Home

We decided to spend another day in Phoenix, NY. The weather forecast for the day isn't bad, just rain showers and wind five to ten. But rumor has it that Oswego is pretty well packed with boats waiting for a weather window to take on Lake Ontario. Tomorrow's forecast is good. Hopefully some of the Oswego boats will head out on the lake. If we wait until tomorrow to move, there is a good chance that there will be room for one more 42' boat when we get there. It is a plan from which to deviate.

I am looking forward to being in Oswego. For me it will mark a turning point on this trip. This first phase has felt like an uphill battle, getting the boat ready to go in the water followed by the seemingly relentless list of mechanical problems made for a real grind. It helped that the crew at the Delaware City Marina and fellow loopers were among the most helpful and friendly folks we have run across in all of our years on a boat. But there were still days where we just fought our way through because we didn't really have any other choice.

I'm hoping the next phase, from Oswego and into the US and Canadian parts of the Thousand Island area will feel like an even keel cruise. Once we cross the border back into the US I will feel like we are on the downhill run to home.

Home.

“Home” is a fuzzy concept for me, a wanderer. I left home at 19, newly married and with a job nearly half way across the continent. It was further west than I had ever been. After that were homes in Washington, PA, Kingman AZ, and St. Louis MO. But even with those “homes” family lore has it that any time I was in the same time zone for more than a couple of days I would get a nosebleed. Sometimes Deb would ask me when my next trip was leaving after having me wandering around the house for too many days, trying to stay busy. Somehow she knew it wasn't that I wanted to get away from anything. I just needed to be on the move. On days when there were no trips pending she would suggest I get on the motorcycle and put in a few hundred miles. “Home”, regardless of what kind of wandering I was doing, was where she and the girls would be waiting for my return.

The girls grew up and headed out on their own adventures. Deb and I moved onto Kintala. Everything we owned was on the boat. Where ever it was, was “home”. It didn't matter the country, open water, on anchor or tied to a dock. Of course we visited the girls, usually returning for a visit during some holiday or the other, and certainly to greet each of the new grandkids as they arrived. But we were visiting their “homes” and were away from ours.

The years of Kintala being “home” passed. We needed to refill the cruising kitty and had a good job offer back in St. Louis. We ended up staying for nearly 6 years. Kintala went up for sale while funds got stashed away. We settled into a two-room apartment above the garage with family, including six of our grandkids, living about 25 feet away. We decided not to buy motorcycles again; we were getting too old and the St. Louis drivers had gotten too crazy. But the wanderer wasn't quite finished. We bought First Light and got it ready for this trip. But this boat has never been “home” in the same sense that Kintala was. No matter where we venture in First Light, the final destination will always be St. Louis. And that is true in more ways than one.

Deb and I recently made arrangements for our after life resting place. It is a huge and beautiful garden with our selected spot (really) directly under the departure and arrival paths for airplanes flying into and out of the St. Louis International airport.

There is a poem written by Robert Louis Stevenson that best describes my feelings about “home”. It is in the public domain now, so I can share it with you.

Under the wide and starry sky,
    Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
    And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
    Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
    And the hunter home from the hill.

Feelin' a Bit Like Home

When you're spending any extended time on a boat like ours, making it feel like home is really important. It's also one of the things on the long-term list of boat projects because you really have to live in the space for a bit before you figure out where things need to go and where changing something will make life easier. This past week we spent a lot of time working on this.

First up was getting some pictures up. I chose carefully from my collection at home, including some artwork that my grandkids have made for me as well as some from my son-in-law who is a professional artist.

Top left: "The Ocean is What I Meant By" by Tom Break
Top right: "Sailing" by Tom Break
Bottom left: "Boat Under Sail" by Catherine Rennier
Bottom right: "The Sea and Sky" by Tom Break
The top of the ukulele cabinet: "Learning From a Uke" by Mary Rennier

This is a work of pourable paint done by my eldest
granddaughter. It reminds me so much of the water
in the Bahamas.

"Birds in Flight Over the Sea" by Edie Rennier

Next was adding some tunes to work by. We have a Fusion stereo system on the boat with control heads at both the lower and upper helms and speakers all over the boat, but it's dated enough that it didn't include Bluetooth connectivity. With the addition of a small Bluetooth receiver we were able to run our Pandora through the Fusion stereo system. Score! It's amazing how much easier it is to deal with boat projects when you have some good tunes playing in the background.

