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A Photo Tribute to Moonrise

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I’m beginning to feel terrified. We have all these plans, and they all hinge on the releasing of attachments to land based things for awhile so we can go and see the world. You see, our children are more well-traveled than we are, and we just cannot let that stand. We want to go to Mexico, and Central America, and down the coast of South America, even to Antarctica. We want to go to the South Pacific, to New Zealand, and to the Great Barrier Reef. We want to sail in Europe and around the British Isles. And being the kind of people we are, we want to go to those places on our own terms and stay away from the touristy crowds. We’ve already established that Moonrise isn’t going to be our world traveling boat.  So now, I’m getting terrified because we’ve put her up for sale. We’re about to be boatless, and we don’t know when, or for how long. Yikes! If you are not a sailor, it’s hard to help you understand just how bad that’s going to feel.

It's hard to get shots like this if you don't have a boat.

You cannot get to this awesome sea cave without a boat.

Being boatless means I won't be able to see things like this, which make life worthwhile. I don't want to go whale watching with 40 strangers in orange jumpsuits for 1 hour. I want to spend the whole day watching them from the deck of my boat.

Part of our preparation for the cunning plan has been purging the house of extraneous stuff and this has forced us to reckon with the idea of ‘sunk costs’. You know: the costs you’ll never recover,  like the fact that we bought something for 1500$ and then sold it for $500. That 1000$ difference is just gone. Poof! When Mike began to tally up all the time and money we’ve spent on Moonrise in the four years we’ve owned her, it became crystal clear that we were going to have to find a way to accept the energy we’ve sunk into her as just par for the course. It would have been great if we had known when we bought her that we would someday want to sail the world and needed a boat designed for blue water. But life has a way of being messier than that, and we wouldn’t have been ready to buy such a boat at that time.  So what do we have to show for those sunk costs?

Plenty. When we bought Moonrise we were still pretty novice sailors. Having Moonrise allowed us to gain skills in ways we would never have done on the Saucy Sue (our Catalina 27). Different boats are made for different things. We sailed in conditions we would have shied away from on the Sue, just because Moonrise made us feel safe and secure. We learned we could sail in 30 knots of wind and 10 foot waves, at night, to cross the Strait of Juan de Fuca. You would have had to hog tie me to the mast to get me to do that on a 27 foot Catalina. Then you would have had to clean up after me. Not pretty.

Mike, fueling up for his turn at the wheel during the night crossing.

Three reefs on the main, just a tiny jib up. Everyone harnessed to the boat, no one allowed on deck. We did three hour watches, two people in the cockpit, one below napping.

Andrew at the wheel during the night crossing, checking the compass heading. Don't ask about the scrub brush behind him.

We learned how to work as a crew together.

Mike and Andrew trim the sail. I'm at the wheel.

And we learned how to use our cruising spinnaker.

On days like this, I think Moonrise is the prettiest boat on the water.

While Saucy Sue was a great racer and day sailer, I would not have traveled extensively on the Sue. She just was not a comfortable boat.  Moonrise is the perfect coastal cruiser. We took extended trips on Moonrise, with her comfortable cabin and sleeping arrangements and complete galley. She encouraged us to venture further each year. We were soon learning to anchor in places the guidebooks didn’t talk about, until we finally braved the Pacific side of Vancouver Island and Barkley Sound.

Nothing but big Pacific ahead.

 

The foggy west coast of Vancouver Island.

One of those anchorages that is not in the guidebooks.

Sailing experience is not all we gained for those ‘sunk costs’. We also gained experience working on boats. Moonrise has a lot more to offer her new owners than she did us. We’ve learned how to ‘remodel’ the boat interior, and how to not be too mortified at the idea of cutting into fiberglass and wood. Mike, especially, has really cut his teeth on Moonrise when it comes to working on boat systems and improving them. We know, now, how to have a boat hauled out and how to sand and paint the bottom ourselves.

Moonrise's lovely bottom.

