The joys of sailing

Two ferries pass us, on the way from Point Judith to Block Island.

The sunset through the rigging. Here you can see our correctly reefed main--more or less.

The moon rising as the sun sets.

PublishThe moon above the city of New London.

Point Judith, RI, to New London, CT

34.1 nm
Wind: NW calm to 15 knots
Seas: 2-3 feet
Maximum speed: 7.9 knots
Maximum speed under sail: 4.5 knots
Average speed: 4.0 knots
Latitude: 41°20.18’N
Longitude: 072°05.71’W

It was a gorgeous, sunny day today, with sun almost the whole day, but ice-cold. My feet are still pretty cold, but I’ve been finally warming up after anchoring. We actually have a wireless connection tonight, and I was excited about posting my blog entries, but it turns out they’re all firewall protected. Bummer. So even though my Airport card is showing three very promising bars, I have no internet access.

I guess civilization is starting to sound appealing. I think civilization is appealing in direct proportion to how itchy my head is. Being aware that I haven’t had a shower or a shampoo since Tuesday morning makes me aware that I’m back to the life of a homeless person. A homeless person with a lovely 33-foot yacht, but a homeless person nonetheless.

Still, life is good. I’m still working out the details of this life—how to do things like do the dishes, make the bed, keep everything in its place, that sort of thing. This morning I picked up, made sandwiches for lunch, and did the dishes, all while Karl motored out of the harbor. The problem with that is that we didn’t get the sail up until we were out in the ocean with three-foot seas bouncing us around. It’s amazing how much less stability we have when using our engine. Once our sails are up, we stiffen right up and seem to glide right over the waves. Secret knows she’s not supposed to be motoring in that kind of weather, and she doesn’t let us forget it.

So I had to round the boat into the wind and stay there while Karl tried to hoist the main and avoid falling off the boat. We had also decided to reef, partly as practice and partly because there was allegedly a small-craft advisory in effect until ten. I say allegedly, because as soon as we got the reefed sail up successfully, the wind completely died. We pulled out the entire jib, but even with it, we were barely going a knot. Occasionally, though, the wind would gust really strong, always dead on our nose, and make us heel over sideways.

I wanted to keep sailing, as always, but we did have a deadline today. We were supposed to be in New London to meet Karl’s friend Wade, who’s supposed to sail with us down the Connecticut coast this weekend. Say what you will about Wade, he’s our only friend crazy enough to come and put his life in the hands of rank amateurs. I’m looking forward to it, even thought the boat is crowded enough with two people who are in love with each other living aboard. The plus is that we have to get forty more miles down the coast in order to get him to the bus that he can use to pick up his car, so we have to make some progress. It did mean that we had to motor all day today, though. We left the main up, which adds some lift as well as giving us stability. We did get going up to eight knots, according to Karl! The computer only recorded 7.9, so that’s all I’m giving us. Hull speed for a Ranger 33 is supposed to be 7 knots, so I’m pretty excited about it. I would be more excited if we had done it under sail. I’ll be happy when we record a day of five-knot average speed all under sail.

It’s crazy how obsessed I’ve become with the pedantic everyday life of sailing already. How much the wind is blowing and where from. How calm an anchorage is. How fast we can eat the fresh vegetables and how fast our ice is going. How cold it can get before I keel over and die. Right now, I’m in my full rain gear, with my lower body in my fifteen-degree sleeping bag under the table. My fingers are numb, because Karl left the top hatch open when he went to go pick up Wade. I would close it, but I don’t want to get out of the sleeping bag. I’m considering making a pot of tea just so I can warm up the cabin. But I have macaroni and cheese in my belly (big surprise there—that one’s for you, Dean), and I’m content, cold and all.

On our way to Point Judith

A big boat passes us on the way into Newport. It was reefed--we weren't.

Another one of the sailboat, through our rigging. You can see our half-furled lapper.

I make another valiant effort to take a lighthouse picture. This one's heading into Point Judith.

Sakonnet to Point Judith, RI

18.8 nm
Wind: NW 10-20 knots
Seas: 2-3 feet
Maximum speed: 6.2 knots
Average speed: 4.2 knots
Latitude: 41°24.36’N
Longitude: 071°30.30’W

We woke up this morning at 6:30 AM, which, for anyone who hasn’t read my trail journals, is a feat of nearly superhuman effort. I, myself, am still reeling from the shock of it. We’re finally motivated, I guess, or growing up, or had a fire lit under our asses by watching Secret catch air in the gale on Saturday.

In any case, we realize that as long as the sun’s setting at four, we need to make tracks while the sun shines. So we rolled out of bed, made coffee, peeled off the sail cover, and turned on the VHF, only to watch the freezing rain sheet across the horizon. The winds were forecast at 15-20 knots, so we had nothing to worry about wind-wise, but it still didn’t seem to start out in 35-degree rain. We had a saying, hiking: “You can hike in the rain, but you don’t start hiking in the rain.” It continues to be true sailing.

It’s unfortunate, because we had vast plans to break our thirty-mile barrier. Our longest day, still, was the day we sailed to Cutty Hunk and tacked across Buzzard’s Bay about eight times. We’ve been sailing in direct lines lately but still have been unable to cross that threshold.

When we finally set out at almost one the rain had cleared, but sailing still seemed ambitious. The sky was grey, it was still icy out, and we had our full West Marine raingear on—waders, rain jackets, and boots. We looked like a yellow West Marine convention. Rob, our friendly West Marin salesperson, would be so proud.

I must admit, though, the investment in raingear may have been the wisest we’ve ever made. It keeps us warm, dry, and happy as we sail in these conditions. I’m definitely glad we decided to take the plunge instead of using the bargain basement stuff we had intended to.

Because the wind was only forecast to go up to twenty knots we decided to leave the full main up. We’ve allegedly figured out how to reef, but it still seemed like a lot of work, and more trouble than it was worth. So when a huge sailboat, heeled over like crazy, passed u s reefed on the way into Newport, we felt hardcore or crazy with our full main extended. I continue to be thrilled with how our stiffened-up rigging is controlling our heeling. We only had a piece of the jib out for stability, but we were still sailing at about five knots, and barely heeling at all. I can always tell because everything stays where it’s supposed to stay. Anyway, the sailboat waved at us—their raingear as fluorescent as ours—and we waved back. It may have been the first time I’ve been acknowledged by another sailboat where I didn’t feel like I was doing something completely wrong. The wind was strong, but not out of control, and Secret was never unhappy or out of hand. It was a gorgeous sail.

The best part of the day was towards sunset, when we headed in to Point Judith, our eventual anchorage. The clouds cleared, the sun came out, and the wind calmed. We let out the whole jib and kept about a four-knot pace but in much more relaxed seas. It was always that way hiking too—it’s so rewarding to head out in awful weather, only to have the sky clear and the day show its beauty to you in a way that those who don’t brave the bad weather never experience. It just feels amazing to be outside again, every day, experiencing what the world is, rather than the controlled interior environments most of us live in everyday.

Even now, I can see my breath inside of the cabin, and the universe is letting me know that it’s cold outside. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I can get under my covers, get warm and cozy, and wake up tomorrow morning and see what the world has to say. A full moon’s coming up soon. I can’t wait. In the meantime, we’re tucked in between two uninhabited islands in an anchorage that’s allegedly packed in the summer. Tonight, the water is as flat as a plate, and we have the anchorage all to ourselves. Life couldn’t be better.