Next up was to find a place to sit our mascots, Bean and Nutters. Bean went with us on Kintala where he lived on the top of the back of the settee and where he was used to judge how rough the seas were by where he ended up landing in the salon. He then voyaged back to the apartment in St. Louis where he's been living on a windowsill in the sunshine for the past 4 years. After a bit of trial and error, he has landed on the lower helm seat where he can get his daily dose of vitamin D, accompanied by his buddy, Nutters, a squirrel that my granddaughter crocheted for me a few Christmases ago. The back story to the gift is the rather large community of exasperating gray furry creatures that populate our property in St. Louis. I tried putting up Christmas lights the first year we lived there and the squirrels ate the lights. Not just the wires (which we have been told are made partially with peanut oil, so understandable) but also the actual bulbs. Evidently they think they are berries. This is why Nutters has a Christmas light bulb in his paw.

Two book racks have been mounted so that the little ones have places for their books and I have a place for all my paperwork. 

All of the instruments have found their home on the boat and Tim's drum set has been set up to where all he has to do is move it over a couple feet to play it. In case you haven't figured it out yet, music is an important part of our lives on the boat or off of it. My daughter rented out our apartment while we're gone on this trip and she had to make a note in the ad that there was no TV in the apartment. Wall hooks for 11 ukuleles and a guitar? Absolutely. TV? Nope, not happening. 

So as we approach the end of the squawk list (Shhhh! don't let First Light hear that!) we're allowing some time to enjoy the surroundings, to play some music and spend some time with friends new and old, and to enjoy our new temporary home.

Getting away

We are in Saint Louis for a couple of weeks. It had been too long since we had seen Daughters Middle and Youngest, their collective 6 of our grand kids, other family, and friends. Modern life is what it is, and it is hard to imagine living any other way than on our floating tiny house, wandering where we can when we can. Still, the days of extended family groups / tribes living together for a string of lifetimes, generations overlapping, is an image that has its attractions. Being surrounded by kids and grand kids, involved every day in the unfolding of their lives, and having them involved as mine unfolds, is certainly a life well lived. How does that compare to the experience of a larger world, knowing and learning from people who are not “my tribe”, and seeing a little bit of life and our place in the cosmos through a different lens? It doesn't really, they are two radically different ways of living. One chooses and, whatever the choice, will always have moments of wondering if it was the right path to take.

Whenever we are back “inland” and visiting like this, there is this feeling of being reconnected, though inundated might be an equally good description. Living on the boat, particularly when we are working like we are, is very much an ascetic lifestyle. Creature comforts are few, accented by times of outright discomfort when the weather turns foul. Lightning, when it is around, is a real and present danger. Kintala recently escaped a strike only because the boat next to her has a mast several feet taller. We walk to the bathhouse rain or shine, day or night. And I work outside, pretty much regardless of what the weather is doing. We are even more exposed to “outside” when riding to an anchor or mooring ball.

Here, in the city, we go outside, but we don't live there. “Outside” plays across the front windows like a sport’s show on bar TV. Some color and motion but no one is really paying any attention. Phase of the moon, state of the tide, time of sunrise, sunset, moon rise and moon set, all unknown and unimportant. And I mean really unimportant. None have any effect at all on the lives being led. Days go by and no one cares if it is hot or cold, raining or blazing sun, with winds topping 30 knots or it being dead calm.

There are many, perhaps a majority, who see that as one of the most positive things of modern life. We have conquered nature, made ourselves comfortable from her shenanigans except for the most extreme examples. That used to sound right, but I don’t know that I lean that way any more.

Occasionally, I drop by John Michael Greer's blog. His is an interesting take on the universe and, as a result, I have spent a little time reading up on the mythology. It turns out that living on the boat, close to nature, with a lot of time spent in the cockpit breathing deeply of the natural world we find while riding to anchor, all sounds very like his descriptions of Druid meditations. They take the idea of magic a bit more literally than seems likely to be true. But is it really that far removed from the impulse to petition a deity to do something or other? (These days those so inclined always seem to call on the deity after the hurricane strikes or the terrorist attacks, which seems a bit backward.)

I also wonder if the Druid's magic, or that of any other mythical ideology, is actually pretty closely related to those moments that brush by while standing watch far from land on a star filled night. Maybe, if one looks at it from the other side (so to speak), “magic” isn’t a matter of us changing something that is going on in the cosmos to our liking. It could be that "magic" is allowing the goings on of the cosmos to change us, shaping our journey here to be useful and eternal. Perhaps the reason the modern world is so lacking in wisdom is that we have cut ourselves off from the source, from the cathedral of the cosmos that is the foundation of our being.

