Throwback Thursday - Just Passin' Through

This post is still one of the most visited posts of our blog. If you spend any time at all in social media, it's worth a read.

Just Passin' Through

Posted by Deb

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Boats leak. A lot. So it was no surprise that a new drop of water slowly streamed its way down the teak siding beneath our headliner, and the irony of its resemblance to a tear was not lost on me. Boat leaks take a lot of work to fix. I sighed deeply.

The leak remained unchecked for some time. We were working our way down the East coast of Florida after having visited with five of our nine grandchildren, on our way to the West coast of Florida where we had arranged to work over the upcoming eight months to replenish our cruising funds. There simply was no time to stop and find the leak, and the summer would provide time in abundance to do so.

Having already tackled some more pressing issues after our arrival, the leak presented itself to the top of the list. It was, of course, part of a multi-project as all boat projects are multi-projects, cause and effect being intertwined in multiple systems in such a small space. The rebedding of the ports project required the removal of the trim around them, which meant the headliner panels were only six screws from being down. It was time.

Kintala is a Tartan 42, known for its soft decks and core damage. Our particular Tartan 42 had the deck core replaced a few years before we bought the boat, a job that was done from the inside of the cabin. We were in possession of photos of the job, one I was happy we had not been required to participate in. As I removed the first panel, I was pleased to see that all the trim pieces and furring strips were well marked, a sign of a professional job. But as I removed the second panel, there staring me in the face was someone's rest-stop-restroom-level declaration of abiding love. It had been scrawled in permanent marker on the new fiberglass, and overlaid with a fresh sheet of glass mat to lend it some permanency.

Scraping old silicone sealant off gives you a lot of time to think. I wondered about the person who wrote the words. Did she still love Ritchie? Was it ever love at all? Did he care for her and respect and support her the way my husband does? Did he bring her smiles or is the scar of their relationship as permanent as this whimsical scrawl? Was it heartfelt, or a pre-Facebook careless need to indulge impulse?

Written communication is a voyage. Through it our thoughts, feelings, and questions travel from the nebulous jumble of impressions in our mind to concrete permanence. Used to be, once upon a time, that communication was labored over. A letter would be carefully crafted and often modified many times before the exact nuance of thought had been captured, a signature artfully assigned, and the stamp affixed. Its receipt would be considered a gift. The command of the English language was broad and deep, and communication an art form of itself. With the increase in the pace of life and the introduction of electronics, communication became – of necessity – fast and easy. Too easy. The letter labored over with love went the way of eight tracks. Impulsive blurting of feelings and impressions became commonplace. Complex thought was delegated to road-weary motivational posters. Subtle humor morphed into crudity.

A disclaimer: I don't yearn for days gone by. I'm a techno-geek and love all things electronic and computer. Without Skype and Facebook to see grandkids, cruising would be much less likely to succeed. But recently I've seen a disturbing trend among my compatriots. The ease of communication through emails, texts, and social media has been around long enough now that it has brought with it a fundamental change – not just in the form and substance of our communication, but in the way we think.

While processing news in short clips without in-depth analysis of the issues is its own whole topic of another discussion, processing relationships the same way is devastating. The overwhelming amount of information and the speed at which it is delivered, leaves us dashing off snippets of communication bereft of body language, voice tone, and eye expression. Carelessly hitting the Send button without reviewing the material in the framework of the person receiving has left many hurting, angry, or confused. The anonymity of internet forums and social media groups lends its own wild West aura to communication, unleashing trolls into the melee with no reliable way to sift their content from our friends'. And while the communication seems fleeting, it's frighteningly permanent, sitting in the cloud archives for eternity to haunt. Writing used to be a legacy to leave behind, a way of lending credence to our short time here. Looking at some of the things in my Facebook feed, I wonder exactly what kind of legacy we're leaving.

Whether you're a cruiser or not, we're all just passing through and time is short. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” I've been blessed that the cruising lifestyle has given me the opportunity to do both. Being far away from those I love, and sharing our adventures with others who wander, I've come to realize that the ability to communicate is both a treasure and a responsibility. The treasure is to be cherished, a means of fulfilling that very basic human need to connect with another; the responsibility lies in measuring its impact. Before it becomes your legacy.

