You Can Go Back Home

I'm back in Kansas, the place of my birth and the following 40 some years. And while the cap'n cringes when I say this, it feels like home. It's hard to explain but it just feels like there is some kind of recognition deep in my DNA. My heart beats more sure. I know the smells and the feel of the air. The way the sunlight slants on an autumn afternoon is a touchstone for all other afternoon suns. I can tell what the day will be by the light that shines in my morning window.

I was born with wanderlust though. Always dreaming of faraway places and the unfamiliar. A wishful restlessness. And so I wander. To distant shores and lands that are as different as imaginable from where I came from. I'm not sure what it is I'm looking for but I haven't found it yet. I'm a little afraid that it's back here where I started. But it could be in Mexico. I had forty plus years to let Kansas seep into my marrow. I've been in Colorado for six "half" years and it's just starting to feel like home. I'll give my new home a fighting chance.

The cap'n is starting to sweat bullets while he reads this. Don't worry cap, I'm not ready to put the house in Mexico up for sale and move back to Kansas. Not even! I'm excited about our new life down there and the undiscovered possibilities. But just like anyone that moves on a boat or to a new place, foreign or not, I sometimes feel nostalgic for "home". That's okay. That's normal. But it's easy to mistake that homesickness for unhappiness with our new surroundings. It takes time and effort for strangeness to evolve into familiarity. It's scary, especially if you don't speak the language. And it's so tempting to surround yourself with only the familiar and do only the things that you already know how to do. But where's the fun in that? You have to confront the things that scare you, if you don't you are not giving yourself or your new "home" a fair chance. You will always ask yourself if you did all you could. Most importantly, recognize if it is yourself or the place you are unhappy with. If you are not happy or comfortable with yourself, no place is going to provide those things for you. (How was that for a Zen moment?)

However, if you have given your all and you've given it all the time you think you can spare, it's okay to say, "This isn't what I want." It can be heartbreaking to admit that the dream wasn't what you thought it was going to be. Plus, when you leave a "fringe" community like the boating or the expat community, you may feel or be made to feel that you've failed. You're abandoning ship. This is so not true. You tried. By God, at least you tried, which is more than most people do. It is more important that you recognize that you are genuinely unhappy and do something about it. If that means leaving and trying something else, so be it. Life's too short. I stayed on the boat longer than I should have. I waited until the cap'n admitted he was unhappy. I squandered some precious years and tinged a lot of happy memories with resentment.

Move on. Go back home if that makes you happy or keep searching until you find a place that feels like home. It's okay. You have my permission.

All Creatures Great and Icky! : Boat Critters

We arrived back on our boat after our Christmas vacation in the land of paychecks. Agur’s Wish was pulling gently at her docklines and all looked to be well. We extracted our key from the top secret hiding place that everybody on the dock and quite a few people in the settlement are aware of, just in case someone needs to save her from sinking or burning to the waterline. Or, God forbid, there might be a real emergency like a shortage of rum, in which case the residents of the dock and town know we have enough emergency rations of rum to “float” a small island nation for the foreseeable future.

We descended the companionway into the gloom of the shrouded boat. As we uncovered the hatches, we gasped in horror. Strewn about the boat were remnants of cigarettes chewed down to the filters. The strings of fake plastic limes and lemons that I had hanging in the galley had multiple bite marks in them.

The cap’n and I looked at each other. Which one of our nicotine fiend, tequila deprived, lime-sucking dockmates was to blame? It could be anyone of them.

“I smell a rat!”

Yeppers, in our absence a transient hobo-type critter of the rodent kind had set up camp and was now plotting to hold me prisoner on my own boat. Think Nicole Kidman in the movie “Dead Calm” or Melanie Griffith in “Pacific Heights”. This intruder was hell bent on incessantly teasing, taunting and torturing me.

There was the night I was laying on the settee reading a book, listening to Stanley, the killer bichon, chomping away at his dinner in the galley. But wait a darn minute, Stanley was laying right beside me. That’s what I call teasing and taunting.

Trapping a rodent phobic, incurable insomniac with frequent nocturnal urinary urges in her bunk all night….that’s what I call torture.

Luckily, the cap’n wasn’t as easily cowed and he set to work setting a trap. Later on that night, let’s just say, our uninvited guest found himself in a sticky situation. The cap’n gave him the old “heave-ho”.

And now Mickey, the Mouse, sleeps with the fishes.

Although no worthy first-mate, except me, would lay claim to having such commodious quarters for the formerly described unwanted guest, rodents are actually your common, garden-variety type of vermin that might be found on your boat. Now let’s talk about some of the more exotic varieties that may take up lodging.

I was introduced to one such creature on a bright sunny afternoon while I was diligently cleaning the cockpit and the cap’n was diligently throwing back lethal adult beverages at the Jib Room at the Marsh Harbour Marina..

I was busily scrubbing away, whistling a happy tune when I happened to open a cockpit locker. Staring back at me from the depth of the locker were two bulging yellow eyes.(I swear he had yellow eyes). A viperine (look it up, as Sister Irene used to say) tongue darted at me. There squatting atop the debris was a big, fat, slimy, day-glo lime-green frog.

“Rrrribbett”, it said.

“Eek!” said I, as I slammed the lid and awaited the cap’ns return from his arduous duties on shore.

Once again the cap’n gave the old “heave-ho” and the culprit swam merrily to shore.

Unfortunately, now my fear of opening the cockpit lockers is akin to my fear of highway rest stops. You see, for some reason every time I go into a highway rest stop I fear that I am going to see an amputated body part floating in the toilet. I try to not even look in the toilet. I have no idea where this gruesome irrational fear came from. Believe me, I’ve never seen an amputated body part floating in a toilet. Maybe I’m a little bit crazy. Normal people don’t think about things like that at rest stops. Do you? Ha! Ha! I bet you will now. Gotcha! Anyway, that explains the sorry state of my cockpit lockers.

Both of the previous experiences pale in comparison to what happened to our friends on the s/v Just Dreaming. This happened a couple of years ago and I wrote about it on some of the cruising boards, so if you’ve already read it I apologize. This is what happened.

We received an interesting vessel in distress call to us via VHF yesterday afternoon. I don't know why they thought we could help them with the nature of their distress except it happened to be one of those rare days when the water in Marsh Harbor was clear enough to see the interesting array of nature on our bottomsides.