The second day

Cranes haul away the boats that went ashore during the storm we didn't set sail in. Smart us.

Sunset through the rigging, as we sail.

Sunset over the water.

Another one of Karl's effortlessly beautiful sunset pictures.

A lighthouse picture--the first of many. I had to take this picture thirteen times in order to get a halfway decent one. Wait until you see the effortlessly beautiful ones Karl takes later on. This is the fourth of thirteen.

Padanaram, MA, to Sakonnet, RI

23.7 nm
Wind: SW 5 knots to calm
Maximum speed: 6.2 knots
Maximum speed under sail: 3.3 knots
Average speed: 3.8 knots
Latitude: 41°29.35’N
Longitude: 071°14.57’W

Our second day as cruisers. Or sea gypsies, or whatever you want to call us. I call us free. Free to follow the path we choose, at last. Without even white blazes to mark the way. We didn’t get very far today—we never get very far—but at least we’re out of Massachusetts. I had a great time in Massachusetts, but I hope it’s a long time before I’m back.

It’s funny, though, a short day sailing is the same as my longest day hiking on the Appalachian Trail. I definitely was a lot more tired at the end of that day. I’m tired today, too, but in a different way. Tired, but utterly, utterly happy. Everything in the world is perfect.

We didn’t have much wind today, which is why we didn’t get very far. We motored out of Padanaram, lifted our sails, and sailed for a while, at a fairly good pace. But by the time we got out into the bay the wind had completely died, so we succumbed to the lure of the engine. We motored the rest of the day, way out into the Atlantic, taking anything but a direct course, and using five gallons of diesel, we figure. That’s fifteen dollars, so it was a pretty expensive day of sailing. We’re torn between using our engine when there’s no wind so we can get south faster, or using our sails even though they’re slower, and getting more experience sailing.

In any case, life is perfect. We even initiated our autopilot, named “Master Tiller.” The autopilot is an absolutely ancient piece of electronics—basically some wires connected to a compass. But it worked more or less perfectly, even though it’s probably as old as the boat. I’m not sure how well it will hold up to big wind, or how much electricity it takes, but at least when we’re motoring it works fantastic, and that’s when hand-steering is the most tedious.

I’m sleepy, but I have to start writing a novel tonight. The main reason I decided to begin cruising is because I thought it would free up my time to write. In some ways it has, but I haven’t taken advantage of the time at my disposal yet at all. Two days before I left, on Monday, I somehow connected to the National Novel Writing Month website. It’s an organization, set up by a group of crazy, ambitious friends in San Francisco, who decided to start writing a novel every November. It doesn’t matter how bad it is, all that matters is that you complete 50,000 words by November 30.

So I signed up. You may think that’s rather far-fetched—journaling every night about my day, sailing all day every day, establishing this new life for myself, AND writing a novel, all in the month of November? But heck, what am I if not ambitious? If I fail, I will fail laudably. Finding that site seemed like a sign from God. If I’m sailing to write, then I’d better write. I fear my novel may be nautically themed, but so was Moby Dick. One has worse footsteps to follow in than Herman Melville’s.

The first day

Sunrise on the very first day, as we sit out on the dock at Marion. Karl took this picture--I'll give him credit for almost all of these. He is the photo half of our photojournalism. This is also the first day, so far, that we've managed to wake up for the sunrise.

Marion Harbor, as we leave it in our wake. A lousy picture that I had to take.

Our reefed sail. Yes, this is really how we thought you reefed. Don't laugh.

Karl, looking serious, in his West Marine jacket, with a ginormous barbecue behind him that will be featured in many photos. He was actually serious. As you can see, the seas were pretty serious that day--the roughest we've had to deal with so far.

Marion Harbor to Padanaram, MA

22.7 nm
Wind: SW 20-25 knots, gusting to 30 knots
Seas: 4-6 feet
Maximum speed: 3.7 knots
Average speed: 2.5 knots
Latitude: 41°57.74’N
Longitude: 070°94.63’W

We did it. We actually left Marion harbor. I feel like a couple of lively renditions of the Hallelujah Chorus are in order. We didn’t have an easy time doing it, though. Yesterday, when I posted, it didn’t seem likely at all, in fact. The quantity of things left to be done seemed insurmountable, as they had since last December.

But we did it. That email from Rob, the friend from the Newport Boat Show, really kicked us into gear. That, and the storm this weekend. We knew we had to get out now or else. So we went and got new batteries, the last thing on the list, loaded the rest of the last-minute things into the dinghy, docked after dark and slept there last night, after stocking the boat with ice and fresh groceries.

This morning, we woke up at six, the first time in probably eons, which was a very good indicator that we were serious. We made one last dash to Sally’s for cereal, coffee, and showers, and set sail by nine in the morning.

That was when the fun started. It wouldn’t be a day sailing on Secret without misadventures of epic proportions. While motoring out of the inner harbor, we finally turned on the VHF. We had been religiously watching the NOAA website to track the weather this next week, but hadn’t listened to the VHF broadcast until there was no turning back. Guess what? “Small craft advisories issued for Tuesday, at noon.” We weren’t heading back to Marion after winning our hard-fought freedom. We decided to reef the mainsail before we even got out into the bay, figuring it was better to be safe than sorry.

Have I mentioned that we’ve never reefed the mainsail before? (For the uninitiated, reefing a sail means tying it down so only part of it is able to catch the wind. It’s safer in bad weather. And I only learned that a month ago.) We figured it was simple—there are lines on the sail, called reef points, and you tie them with reef knots. Simple, right? Not quite. Instead, while trying to raise the main halfway so we could tie our reef knots, the boom collapsed on deck. After Karl reattached the topping lift, and got the boom into place, I tied the reef knots only to discover that the sail still ballooned out on both edges. There were holes on the edges, with no reef points, and we had no idea what to do with them.

Eventually Karl found some lines, tied the ends down, too, and we managed to limp out of Marion harbor. The worst of it was that our farewell committee, Ralph and Sally on the beach, watched the whole doggone thing, taking scenic photos of us sailing off into the wild blue yonder. These people are supposed to sail around the world? They must have been thinking. They can’t even get their sail up!

The rest of the day was fantastic, though. Our mainsail didn’t have the best shape, but we were able to unfurl part of the jib for balance and make a fair amount of speed. The most amazing thing was how little the boat heeled! All summer we’ve been gritting our teeth and bearing it as our rail touched the water, only to discover that our rig was completely untuned. (Everything holding the mast up was saggy.) Ian, our wonderful Scottish friend at West Marine, helped Karl tighten the rig, and couldn’t even believe we’d been sailing with it like that. That, combined with the reefed main, completely stiffened the boat up. It’s actually comfortable to sail! And this, on a day that’s a small craft advisory!

The highlight of the day—we saw a seal, heading into Padanaram Harbor. It was just a glimpse, but I figure it’s an omen. We’re doing the right thing. We’re on the right path. It’s going to be hard, but fun.

The icing on the cake was that Rob and his wife met us and took us out for a prime rib dinner. Talk about trail magic. The boat magic continues. He not only explained to us how to reef, but gave us hints for the whole trip—where to anchor off the Statue of Liberty, what to watch for off the New Jersey coast, the best towns for marinas in North Carolina. Talking to them was inspiring, and as delicious as the steak, potatoes, and giant slab of chocolate cake was, I think the conversation was better.

