Category Archives: Sailing

Vacation 2013: Successful Slothing with Plenty of Archetypes

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After 3 weeks on the boat with no one else present to intervene, the verdict is in: Mike and I did not kill each other in our sleep. This is no small thing because it means we could cruise successfully and our relationship would survive. To put this in perspective consider this: we’ve been married 31 years, we’re both seriously “oldest children”, and are pretty much accustomed to doing our own things. We both need our space and our privacy. We are both at the proverbial ‘top’ of our fields and when at work, we are the ‘go to’ people. Not to mention that I’ve worked for myself for the last 13 years. (Translation: Boss me around at your peril.)  So the fact that we can live on a boat for even 3 weeks without killing each other quietly and surreptitiously is significant and encouraging.

Why, yes, those are Tate’s famous Margaritas in those jelly jars. Mike was hoping if he medicated me before the game he might win.

Plus, we had a ton of fun and played Scrabble at least once. I read a total of 10 books, including Love, With a Chance of Drowning by Torre DeRoche. Great book! Mike read Moby Dick, which is a tome so huge it took him the entire vacation. Our days developed their own rhythm: Mike gets up and makes coffee. Melissa gets up and joins him. One of them makes breakfast.  Then there is reading and napping, then lunch. Then more reading and possibly a paddle or row to leisurely explore a beach. Then more reading and napping. Dinner in the cockpit or in the cabin while watching a DVD. Beautiful sunsets. Bed at sundown, 5 minutes of reading, then deep sleeping.

Now I have to go back on my diet. Damn and damn, again. It was totally worth it.

Visibility about 1/4 mile, give or take. Winds on the nose at 25 knots, but higher winds ahead of us. This might be exciting, but it’s not relaxing. We turned around and were happy to do it. Photos just don’t do the sea state justice.

My last post announced that our plans took a rapid change when Mother Nature intervened in our attempt to go to Barkley Sound. It seemed the better part of wisdom to abandon that plan rather than to go willingly and knowingly into gale force winds and fog. Moonrise would surely take the beating well, but that wasn’t our idea of a restful vacation. So we turned around and went back to the Gulf Islands. Since we had more time than usual, we got to go further north than we have before and explore places new to us. What a great thing to find a new anchorage, spend a couple of days, and then move on at our leisure! Being on a boat is so easy when the weather is fine. We really needed this time of deep sloth behavior.

This wooden boat is in the boat yard at Port Townsend. Notice the instructive sign.

Now that we are back, the push is on to continue paring down our ‘stuff’ and prepare the house for either sale or rent. While away, I was sorely tempted to just sell the place and be done with it. If we can get Moonrise sold to a new owner and find a boat we can live on, then we will feel like we’ve really moved forward with our plan and the decision about the house will be easier. Being away for three weeks helped us clarify that our goals remain constant. This is a good thing, because being in the house we can get so involved with the day to day maintenance of the place that our world becomes quite small and dense, like a black hole from which there is no escape.  Being on the boat allows us a vision of a simpler way of living that would be less chronically stressful, even though it comes with its own kinds of problems.

Last year I posted about some of the Pacific Northwest Archetypes we experienced on one of our weekend trips. This trip there are extensive lists of archetypes, which makes a handy way of organizing all the data we have. We both look forward to catching up on the blogging, one part of our everyday life is always a pleasure. We have stories, and we will be telling them.

Archetype of Water and Stone, Kuper Island, B.C.

 

 

Gearing Up!

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June 23 is fast approaching. In case you are wondering why that day is important, aside from it being Mike’s birthday,  it’s the day by which if Moonrise doesn’t sell we will be sailing her back to her home port in Tacoma and getting her outfitted for an actual adventure. I’m holding my breath. In a recent post I threw down the proverbial gauntlet and challenged the Universe. Either sell our boat, or give us a good vacation this year. It’s just entirely possible we will get our vacation. So it’s hard to be sorry that the boat hasn’t sold yet. The vacation cannot come fast enough for me.

I want this. I want it now.

I want this. I want it now.

I remember the last time we headed up to Barkley Sound and how much planning we did for the trip. We bought a Spot Locator so family could keep track of us, only to realize when we failed to push the magic locator button at the end of the day, they got worried. Oy. That was a mistake. We dithered and bought things and laid on supplies like we were going to the far reaches of civilization. Imagine our dismay when we realized just how many boats there were up there in the wilds of Vancouver Island. And they actually have grocery stores there, too! Imagine that!

This time we are preparing in a different way. With all of our ‘stuff’ off of the boat, we have the opportunity to be choosy about what goes back onto her for the trip. Only things we know we will use will find their places below. Of course, that includes my hammock. I will need that desperately. And reading material of all kinds. I like to have a small library to choose from as the spirit moves me. Mike has bought another anchor off Craigslist to replace the one we lost last year in the ‘sailboat hard on the rocks‘ debacle, so that will go on the boat. This year we both have new cameras, one of them waterproof. And I have a fancy new Asus notebook computer with some fabulous navigation software that we’ll be reviewing. We can’t wait to try it out.

But that’s not the only new toy we’ll be having on this trip.

Looks like Mike had an early birthday this year! Is that a halo?

