normal" world for a while; suburbia, cars, traffic jams, sirens, guns, noise, and news. I have put more miles in driving the last 4 days than I had in the last 7 months, and I'm having trouble remembering why I used to enjoy it as much as I did. On the other hand there is ice cream in the fridge, cold milk, (that doesn't cost $12 / gal) and pretty good and consistent Internet access. Not sure the balance comes out in favor of "normal," but it isn't all bad.

Being 1000 miles away from Deb and the ocean? That is pretty much all bad.

Being away is also giving me a chance to take a look at our new life from a little different perspective, an opportunity to think about where we were, where we are, and how it looks like we are doing.


One thing that stands out is that full time living aboard and cruising is a far, far different endeavor than sailing, chartering, or living on a boat as an alternate to having a house or an apartment. It is its own, completely unique, thing. Even more, it is different for every person who is "out there" doing it.

As much as I loved sailing on Carlyle and appreciate the things we did learn about handling and living on a boat there, it really wasn't much preparation for what we are doing now. Having a boat as our one and only home is a far cry from visiting the lake on weekends. Mostly those years allowed us to get a lot of work done on our soon-to-be ocean going house, and make some life long friends.

I'm not sure chartering is much like living aboard either. We did take three week-plus training / cruising trips that might be counted as charters. Truth to tell they were not much of a hint as to what living aboard full time is like. Provisioning, watering, finding pump outs, 24 / 7, 365-days-a-year weather watch, these are our constant companions now. For many of us full time cruising means going "all in." There is no alternative, no plan B, no place to fall back to if it all goes bad. Virtually everything we own floats with Kintala. Every weather decision, every day under way, every harbor entered or Current Cut attempted, is an all or nothing deal. Flub it badly and we are homeless . . . at best.


As valuable as those trips were for us choosing a boat, the fact is both Deb and I are pretty sure the Tartan 42 wasn't the best choice. It is too much the racing boat and not enough the living-on boat. Romping across the Gulf Stream was great. The total time required to go both ways was less than two full days of sailing. (Biscayne Bay to West End + Bimini to Biscayne Bay.)

Living on a Tartan 42 is often a trial, and we do that all the time. For us, a boat just has to be as stable as possible riding to its anchor or a mooring, has to have sufficient storage, and has to have a cockpit comfortable for near full-time occupancy. An island bed would be nice and, contrary to what I had been told, would not be a problem on a passage. Neither of us sleeps in a bed on passage; short handed crews don't often get that far apart.

Once upon a time I claimed a center cockpit boat was a better idea than an aft cockpit, low free board boat because, "I didn't want the ocean that close to my ass." Now I would take an open transom boat without a second thought, so long as the cockpit was big, roomy, and comfortable. It would also make getting on and off the boat from a dink a lot easier. Yet a center cockpit ketch rig would be an excellent basic platform for a live-a-board cruiser. Not because the ocean isn't that close to my ass, but because the sail plan is easy to manage, the aft cabin can be a great place to live, two heads are pretty standard, engine access is likely acceptable, and storage is better.

The cruising community is not much like America. These are people with different motivations, different ideas of what it means to be responsible, with a close and personal relationship with the natural world. Many are from Canada and Europe and are not nearly as impressed with Americans as Americans tend to be with themselves. Most know well their turn will come to need a little help, and so they offer the same with little hesitation.

It isn't that religion and politics are left on the beach, but even among American cruisers no one wears them on their sleeve. There are a few gun nuts, some religious fundamentalists, but none have been offensive or overbearing. Not once have I been told I am going to hell and no one has waved a gun around. Individual political leanings deemed important on land haven't disappeared. But they don't mean as much as they once did. Maybe it's because the ocean will drown Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Tea-partiers, Socialists, people who like their universal health care, and even Texans, with equal enthusiasm. Being capable on the water is the measure that matters once any nation and its politics fall below the horizon.


Even for us Americans who have only accomplished a single "ocean crossing" to the Islands and have managed to live there for just a couple of months, the world appears bigger and the center of the map isn't - automatically - the US-of-A. There are whole other societies doing things in a whole other way, with a history completely different from this country. There is a whole planet where people screw things up in new and unique ways, not just American ways. (The Democratic and Republican ways of screwing things up are getting repetitive. We need to come up with some new material.) Being arrogant about "being an American" works inside these borders, where boasting counts more than doing. Outside these borders it makes you look like a wanker.

As much work as living on the water might be, no matter that a different boat might make that life a lot easier, being back for a visit has made it clear that I really don't want to be living anything but a cruising life. Most mornings on Kintala I take a cup of coffee out to the cockpit, sit back, and start my day slow and easy. I actually look up to see if it looks like the forecasts are reasonable. The sky and the sea fill my senses. Sometimes we are in the middle of a city, sometimes surrounded by other boats . . . and sometimes not. Any way I look at it, it is a good way to start a day. Most days end in pretty much the same way except the drink is cold and has a bit more horsepower.

My new world feels far, far, away at the moment, and I long to be home.

Settling in...again

The carriage house companionway
with a view into the cockpit

The move is mostly done. It will be a few weeks yet before everything finds its place, though the grand kids have settled right in. So long as only our screen door is closed they know they are welcome, and walk right in. If the main door is closed they knock, then walk right in.