The leak is fixed, the new headliner panels are up, and with it Ritchie's story has leapt from boat maintenance obscurity to the dubious social recognition of the World Wide Web. Besides getting a shiny, clean, new headliner, I also got a reinforced foundation for my thinking. Not a bad return from one little leak.

A Treat For Yourself on Black Friday

Seeing how it's rapidly approaching Christmas, I'm going to indulge in a shameless little plug of my new book. Below, you'll find a copy of the introduction from the book. I think it will best tell you what the book is all about. If you're dreaming of going cruising this book is for you. If you've been cruising and are temporarily or permanently land-bound, this book is also for you. If you have family or friends that just don't get why in the world you would even think of doing something like this, buy them this book. It makes a great Christmas gift.

As with any of our writing, we've always promised that we would tell it like it is, the good, bad and the ugly. This book is no different. In it, I lay bare my soul. I hope that it touches you as deeply as the writing of it touched me. If you read it and it means something to you, please leave a review on Amazon. It's impossible to emphasize how much reviews mean to self-published authors. And, as always, I welcome your feedback.

Introduction

Selling everything and sailing off into the sunset is a dream for many who, like I once did, live a life of unsatisfying work. It's a search for something more, some deeper meaning to life than the 9-5 grind. But leaving a life I knew to embark on a life wholly unfamiliar was hard work. It takes so much time and effort that in cruising circles it's known as the “five year plan.” We were actually fortunate to depart almost exactly 6 years after our initial decision to go.

Unless you've sailed your whole life, and the departure to a full-time life on the sea is just an extension of that experience, the learning curve is steep. We had never sailed or owned a boat before we decided to do this and we were suddenly caught up in a whirlwind of classes, how-to books, and an unending list of online forums full of experts eager to offer advice. My kitchen counter became Command Central with countless to-do lists (many of which had large dollar values in the cost column) neatly arranged in order of priority.

Balancing the end of one existence with the beginning of a new life rapidly became overwhelming. Our departure day brought no relief. The first year or two of this new life was immersion school, a hard-earned lesson learned nearly every day. My illusive and somewhat hazy concept of paradise felt distant. In its place I found an unnerving sense of uncertainty, fear of failure, and that mind-numbing blankness in the face of too much information. Every moment was dedicated to figuring out the “how” of this new life. The shelf in the living room grew full of books to guide us through the “how” of buying a boat and establishing a life on the water, but as the departure date approached, I began to lose touch with the very reason I was choosing to make this significant change in the first place. 

Five years into our new life, as I was cleaning out my photo folder, I was surprised that in spite of my preoccupation with figuring out how to make it all work, my photos had captured those moments that singularly defined the “why” of my journey. I began to collect them and to attempt to capture their essence in the written word. This book is a collection of those moments that most accurately portray why I felt compelled to live a meaningful life with the sea.

If you would like to read a review before you buy, here are several:

Ellen Jacobson

Ardys Richards

Keith Davie

On Trying a New Genre

Reading is a huge part of the cruising life, at least for most cruisers I know. Tim and I each have hundreds of books in our Kindle Readers, many of which we read more than once. We're voracious readers, bad enough that my Amazon storage is nearing full. I don't often leave book reviews here, but when my friend Ellen Jacobson (of The Cynical Sailor & His Salty Sidekick blog) approached me to see if I might be interested in receiving an ARC (advanced reader copy) of her first novel, Murder at the Marina, I was happy to agree to help. I had the time, as we were just departing the boat yard where we'd been stationary for too many months to count. The next few weeks would have evenings in anchorages with a drink in the cockpit. A good book would be a bonus.