Now we’ve rowed back to the boat under a gibbous moon. I’ve celebrated Keatsmas (the anniversary of John Keats’s birthday, which coincides with Halloween) with one of my best friends, Stephanie, by cell phone, and Karl’s chatting with his father. I’m exhausted. I can barely see. My back is sore, my legs are sore, my stomach is stuffed. And I can’t imagine a better day. I am completely content. And I think I’m starting a novel tomorrow morning.

Wireless Pirates.

Yet again, the departure date is set for tomorrow. They’re still forecasting winds gusting as high as 28 miles per hour, which is higher than I really want to set off in, but I’m so impatient. I’ve been corresponding with a friend we met at the Newport Spring Boat Show, way back in March, long before we got the boat in the water or were anywhere near ready. He and his wife and two kids set sail in a 24-foot wooden sailboat, a la the Pardeys, and ended up spending five years going up and down the Atlantic coast.

He emailed today, and said—you better leave yesterday, because November is nothing but gales. I know we should have left mid-September, as was our original plan, and looking back I can’t even remember why we didn’t. Here we are, trapped at the end of October, with November and winter right around the corner. How could we have ended up in this pickle?

I know that there’s nothing to do but press on, wait for the good days and keep heading south, but I’m very frustrated with my lack of planning, or something. We’ve also been inspired by the Landrums, a couple who did the same trip from Boston two years ago, leaving on November 7. They didn’t get out of Newport until November 14, so we keep using them as a benchmark. “Well, we’re still a month ahead of Rubicon.” “At least we’re two weeks ahead of them.” Etc.

Our buffer is rapidly being eaten up. And somehow, mysteriously, time marches along, refusing to go backwards. Bewildering, isn’t it?

I always feel the need to use my journal as an apology for our actions, a rebuttal to all critics, but it’s still more than a little scary to get warnings from extremely experienced people. We have no choice, though, and if it gets to be more than we can bear, we’ll at least hole up somewhere else along the coast, somewhere closer to the glorious tropics, if only a state or two, where we can live on the boat just as well as we can here. I know all our doubts will float away that first glorious day when we hoist our main in Marion Harbor, put our bow into the wind, and head off for places unknown. That day feels very, very long in coming.

On the plus side, I’ve just discovered that November is National Blogging Month, in honor of which bloggers are supposed to unite to compose daily. That coincides nicely with my plan to write daily once we set sail, even though it’s unlikely I’ll actually have an internet connection daily. So if I disappear for a week, hopefully tomorrow, it’s only in body, not in spirit, and I’ll be posting as soon as I can pirate someone’s wireless.

Wireless Pirates. Arrrrrr. Terror of the Sounds.

More last-minute pictures

So, the bad news and the good news: the bad news--we're still here, thanks to more plumbing problems and a gale-force storm in the northeast, the good news--the fire was a joke, believe it or not, and we're supposed to leave tomorrow. Only the fifth delay in departure date! The funny thing is, we were supposed to leave on Saturday, which besides having sixty-knot winds also was the anniversary of the infamous Perfect Storm. Not an auspicious date.

This is me, rowing across the harbor on another cold, rainy, and windy October day, heading to our going-away party, that ended up being a week premature. Oh well. I know we should have left a month-and-a-half ago--the gales and the weather are just going to get worse, and I keep kicking myself for not having been ready to leave a month ago. How could we have been so stupid? How could we have procrastinated so much? At least I'm learning how to row.

Peter (my brother) and Karl at the party. Thanks for coming, Peter!

Ray, Megan, and Scott at our going-away party. Shout out, guys. Thanks for coming. Sorry for feeling too guilty for being here this last week to hang out.

Seth, Karl's nephew, seems to get more and more confused as we get ready to leave. He's been expressing interest in all of our old backpacking stuff lately, and here he tries on Karl's old, stinky backpack. When Karl and he took off for a walk around the backyard and Grammy asked when they'd be back, he said, "A year!" I'm not sure if he understands if we're going hiking or going sailing.

Yup, we're still here.

Our departure date keeps getting pushed back, and it’s driving me a little crazy. I keep holding off, thinking that my next post will be from the boat, as we’re sailing, or at least all ready to leave, but I’m still here, at Karl’s mom’s, waiting. It’s one thing after another after another. Every day I wake up, thinking, “today’s going to be the day!” And it’s not. Not yet. Maybe today. But I doubt it.

The thing that’s been holding us up this time is the propane system. Karl’s brother (a plumber) went out on Sunday with Karl to try to set it up, and allegedly there was a fire. They came home and told me this and I thought they were joking. The teak and holly, which Karl worked so hard on this winter, was scorched. I was devastated, and angry, but Karl acted like it was no big deal, like he didn’t care. I just feel like they must have been careless, to let something like this happen, or that Karl’s brother can’t have been as careful as just Karl would have been in the same situation. I mean, this boat is ours. The only thing we own in the world. Fires are not in the program.

I haven’t seen the damage yet, and I’m waiting for Karl right now to head out to the boat, with yet another load. We have six extraneous sails to fit on the boat somewhere. These seem essential, like something we shouldn’t leave behind at any cost, but where are we going to put them? There’s also about three boxes of miscellaneous paint, paint varnish, epoxy, fiberglass filler, fiberglass cloth, and paint thinner. We haven’t even started working on where we’re going to put all of Karl’s tools. And these are things we have to have on board, because we have to be able to fix the boat if it breaks.

I keep going to the boat and devotedly putting things away, and the next time I go, Karl’s done more work and it’s all ripped apart again. I’m doing my best not to be frustrated with him, but we’re both impatient, on edge, and at each other’s throats. Imagine moving all of your belongings into a new apartment—that happens to be 33’ by 9’. Good luck, right? Our perspectives differ completely on what we’re allowed to bring, too. In my mind, we’re setting up a home for us to live in comfortably for a long time. In his, the boat is nothing more than a glorified backpack.

Our perspective on the food differs completely, too. In my mind, the $300 worth of canned goods that we bought are a backup, in case we get stranded at sea or on a desert island, we have enough food to live for several months, with the supplement of fish and coconuts. I don’t want to live off fruit cocktail and evaporated milk for our entire coastal sojourn. In fact, if we do that, I’m convinced we’ll end up eating out ninety percent of the time, because neither of us are going to be happy. If we use the canned food to supplement the fresh food that we buy more or less weekly, we can cook and eat like we live in a normal household, and avoid spending money on restaurants. But in his mind, it’s a waste of money and fuel to buy any more food than we’ve already bought. And if we put any extra weight on the boat, it’s going to sink.

Maybe these are normal disputes to be having. Maybe my emphasis is too much on comfort. The root of the conflict in our relationship has always been happiness. Karl thinks I need things in my life to make me happy, instead of having happiness come solely from my inner being. Which is all well and good, but would anyone be happy if forced to eat mushrooms and mustard for three months straight? No matter how Zen they are? You can have internal happiness inside a concentration camp, but that doesn’t mean that anyone would choose to live in those conditions. Except Karl, evidently.

I keep returning to the Japanese art of feng shui, about which I know nothing, I should probably confess. But my idea of feng shui is that my surroundings are important, and have a connection to my spiritual being. One needs to align the things in one’s life in order to maximize one’s connection to the world of the spirit. Things are not just things. Our spirits do not just exist in isolation from our bodies. Our bodies and their comfort are important—no, vital, to our spiritual wellbeing. And our bodies don’t just become happy by themselves. We have to work on creating for ourselves space that cultivates the spirit. This is why people who meditate, or do yoga, or whatever, have places in their lives that they carve out, where things have spiritual resonance and meaning. I want that for our boat. The boat has that potential. But if we have epoxy falling out on our heads and jars of olive oil breaking and are sleeping next to sails, it’s not going to work.