It seems that the admiral of the distressed boat had been diligently (Ah-ha, a fellow member of the diligent cleaner club) scrubbing the head when she noticed what she thought was algae poking out from under the rim. She immediately armed herself with toilet brush for the attack and the enemy beat a hasty retreat. She decided to flush the area for more traces of enemy insurgents and sure enough more little legs poked through.

Dispersing with the usual regimen of interrogation she went straight to the torture stage and started gingerly tearing off limbs. When the captain and admiral had torn off a respectable amount limbs without gaining any useful intelligence they decided to call us. They now had their own little P.Y.N. (pinch your nose) camp set up in the intake of their head and they had removed all means for their prisoner's escape. You think the Abu Gahraib (sp?) scandal caused a stink.

My captain had indulged in his usual breakfast of Kalik's followed by a nutritious brunch of Rum-N-Ade’s and for some reason couldn't come up with a solution. I muttered, "You suck." My captain replied, "I besh your parshon!" I replied, "Tell him to disconnect his intake hose and apply suction." Sure enough, after just a few seconds of militia strength ShopVac to intake hose and the enemy lay legless and quivering on the floor.

A 3-4 inch slimey Jabba the Hud squid in his last throes. Of course, my captain took all the credit for the successful mission.

So, if some dark, .dark night you find yourself on the throne trickling and you feel something tickling....... Sorry Denny and Diane this one's going 'round the world wide web.

Reefer Madness: Boat Refrigeration Gremlins

That title should garner some interesting hits to my blog. (*Note to self: Look up the definition of “garner”)

The captain and the boat are driving me crazy today. Or maybe it’s just the captain on the boat and it’s not the boat’s fault at all. Yeah, that’s probably it. Anyway this is kind of like one of those letters you write when you’re afraid to tell your spouse he’s doing something that drives you crazy so you put it in a letter to an anonymous newspaper column hoping he’ll read it and recognize himself. Then he’ll recognize how ridiculous his behavior is and beg your forgiveness and swear to change his evil ways. My problem is the captain doesn’t read those columns and the other problem is I’ve told him repeatedly, sometimes loudly and profanely, every little thing that he does wrong and he keeps on doing them.

You must understand that the cap'n didn’t develop these annoying little habits only when we moved on the boat. He’s always had them. They just seem amplified in the limited space and magnified expanse of time we spend together on the boat.

Now which one is my very least favorite? The one that has me gnashing my teeth and muttering words that would have my mother washing my mouth out. Hmm. Let me think. Ah yes, that’s the one. The diabolical refrigerator or to be more specific the captain's neurosis about anyone opening the door to get things in or out of the refrigerator.

As I said, he’s always had this particular neurosis. The kids and I used to time him and it usually only took about 2.8 seconds after hearing the refrigerator door open before the captain would espouse the same wise words.

“It’s not a TV. Get in and get out,” he’d bellow.

This isn’t such a big deal when you have a side by side with about thirty shelves and see-through bins.

Since buying the boat his repertoire of sage refrigerator advisories have grown. Let’s see there’s…

“What are you looking for?”

As if just by the act of answering this inquiry the sought after item will magically levitate through the layers of jumbled containers and decaying produce to the top of the refrigerator.

Oh and then there’s…

“Do you need a flashlight?”

Let me think. Not unless it has an x-ray beam that can see through the questionable contents of those jumbled containers and decaying produce.

There’s also this one…

“You know the cold just pours out when you use the front opening instead of the top one.”

Since I can’t get to the bottom compartment without using the front opening I guess I could stop storing food in the bottom compartment but with the captain's penchant for provisioning for a non-stop round the world cruise every week, that’s out of the question.

Here’s my favorite.

“You need to organize it better.”

I would be overjoyed to do this if I could have at least twenty seconds in the fridge to put things to rights and then another five seconds each time I put something in it to put it in its place. The current practice of gathering all the refrigerated items together, opening the door, throwing them in, and then slamming the door doesn’t lend itself towards organization.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot this one…

“Is that the freezer running again?”

Which translates into, “You’ve been in there long enough. Get out!”

On most sailboats power conservation ranks right up there with water conservation. You don’t have to be planning an ocean crossing to be concerned about conservation. A week of gunkholing can put a serious drain on your batteries, especially if your trying to get away from it all and swearing off civilization and marinas, or if you just dread docking like this first mate.

On a sailboat without a generator the production of power is limited to solar panels, wind generators, or your engine’s alternator and a reliable battery bank. Solar panels and wind generators are great adjuncts to your engine’s alternator regenerating capacity but they cannot be relied on as the primary source of electricity for most modern boats. Eventually you’re going to have to run your engine to recharge your batteries. This unfortunately increases your engine hours along with wear and tear on your engine. The longer you can manage your power usage with just your battery capacity, the better off you are. So what does all this have to do with the previous diatribe on marine refrigeration? Refrigeration is a big consumer of electrical power and that is the reason for the involuntary sphincter reaction of most captains I know every time the fridge door is opened. But there’s help on the way. Here are some tips that might help keep the air in the refrigerator a little colder and the air between you and the captain a little warmer.

Tip One: If you’re an American or just can’t abide the thought of drinking a warm beer, keep a separate ice chest with your favorite beverages in it. This saves space in your fridge and saves multiple trips in and out of it. Ours fits right under our salon table so it’s out of the way. Of course, you still have to buy ice which can be expensive.

Tip Two: Do try to keep the fridge somewhat organized. I try to keep routine items in the same place every time. You’ll also have to layer your foods according to their squishability. Meat and cheese and hard vegetables and fruits will survive on the bottom of the heap but more vulnerable fruits and veggies that bruise easily will have to go on top. I also keep my bread products in the refrigerator because out of the refrigerator bread products don’t last more than a couple of days for me. The squishablility theory applies here also. Pizza crusts and tortillas go on the bottom with loaf bread and hamburger buns on top. Remember though, no matter how well you accomplish this you’re still going have to do some excavating when you’re looking for items but at least you’ll know which way to tunnel. It also helps to keep a list of what items you have in the refrigerator and freezer because, as mentioned, things can get buried. Of course, this only works if you mark off items as you use them.

