Flash to bang

We are tucked in at Boot Key Harbor and preparing for the cruisers' Thanksgiving Day Potluck in a few hours.  We are all strangers who share a common bond and obligation.  Like when lightning strikes.

Two nights ago a fierce cold front bashed through here in the wee hours with many direct strikes in the harbor.  I remember one especially close strike allowed me to see through from the inside of my eyelids while trying to sleep through it.  I should have taken a clue from the unpercievable flash-to-bang time. 

We learned the next morning on the cruisers' radio net that two boats were hit, one lost their chart plotter electronics, another lost a lot more.  Somehow (in the oven?) they had saved their handheld VHF and put out a request on the net for any available assistance.  Boats all over the harbor responded with 12 volt fridges, spare parts, etc.   Others' dinghies were swamped and kayaks blown away in the corresponding torrential rain.  National Weather Service reported 40 kt gusts in the outer channel.

I thought we had escaped with just a dinghy full of rain water but last night we found our masthead anchor light (and later found our masthead navigation tri-color) were blown.  It is mercifully a modular (=$$$'s!) part and we happen to have one aboard.  But it means a trip to the very tip top of the 60' mast out in the harbor, a spooky task with which we have very little experience, to secure small screws against loosening, juggling a very expensive spare part, and trying to get the wiring joint all sealed against the weather up there.  That will will have to wait for Saturday when the weather is expected to back off a lot. 

In the meantime we are watching for our window to get Across and at least it doesn't look like it will arrive before I have a chance to get up the mast. 

So we wish you all a happy Thanskgiving, we are missing our families yet thankful ourselves for where we are and who we are with. 

HYATS

Learning how little we actually need

Western culture is all about consumerist comfort.  Cruising is all about seeing the world under your own steam within a budget.  And boating adds a lot of cost to comfortable things that land-dwellers nearly take for granted.  So it boils down to how little can you take with you and still be happy enough to keep going. 

It starts with the boat.  The old saw says  "Get the smallest boat that will let you do what you want to do."  But what do you want to do, how do you know until you are Out There?  And you won't be Out There until after you have the boat, so what you are going to experience will be pre-constrained by the boat  you pick.  Many cruisers quit because their boat is just too cumbersome and troublesome.  But many never even get started becasue the boat is so small they can't comfortably live aboard it.  For us, we set some metrics ahead of time such as the boat had to have a built-in shower, not one of those hose-n-sink systems, anything less was extended camping.  But that means a watermaker to supply it, and that means a generator to power the watermaker, and that means extra diesel and spare parts, and all of that requires a larger boat to carry it all, ...   

And knowing the difference between what you need and what you are used to is a kicker, too.  Just because you like to chat with your kids and grandkids three times a day doesn't mean you need to.  And need becomes expensive, exponentially.  Coveniently (?!) there is now an enormous spectrum of options.  Chatting by phone requires a landline (ie ties you to a $100/night dock), a local cellphone ($0.80/minute and not more than 5 miles from established towns), or skype (free but ties you to <200 yds from a wifi hitspot, which are rare).  For getting completely off the beaten path radio-telephone services work literally anywhere on the Earth ($3000 radio gear and $1/min via WLO, but the connections are bad and cranky), satelite messaging like our InReach ($0.25 per txt mesage), or satelite phones ($10,000 for the gear and $2/min for the Iridium services).  So, how badly do you really need to reach out and touch people?

And it goes on from there.  How much do you need tabasco on your fried eggs?  Cheerios and fresh milk at every breakfast?  Weekly pedicures?   The presence of your favorite family antiques?  All those are possible on a boat, at some breathtakingly high costs. 

We think we have found our happy medium, we have certainly made our choices, and are about to find out where that line betwen Need and Want really lies for us... 

Dream vs Reality

The dream is becoming real.  Within two weeks we should be off the docks and underway.  So, of course, we are experiencing the reality behind the dream.  Loss of easy connection to loved ones.  Loss of ready access to communications and critical information (like weather).  Walking(sailing) away from life-time careers and colleagues.  And all those what-if-X-happens worries.  Our final trip to Texas starts today, for final visits to family, friends, and doctors.  Then .. yikes .. we are going to finally light this candle.

To paraphrase the Colonel in "Ender's Game", you are never totally ready but we think we are ready enough.

Progressive loss of recess?

When I was in the fourth grade, I came out of band class one afternoon and noticed the upper classmen (6th graders!) on the playground at their one recess of the day. Us fourth-graders had three.  I flashed on my older sister who had just started middle school and was talking about how there they got no recess at all, but did get to play a bit at lunch.  Then I thought about my dad whom I barely saw during a day because he left before dawn and returned about dark.  The pattern became instantly clear - life consisted of the progressive loss of recess. 

I railed against that principle for much of my life until I recognized the fallacy of it - I could go cruising!  And here we are, moving on to our boat and rushing around to get her ready to take to sea.  Is managing the many small-but-crucial repairs, ensuring all needed supplies and parts are aboard and accounted for, validating systems that we will need (eg SSB) are fully functional, getting my skills up to the task (how do you rig Jumar ascenders and which halyard is best to use to climb the mast?) not recess?  Certainly bobbing around a crystalline lagoon trying to decide to go spear fishing vs kayaking is recess.  But that's not the reality of the life aboard. 