It may seem counter intuitive to some, but we bought an auto pilot for the boat. Yes, the boat will be for sale again when we get back, unless we find a buyer while we’re up there. But the way we look at it, if the boat doesn’t sell and we keep it awhile longer, we’ll enjoy having one. Going to Barkley Sound without one would still be fun, but it would mean taking turns being wheel slaves constantly as it’s likely there will be a lot of motoring time unless we get lucky. This will be a long trip and if we did something else for a vacation, that money would be spent anyhow. So we’ll get to use it for the trip, and as long as we have the boat. And it will make Moonrise that much more desirable to someone else in the future. See how happy Mike looks? That’s because we are going to learn so much about installing this thing and making it work and all that learning will benefit us the second time around.

While we’re waiting for next weekend, we’re busy reading some classic sailing books by Tristan Jones. I’ll be taking some of his books aboard for the trip. I’d never heard of him before, but noticed an entire shelf devoted to his considerable works at my local used book store. He tells a good yarn and did things most sane people wouldn’t even consider, such as taking his trimaran, S/V Outward Leg, across the rivers of Europe during the height of the cold war. Oh, and when he did this, he had only one leg, the other one being a wooden model allegedly carved for him by none other than Larry Pardey. I have not checked this out with Mr. Pardey, so I’ll just take Tristan’s word for it. His books are page turners and we found we couldn’t wait to see what kind of wild thing he did next. He must have been some kind of character. Pick up one of his books and see if you can read just one. By the time we come back, maybe I will have read them all.

 

 

How I’m Going to Spend My Summer Vacation! I Mean It!

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In naming this post, I’ve thrown down the gauntlet; drawn the proverbial line in the sand between us and the Universe.  It began when I realized two things: we haven’t had a really long sailing vacation since 2010, and we never get to use our boat since we moved it down to Olympia. We’ve had such lovely warm days here of late, and there has even been a bit of wind. We eat dinner on the patio, overlooking the pond and garden and watching the koi spawn. This is lovely. The garden is amazing this year and watching koi spawn is a lot more interesting than some things I can think of.  But sometimes we’d both rather be on the boat, eating dinner in the cockpit.

The koi are spawning early this year and the shallow end of the pond is covered with eggs. The koi will probably eat them all. Got to love an animal that eats its own young without even regretting it.

The koi are spawning early this year and the shallow end of the pond is covered with eggs. The koi will probably eat them all. Got to love an animal that eats its own young without even regretting it.

Just as I was about to get lulled into a nice, deep complacent lack of giving a c**p about boats and plans; just as I was about to throw caution to the wind and stop caring about any of this stuff because it’s just too much out of my control anyhow,  these two simple facts converged in such a way that I began to panic. I feared another summer would go by without a really good sailing vacation. I thought about the coming winter. (We Pacific Northwesterners always start thinking about winter just about the time the Summer Solstice comes around. It’s our way of pre-grieving the loss of the sun.) I thought about things like ‘carpe diem’, and other ubiquitous sayings that mean you should stop what you are doing now and go sailing. And I was seriously not amused at the idea of owning a boat without being able to use it, even if that boat is for sale. I felt my temper rising, just a little bit.

I have NEVER had waterlilies bloom before August. I have three in bloom this year already.

I have NEVER had waterlilies bloom before August. I have three in bloom this year already.

So I made a suggestion. It was really more in the form of a pronouncement, as my dander was up with frustration, but still, it was well thought out: If Moonrise does not sell by the end of June, we are retrieving our boat from Olympia, getting her ready to go, and heading back out to the west coast of Vancouver Island. I want to remember what the big ocean looks like and feels like, and that’s about as far as we can reasonably go in the amount of time Mike has.  I need to remember why we are doing this because it’s been such a frustrating experience so far. We’re not even to square one and already we are behind schedule.  I know that if I get out there and see even one whale, I’ll remember.

This was 3 years ago. That's too long between good, long trips.

This was 3 years ago. That’s too long between good, long trips.

We also need to practice doing things like charting, setting way points, paying more acute attention to weather, and keeping watch. We don’t need these skills very often around here as we’ve been sailing here for 10 years and we pretty much go to all the same places most of the time due to time pressures.  If you don’t have much time, you don’t go very far in a sailboat. So this kind of trip would allow us to get offshore, even if not for long. There will only be the two of us on the boat for this trip, unlike our previous trip to the west coast when our son, Andrew, was with us. He is good crew.

Also this cave almost ate me the last time we were there. I probably should go back and have a little conversation with it, just to clear the space between us.

Also this cave almost ate me the last time we were there. I probably should go back and have a little conversation with it, just to clear the space between us. It’s bigger than it looks. And darker. Much darker. 

Now that I’ve begun planning for our trip, the gauntlet is thrown, the die is cast. Now that the decision has been made, it wouldn’t surprise me if we get a last minute buyer for Moonrise.  If that happens, we’ll have to cancel the trip. But then we can spend our time looking at boats for real.  And that will be just as much fun.

Just in case the Universe is unclear about the plan, if our boat doesn’t find a good buyer before the end of the month, we’re going here. Let it be written, let it be done.