Tip Three: Cut a piece of foamed plastic insulation to fit over the top of the refrigerator/freezer area. When my captain suggested this I fought it tooth and nail. I didn’t want to have to remove some ugly piece of silver insulation every time I got into the refrigerator. As usual, I lost and he did it anyway. And boy, it was ugly! Thankfully a friend, that has all the decorating genes I was born without, suggested covering it with contact paper or wallpaper and it actually turned into an attractive workspace. It is lightweight really not all that inconvenient to take on and off.

**I promise all first mates that if you make this suggestion to your captain he will be eternally grateful and then he’ll immediately claim it as his idea.

Tip Four: Buy smaller containers of products. I’m not a big believer in keeping food products that say “refrigerate after opening” out of the refrigerator. I figure there’s a reason for that warning and it’s probably because someone died or got really sick. I know there is lots of literature out there that says if I use a clean spoon in my mayo every time or if I turn my eggs every week I don’t need to refrigerate them. Well, if you saw some of the water conserving methods we use to wash dishes on our boat you might question the cleanliness of that spoon and if there ever was a universal inexpensive food it has to be eggs. Why would I risk salmonella because I forgot or was too lazy to turn my eggs one week. You can probably tell I’m not a big fan of food poisoning although I have considered it as a diet alternative. Seriously, I would rather throw a questionable item out then risk it. I also buy smaller containers of my favorite condiments even if they are more expensive and keep them in the refrigerator after opening rather than larger containers that won’t fit in the refrigerator. I‘ve found that even when I refrigerate larger containers of perishables I end up throwing half or more of the product out because I don’t use it fast enough and lose faith.

Tip Five: My captain should probably patent his latest “keep the cold air in and keep the first mate out of the refrigerator device”. It is a kind of thermal blanket for the freezer. Hmm…a blanket for the freezer. It didn’t make a whole lot of since to me. He couldn’t find one, go figure, so he had to design it himself. He bought a small silver tarp and some bubble wrap. He then made a template of our freezer using newspaper and using this template cut two patterns out of the silver tarp and two out of the bubble wrap. He placed the bubble wrap (with bubbles together) between the tarps and glued it all together with contact cement. It now resides on top of our frozen goods. It manages to keep me out of the freezer because it is a little unwieldy to get the “blanket” in and out so usually I just grab the first thing I feel under it. “Oh look, lobster again. I wonder how all those little buggers got to the top of the pile?” The captain swears it has noticeably reduced our refrigeration running time and, for once, I’ll admit he’s right. Ouch ! That hurt.

Tip Six: Almost any book about cruising (ECGIER) will have tips on how to reduce your refrigerator’s power consumption. Find the ones that fit you and your boat and use them. Every little bit helps.

Final Tip: I saved the best for last. This is the one that works best for me. If you find you really do need to get into your refrigerator for some mundane reason such as sustenance, plan ahead carefully. Figure out everything you need out of the fridge and its approximate location then boldly make your move. Just make sure the captain is off the boat.

Epilogue: I wrote this article when I actually had refrigeration and my most heart-felt back-thumps to you that live without it. I went all last year without it and the only good things I can say about doing without it is that I helped the Bahamian economy by eating out a lot, and buying a lot of stuff that I would have to throw out and replace on a day by day basis. Oh, the other good thing was that the cap'n didn't yell at me every time I opened the refrigerator (hatch,door??? what do you call it?).

Whadda Ya Do All Day?

I just got back from Pilates class on the beach (actually it was on a concrete slab behind the Hope Town Methodist Church, but beach sounds more romantic) and the cap'n is out racing on a friend's boat. Life is wonderful and idyllic. Actually some friends had to pry our lazy asses off the boat.

Life is one big circle. We spend our first few human years with nothing to do but learn the basic skills of walking and talking and controlling our bodily functions. All of this happens rather naturally without much effort on our part. The rest of this time is spent, well, just playing. This too comes rather naturally and without much effort on our parts. Most of us probably spent countless hours banging on a metal pot with a spoon. We didn’t spend a whole lot of time worrying about what we were accomplishing or contributing to society. Life was simple.

And then they ruined it! They sent us to school. Our life became a routine. 8:00 a.m. first bell. 8:15 a.m. time to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. And on it went. Even recess was organized play and as we got older the recesses got shorter and shorter until they finally disappeared altogether.

Most of us endured this for at least twelve years. A lot of us suffered even longer. Why? So we could get a job! That’s right, after years of forced routine and learning, we traded it in for more routine and even shorter vacations. For what reason did we endure another 20, 30, 40+ years of enslavement? In order to make enough money to go back and do what we were doing all those years ago. Play.

So now you’ve been on your boat for a few months and ….

“Waaah! theres nothing to do!”

Snorkeling and fishing all day were a blast when they were a once or twice a year event but they lose some allure when you do it every day. I know you won’t believe me but you can get real tired of a steady diet of fish, even lobster.

You don’t want to admit it but your bored out of your mind. Try admitting that to a working person and you won’t get a whole lot of sympathy but lament to a fellow “first mate”and believe me they’ll know where you’re coming from. We all started out with great expectations of the nirvana of the cruising life. Water of unbelievable beauty and all the activities that go along with it, perfect weather, beach barbecues, nights under endless stars…and it’s all out there, the only problem is it doesn’t seem to be enough. All those years of routine and learning and accomplishing have altered us. We want to be doing something. We want to be challenged.

Okay, so you’ll learn new skills. You’ll paint or write. But you may find if you haven’t used these skills since high school or college you’re bound to be rusty. You can learn on your own but you’re going to have to be very self-disciplined and not give up after your first disappointing efforts. Channel your inner child, you know the one that picked up a crayon without any concern whether the result was going to be a masterpiece, and just have fun. The good new is that in some of the larger harbours there are organized painting and writing circles that readily welcome newbies. And where there's internet, there's a way, or at least an online course, either for fun or for college credit. One friend of mine taught herself oil painting (and she was good at it), how to play the flute and sax (and she was good at it), she also wrote a book, and, in her spare time, she monogrammed clothing for friends on a special sewing machine she brought on her boat. All of this in four months. Oh, I forgot to tell you she also jogged every day. She had retired from the military and was obviously very self-disciplined. I hated her.