I have to admit that this is the very first “Cozy Mystery” I've ever read. I'm a pretty diehard sci-fi, techno-thriller, and spy, political, legal thriller reader. The more intense, complicated, and fast-paced, the more I enjoy it. But, like with food, I'm pretty much always willing to try something new. Having a long history with murder mysteries and zero history with cozy mysteries, I was first caught off guard by the light-hearted tone of the book. I was having trouble lining up murder with light-hearted. I stopped, went out on the internet and researched the cozy mystery genre, and began to understand the background for the story. For those of you with the same problem, here's a short excerpt from Wikepedia:

“Cozy mysteries, also referred to as “cozies”, are a subgenre of crime fiction in which sex and violence are downplayed or treated humorously, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community...the detectives in such stories are nearly always amateurs, and are frequently women...dismissed by the authorities in general as nosy busybodies...the detectives in cozy mysteries are thus left free to eavesdrop, gather clues and use their native intelligence and intuitive “feel” for the social dynamics of the community to solve the crime.”

Ahhhh. Now I got it. Back to the book.

The intimate community in question is a marina. If you've never lived in a marina, you may not get this, but there is no more intimate community than a marina. When you're living in a 16-foot-wide slip and you can hear everything on the boat next to you, (not to mention seeing in the portholes that are right outside your portholes,) everyone knows everyone else's business. News travels faster than the speed of light, and rumors abound. Everyone  has an opionion about simply everything. The perfect background for a cozy mystery.

The protagonist, Mollie McGhie, has never been around boats or owned one, but her husband, dreaming of the two of them sailing away to paradise, buys her a sailboat for their anniversary. All she wanted was diamonds. All she got was a dead body on her new-to-her boat. Sensing the authorities are not as invested in resolving the murder as much as she is, she dives right in to solving the crime herself.

A parade of eccentric characters follows, from the owners of the marina who define the “opposites attract” expression, to pink-obsessed Penny Chadwick, to Ben, the pirate wanabe with the dream to sail around the world, (an example of whom can be found in every single marina,) to Mrs. Moto, the cat with much more going on behind the fur than is suspected. Mollie's inquisitiveness and persistance are a magnet for trouble, though, and soon she finds herself more invested than she wants to be.

As the story progresses, Ellen develops the characters well, combining them into a believable marina community. Mollie is intelligent, determined, not shy in the least, and more than a little quirky in her choice of professions. And did I say she loves chocolate? A lot? Her predilection for treating emergencies with healthy doses of chocolate immediately endeared her to me. Mollie's husband, Scooter, who at first glance seems kind of self-absorbed, becomes to the reader a loving husband with a dream to share something special with his “best girl.” Ben, dismissed by everyone around as a nobody, shows integrity and caring. Penny, who at first glance seems shallowly absorbed with girly pink, shows a remarkable devotion to her students. All through the book, the reader is led from false first impressions to a deeper knowing of some interesting characters. I look forward to seeing how Ellen continues to develop the characters in the next book of the series.

While the book is the first of a series featuring Mollie McGhie, the book is a complete, stand-alone story. It does not suffer from one of my pet peeves of self-published books, where each book is in reality just a chapter of a longer story forcing you to purchase many volumes to complete the read. I have also frequently put a self-published book down in the first chapter just because of the volume of typos, but Murder at the Marina had first-rate editing with flawless type setting and grammar.

Murder at the Marina is a fun read, a light-hearted look at the goings on of the typical, small marina, with characters that are fun to know. The story is full of surprises, and leaves you with a good sense of the kind of characters who choose this crazy way of life.

To buy or for more information:

Murder at the Marina on Amazon
Copyright© 2018 by Ellen Jacobson
Print ISBN 978-1-7321602-1-7
Digital ISBN 978-1-7321602-0-0
www.ellenjacobsonauthor.com

Funding your cruising

One of the most common questions we get from people is how they can fund their cruising. Since a vast majority of cruisers are of retirement age they are depending on fixed income, usually investments they made while they were gainfully employed. Those who are young have usually worked for some time and set aside enough funds to cruise for a specified time, maybe a year or two, before they settle down to raise a family, with plans to cruise once again whenever the kids are on their own. A good many cruisers across the age spectrum are working part-time jobs, taking mostly seasonal retail positions in whatever port they happen to land for awhile, making enough money in four months' work to fund the other eight months. A small minority of cruisers is working full-time from their boat. Most of these are in an IT capacity like a friend of ours who is a software developer, but some are start-up businesses that sell anything from canvas work to home-crafted jewelery. An even smaller minority is depending on contract writing jobs, writing for sailing and cruising magazines and blogs.

