The Road to Home(s)

Early Sunday morning we headed out for our first trip to First Light as owners. We were going to do it in one day again, a killer trip of 15 hours and change, but at least this time I would be able to help drive some. We were greeted with a nice sunrise to start the day. We chatted about what we would be ticking off the list, but we both agreed that this trip would primarily be a reconnaissance trip, a first date so to speak, us dancing warily around the boat to see if perhaps we might just have learned something from our previous experiences. I really have no interest in writing another book about our mistakes.

Arriving at the marina the next morning, we both looked on First Light with some cautious optimism. We worked the whole week ticking projects off the to-do list to make the insurance company happy. Mostly electrical things were being done but, being who we are, cleaning had to happen in between. One of the things bugging me was the underside of the cockpit hardtop which had developed a fairly decent coat of mold. While Tim pressure washed the rest of the boat to get the NC swampy green slime off, I had him hit the underside of the hardtop and absolutely nothing happened. The mold resisted. I had brought along my new favorite All Purpose Cleaner by Better Life, an ecologically sustainable cleaner, and decided to give it a shot. Wow. I was completely amazed because usually ecologically sustainable = no worky. It took a minimal amount of elbow grease and an hour or two, but the results were absolutely worth it. It comes in a quart sprayer and then also in a gallon of concentrate that lasts a really long time. If you're looking for a completely impressive and affordable boat cleaner that's kind to the environment, try it out.

It only took one night for me to feel completely at home in the V-berth. The bed is super comfy thanks to a very high-end custom mattress. After the toe-tootsie V-berth in Kintala, it was nice to actually be able to stretch out all of my legs on my side of the bed. There's good ventilation as well between the four portlights and the overhead hatch. Only time will tell whether the bow will be noisy at anchor. Fortunately, there is a very good anchor snubber at hand that should minimize the anchor noise.

Even with the lack of water in the tanks (she's still winterized and we're going to keep it that way for now,) the galley is wonderful. We bought a new electric tea kettle to heat water for coffee, which performed flawlessly. There's already a functioning microwave, something I never thought I would want or need, but reheating stuff quickly on a night passage is something desirable it turns out. The plan is to possibly get rid of the stove/oven combination and go with an induction stovetop and a Ninja Foodie air fryer/oven and make the existing oven space into more cupboards.  There isn't quite as much usable storage in the galley as I would like, and the areas are oddly arranged, but we have plans to add shelves to the hanging locker in the pullman berth and turn it into the same kind of pantry that I had on Kintala, which was enough to last us for several weeks.

Our biggest challenge is going to be the fact that our diet has completely changed since we were cruising before. Since we both gained a tremendous amount of weight in that six years (too much time at anchor baking cookies and bread...) we worked hard at losing it when we came back to land and don't want to go down that road again. The new diet is highly plant-based and requires a huge amount of fresh produce. The Norcold fridge/freezer performed well, but it is limited in space so we will have to make more frequent runs to the store. The Norcold was not up to the ice cream task, though. It froze bottles of water easily and kept them frozen, but the ice cream was very soft. In its defense, we did turn the fridge off periodically when we ran the vacuum and pressure washer because the electric at the marina is limited to one 30 amp circuit for the whole row of boats on the hard and there were other people using power tools so we were trying to be considerate. As a result, we can't really say the ice cream test was very accurate. The fridge portion did very well with everything we put in it.

In order to keep the suck-to-fun ratio properly in balance, we did find time to spend with our friends Alex and Diann of Yacht-A-Fun fame who introduced us to some new friends, Danny and Doris on SV Unicorn which is on the hard just down from us at Duck Creek Marina. We had some good beer, excellent food, and much needed laughs. Alex is a great tour guide, giving us some historical background on the city as we walked around for the annual MumFeast, a walking tour of restaurants in the historical area of New Bern, a tour that included several musical happenings and, of course, ended at an ice cream shop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When we first started talking about transitioning to a trawler from a sailboat, I admit to being somewhat concerned. Sailors have this "thing" about them, something you can only really understand if you've experienced that sudden hush when the engine is killed; the sails fill and the boat surges, the water slipping by the hull with a soft swish. I was worried that somehow we would lose that connection with the water that made Kintala so much a part of us, so much our home.

After spending this past week on First Light, it became readily apparent that what made Kintala our home wasn't the big white flappy things in the air, it was us.  We were back in the groove, working easily together, reading each other's thoughts before they were uttered. The space that is First Light fits us well, but it is only a shell to hold that which makes it a home—the two of us.

So, for the time being, we'll make the road trip back and forth, each direction taking us to a place we call home. Our land home where seven of our eleven grandchildren live, and our boat home which promises to get us back to the four grandchildren cruising in Florida. Anyway you look at it, the destination at each end is as good as the one at the end of the rainbow.

Now if I could just figure out where we're going to put all these ukuleles on the boat...