There is a regular parade of kids including, once in a while, friends of grand kids. It has taken away much of the sting of having had to leave the cruising life for more mundane waters, though there is still many things to get used to. We have two rooms now. That is one less than the boat’s v-berth, salon, and aft cabin, though Kintala’s rooms were cabins of course, and much smaller. So it all still feels too big, and a bit clunky. In fact all of land living feels a bit clunky. Traffic surges and stops. Houses and buildings are mostly squared off blocks arranged in bigger (and rightly named) blocks, which are bordered by squared off streets. Sometimes it reminds me of old video games filled with squared off people riding in squared off cars and walking their squared off dogs.

One good part having our own squared off front room is that it has been filled up with all of the instruments, plus one, that we had stored away all over the boat. Two “bucket drums,” various percussion instruments, a kind of Lute, a flute, my Uke, and a guitar Deb has been learning to play, (the “plus one.”) As soon as some bonus money lands in our account we hope to add two more, a somewhat smaller guitar for Deb, and a somewhat larger Uke for me. One of the reasons grand kids drop by is to practice on the drums. Daughter Middle’s house has a piano, guitars, and a whole collection of Ukuleles, including one of ancient solid wood that makes the most mellow tone you have ever heard…so long as it stays in tune. Something that it isn’t prone to do with its older style pegs. But Grampy T is the drummer of the family and kids like drums.

I like that the house is often full of music, even if its one of the kids trying to learn LLLL RRRR LLRR LLRR LRLR LRLR LRLL RLRR, or my still more than modest attempts at finding a song hiding in the strings of the Uke. It reminds me of the boat where, even without our contribution, nature often filled the day with music of her own. There was the water slapping against the hull, the winds whispering through the rigging, the thump and splash of jumping rays and the puffs of broaching dolphins. (Who would have thought that one could miss the sound of dolphins this much?) Somehow the sounds of cars, ‘choppers, jets, trucks, and garage door openers just doesn’t come across as music. (Well, maybe… if one thinks really bad, out of tune music.)

And let's not forget barking dogs. Being surrounded by dolphins broaching and puffing is magic. Being surrounded by dogs yapping and barking and scratching is just down-right annoying.

At the shop I have finally cleared the initial qualification hurdles and start working with client crews next week; GFS and Simulator only. Classroom qualification is several weeks (at least) away yet, and awaits a week long trip to Dallas for additional training. Clearly the clunk who coined the phrase, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” never taught people to fly jets. Getting type rated in the Legacy was the easiest part of learning this new job. To fly the jet takes “X” amount of knowledge and skill. To teach others to fly the jet takes X times 10. It’s no wonder than when people go looking for an airplane driver they often raid the training centers. Which is the reason we get a bonus for staying, and that will let me buy another Uke.

The Boat Hammock still getting used with lots of laughter

Some beauty from the local park. Anyone know what this tree is?

And yes, still some water fun thanks to their other grandparents' farm pond

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.

On the move…

One of my favorite things about living on the boat was being able to move to a new place without having to move anything but the boat. Pick up the anchor or drop the lines, that’s all it took to be on the way. On land, moving is a much more tedious, yet labor intensive, process. Pick up, pack up, carry stuff out, load the truck, unload the truck, carry stuff in, unpack, and put things away. There is furniture to be disassembled and then put back together, and everything needs to find its new place in the new place. So when we moved back on land the plan was to move no more than two times. Once back onto the dirt and then, cruising kitty full, once more back to water. But, apparently land plans are as much written on a beach at low tide as are the cruising kind. Not even six months in this place we are off to a different place. It's a strange and wonderful tale.

Daughter Middle has a big family, with grandkids (six) growing every day. They knew they were going to need more room in the not-too-distant future and so starting looking around. Nothing serious, just getting the lay of the housing land. Things got a bit more interesting when they recently managed to sell a house they have owned on the East coast where they used to live, many a moon ago. With money for a down payment they started to look just a bit more seriously. They found a place that would be perfect, though likely far out of their price range. But, with nothing to lose they offered as much as they could, though it was still far below the asking price.

Less than a week later the offer was accepted. Yikes!

Thus began a blizzard of activity to get their current house sold as soon as possible. Painting, cleaning, fixing, they all worked like crazy, Deb included. (I did what I could but there is this whole “earning a paycheck” thing that fills up a lot of my days.) The house barely made it to market before it was sold, and I mean barely. It sold in something like 18 hours.

This morning they closed on the new place. Two houses a thousand miles apart sold, and a new one purchased, all in the matter or a few weeks. I'm not sure I believe it even though I had a ring side seat to the show.

The Granny Flat Salon (sale photo-not our furniture)

Anyway, their new place has all the room they need for the growing family, including grand daughters (2) scarily close to being teenagers. It also has a detached garage in the back. One with a two room apartment on top, something known as a “Granny Flat.” By the end of next week it will be known as the "T and DeMa flat." How can you not love the idea of having rent money stay in the family?

The Granny Flat Galley

The hardest part of our leaving the boat was leaving Daughter Eldest and her brood behind. There is a few minutes of every day when my heart hurts from not having them as a part of my daily life, not waving to them from the next mooring ball over, not settling into a quiet anchorage with the two boats rafted together. Those days are some of the very best days I have ever known and, someday, we plan to live like that again.

The days to come hold the promise of being the land version of those days. Days filled with strumming my Uke with a little one on my lap, of whittling sticks with grandsons, of seeing the youngest take some of her very first steps. I know a lot of people believe in some kind of reincarnation, or of karma. It sounds good, but I fear it can’t be so. There is no way I ever lived a former life so well as to have this one working out the way it is. But I'll whisper my thanks that it is, and start packing.  

The Granny Flat Aft Cabin (sale photo-not our furniture)

The Granny Flat Cockpit