So have I finally convinced you to give up on the idea of sailing off into the sunset and living happily ever after? I hope not. You don’t have to become unhappy and bored but you have to be prepared to prevent it. You have to realize you’re not going to be happy for long with nothing to do everyday but walk on the beach or snorkel in crystal clear waters. I know this is hard to buy when you’re in the middle of a fifty- hour work week with additional children and grandchildren obligations to top it off, but take my word on it. Unfortunately, all those years of routine and productivity can’t be wiped from our subconscious right away. You’ll find that you miss routine. You’ll find that you miss having something you’ve got to get done and deadlines. That’s right we creatures of habit need routine. The good news is now we get to be in charge. We get to say when and what we’re going to do and how. Oh yeah, and we get to put recesses back in the schedule. The only problem is we’re going to have to learn to play again but we’ll discuss that later.

Let’s get started.

Step One: Don’t enforce the routine the minute you cast off the docklines. Do take a vacation. Spend the days like you dreamed. Walk the beaches. Find some shells. Do nothing! You’ve missed a lot of recesses. You deserve it. You’ll know when you’re getting a little restless. Then you’ll be ready to add a little routine. It took me about four months to start feeling restless but a lot longer before I did anything about it.

Step Two: Decide what your routine is going to be. That’s the beauty of it. It’s entirely up to you. Most of us spent our working careers with someone else engineering our days. Now we get to do it ourselves. The routine you create will depend on how much you want to accomplish and how much time it will require. I am not a very regimented person. I like flexibility. Instead of planning my routine on an hour to hour basis, I like to make lists of the things I want to accomplish each day and the approximate times I intend to dedicate to them. My list looks something like this:

Sample List: Write 2 hrs.
Exercise 30 min. (Maybe…probably not)
E-mail 30 min. (Actually it’s more like 3 hours but I steal it from my exercise and boat chores time)
Boat chores (laundry, cleaning, varnishing …) However long the chore takes. Boats are a lot smaller than houses and you can get a vast amount of work done in an hour.

(Sorry! Can't make the friggin' tab work on blogger. AARRGH!)

Never mind! Blogger was smarter than me as usual. Mea Culpa, Blogger


I don’t usually schedule more than four hours. I feel like I worked enough 8+ hour days to deserve a lesser work schedule. This is enough for me to feel like I haven’t become a beachbum or cockpit potato. Some of you will want more and some of you will be more regimented. Once again, it’s up to you. Just don’t forget to make time to play. I like the daily list so I can tailor it around where we are and what boat activity we might be doing that day. Plus I love crossing things off of the list so I feel I’ve accomplished something that day. In my former life I was an over-achiever. As you can see, I expect a lot less of myself these days. It’s amazing to what depths of laziness you can sink on a boat.

Step Three: What are you going to include in your routine? This is probably the most difficult and important step. The best time to figure this out is before you slip those docklines. Most of our former lives were centered on our jobs and families. We didn’t have time to figure out what we’d really love to do. I’d always known I wanted to write and had written articles for various magazines before we moved on the boat. I had done research on writing and publishing while I was still a dirt dweller so I had a few tools in my toolbox and I knew it fulfilled my need for productivity and creativity. Many women I met brought art supplies or musical instruments. I did too. We carried a guitar around for two years before we gave it away and I still can’t play a tune on my harmonica. I am just a little more proficient at my pastels. I consider these my “play” things and I don’t devote a whole lot of time to them. Mostly because I don’t believe I have the gene to surpass my painfully embarrassing level of talent in these skills. I can still have fun playing with them though. If you wish to spend a “routine” amount of time in developing this type of skills, then by all means do so.
However, if these skills do not have enough substance to fulfill your need for productivity you might want to investigate “real” jobs you can perform from the boat. Internet access is pretty much accessible in all areas of the world and many people are working from their boats. You may even be able to bring your old job with you. My friend, Joan, on “Joan Marie” tried to retire from her job as medical laboratory technician instructor at a medical college in California but they wouldn’t let her. They still employ her as a consultant and she contributes to several textbooks in the field. Any of these jobs may require additional learning and skills that would be much easier to acquire while still on land. And, of course, lots of people in the computer sector are going about their business as usual. If I can talk to a guy in Timbuktu about my computer problems, why can’t I talk to a guy in George Town, Exumas. So while making future preparations for the boat in planning a long-term cruise don’t forget to make a few preparations for yourself.

An additional activity many cruisers take part in while in paradise is volunteer work. This may seem difficult to plan if you’re moving around frequently but you’ll be surprised how simple it is. Almost any church or school on an inhabited island will be very grateful to find something for you to do. This might range from picking up a paintbrush to reading to a group of children while the teacher spends a little extra time with an individual student. Most volunteer jobs require no special skills although if you do have applicable special skill they are also always very appreciated. Another “Joan” friend of mine on the boat “Ola B” was waiting out a hurricane at a school when she happened to mention to the principal that she had been a psychologist in her former life. Well guess what? She’s now counseling a couple of kids a couple of times a week and she loves it. Here in the Abacos there are many requests for volunteers with any building skills for many of the non-profit organizations there that receive no aid from the government. Believe me, if you put yourself out there some one will put you to work.

If there aren’t any opportunities make your own . If you happen to be on an uninhabited island, take in a couple of trash bags and pick up the debris that litters the beaches and haul it to the next settlement that has a trash pick-up. If there’s more than one boat in the harbor invite everybody to do the same thing and make a party out of it. It may not seem like much but every little bit counts. Another fellow boater, Niels on Westwind, organized a shore clean-up in Marsh Harbour and it has now become a yearly tradition with both boaters and locals involved.

Step Four: Convincing the captain to cooperate. Although some of these activities can be done together, you will have to put your foot down and insist on some time for yourself. Probably before you even get restless you’ll notice that the captain is starting to get on your nerves. Most couples have never spent as much time together before going cruising, much less in the close confines of a boat. In my experience it seems that this sudden aversion to your spouse occurs earlier and much more frequently to the boat’s first mate than it does to the captain. Probably because the captain is just so doggone happy to be on his boat. And that is where you get your edge. Remember he really wants you to be happy on the boat. He doesn’t want you to make him sell his boat. You don’t have to hold this over his head 24-7 but it sure does make a good bargaining tool when you want something to go your way. This really isn’t a big deal. Discuss it with him when you’re at the “ Setting the Rules of Our Cruising Life ” stage and it won’t be a big surprise to him when you demand your space. Discuss with him how much time you need and when you want it if it is going to be on a regular basis. Remember to be flexible. If you’ve just sailed into a new anchorage and he really wants you to go explore it with him, by all means go and put off your plans for a few hours. But if you’ve been lazing around in the same harbor for a week or two and you’ve become locals let him go off on his own to snorkel or fish. It will do both of you good.