I don’t mean to complain about Karl, because I love him and I wouldn’t be doing this with anyone else. I’m sure both of us are right, in some ways. I’m probably trying to bring too many things that tie me to home, and he’s probably trying to bring too few. I emphasize the importance of comfort too much, and he not enough. But we’re both strained almost to the breaking point right now. We’ve put off our departure for the fourth time now, and it gets colder and colder, and we get more and more frustrated.

We’re trying not to take the stress out on each other, but it’s inevitable, to some degree. I emailed all of my friends and family saying that we were leaving the 21st, the two-year anniversary of our Katahdin summit on the Appalachian Trail. We had a going-away party on Friday night with all of our friends, telling them we were leaving the next day. We said goodbye to Karl’s nephews, although I don’t think they really grasped the concept. And we’re STILL here. The kids show up again today. What are we going to tell them? This is getting to the point of ridiculous. I’m embarrassed to still be here. But there’s nothing to be done about it except keep plugging away.

Getting ready to leave

Secret on a cold and stormy October day in New England. We're rowing out--you can see Karl's oar in the foreground.

Karl rowing out in the dinghy on the blustery New England day. This is the wonderful view I get whenever he rows me out to the boat. And yes, I am practicing my dinghy-rowing skills!

Another beautiful October day's sunset, in Marion Harbor. Those are our neighboring boats--Freestyle, the powerboat to the right, and Corsair, the navy blue sailboat to the left.

Our naked transom. This job is what Karl's been working on, one of the things that's delaying our departure. He scraped off "Top Seacret", and then we decided we needed to paint the transom to cover up the residue that remained even after sanding. I think it looks great, especially for having been done in the water, but Karl's a paint perfectionist.

Second, and third, thoughts

I’m supposed to be rowing out to the boat right now, by myself, for the first time. But I’m a little nervous, I guess, which is ridiculous. We’re getting ready to set sail. Next week, allegedly. I should be able to row a dinghy to the boat. Karl’s decided to help his friend pick cranberries for a week or so, which will pad our bank account a little bit, but isn’t helping with our procrastination. And it’s left me along to begin to bring our earthly goods out to the boat and to tie up the loose ends that remain out there.

One of the cranberry bogs Karl is harvesting, with floating cranberries.

The closer the departure date gets, the more nervous I feel. Do we really know what we’re doing? No. Should we really do this? Yes. We have to. I’m sure we’ll be fine—many other people have done this with even less experience and preparation than we have, but it’s still nerve-wracking. Our friend Rob, the friendly neighborhood West Marine salesperson, is afraid for our lives. He’s helped us out a ton on gear, but he thinks we need more sailing experience before we set off.

We do need more sailing experience. I honestly thought we would spend more time sailing this summer, and I’m disappointed that we haven’t. I’m not sure why we haven’t. We probably would have been better off if we had spent less time reading and buying, and more time on the water.

Both of us have felt some wariness. We love the sailing, but avoiding sailing is a way for us to avoid looking this adventure in the face. You can’t hike fulltime the way you can sail fulltime. You can’t live on a trail the way you can live on a boat. This journey will either be an utter failure, which wouldn’t be a failure at all, really, or a semi-permanent lifestyle change for us. We haven’t done any one thing for any longer than six months, in the whole course of our relationship. But we could end up living on a sailboat for five years. It feels like the end of my youth and the beginning of my middle age.

I’m getting far too ahead of myself, of course. The bigger chance is that we decide we hate sailing and find a new adventure, which would be par for the course. In which case, I’m going to be really sad we spent $400 on canned goods and $300 for snazzy new raingear. Not to mention the $600 on various navigation aids, the $200 on books, the $800 on epoxy.

I recently listened to a podcast with Larry and Lin Pardey, and they said the number-one trend they see in sailing today is people not spending enough time learning—they just want to hop on a boat and circumnavigate. And I wonder: is that what I’m doing? Do I need to spend three years bending teak timbers for a wood boat and sailing a dinghy around the harbor to be ready? Should I have a thirteen-year plan to save $3 million, just to have enough money to buy the perfect boat, the perfect gear, and a lifetime supply of American goods at island prices? Do I need $3 million and a Swan just to cruise the Caribbean? What about go simple, go small, go now?

I know I don’t have the sailing experience I need. That’s why I’m sailing the Intracoastal Waterway, not to Bermuda. When I think about the alternative, which would be getting a job, a real one this time, finding an apartment or a permanent mooring, shrink-wrapping the boat for a god-awful New England winter, making Karl get a job he’ll most likely hate, working days and nights for another year or more just to cover the expenses of life in these United States as well as all the boat improvements we’ll convince ourselves we need, I want to shoot myself. I know I’d rather face forty-knot winds and twenty-foot waves than deal with a single day of that. We have a boat. We can make it go. Isn’t that all we need?

This journey is pulling us onward, irresistibly. That boat found us. She pulled us to herself and now she’s pulling us south, towards the Equator and distant horizons. I can’t resist, even as my conscious mind fights. The story will have a happy ending, one way or another, even if we end up with a wrecked sailboat and a farm in Maine. If I really believe that God is bringing all things toward completion, then the story will have a happy ending however it ends. And no one will be able to say we didn’t live bravely, ferociously, gloriously.

Enough. I have some dinghy-rowing to do.

Beautiful Secret

This is Secret, our boat. The picture to the left was taken before we bought her, and before we did any work on her. She's now, happily, on the water, but I still love this picture.




















Karl in the cockpit, on a gorgeous August day.
















Secret in the water, the first day we docked her. Karl is busy pumping out the holding tank. Isn't she beautiful? With the glimmer off the water, you can't even see that her topsides are scuffed up.

Gandhi, fertilizer, and farmers

“We must be the change we wish to see in the world.” --Mahatma Gandhi

My mom has given me a book to read, entitled Coming up for Air, by Margaret Becker, a onetime Christian musician. We’re out on the boat, again in Quissett Harbor, this time with my parents as houseguests. They’re out on the dinghy (which we have christened Tinkerbell, or, in my zanier moments, Dinkerbell) right now, rowing across to a little spit of land called the knob. I think they’re having a good time. After my mom left, I picked up her book, and that quote was the first thing I read. “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.”

I’ve read it a hundred times, but I don’t think it ever hit me as hard as it did today. My parents are missionaries, and this trip has been a way for me to both explain and justify what I’m doing to them. I have this feeling that they think I’m squandering my abilities just sailing around, that I’m wasting my education and my talent, that I could be changing the world.

But I must BE the change I wish to see in the world. We spent this weekend with my brother, Peter, who’s attending graduate school at Harvard this year. My sister’s in graduate school too, and it’s hard to compete with them—they’re the two good children, living responsible, sane lives, not throwing away perfectly respectable careers to hike trails and ride bikes and sail across oceans in thirty-year-old beat-up sailboats. My brother told me a story about the high rate of suicide of poor farmers in India, who are being marketed genetically engineered crops by American companies. The crops are allegedly pest-resistant, but they’re also infertile, meaning that the farmers are forced to purchase seeds every season from the companies instead of being able to produce their own seed from their crop. Before, even if they had a bad harvest, at least they could replant. Now, if they have a bad harvest, they’re left with nothing, not even what they need for the next year.

