We are on board Galapagos at the dock this week for the first time ever, testing out this ‘new and improved’ lifestyle we’ve worked so hard to achieve. This morning I awoke with mixed feelings, which, I suppose, is natural. Having worked for the last week in a focused, almost manic way, to get our house scrupulously clean and move all of our personal supplies and thingamabobs out of the house, we are both just dog tired. And speaking of dogs, we miss our Skippy dog. We really do. He went to stay with Andrew and Jill until our renters are gone and we are back in the house. It’s weird how a dog gets under your skin. But seriously, you can eat off of any surface in our house if you wanted to. It’s that clean. It looks like a frickin’ hotel.

After our 5 day cruise, Mike worked on a list in his little notebook. Now the list is growing every day.

Today I’m just not thinking much about how strangers are living in my house. Instead I am looking around in this boat and reflecting on how great it is, but how very much there is to do, and also how very much neither of us want to move anything on board. We just like that it wasn’t junky looking on the inside. Past tense. We liked the clean, sparseness that is an almost empty boat. But that’s not going to last. Already I am irritated with the number of items that are out in plain view in the salon. And the aft cabin is just a downright shame. We are waiting for our mattresses to be upholstered so we are sleeping in the rumpus cabin (v-berth). This means I have to remove all the rumpusing stuff from that cabin, make the berth sleepable, then the next day I have to undo everything and replace it like it should be. So I’ll need to add that to my morning routine, which now goes from about 7:30 to noon. Half my day is already gone.

One thing about this week is that 6 days is really not enough time to bother putting everything away. We’d just have to get it out again in less than a week. So we are going to live out of containers for a week. Woo hoo. Even my containers are disorganized.

Why bother stowing this stuff? We’ll be back at the house next week.

This was Mike’s first day getting ready to go to work from the boat. Neither of us got much sleep last night since we are not used to sleeping that close together, we were both still running on adrenaline, we have never slept in the v-berth, and the boat was making a ton of noise because of wind. Sleeping at anchor is different. Mike’s preternaturally good hearing is not a gift when he’s trying to sleep and there are a million noises. Also, I realize how much light there is in the city, and in this marina. Tonight I will put something over the hatch in the forward berth. It’s too light in there for sleeping.

I will be working this week as well, but since clients come to the boat to see me, I better get up and put all this shit away. I can’t have people coming down to a boat that is in disarray. Maybe that’s another good thing about working from the boat. Lights a fire under my rear to keep this salon looking decent.

My alarm woke me this morning and the boat was cold. Seriously, it was warmer in the cockpit than inside the boat. This does not bode well for living aboard next winter, which is probably going to happen. I just don’t want to think about that because….cold…damp…. On to the next thing for now..

I have a few little projects to get done this week. We are remodeling the hanging locker in the aft cabin. Seriously, these are just huge caverns of wasted space right now. Mike will do a post on his part of that. My part, today, is Bilge Kote and some fabric headliner I need to use up. I need to get my butt off the settee and get started on that. I’m noticing a trend here.

This is in the salon. I used that thick fabric headliner to cover the walls. Clean appearance, and it absorbs sound also.

The aft head is a mess. I want to put everything away, but there is a leak in the deck drain above the aft head. I hate those deck drains. They are too small, and I don’t understand why water has to drain anywhere but immediately OFF the boat. In a perfect world I would pay someone to put drains in the bulwark. Why is it even possible for it to drain into the cabinet? We have a fix in mind. It’s on the list. Meanwhile, everything is out on the counter. It is chaos.

There are too many different places leaks can occur on this thing.

I do love having a hot shower inside the boat. I thought it was ridiculous when we bought her. I was wrong. It is luxury.

We are discussing the galley remodel. Seriously, it is LONG overdue. Take a look at what’s underneath those sinks. It’s a leak waiting to happen. Oh, wait, it’s already leaking. And those drawers have to go. They are narrow and deep. Just try finding anything in them without emptying the drawer. There is a lot of wasted space in that area. I want a cabinet with pullouts or shelves.

What do you think? Time to pull this out and start over? Love that big gob of silicone on the right? Excellent.

And this:

Narrow. Difficult.

This week we played ‘What’s That Smell?’.  On warm days, when you come to the boat, the cockpit has a weird smell. Then you open the companionway door and WHEWY! Until you get air circulating, it’s pretty bad. Of course, people always think ‘it’s the head, or your hoses’, but it’s not that. New PVC pipes. Excellent holding tank installation. No leaks. No smell. It’s the bilge. My nose knows. Looking down in the bilge we notice something that looks like transmission fluid, but it’s not. However, it is possible it is hydraulic steering fluid. Mike took the shop vac to it and cleaned out the bilge.  Problem solved. The smell went away almost completely. But these lines to the hydraulic steering are old and travel through fiberglass tubes so it’s likely there is a small leak, but enough that over time fluid collects in the bilge. They will be replaced. Pretty sure that’s the issue as the boat has always had that smell to some extent, and we’ve had to mess with the steering a couple of times. Just say ‘no’ to nasty boat smells.

That’s our boat in the South Pacific. Notice the Minto on the foredeck. Notice the double furling foresails. Notice how pretty she is.