Step Five: Oops! Sorry the bell just rang. It’s recess time. Let’s go play!

O' HOLY NIGHT IN THE ABACOS

We are off the boat and back on the Mother Land for a bit of work this Christmas. We will be spending our Christmas in a motel in Bay City, Texas. As we pulled into this hard-scrabble dusty south Texas town, I thought to myself, “This is where I’m going to be spending Christmas?” At that moment I was thrown back to Christmas Eve 2003 on Grand Cay, Abaco, Bahamas. My first day in the Bahamas, and I bawled my eyes out.

We had been working toward this moment ever since we bought the boat. We had been restricted to the East Coast for our previous sailing years because of family and custody requirements but since my youngest had graduated we were free to reach further. We had spent the summer and early fall readying the boat for passages south and attending two of our sons’ weddings and one grandchild’s birth. Shortly after Thanksgiving we made our way south toward West Palm Beach. We did our time in Purgatory at Lake Worth waiting for that elusive weather window. We became the pilot boat for the whole anchorage. Every morning the other boats would watch us pull up anchor and head out the inlet. They would then wait with bated breath, and coffees or Bloody’s until they saw us come back and do the anchoring dance again. Maybe tomorrow…

Then came the big day. December 23rd, 2003. We went out early a.m. as usual aaannnd came back, as usual. Put the anchor down and settled in until the next morning but waddayuno right in the middle of our brunch of stale bread and green tinged bologna we noticed a mass exodus of boats out of the anchorage. The cap’n , grateful for any excuse to throw his sandwich overboard, jumped up and hollered, “Haul Anchor”. And away we went.

I don’t remember if we motored or sailed but at about 11:00 pm that night we were on the banks and we were exhausted and decided to put down the anchor. The fact that the passage was not memorable is a good thing. We could see three other mast lights out there in the vast nothingness. We had left with 30+ other boats. Against the cap’ns wishes I lit the Christmas lights and blasted Bing Crosby across the ocean.

At about 4:00 a.m. the wind was piping and we pulled anchor and headed towards Walker’s Cay. It was Christmas Eve. We arrived at our anchoring place at about 10:00 a.m. I won’t call it an anchorage because we were way out in no man’s land because of our 6.6 foot draft, but that’s okay because there were three other boats stuck out in the aqueous boondocks with us. The first boat came back with great news. “Easy clear in. No problem”. We made ready for a landing. Unfortunately, we ended up being the last of the fleet. Unfortunately, it was the first year that the Bahamas had increased the cruising permit fee. Unfortunately, we were preceded in the clearing in process by a disgruntled Norwegian?, Finnish? Danish? One of those Viking type sailors who decided to wage his battle against the Bahamian government on the only customs agent on the island. Unfortunately, the agent took afront at this and walked out. She did return….an hour later. Unfortunately, we bore the brunt of her anger when she charged us $150 for a fishing permit that was supposed to be included in our cruising permit and that we only needed for two days, but as usual that’s another story. Thank you Ma’am. Have a Merry Christmas.
So four hours later we head back to the boat. Unfortunately, we are in an unprotected non-anchorage. Unfortunately, there is a storm brewing. So we haul anchor….again and head for Grand Cay

Grand Cay. Hmmm. Grand Cay. What can I say about Grand Cay? We were anchored about 2 zillion miles out. At least that’s the way it seemed to me. Keep in mind, I was sleep deprived, I might as well have been 2 zillion miles away from my friends, my kids and my Dad. I saw our future in the Bahamas as a boat on the horizon staring hungrily at the lights of an unreachable civilization. I could hear the hounds of trash island calling to me. (Anybody that’s been to Grand Cay knows what I’m talking about). I may have been PMSing also, maybe that’s why the hounds were howling. Let’s just say I made the cap’ns life a veritable hell that night which is my sole purpose in this world. Happy, Happy Christmas, Baby.

Christmas Day! We’re up early and head to town. Either my chakras are more balanced or my eyes are too swollen to take in the whole picture, but Grand Cay is looking better this am. Not good, but better. It’s Christmas Day though, so will we find anything open?
Good news! Grand Cay is not only open but it’s right out there on the street. Every inhabitant is either parked in a chair along the main street, (men on one side, women on the other) or, if they are of the younger variety, whizzing down the road on shiny new bikes or skateboards. The only population that is inside are the ones shooting pool at Rosie’s. I always thought Rosie was a petite older black woman….not! On all accounts…not!

We walk by the house/store fronts and ask the women sitting out front if they are open for business.

“Sure, Sweetie, What you want?”

We fall in love with the two cuties with matching hair ribbons and dresses, all dressed up and holding hands as they skip down the road.

We cheer wildly for the young daredevils racing their new bikes down the main drag.

We wince at the plethora of Styrofoam containers in use and disuse at the same time we sniff appreciatively and wonder where they got the contents..

Later that night we are aboard the S/V Concerto with our first new friends in the Bahamas, June and Geoff. This friendship continues today, even if they haven’t reciprocated in years, we still love them. We were joined by that disgruntled Dane, Hans and his Yankee wife, Joy. Hmmm…Joy?….Christmas?…..She was joyful and so was he away from the customs office.


My message? Don’t judge a book by it’s cover or an island by it’s refuse. Instead judge it by its’ people. You won’t be disappointed and you might just fall in love. Islands are like a box of chocolates and as Forrest Gump says “You never know what you’re gonna get.”
They all taste different, but they’re all good.


Merry Christmas from mine to yours!

P.S. My thanks to AwayTeamAbaco for the beautiful picture of the Hope Town Lighthouse (actually the Elbow Reef lighthouse)all decked out in holiday splendour. Our thanks also to the Hope Town Harbour Rats that worked so hard stringing the lights.