One farmer planted his fields three times. The first and second time, there was no rain. The third time it rained too hard, and all the seeds were washed away. He took his last seven dollars, bought a jug of pesticide, and committed suicide by drinking it. He had gone into so much debt to buy his seeds that he could see no way out.

That story is exactly what’s wrong with our world. I don’t know how to fix it. I want to be there, helping that farmer, saving him somehow. How much money do I have? How much would he need to replant his fields? I’m sure it would be nothing to me. I spend that much on dinner out. But there’s so many like him. Not just in India, but all over the world. And I’m the one investing in the company that sells him his seeds (I have mutual funds, and I have no idea what stock they own), I’m the one buying his crops at unfairly low prices, I’m the one putting greenhouse gases into the air so his weather patterns are utterly destroyed. How can I fix that?

I don’t know if cruising will fix anything. I feel like I should aspire to be Mother Teresa, the one feeding the babies, clothing the lepers, caring for the sick. But maybe it’s my calling to tell the stories. Maybe just by telling his story I can help some Americans understand how rich we are, how much we can do. All I can hope is to change myself. I’ll sell my mutual funds and buy canned goods for the boat. I’ll buy produce from local farmers at their own markets. I’ll use wind instead of fossil fuels to move me across the water. Maybe I can meet that farmer, or someone like him, and help him somehow, or encourage him. Or maybe I can inspire someone else to change, and maybe if enough of us become the change we see in the world, things will actually get better.

I have to have faith. I do believe that God is bringing all things to completion, but the world seems so ugly so often. There’s so much injustice, so much pain, so much evil. I can only follow the path I believe God has laid out for me, in faith, in hope, and with love.

Last-minute angst

Time progresses apace. I can’t believe we’re supposed to leave a week from today. I’m beginning to think that goal is unrealistic, both because of hurricane season and because of the amount of stuff that remains to be done. We still have the wrong name and hailing port on our boat. (It says “Top Seacret,” a name that both makes no sense and is far too cutesy—we changed it back to plain “Secret,” how the boat was registered when the previous owner bought it.) I’ve spent the whole week working on this website, trying to get it set up in such a way that it will be convenient for family and friends to follow our journey, but it’s been exhausting work. Who knew websites were so complicated? We still have to buy tons of food, not to mention cleaning supplies, and other miscellaneous perishables. We have to move all of our stuff onto the boat, something that will probably take a week by itself. Karl hasn’t set up my bookshelves, the head (bathroom) remains unvarnished, we don’t know how to use our staysail…

The list goes on. It’s a long list. I feel like we’re right on the precipice, that we could really leave at any moment, but our departure also feels so far away as to be impossible. One of these days we’ll just have to bite the bullet and do it, whether or not everything is done.

I’m on the train into Boston right now, heading in to visit my mom, who flew in this morning. She and my dad are supposed to join us for a multi-day excursion on the boat this week. I hope we don’t embarrass ourselves. The whole idea was to prove to them that we know what we’re doing, a plan that didn’t work so well when we took my brother out. My dad’s an experienced sailor too, but it’s been a long time. I just hope the weather’s fair.

My angst continues too. I’m ready for this preparation phase to be over. It’s lasted so long. I know that everything will change, in ways we can’t even begin to explain, as soon as we set sail south for the first time. We’ve pinned all our hopes, for the last year, on that fateful moment. I hope we’re not disappointed.

White Mountains hike

We went hiking in the White Mountains, to scatter the ashes of a family friend on Mount Liberty. Here Karl casts them to the wind, with a view of Mount Washington in the distance.

My brother Peter accompanied us--the two of us smile for the camera.

More scares

The adventures have continued, without us even being able to take time to stop and take a breath. Every day is crammed full of working, buying stuff for the boat, cleaning the boat, getting stuff ready for the boat, even talking and thinking and reading about the boat. We have less than a month now before we actually cast off. Our goal is September 30 to leave.

Last week, after our wonderful zero day in Quissett Harbor, we decided to give ourselves a more rigorous challenge and go through Woods Hole for the first time. Woods Hole is the very difficult channel between Cape Cod and the Elizabethan Islands. The tide runs really strongly through there, and they recommend not going through at all at any other than slack tide. It worries me, in some ways, that we haven’t even been through it yet. We’ll have even rougher challenges ahead.

Anyway, my brother came out to sail with us for a couple of days on the boat, and we were going to head for Martha’s Vineyard, on the other side of Woods Hole. We had a beautiful day-sail, catching and losing a light five-knot breeze. We’re very stubborn about not turning on our engine, so we didn’t, instead floating along at barely a knot. Eventually we decided to swim off the boat in motion, jumping off the bow and letting the boat float by until we grabbed the swim ladder in the back and pulling ourselves onboard. It was a blast.

By the time we hit Woods Hole the wind had picked up, but we still left most of our sail up, figuring we’d try to sail as much as possible through the Hole. It’s a good thing, because after we had passed the first couple of buoys, the alternator belt (which also ran the cooling system, as it turned out) on our engine blew. We abandoned our plan to get through the Hole, and took a sharp turn into Hadley Harbor, right on the edge of the channel. Hadley is an extremely protected but shallow anchorage off the Elizabethans. It was gorgeous—mirror-still water, trees overhanging the edge, egrets in the eelgrass. We anchored in seven feet of water in an anchorage marked in our old guidebook. There was seven-eight feet of water marked on the chart, and we figured it was low tide, so we thought we would be fine, even though there were no boats on our side of the harbor.

We had a beautiful steak dinner on the grill, with baked potatoes, grilled zucchini, fresh from Sally’s garden, and wedges of onion, seared black on the edges. We went to bed, bellies full, only to wake up at a 45-degree angle. The boat was completely on its side. It was absolutely terrifying. I’ve never had to walk across a flat surface at that angle, and the angle kept increasing until you had to claw your way up the outside of the boat. Inside you pulled yourself from handhold to handhold. By the time I woke up, Karl had already rowed halfway across the harbor to see if he could set a second anchor to pull us off our first. My brother lolled, groggily, on the lee berth.

We tried to use a halyard to pull us toward our second, lighter anchor, but couldn’t figure it out in the exhaustion and confusion. Karl waded around the bottom of the boat to figure out what we could do, and discovered inches-mud and eelgrass. The boat didn’t seem in any immediate danger, so what could we do? We went back to sleep, wedging ourselves in corners so we could feel something like stability.

I was terrified. I was convinced, while sleeping, that we would land on a rock, puncture our side, and not only lose our boat but all of our savings to salvage it. And of all places, right off the Forbes estate. In the morning, our angle had only slightly improved. Some friendly neighbors with an outboard motored by to ask us if they could help us pull off. We decided to just wait for high tide.

Finally, at noon the next day, we set an anchor a hundred feet out, hoisted our mainsail, and sailed off the clump of mud we had evidently hit. We had to sail, because we still had a snapped alternator belt. We sailed off a little too early, though, hitting the Hole an hour before slack tide and trying to sail straight into the current. With all sail set, we were barely moving. Our only choice was to run the engine in short bursts, waiting until the overheating alarm went off. We finally powered out of the harbor and headed back towards Marion, egg on our faces yet again.

It feels like we keep running into these crazy problems. Maybe this is just par for the course for the crazy thing we’re doing, but I feel like we’re getting into more than our far share of scrapes. Still, though, things progress apace. Everything’s coming together. We bought ourselves brand spanking new anchor rode with forty feet of chain, plus a backup handheld GPS, RAM for our computer. We’ll spend more this month than we probably did the rest of the months put together. I’m just hoping it doesn’t cut too deeply into our cruising fund. We nearly tear each other’s heads off about every three days. There’s just too much stress with all we have to do. We can only hope that the decisions we made when we were saner were the right ones. Things will straighten themselves out when we’re at a perfect deserted anchorage for the third week in a row, with nothing to bother us but love and time. And maybe some fish.