Let’s see, what else? Oh, dinghies. Still considering options there. We’d still love the Portland Pudgy, but $$$ and also they are back ordered on the liferaft kits. We would have to order everything now to be sure to have it by next year. We don’t have the money to do that now so we’re looking at options.  A previous owner of this boat had two dinghies: an inflatable and a Minto sailing dinghy, both kept on the foredeck on passages. Hmmm. He emailed us his thoughts, having a ton of experience on this particular boat. We are strongly considering his views for many reasons.

On the Women Who Sail local page, a woman was selling her nice hypalon dinghy and a Minto that needed transom fiberglass work. We drove out and made a deal on both of them, offering her full price. She declined a deposit, saying she didn’t need one.  I texted I would pick up today. She texted ‘thumbs up’, which meant, to me, that this worked for her. Then she sold the inflatable to someone else the same day. Then she told me that the Minto was no longer available. Huh? Or rather WTF??  Karma will not be kind to her. That was a dishonorable thing to do. I’m still angry because this week is Mike’s birthday. That little Minto would have been a fun birthday gift. But it has got us thinking about our options again. So we’ll stick with that. I’m sure there must be a reason the Universe intervened on that purchase. Maybe the hypalon had a leak? Who knows? When the right combination of boats comes together, it will work out.

Random, fairly disorganized thoughts. Like my boat right now. Ok, procrastination through blogging over now. The aft hanging locker is calling my name and it’s getting irritating. I must bow to its wishes and make it pretty.

It will be a fascinating week! We are looking forward to it.

Decisions, decisions, decisions. Thrumming our fingers on the desk does nothing to help with some decision making. Like whether to allow our blog to make money for us. Yes, that’s becoming a ‘thing’ that we have to decide about because suddenly (well, not really that suddenly) we have had a couple of offers from people to advertise on our site. I guess it’s not really that much of a surprise since we’ve been blogging for 5 years in October. We have a lot of posts, even if some of them get more traction than others.

We’d be lying if we said that we never hoped we could make some change from this blog, but that has never been our primary purpose. We’ve blogged because it sharpens our focus on our goals, helps us meet cool people, and documents an important time in our lives for us and for our children. We hope that after we are dead and gone they will be able to pull up the blog and say, ‘Wow, our parents really did something. Remember when they spent all of our inheritance on a boat and sailed away?’. At the rate we are spending money, the blog may be our only legacy. If people are entertained by our blog and get some ideas from us, that makes us feel good and like we’ve contributed something to others. Plus, we like to write. It’s always been a win for all those reasons.

But now that we are getting closer to ‘living on a fixed income’,  we are asking to be shown other ways of bringing in a little cash. The Universe has responded by offering up a couple of small-time opportunities with the blog. One young company wrote to us and asked if we’d be willing to model their shirts on our blog. We had such a good laugh over that one because the last time anyone asked us to model something for them was… exactly never. We are not young. We are not hip. We do not party. We are boring, thoughtful middle aged people. Also we do not photograph all that well and neither of us have cheekbones. But they seem to like the cut of our jib, so they are either desperate or they have us confused with our kids. But I thought it would be fun, so I said yes. Why not? Free shirts, anyone? If you suddenly see us parading a couple of unusual looking shirts on the blog and linking to a place where you can purchase the shirt for yourself, you’ll know we decided they were okay and we didn’t look too terrible in them.

From our travels to Washington D.C. Traveling costs money.

The other offer was some kind of marketing company in the UK who approached us wanting to publish a guest post related to boating and travel on our site. They would pay us a nominal fee for the privilege. We were suspicious because it sounded a little too easy. We’re always suspicious when things are too easy. But we do get to be ‘in charge’ of it, and we can look the article over and reject it if it looks too hinky. On the other hand, the subject sounded like something we’d like to know about ourselves, so we said yes to it. When I think about the number of hours we’ve put into this website, so far the amount of easy money we could potentially make at this point is somewhere around $.0000000001; a number I am completely making up and that is so infinitesimally small that it could well describe your chances of that Nigerian prince coming up with the money he promised if you’d only share all your banking information. Yay! We will be rich!

Anyhow, heads up. If we post something someone else writes, we will post it as a ‘guest’ post and it will be labeled as such. If we get paid to post something, we’ll tell you. Also, I guess it should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyhow: if we don’t like something, it won’t appear here. If we don’t find it pertinent, it won’t be on our blog.  I’m fairly certain we’re not going to be flooded with requests to become spokespeople for Gill or West Marine, or that our blog is going to be gobbled up by corporate entities who don’t give a crap about the voice of the blog. But, you know, if West Marine needs any more spokes people, I’m looking for a part-time job and I know how to talk. (I’m especially interested in testing and reviewing things like Sat Phones, sailing hardware, dinghies, and head rebuild kits.)

We’re thinking maybe we can make enough change to keep us in coffee if these offers pop up occasionally. Why the heck not? Anyone else have any free stuff they want us to try out and review for them? Bring it on!

From the Library of Congress. I was in complete awe. Europe has nothing on this. Breathtaking.