As hard as it is to look at the tally sheet of expenditures on this boat, how much would it have cost us to have someone teach us these things? How would that even be possible? No, I feel sure that this is money well spent in the end. Sure, we are selling the boat, but we are not selling our experiences, our learning. We get to keep those. And we have the memories of being on this boat together in places we would not have seen otherwise.  And those are priceless.

 

We’re Legit!

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Now we HAVE to go!

Look what the mailman delivered today! We’re feeling pretty legit around the Cunning Plan household now that we have real business cards. We haven’t bought a boat yet, or rented our house out yet, or quit our jobs yet, but, by golly and furry kittens we’ve got cards and a website and that means we’re doing it! It’s a milestone. And when we get our boat, I’ll have more printed up with the boat name on them. And then we’ll REALLY be cooking with gas.

So if you see one of us and we hand you a Little Cunning Plan business card, please just take it and smile as if we were a real live business. It will encourage us and it’s just a lot less complicated that way.

Stay the Course!

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A sunny day at the boat today.

January sucks. I had to get that out of my system. I just hate this month with its long darkness. The sense of urgency I feel to get out of here and into someplace with more sunlight can be simply overwhelming at times, causing sleepless nights, irritability, and thoughts of simply walking out the door, getting on the boat we have, and sailing away. So I frequently have to smack myself into thinking more clearly about The Plan. The smacking happens more easily on days like this: filled with sunshine and being on the boat. It’s cold, but at least down here at the marina we can get the benefit of whatever sun is available this time of year.

We’ve been spending a lot of time looking at boats lately and this has led me down the garden path into thinking that we’re closer to leaving than we actually are. Fantasy is really so much more enjoyable than physical reality.  What we really need to be doing is selling Moonrise. So we’ve begun preparing her for sale. This is kindred to a grieving process since boats, as everyone knows, have consciousness and personality. Moonrise is a steady, supportive boat filled with kindness and a sense of adventure. She is upbeat and sincere, and like a good and faithful dog, always wants to please. We have had many years of good times in this worthy boat and being down here at the marina, working on her to get her ready for sale, gives me time to reflect on these times and to be glad I’ve had them. If it were not for Moonrise, I would not even be considering long distance cruising, and she knows it. Moonrise has shown me that it is completely possible to feel safe and secure while on the water, even in nasty weather.

So first, get Moonrise on the market. Concurrently, we need to prepare to rent out our house. This causes yet more of those feelings of grief. It’s hard for me to leave houses. I left houses all the time as I was growing up, a brat with a military father. So I tend to get rather attached to them, and at the same time I resent this attachment. Probably no one except another kid with an upbringing like mine can understand this pathetic and delicate rapprochement. Our house is filled with sweat equity. Every room bears witness to the countless hours we spent making our house the home it is today.

And I cannot even begin to express my dismay at leaving my garden. I have begun to withdraw from the emotion of it in order to continue to move forward with the plan. The huge pond and waterfall I built with my own hands, my koi, raised from tiny babies and protected lovingly from herons and their ilk. The greenhouse Mike insisted I needed and built for me. The garden walls I built, using my own red cement mixer. The berm in the back, built with the cooperation and help of my many gardening friends. My hundreds of lily bulbs. My thousands of dollars worth of rare plants that no one but me can identify. My 30 or so different types of hydrangeas, many of which cannot replaced.  Who will protect my emerging hostas from slugs? Who will know to go up to the witch hazel and sniff the flowers in the dead of winter? Who will know, when the Himalayan lilies bloom again in about 4 years, that this is a rare and wonderful thing?  How will anyone else appreciate these things, much less care for them? If I think too much about it, I will get a little crazy.

So I prepare to walk away from this, because it’s the only way we can move on to the next part of our lives and not get stuck in the same old rut forever, until we die, old and unfulfilled. My worst nightmare. I’d really like to skip over all of this part and just move on to the boat shopping. I tried that and it worked for awhile. But then I remembered that we already have a boat, and a house, and that I’m supposed to be getting these things ready to be released into the universe. So that I, too, can be released.

View of the S/V Annabelle, an old ferry that someone lives on. It's just so cute!