An authentic New England clambake

Chowing down on some clams. You can see corn, sausages, potatoes, butter, and a big ole basket o' clams.

Karl takes the biggest bite of clams ever.

The clams coming out of the bake.

Steam pours from the rocks, and from the huge heaps of seaweed. You can see some on the left.

A big scare, followed by paradise

I’m in the boat right now. It’s about two pm, and the light’s sliding its way across the companionway hatch. Karl rigged up an awning for us out of a hunter green bed-sheet left for us by the previous owner. It’s like a boy-scout tent over our cockpit, rigged over the boom and tied to either lifeline stanchion. We sailed out here yesterday, to Quissett Harbor. I think we’re taking a zero day today, like we took so many on the trail. Our hike was really about the zero days.

That’s what blows me away out here. It’s absolutely free out here, once we’ve set the anchor and we have everything we need on the boat. We made each other eggs and bacon this morning—Karl fried the bacon, I made the eggs—and ate out of little wooden bowls while we drank ice-cold water and warm soy milk, that we forgot to put in the icebox. This is perfect. This is exactly what we’ve spent all this time waiting and working for.

We had a scare a couple of weeks ago, a big scare. It made both of us question, really, what we’re doing. Last week we didn’t even go sailing on my days off, which is the first time we’ve done that since I started having days off. The week before we sailed out to Cutty Hunk. Our goal was Newport, but the prevailing southwest wind in Buzzard’s Bay has been our bane. We beat across the Bay all day long and ended up giving up at the far end of our last tack and heading into Cutty Hunk, the last of the Elizabethan Islands. The Elizabethan Islands stretch out between our side of Cape Cod and what they call here “the Islands”—Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.

Cutty Hunk has a great harbor, a little tiny pond nestled in the heart of the island, with a twenty-foot channel cutting into it from the Bay. We anchored there, next to some other like-minded cheapskates. I don’t understand why anyone would pay $40 a night for a mooring when you can anchor for free right next-door. We wandered around the little island town that next morning, bought coffees, watched the island community zip around on their golf carts and electric scooters.

The sail back was choppy, but fast—we sailed before the wind in about three hours what it had taken us to tack against eight. We didn’t have to be back to Marion until the next day, so we decided to anchor in Mattapoisett, the next town over, for a change in scenery. When we came into the harbor, our engine wouldn’t start. We had pushed sailing longer than we really should have for safety, just because we always try to sail as long as possible. And then went Karl when to turn the engine over, it chug-chug-chugged but wouldn’t start.

We panicked. Our immediate reaction was to stop our motion, and we dropped the mainsail. In hindsight that was our biggest mistake, because we completely lost control of the boat. We drifted in the harbor, across the channel, to where all these boats on our moorings were. We tried to set anchor, what we felt was our only option for stopping the boat so we could work on the engine, but we couldn’t control the motion of the boat to set the anchor, and it dragged with us as we drifted towards the Ned Point lighthouse, that marked some nasty-looking rocks. Finally we decided our only choice was to pull anchor and sail away, so Karl yanked up the 35-pound anchor, while I unfurled the jib and tried to sail us the hell out of there. Our goal at this point was still to try to anchor, but we’ve never set anchor under sail before, and we had no idea how to do it. We sailed successfully back across the channel to where the anchorage was supposed to be and again tried to set our anchor, which again dragged. It dragged us right into the mooring field, where at least a hundred giant boats lurked, menacingly. We were panicking this whole time, screaming at each other, running back and forth across deck, heaving at lines, gouging ourselves on pieces of deck hardware, leaving streaks of blood and mud from the anchor, poring over our chart, ripping our hands open on lines. The anchor kept dragging and dragging, relentlessly, towards the boats. It felt like slow-motion. I noticed how the boats were closer, then closer, then closer. I thought, we’re not going to hit them. I thought, nothing’s going to happen. And then I saw our anchor come dragging up the mooring line of this other boat, catch on the mooring ball, and our boat swing towards it, in slow motion. Karl did a crazy action-movie super-hero leap over to the other boat, which probably cost at least a quarter-million dollars. I started frantically throwing fenders over the side, and Karl wedged his body between our boat and theirs. They say never endanger your body at the expense of your boat, but if we damaged that boat, our bodies wouldn’t be worth squat. We don’t have a quarter-million dollars lying around anywhere. Just the paint job on that boat cost twice as much as our entire boat.

I don’t know how, but the anchor pulled free of the mooring. That’s the most miraculous part of the whole story. I tried to pull the anchor up, terrified of whacking a hole in the other boat, but couldn’t pull it over the side. Eventually Karl leapt back over to our boat and hauled it up while I unfurled our jib again and fled the scene of the crime.

We ended up returning to Marion and successfully anchoring under sail just past Silvershell Beach five minutes before Karl’s brother and Ralph showed up in their powerboat to rescue us. We left the boat there and spent the night at Karl’s brother’s house, eating much-deserved Chinese food.

The whole ordeal spooked us. We ended up relatively unscathed, aside from the gouge in Karl’s shin, and a slightly splintered toe-rail. We haven’t been arrested for damages yet. But we took last week off, and now we’re taking today off. We need to be reminded of why we want to live this way, what the end goal is. The end goal is this: me, sitting feet up, typing away, Karl out on deck, chatting with the neighbors and brainstorming ideas for the boat, a little row across the harbor to a lookout point and a swim planned for this afternoon, and BLT sandwiches for supper.

Psychedelic undersea growth

Crazy things grew on the bottom of our dinghy, after it had been in the water for only a month! We've since painted the bottom with bottom paint, so no more crazy fungi.

The second sail

We went sailing again this week. It was a little trickier this time, not because it was more difficult, but because we were aiming higher. Rather than simply moving the boat, we wanted to sail well, and we’re still missing some of the finer points of the art. Believe it or not, after sailing twice, we’re not the world’s best sailors.

For me, the major point of dispute is the heeling. For you landlubbers out there, heeling is when the boat dips away from the wind, sometimes so much that the sides of the boat, the gunwales, are actually touching the water. Our boat, a 1971 Ranger 33, is a racing cruiser, but according to those who know, it’s actually a racing hull. This means it heels. A lot. I’m beginning to understand why cruising sorts want thicker, heavier, wider boats—trying to live in a house that’s always tilting on its axis is a little tricky. Even getting sandwiches out of the icebox when we’re up on our sides is tricky. It’s more a matter of pulling yourself, hand over hand, below deck, and then pulling yourself back out again.

I’m convinced we’ll get used to it. We’re not trading this one in on a cruising cruiser, no matter what, at least for the next five years. It’s not really that uncomfortable, either. It’s exhilarating, bracing yourself against the power of the wind. It’s just confusing because I’m never sure, when at the helm, if the boat’s actually supposed to heel that much. Am I doing something wrong? Should I be heading more into the wind, or farther away from the wind? Should our sails be pulled in tighter, or let out looser? These are the questions we ask ourselves every minute that we’re out there, with no one to answer them. It will all come with experience, but it would be nice to have something else to rely on other than our own trial and error. Not that we’ve relied on anything else the whole rest of the way.