We've had many of our blog readers tell us that they enjoy our writing and that we should write a book. We do both enjoy writing and are fairly good at it, thanks in part to being avid and voracious readers and thanks in part to genetics, but with all the distractions of the first year of cruising and the debacle that was The Bear, we haven't had much time to do anything other than concentrating on blog posts.

Writing is hard. Ask anyone who has published and they'll sigh deeply and tell you that the agony of producing a written work is always more difficult than the compensation received for it. I can echo this without any doubt. The first thing I published was a short article for Cruising World in the 35th anniversary edition October 2009. It was part of a special tribute section to Murray Davis, the founder of Cruising World Magazine who had recently died. For my troubles I received a Cruising World hat and duffle bag. I still have the hat, but the duffle only lasted about as long as the magazine issue. It was still slightly more profitable than my next article, an article for the May 2012 issue of Latitudes & Attitudes which was supposed to yield a whopping $75 of which I was entirely and unceremoniously stiffed due to the immediate demise of the publication shortly after my issue was printed. So far Tim holds the dollar value winner in the form of an article he wrote for Flying magazine which brought a mind-boggling $100. So I'm sure you can understand our hesitance in pursuing a writing career to support Kintala.

That being said...a few years ago while working my last aviation marketing job I became quite proficient in an open source graphics design program called Gimp. After being unceremoniously dumped from the job and being short on funds, I began to fiddle with the beginnings of a children's book that I hoped to print out for my grandchildren for an inexpensive Christmas present. The story evolved, I got better at the illustration and design, and before long the idea that it might be publishable began to enter my mind. The story had lain dormant for some time during our frantic, last- minute cruising preparations but after the financial drain of the three months on the dock I found some motivation to pick it back up. I finished the book while we were anchored here in Middle River and began the final editing and formatting process by showing it to Tim for the first time. He was impressed, and it's pretty hard to impress him with a children's book. My art critic and editor son-in-law was next with positive feedback.  I was buoyed, and submitted it to createspace.com, Amazon's self-publishing company, for approval. After 3 weeks and as many revisions, the book has been published and is ready for your perusal. If you have any children on your holiday gift list in the toddler to third grade range,  this book makes a great holiday gift. You can either get it on amazon.com or on createspace.com. I get more profit from the latter, but if you're shopping on the former and just want to add it to your cart, go for it.

A little background on the story and the main character is in order I think. The book is the first in a series of books with the main character, Maryssa Mayberry, who is a young sailor who feels very passionately about the ocean and is sailing around the world to educate kids about the problems with the oceans and how they can help. This first book introduces her and is a fun story about working together to accomplish things. The next book will begin to deal with the pollution of the ocean with trash.  There is also a companion blog for the character, 

www.maryssamayberry.blogspot.com

which has more in-depth information on the issues and resources for both kids and parents on how to get involved in helping. There are also some coloring pages, puzzles and games there to entertain the kids. If you happen to notice the author name and wonder about it, it's DeMa, the nickname my grandchildren fondly call me.

I can assure you that you won't be disappointed with the quality of the book. I have one in my hands right now and I have to tell you that I've been extremely impressed with the quality of printing done through Create Space. It's a print-on-demand service which I was leery about at first, but the book I ordered was printed the same day and I had it a few days later. It was a user-friendly interface and I look forward to working again with them in the near future with the second book. By the way...rumor has it that there will be a co-authored book for our adult blog readers coming up in the near future as well so stay tuned.

I'd love to have your feedback on this book, so please feel free to leave comments. Please try to be kind and constructive in your criticisms if you can. One of the other things that makes writing for pay so difficult is that you lay yourself bare out there. You tend to get attached to your characters since you spend so much time with them, and publishing a book leaves you feeling very vulnerable. But then, like cruising, any venture without risk is a venture without reward.

I hope you enjoy.