PLACES I'VE BEEN AND SHOES I'VE LOST

I was sitting here contemplating my gnarly old arch deprived feet the other day and I thought about the people that would be envious of me and my barefoot lifestyle. You know, the “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problem” kind of life. The truth of the matter is….I don’t have any friggin’shoes left.

I don’t remember the first time I lost a pair of shoes. It was probably somewhere up north. Maybe in Block Island at the tiki bar at Champlin’s Marina. Probably the same night I learned to do the hand jive from some little girls that were sitting outside the bar’s entrance, the same night we couldn’t find the boat for a couple of hours. Hey come on, there were 1200 boats in the harbor.

There are a few times I do remember, though. Like my favorite pair of “Candies” sandals. (I admit, I never was a Manolo Blahnick kind of girl and anybody that knows me knows that.) They now rest in a watery grave at the Las Olas Marina in Fort Liquordale. We’d started our happy hour at Blondies on the corner of Las Olas Blvd. and A1A. Of course, Blondies’ happy hour starts at 10:00 a.m. and goes until. This is one of the cap’n’s favorite bars. He says it’s because of the scenery. Blondies is smack dab across the street from the beach which sports many signs that say nude sunbathing is not allowed under which numerous young nubile bodies are blatantly disobeying these public sanctions and the authorities are turning a blind eye but risking the other just for a peek. The cap’n went inside for some freshers and conversed with one of the patrons leaning tiredly against the bar.

“I’m so drunk. I really need to go home but I just can’t tear myself away from the view,” says the patron as he eyes one of the sun worshipers who I hope only had to pay for the half of the bathing suit she is wearing.

“Come on, man,” says my noble cap’n, “They’re obviously fake.”

“My complimentsh to the shurgeon,” drooled the bar patron.

Later on that night after bar bouncing down A1A with the cap’n and four other guys, (Mary’s a lucky girl!! One of them even looked exactly like Steven Segal, but his shirt was wrinkled and he lived in a cinder block house so I don’t think it was him.) we ended up back at the boat for a nightcap (like we needed one!). The tide was out, waaay out, and I was faced with a little 6 ft. hop down to the deck of the boat. I decided to do my best Baryshnikov impression and leapt…and missed…again. Instead of partaking of the assistance offered by my four handy male companions, I decided I’d retain what was left of my dignity while floating around with the skirts of my very short dress swirling about me and climb aboard myself. No, not by using the ladder. The cap’n never puts it down. I guess he doesn’t want it to get wet. Instead I’ll use the barnacle encrusted piling to which the boat is tied up. I’ll just use the barnacles as foot and handholds. Just like one of those climbing wall on those fancy cruise ships. Not a good idea, as my oozing scraped up arms and thighs would attest to in the weeks following. I did eventually make it back onboard but alas my poor “Candies” didn’t.

Marsh Harbour Marina and Jib Room Restaurant, Abacos, Bahamas. It was a dark and stormy night. I don’t remember what kind of shoes they were but I’d lived aboard long enough that I’m certain they were of the moldy variety. I can’t even blame it on too many Bilge Burners or any of the other lethal adult beverages that Steven, the bartender at the Jib Room, serves up. We hadn’t even gone into the Jib Room, instead we’d had a nice quiet dinner with some friends who lived across the road. Just a couple of glasses of wine. When the evening wound down, we made our way down the death defying steps of the Marsh Harbour Marina without mishap and proceeded to the dinghy dock to continue our passage home. Did I mention it was raining? For some imperceptible, idiotic reason I chose this night to abandon my usual “old lady, ass slide” into the dinghy and leapt feet first. And I made it! At least my feet did! The dinghy lurched one way, of course I lurched the other and with arms windmilling I ended up in the drink….again. By the time I sputtered to the surface, whatever shoes I had on were permanently embedded in the muck of the bottom. Another innocent pair of shoes left behind along with a pretty good chunk of my scalp on the dock. Thanks, Cleatus. Whooee! Those scalp wounds sure do bleed! Fins to the left, fins to the right. And I'm the only bait in town!

So this year before we got on the boat the cap’n refused to invest anymore capital into my shoe inventory. “Nothing but thongs,” he pronounces. I presume he meant the shoe kind. Have you ever tried to find flip-flops in Colorado in the winter? So here I am shoeless. But you know what? If shoes are required, I don’t think I want to go.

Potluck 3: Sourdough Starter and French Bread

Back on the boat for 4 days now and nothing is working (batteries are crapped out and the alternator is likewise) but this always works as long as you feed it and pamper it as prescribed. This makes a very hard crusty bread but delicious when you break through, kind of like the cap’n. Just mixed this up yesterday so it should be ready to bake by Thanksgiving, in time for the potluck we have planned here at Hope Town Marina. This is from the cookbook Cruising Cuisine by Kay Pastorius. I have been doing this sourdough since we moved aboard the boat.



SOURDOUGH STARTER

1 pkg. active dry yeast
2 cups tepid water
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1.In a clean, rigid-covered container, dissolve the yeast in the water and stir in the flour. Don’t use a metal spoon--use a wooden spoon or chopstick.

2. Leave uncovered in a warm place (80 F to 90 F) for four days to a week, or until mixture bubbles and has developed a sour odor. Stir the mixture daily. If it smells bad or becomes discolored, discard and start again (also pertains to the cap’n)

3. You can begin using the starter or store it in the refrigerator. If stored in the refrigerator, allow it to come to room temperature before using.

4. You should feed you starter every week. Always save 2 cups of this mixture for an ongoing starter. If you have your original 4 cups of starter, either give half away or use it in baking. To the remaining 2 cups of starter, add 1 cup of unbleached, all-purpose flour and 1 cup of tepid water. Allow the starter to ferment and bubble overnight at room temperature, then use or place in the refrigerator.

5. You can also freeze the starter for 2-3 months. Thaw at room temperature for 24 hours, feed it some flour and water and it should start to bubble. If it doesn’t add a teaspoon of active dry yeast and let it ferment overnight.

6. If a gray liquid accumulates on top of the starter, pour it off. Wash your starter container every week with soap and water, then rinse and dry it. (also pertains to cap’n)

7. To use the starter in any bread recipe: 2 cups of starter equals 1 pkg of dry yeast and dissolving liquids in the recipe.