It’s an amazing feeling, though, standing at the tiller, feeling the water beneath you pull against the rudder. Feeling the wind resist you and then give in, as you push the boat towards it. Feeling the vast power you have filling the sails as you attempt to sheet them in. It’s amazing, controlling this huge half-alive machine, using an ancient art. I feel like we’ve resurrected her, our boat, and she’s as thrilled as we are to be out there, pulling against the wind, coasting down the side of each wave. Sure, she has some pockmarks, some scars, but we already love her warts and all. I can only imagine how people feel about boats they build themselves.

We zigzagged back and forth across the bay a couple of times on Tuesday. We finally exhausted ourselves and decided to take a break by taking down the main. The boat sails so fast and heels so much with both sails up that we sometimes feel a little out of control. Taking the jib down is a way to slow down without having to stop sailing.

We finally came into Pocasset Harbor, almost directly across Buzzard’s Bay from Marion, and anchored somewhere in Red Brook Harbor. We don’t have our anchor light hooked up yet, and I’m not really sure where exactly we’re supposed to be anchoring, but we’ve done it successfully twice now. We can call it stealth anchoring, like we used to stealth camp. As far as we know we’re doing nothing illegal, but we haven’t exactly studied up on the rules, either. We had a delightful evening, jumping in the water to escape the sun, then meeting Karl’s friend Dave at the Chart Room in Cataumet for a lovely dinner of shrimp and swordfish. On the way back, rowing our dinghy across the harbor, we could see thousands upon thousands of tiny jellyfish, each one glowing as the stroke of our oars hit it.

The Holy Spirit hovers over the water

So I’m sitting on the boat with Karl. His friends Josh and Wade are hanging out with us tonight. I’ve had a long day at work—eleven hours to be exact—and it’s great to be out here now, the ocean breeze blowing across the boat, cold pizza in the stomach. My sister just called, my brother’s back in the country, heading to Boston soon. I’m exhausted, but happy.

The only thing I really have to write about is the phosphorescence. I’ve heard about phosphorescence before, but I’ve never really believed it before, that the water actually glows. It glows. There are things living in the water that glow. I don’t know how to adequately explain the wonder of this. Yesterday Karl rowed Wade and me around, and we watched the phosphorescence swirl around the oars. Occasionally I’d see glowing blue fish shoot away from the paddles, or little floating jellyfish that collected and glowed around the edge of the boat.

It’s like there’s energy in the water, and you can’t see it unless you’re out here, in the weather, in the wind, running your fingers through the water. God’s under there, showing Himself to us, underneath us all the time, if we only had the time to pay attention. He’s out here everywhere, trying to speak to us. We’re living outside again, where we belong, where you have to breathe deep of real air, real breath, where you can feel the Spirit of God moving over the water.

The first sail

We went sailing yesterday. Actually sailing, in our sailboat, alone, with the sails up and the wind in them and the sailboat moving. Karl kept telling me that we didn’t have to worry about the sailing part, that once we got the sails up and the wind in them that we would move, and he was right. There are many things we have to learn, of course—how to sail efficiently is another matter altogether, but it was still absolutely exhilarating, the end result of seven months of hard labor.

We sailed out across Buzzard’s Bay, back and forth a couple of time, cutting a big Star of David across the Cape Cod Channel. We started out under main alone, as Karl’s friend John, a captain with his 100-ton license, recommended. We tacked back and forth a couple of times across the wind, and then finally got brave enough to unfurl the jib. Everything worked beautifully, once we got the sails up, even the cobbled-together roller-furling system, everything. We decided to try to go someplace after sailing for a couple of hours, and cut up into the Channel. The wind was directly behind us then, and running with the wind seems like the hardest thing we tried to do. Another thing we have to learn how to do, but it’s only a matter of practice. So we fired up the engine, maneuvered through the buoys to Onset Harbor, where our favorite pizza place, Marc Anthony’s, is a stone’s throw from the water.

By the time we anchored and rowed to the dinghy dock, the double-crusted gourmet pizza we ordered seemed a perfect reward for a perfect day. The sail back yesterday was a little more tricky—we had to beat across the wind all the way back to Marion, under jib alone, but it was still great practice. All we have to do is get out there as much as is humanly possible in the next month, and maybe we really will be ready to leave come September. It is thrilling, really.

The only wrinkle is that both of us are absolutely purple with sunburn. After the first couple of hours on Wednesday, Karl looked at me and said, “Maybe we should think about finding some sunscreen.” All we had was SPF 4 that I had inherited from my Greek mother, and it definitely did not do the trick. One of the reasons we’re taking the day off today is that neither of us could face another UV ray. We’re also thinking more seriously about investing in a bimini cover, especially because Karl’s fire truck sold! Yet more wonderful news we found out yesterday.

The infamous antique fire truck. Jacob and Seth, Karl's nephews, are climbing on top.

He was asking $2000 for it, and it’s going for $5000, to a fire truck museum in New York, where it will be the oldest fire truck on display. They have a whole team of restorers working on fire trucks, with all different ones arriving from around the country every day. (For the uninformed: this fire truck is a well-preserved 1924 Maxim that’s a family heirloom. It was rotting in Karl’s brother’s backyard before Karl decided to sell it for boat money.) I couldn’t imagine a better home for it, and it more than doubles our cruising kitty. As soon as Karl got the phone call, I saw his eyes sweep around the boat and spend the money all at once—new standing rigging, a spray dodger, a fancy new GPS chartplotter, a handheld depth-sounder, and all the other high-tech gadgets he’s been hankering after. We’ll see.

The best news of all is that we found Fred’s dinghy. It’s rather old news now, but the morning after my last entry, Karl spotted what he thought was a dark blue dinghy blown into some reeds. We rowed there, praying hard the whole way, and salvaged the thing. Now we’ve replaced the rope and secured the dinghy fast so it won’t escape again. But that one awful night, both of us, independently, were wondering if we hadn’t taken a wrong turn. Everything seemed to be going against us. Pieces weren’t falling into place, and at every turn we were met by a new and unexpected obstacle. Now it seems the opposite is true. Doors are opening right and left, our hopes are rising, and the horizon looks clear. I know we’re bound to encounter other hardships, but right now it does seem like I’m moving in the right direction. We’ve found our path, perhaps, at least for the next little while.

Further complications

I’m sitting in the darkened boat, Secret, having just turned out my headlamp. We’ve just discovered that our friend’s dinghy has disappeared. The thing is, he’s not really a friend—he’s more of an acquaintance, a regular at the restaurant where I work. He found out about our boat, about our need to moor it someplace, and he had a mooring he hadn’t used in a while so he’s been letting us stay there. He talked to the harbormaster for us and everything. The only condition? That we take care of his beat-up navy-blue dinghy, attached to his mooring.

And now it’s gone. Do you know how much dinghies cost? About $2000. A third of what we paid for our entire sailboat. $2000 we don’t have. Karl’s out there right now, rowing around the harbor in the dark looking for it. It’s more or less hopeless, though—it was really windy last night, the whole reason the dinghy’s gone. And the reason we weren’t here when it disappeared. I was exhausted last night after working eleven hours at the restaurant, and Karl had had a rough day (he got our jib up, finally, with Ralph, which should have been a cause for celebration), and it was windy, so we decided to just crash as his mom’s place.