The reality of life aboard is more about making your own way than it is about sunny-beaches-and-water-play.  I have an SBIR grant to complete, and the responsibility of ensuring the safety of Cerca Trova and her crew.  Weather, currents, bad holding, mechanical failures, and Murphy's Law lead to constant effort to keep the boat going and in secure situation.  Navigators talk about "staying ahead of the boat" because you have to be constantly thinking about more than the moment of Now. 

But all in all it is recess, on our own timetable, not the teachers'.  We plan to play for awhile and then return.  How long we are Out remains to be seen.  But when we return, I think we will be different people, and see the whole of life as an opportunity to take recess as we choose.   

Prelude to the Sea

Our hiatus in New England has been charming and productive and is now running down.  We have set up our hurricane-season retreat, seen all our friends and family here, gone to all the down East sites like Gloucester, made applesauce and eaten our fill of $3.99/1b lobster, and we are getting antsy. It has dropped below 35oF twice in a week and the maples are clearly on the verge of changing.  It is time. To pack up and get to Cerca Trova.

This has been the longest we have been off the boat since we got her 2 years ago. We have had no adverse news from the skipper keeping an eye on her. And no hurricane scares. But still, what will we return to?  For one thing, a lot of work to get ready to cruise. We have been consuming all the wonderful published insights from friends on Take Two, Windtraveler, Irie, and all the other Manta owners too.  And we will be putting that to work as we dig into our 5 page To-Do list of preparations. Just today, I was making up a detailed list of items for our ditch bag.  And our Amazon wish-list has more than 100 entries of gear and supplies awaiting purchase (and we just spent the last year getting rid of all our Stuff!).  And that's only the purchasing.  The work tasks are immense as well.

One really valuable aspect of Manta catamarans is the vigorous and committed owners group that provides access to all the experience that exists with these boats, ie the current & past owners.  Sure, other production boats have owners groups.  Unlike Catalina, Hunter, etc. with thousands of boats, Manta only built 127 boats and yet the owners group is incredibly active and effective.  The most experienced gladly help the newbies with everthing from finding engine parts to sail trim.  And the newbies follow suit.  We get together in meet-ups, the next one is at Annapolis, and, thanks to Clark Haley, the tradition of Manta Migrations is up and running again.  Hope to join in this April in the Abacos.

But to do that, we have to get the boat ready, us ready, and GO! 

.. over the brink, down the cliff, and out on the plains.

The worst part was Jennifer officially resigning from a well-paying, good-benefits, satisfying job as an expert provider in congestive heart failure care.  "What are we doing?"  But that was over in a flash and then we got so busy moving furniture, prepping kid's apartments, and pushing a 10 ton, 45-foot "road schooner", that we barely have had time to breathe, much less reflect.



The Road Schooner

The U-haul "road schooner" was loaded with the stuff for our hurricane-season hide-away in Massachusetts including our car on a trailer, and another apartment's worth of furniture and housegoods for a daughter in Vermont.  Pushing that along at traffic speed in and among the semis took both of us.  Jenifer to navigate in near-real time since it would not fit into any old gas station, and Royce driving.  We saw lots of near-miss situations with small "whipper-snapper" cars doing stupid things in front of speeding semis - imagine a ketchup packet stamped on by a large boot! - but no actual tragedies, thankfully. 


Looking out from Lookout Mountain

We got to spend a great afternoon/evening in New Orleans - sorry, what happens there stays there - and spent the night with friends on Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga.  Who knew there was such an enormous mountain in the midst of this elegant city and that so much of the Civil War pivoted on it's control?  Then, after a thousand miles of schoonering, a frantic partial unloading at our hide-away, dropping off the car trailer and a few crazy hours maneuvering large antique furniture up narrow creaky stairs, we have had a wonderful long weekend with our daughter in Vermont helping her put together her first household. 

My cousin in Vermont asked us "How's retirement?" at dinner last night.  We both looked at each other and replied nearly at the same instant "We wouldn't know, we've been working too hard!"  But now we get to find out, finally, what we have been working for so hard, for so long.  A few weeks of decompression at our hide-away to sit out the remainder of the hurricane season, and then off to Cerca Trova! 

How long do you think we'll be able to stand it before we just have to up-stakes and head for the boat?

   

On the brink ..

Teetering on the brink of departure from San Antonio.  Our daughter is due in on Saturday night to load up with her share of the housegoods and then move in to Austin.  We are busy saying goodbye, trying to collect all the stuff going with us, running to see all the wonderful those-are-for-tourist things you never get to in your home town. 

 

It feels sort of schizophrenic, saying goodbye to so many close friends and so many people who seemed only peripheral in our lives, but turns out they were all pretty important. A little late on our part to have figured that out. Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you're losing until it's almost gone?

 

And in limbo too.  We miss the boat and can't wait to get on the road.  We're killing time, a terrible crime, while we wait.  But we're having all kinds of fun at the same time.  Doing the Riverwalk, discovering restaurants we had heard of but never quite gotten around to going to, biking down the river into the Misison District, big brews and microbreweries. 

 

San Antonio is actually a pretty cool town (ha! take that Austin!)  and we will miss it here.  But the boat and the water call.  Like Tolkein's elves, having heard the seagulls, you are forever restless until you can cross west over the water ..