SOURDOUGH FRENCH BREAD

1 ½ cups room temperature starter
1 cup warm water
2 tsp of salt
2 tsp of sugar
4 cups flour

1. Mix together all the ingredients. Knead on a floured board until the dough becomes smooth and elastic. Add more flour if dough is sticky. ( I usually have to add quite a bit more)
2. In a warm draft-free area, allow the dough to rise in a greased bowl covered with a cloth until doubled in bulk. Punch down and allow to rise another 45 minutes.

3. Shape the dough and place in a greased loaf pan. (I usually just shape it and cook it on a cookie sheet) Allow to rise again.

4. Bake in a preheated 375 F oven for 45 minutes (usually takes my oven on the boat longer) until crusty and brown.

Lots more sourdough recipes to follow! The capn says to write something funny so I guess I’ll have to invite Kary May over. Thank God the liquor order is coming over on the afternoon freight boat.

Diet Ads

I don't understand why all these diet ads are showing up. I guess the google crawlers are trying to tell me something. I wish I could click on the ads myself (against the blogspot rules) and maybe I could figure out how to lose this last 25 lbs before I get to the boat in 3 days. Could somebody just email me how Rachel Ray's diet works or those 2 steps to a flat stomach or put it in the comments. And why are my before and after pictures in the wrong order? I'll talk to you when we get there.

Personal Orifices or What the Heck Do Personal Orifices and the Kindle Ebook Have In Common

It’s my secret spot. One that I don’t dare tell anyone about. A mysterious niche undiscovered. A treasure cave unplundered. I must guard it. Protect it. Man will fight to claim it. He would fill it with his tools of manhood. I must be strong! I must withstand his persuasive ways. I must hold on to the final thing that is mine and mine alone.

It’s the last empty drawer on the boat and I’ll be damned if he’s going to put his socket wrenches in it.

I can recall a time when our boat was new and the storage seemed endless. Two hanging lockers for clothes, an extra cabin for guests, deep wells of storage behind the salon cushions and cavernous cockpit lockers would be darn near impossible for us to fill. We carefully planned where everything would go. We even made diagrams and lists of what was where. We divied up our personal space. The galley, of course, was for galley stuff. Pots and pans, dishes, and, hopefully, edible things would reside there. The nav-station was for navigation stuff. Although I thought it was tacky to have a radar screen, numerous radios, and fathoms of cords in my salon, I held my peace as long as they stayed where they belonged. A place for everything and everything in its place.

It was almost unnoticeable at first. The intertwined cords of the nav-station seemed to reproduce overnight and before I knew it they were tumbling with wild abandon out of their cubby holes and onto the shelves of the salon. The tools started to metastasize into the galley. The fenders found their way down the companionway into the aft cabin. The solar panels, dock lines, and boom vang soon followed. I mistakenly let our bread bin go empty one day and returned from the store to find if full of spare oil filters. .

So now the aft cabin has become the garage, whose contents have to be transferred to the salon when any of our guests insist on sleeping there. After three nights of sleeping in the cockpit, they’ve seen enough stars! The wet locker is the storage shed and the hanging lockers have so much junk, excuse me, “crucial boat equipment” in them we can’t get to our clothes. Our cockpit lockers are still cavernous but it takes a major excavation to find anything you need in them.

When I approached the captain about this problem, he agreed wholeheartedly that there is definitely a shortage of storage space. His solution? Get rid of the food! Make sure and keep just enough galley space available for rum and beer. Then get us some good multi-vitamins. They don’t take up much room. Oh yeah, get rid of all the clothes too, he leared.

So much for seeking logical advice from a boat addled mind.

You would think after twelve years, there would be nothing left to take to the boat but it seems year after year we find more offerings that she would appreciate. And of course, my lockers there mirror my closets here in our dirt dwelling. Both of them are full of clothes that I’m going to get back into next year. This year however, I’m being selfish. Don’t worry, I’m planning on doing my part to pay homage to the boat. I’ve bought a sewing machine and bolts of material to recover her salon cushions. The only problem is, I’m going to have to teach myself to sew. I’m sure by the time I’m done with this project it will qualify as a sacrificial bloodletting and when you drive by the boat the person speaking in tongues will be me as I try to wind a bobbin or something as equally perverse to me.
.
But back to being selfish. I’ve just got to share with you other feverish readers the treasure I’ve found. It is the Amazon Kindle. It is an ebook device that does so much more. It operates wirelessly through Sprint’s Whispertel network. When you are located in the Whispertel service area you can purchase and download books from the Amazon Kindle store to your Kindle within minutes if not seconds. Best of all, if you are not in an area where Whispertel is available you can download the books to your computer and then transfer it to your Kindle using an USB cord. You do not have to subscribe to Sprint and the wireless delivery is free. You do have to register your Kindle with Amazon and set up an account. You can even subscribe to newspapers and magazines. Best sellers usually go for about half price and, of course, you can shop for less expensive books or go to the internet’s various free ebook sites such as http://www.freekindlebooks.org/ or http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page The books must be in mobi format.

You can also download audio books and music. If you are in a Whispertel location you are able surf the net and send email which is experimental and free at this time.

The device holds about 200 books and once you have purchased a book from Amazon it is always there in your account if you decide you want to download it again. You can save any non-amazon books to a separate memory chip to save storage room on your device

There’s always a downside so… The initial purchase is an expensive $360.00 but I figure it pays for itself in my enjoyment and the amount of time I won’t waste reading books from book swaps that I never would have read unless I was desperate. The backside of that is you can’t share or swap books you like.
Also, you can’t take advantage of free ebooks from your public library because of the format.

I now have about 80 books downloaded and free shelfspace on the boat. I have had no problems with it and a friend on another boat dropped his and they actually sent him on free of charge. The bad thing is that another friend tried to order one and there was a 13 week wait.

Now all I have to do is figure out what to do with all that book space I’ve freed up. Of course, I’ll have to guard it from the cap’n but the good news is Nigel Calder’s books are also in the Kindle format too. Imagine all the space that will provide.Check it out at http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=afimasruofthr-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B000FI73MA&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr14 days until the boat

CONFESSIONS OF A MASS MURDERER

This is such an exciting time of year for us boaters. Everybody’s buying new gadgets (I’ll tell you about mine later). And ,of course, we’re stocking up on those cheap items we can find in larger ports before we head off to the boonies. I just have one piece of advice. Okay, I have a lot more than that but I’ll limit myself for now.