We shouldn’t have, of course. We were being lazy. And we should have reinforced Fred’s dinghy lines, just in case. But we didn’t. I feel so angry, and frustrated, and maligned by fate, exactly the way I did when my purse was stolen in Michigan. Except my purse wasn’t stolen. I left it in a Taco Bell in Berrien Springs, and the kind owner mailed it back to me, minus the $100 cash that had been in it, lost somewhere along the way.

I want to ask, why me? I know I shouldn’t, I know these things happen to everyone, and that ninety percent of them are my fault anyway, but still: why me? Why can’t I catch a break? Every time I start feeling like we make forward progress on the boat, we get socked in the gut again. How am I going to tell Fred? What are we going to do? How can we afford to replace a dinghy?

I can’t do anything now but pray. My grandmother’s prayers worked on my purse, but I feel like I’m asking God too much now. I don’t deserve more mercy. Karl thinks we shouldn’t pray about these things anyway, that they’re below God’s level of concern. I too agree in some ways. I feel guilty asking God to return my poor little lost dinghy when people are dying of starvation. How dare I? But God has to care, right? If he cares about every sparrow that falls?

And So It Begins

There’s something wrong with me, and I can’t figure out what it is. In thirteen minutes I have to be at work, and I’ve decided that this is the best time for me to start my new web journal. If not now, when? I’m sitting in a bedroom at my boyfriend’s mother’s house, sweat dripping off my face, mainly from the extremely hot shower I just got out of, and I can’t put my finger on what’s wrong.

Everything should be great right now. Perfect. My boat’s in the water. I’m living on it, more or less. Karl’s out working on the varnish right now, allegedly, and after that’s done we can put back in the wood fittings and cushions, and then maybe it will start to feel like a home.

What it boils down to was that I didn’t have my conditioner in the shower just now. It’s in my gym bag, which I cart to and from the boat every day, along with my hairbrush, deodorant, and a growing wardrobe of accessories. I’m sick of not having a home—I haven’t had a place that was my own in two-and-a-half years now, and the boat, in the water, was supposed to solve this quandary. But I’m just as homeless now as ever. I have to shower in places that are not mine, and that will continue to be so, unless we get a sun shower rigged up. Unlikely in the extreme.

My peripatetic urge is beginning to take on the character of a compulsion. Am I really cut out for this life? Should I really just settle down somewhere, buy a house, have a couple of kids, start growing vegetables? At least I’d have conditioner in the shower. I keep telling myself that I wouldn’t be happy then, either, but is that really true? I can’t answer that, because I haven’t done it.

I keep postponing my contentment to a later date: once the boat is in the water, once the varnish is finished, once the sails are up, once the galley is set up. But this dynamic in myself will never be resolved—my simultaneous longing for the comforts of stability, the conditioner, and the everyday adventures of mobility. Is all of this just born of fear? Fear of what I’ll discover about myself if I settle down?

In any case, I’m not changing course. I have laid this one down, and I’ll follow it until the weather turns. I hope this hiccup of discontent is just a passing gust.

An Introduction

So I've been journalling a while, about our summer adventures rebuilding a boat and learning to sail, but critics have deemed my early entries to be a little too pessimistic. Perhaps rightly so--this is a big mountain that we've given ourselves to climb. Still, though, I've decided that an introduction might be the best way to begin.

If you've read my profile, you know that Karl (or Big County, as he's known in hiking circles), and I met on the Appalachian Trail in 2004. Upon meeting, it took us eight months to get to Maine, hike Katahdin, and finish the trail, for reasons that have been better explained last year. We spent the winter of 2004 in Maine, at Karl's farm there, contemplating building an organic commune there. Eventually we decided that we hadn't done enough hiking yet, and set out for the Pacific Crest Trail in April 2005.

For many reasons, again best explained elsewhere, we decided to move on from hiking after doing 800 miles of the PCT. Karl bought a beat-up touring bike in Bishop, California, I had mine shipped to me, and we set off to bike to Canada. We had a great time, but we didn't get too far.

Upon returning to New England (after participating in the birth of my sister's beautiful baby girl), we discovered we were fresh out of adventures. What to do? We had had enough of hiking, at least for the time being, the bicycling hadn't gone so smoothly, we weren't sure we were settled enough for the organic farm, but a host of other possibilities awaited. The most appealing of those to our imagination was a little scuffed-up boat up on jacks at the boatyard a mile from Karl's mom's house.

It was a 1971 Ranger 33, to be exact, and in all of our angst and indecision, we found ourselves gravitating towards it. It was the barren cold of a coastal Massachusetts winter, but kept sneaking down to the boatyard, looking it up online, poking around the cabin after we discovered the helpful owner had left an old wood ladder lying at its base. He had also left a little globe on the nav desk, and as we poked holes in the half-rotted wood, and scraped at the peeling paint, that little globe captured my imagination the most.

Oh the places we could go! The Pacific islands we could visit! The tropical sunsets over the clear green Caribbean sea, which we could watch nestled snug in Secret's cockpit... That was the little boat's name, and as October changed to November and into December, we got more and more serious. We did research. We read books. We surfed the web, and eventually decided to get enough cash together to put together a tiny little offer for the boat.

It was far less than the previous owner deserved for his beautiful but slightly battered boat, but it was all we penniless adventurers could afford. We left it in the hands of God, or fate--if he didn't take our offer, we'd get to our next adventure another way. But he did, and as of 2006 we were left the proud but completely ignorant owners of a brand new boat.

To give you some context, Karl had never been on a moving sailboat before in his life. I had sailed, yes, with my father, before the age of ten, a handful of times, mainly on those catamarans with the vinyl trampoline thing between the two hulls. Neither of us had a clue. But on the very first night that we met, the night we mark as our anniversary, Karl had asked me to move onto a boat with him, and I had said yes. Now the dream was ours, and we didn't quite know what to do with it.

The next seven months were dreary and miserable. We bled. We cried. We fought, more than we've ever fought before. We fought about money, about time, about housing. But that tired old boat slowly came back to life. Karl recored the entire deck, an exhausting process. I worked as a waitress, funding the gallons and gallons of epoxy we had to buy. We bought a sheet of teak-and-holly plywood and added accents to the cabin. Karl and his father repaired the roller-furling system and painted the bottom of the boat. Ralph, Karl's stepdad, painted the entire interior for us. We read the entire Cruising in Serrafyn series, about newlyweds who circumnavigated in a 24' engineless wooded sailboat they built themselves. We corresponded with strangers about fiberglass. I didn't even know what fiberglass was in December.

Eventually, as of July 7, the boat was in the water, a month and seven days past our deadline. In retrospect, this seems astonishingly fast. People spend three years buying, financing, and rebuilding their boats, if not more. We had our strokes of luck--someone gave us a brand-new dinghy, another friend supplied us with a free mooring, a random stranger at West Marine gave us $300 worth of used charts that he was replacing, my best friend gave me her old computer (which I'm writing on now). And now our departure date is set for September 30, believe it or not. I don't know if we're brave or just plain crazy. I guess we'll find out.

Boat makeover

Before


During

After

Before

During

After!

Tearing off the ugly vinyl

Here's Secret, demasted, on the hard, bottom scraped, just waiting for us to get our act together...

We're tearing out all the old vinyl that used to line the hull. It was fug-leee.

Karl's birthday

I know we both look a little worse for wear, but hey, we had a good time.

The work continues

Putting the headliner back in, using fiberglass epoxy and filler. You can barely even tell it was cut out!



















Fiberglass dust on everything! Great for the lungs.





















Karl hand-scrubbing our waterline, and scraping the bottom, too. That's our other Ranger, the Ford Ranger, behind him.