In any case, getting away for us also means coming home. And leaving here will mean going home. There is something pretty special about that, something I haven’t fully grasped.

Maybe, someday, I will.

Reset ...

Car, tram, airplane, van, train, metro-link, bus, dink ... HOME!

For more than a month I lived alternating between four rooms, each roughly the same size and shape. The floors were smooth and carpeted and still, never once rippling to send light dancing in all directions. The walls were hard rectangles equally still. Except for a louvered hole here and there, no breeze flowed through them. Except for a window here and there, no light flowed through them either. No matter which way I turned the view extended a few feet and was stopped by a drab so dull as to be numbing. Looking up was even worse. Instead of sky and sun and an entire cosmos of stars laid out in a feast for the soul, there was only more drab. The sound was muted. The colors were muted. Even the temperature was muted.

Three of the rooms held a resident TV which was usually the only source of pretend movement. The TV didn't move of course, just the obviously 2D pictures that danced across the screen. They weren't pretty pictures either. It was hard to tell which was more insipid, trite, shallow, violent, and twisted, the news, the "shows", or the commercials. I finally decided it was a draw. "News" that has been thousands of years in the making got summed up in minutes by people who clearly had no clue. Not only did they sum it up, they were quick to suggest what it all "meant" and who should be blamed for it. TV shows from decades ago (a station called MeTV – don't bother) were openly racist, overwhelmingly sexist, and just as violent as the modern versions but lacking the special effects. At least the commercials were honest about being pure propaganda. Some were so blatantly BS that I swear the narrator / actor / pitchman was winking at the camera. It was almost as if he / she were saying, "We know nobody believes this crap, but they pay me big money to say it like I believe it, and you should see the size of my house".

Then, yesterday, I scrambled up the last of the eggs in the 'fridge, toasted the last English muffin, downed the last of the orange juice, and brewed some coffee in the last of the coffee filters. (It was actually the second pot through that filter. There was one less filter than there were days, so it got recycled to fuel my heading home.)

The car ride started at 1115, the dink bumped Kintala's starboard side right at 2200. It was dark. Thunderstorms flashed out to the east, northeast, and southeast. The bow swung back and forth, unable to decide which one was heading our way. I sat in the cockpit trying to get my bearings. Apparently us human beings calibrate our senses to fit the surroundings. Lightning on a horizon open in all directions, wind shifts and temperature changes, stars and a near full moon back-lighting a massive thunderhead and its ice-cap cloud, waves splintering the moonlight and sending it dancing in all directions. My room-dulled senses where being overwhelmed.

I didn't sleep much. The boat was uneasy, or I was. One of the storms finally found its way overhead. The sound of the wind hummed in the rigging, lightning flashed, thunder rolled; none of it was muted, none of it was dulled. This morning I stumbled my way through the morning routine sleep deprived and wishing I could take it easy. But we need to get heading north this week and there are tasks that must be done.

While others tended to shopping and laundry and taking care of kids, I humped 140 gallons of water to the boat in four trips. It is summertime in southern Florida. The sun fried my indoor pale skin. Muscles used to sitting for hours and challenged only by pushing wheelchairs down padded hallways, balked. Feet long laced up in shoes searched for purchase on a deck that wasn't as familiar as it should have been. Hands as soft as a CEO's pampered paws chafed at hoses and lines, cramped at the weight of water jugs. By the end of the day I was sore, tired, dehydrated, slightly ill, and maybe a bit touched by the heat.

But grand kids needed to go swimming and I couldn't bring myself to say "no". We beached the dingy on the island near the marina and I waded out into neck deep water keeping an eye on the little ones. The water was warm enough to ease sore muscles but still cool enough to leech the heat out of my core. The sun settled behind the next round of thunderstorms. Back on Kintala a cold shower washed away the salt and the last of the sting from my sunburned arms. Dinner was served and along with the chicken, rice, fruit, and corn were glasses of water and a cold drink. The kids went back to Floating Bear for the night. Deb and I settled into the cockpit for the rest of a quiet evening. Lightning danced on the western horizon. A near full moon rose to flood the flanks of the storms with a pure white light, but Kintala kept her bow pointing the other way. Not sure we will see any rain tonight. But unlike last night the place was familiar, comfortable, ...

Home!

Far from home

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.