CONFESSIONS OF A MASS MURDERER

(THE SERIAL ROACH KILLER CHRONICLES)


Glossary: ECGIER=Every Cruising Guide I Ever Read


Today’s topic is how to prevent roach infestation. As is explained in ECGIER roaches are proliferate in tropical climates. Which, by the way, is where most of us dream of cruising so here are a few helpful hints offered in ECGIER.

Tip 1: ECGIER said that roaches love to lay their eggs in the glue of cardboard boxes and canned good labels. The solution is easily apparent. Never, ever, ever, ever bring these items aboard your boat. So the easy solution is to take those four grocery cart loads full of non-perishable goods that ECGIER told you to get and push them down to the dock. Then, before stepping foot on your boat remove every non-perishable item that is stored in a cardboard box, which is about 48% of the non-perishable food that ECGIER told you to buy and place it in a non-disposable, sealable plastic container. Don’t forget to label and include cooking instructions. Next take all the canned goods which make up about 50% of the non-perishable food items ECGIER recommended you purchase and remove the labels. Don’t forget to label and include cooking instructions and expiration dates although ECGIER says expiration dates don’t really matter unless the cans start to bulge or emit noxious fumes, kind of like the cap'n. The most important thing is to get rid of the roach eggs. That’s good because by the time you complete this process the expiration date on most of your items will have passed anyway. Okay so now we’re left with 2% of the non-perishable food items that ECGIER recommended you purchase that you can transport directly onto the boat…unless they have a label or happened to touch a canned good or a cardboard box. And you never know where those things have been before they became yours. Truthfully, I skip this step and I have never, ever seen anybody sitting out on a dock doing this but every cruiser I have met swears they never bring cardboard on a boat.

Tip 2: It’s about a week later and you're finally ready to bring your provisions on board the boat. There’s just one more thing that ECGIER recommends. It seems that roaches also like to lay their eggs in the adhesive of paper bags. No problem, right? You sacked all your groceries in plastics bags. Your out of the woods except…..Doesn’t flour come in paper bags? Red alert! Red alert! Some roach eggs might have fallen into the flour. So now you need to take that fifty pounds of flour ECGIER recommended you buy and put a bay leaf in every sealed plastic non-disposable container. Then for good measure freeze if for a week. If you have a freezer.I guess if you don't have a freezer you're doomed to live among the enemy.
By now your boat should be a roach free happy environment until the next time you go to the store except……ECGIER didn’t take into account that in the tropics some of the roaches have wings. So what it if they call them Palmetto bugs. They are not cherubim and seraphim of dearly departed formerly earthbound roaches. Nope they’re real roaches and they are free to fly about your boat.

Tip 3: ECGIER has their favorite roach bait recipe (Which makes me a little suspicious that the authors may be sneaking cardboard or labeled items on to their boat). They all have the consistent ingredient of Boric acid with assorted mixers ranging from sugar and water, sweetened evaporated milk and even dog food. I’ve tried them all and it seems like the dog food works best, just make sure Fido can’t get to it. Just dump a healthy dose of Boric acid in bowl and add mixer until you have a thick paste like consistency ECGIER recommends that you make little patties out of the stuff and then let them dry out on wax paper before placing them in the places roaches like to hang out but we like to serve ours up in used rum bottle caps of which we always seem to have plenty. Overnight you should start spotting some of those good roaches. The dead ones. Just pray they haven’t laid eggs.

Tip 4: How to spot a roach egg. This is pretty simple if you look in a locker and you find spilled pepper and you don’t happen to store pepper in that locker, you have found your roach eggs. They are little black specks that look just like pepper. There may be just a few individual ones or you may find clumps of them in the corner of the locker. In the early days I didn’t really even worry about eggs. I never saw any. Of course, I didn’t really know what I was looking for. I only worried about damage control when I found the live proof of infestation. Then out would come the Boric acid and the commerical traps. I’d find a few corpses and think my job was done. Then a few weeks later I’d see these tiny little beetle like things with wiggling antennae crawling around or doing the backstroke in the dog dish. They didn’t look like roaches. In fact they were kind of cute. Kind of like how pit bull puppies are cute. Well, don’t get attached to the things because now’s the time to strike before they have time to mature enough to mate and expand their family tree. You don’t want your boat to become their ancestral home. .

Tip 5: Give ’em Da Bomb In truth, I’ve really only had one invasion and having lived aboard on and off for eleven years, most of them in the tropics, I consider myself lucky. Unfortunately, the one infestation got out of hand because I kept trying the various aforementioned remedies and each generation got a little more resistant to my various potions. I knew when I saw them doing reps with my barbells (at least someone was using them) it was time to try something else.I happened upon the bombing solution when we were leaving the boat for a period of time in the Bahamas. The local that was going to be looking after the boat while we were gone came on to familiarize himself with our systems and noticed our growing colony of unwanted “guests”. He volunteered to take care of the pests for us also. While we were gone he set off a couple explosive devices and we have not had any return visitors for many years. It probably helped that most of the food was off of the boat at the time. Or maybe our guests finally figured out that I wasn’t going to feed them any more of the delicacies I had been concocting for them and went off to find a more gracious hostess.

Tip 6: Skip Tips 1-4 and go straight to Tip 5 at the first sighting of these sneaky creatures. Show no mercy! None of this hand to hand (more like hand to mouth) combat. Go straight for da bomb. Of course, follow the manufacturer’s instructions on the deployment of all weapons in your artillery.


Tip 7: Please make sure you have no open flames on the boat when you set a bomb. The first time we were in St. Thomas there was a guy and his friend on his boat that set off a bomb and then went up on deck and were promptly blown into the wild blue yonder. One of them survived, one didn’t Apparently, the owner had left a pilot light lit on his stove.

I'm off for a good Chianti and some fava beans.

HAVE A GOOD DAY!

Potluck: Chicken Tortilla Soup Recipe

I'm sitting here way up in the Rockies, the temp is dropping, the wind is picking up, and there's white stuff on the ground. I'm ready for something hot but since I still have 27 days to go before I'm back on the boat in the Bahamas I guess I'll have to settle for soup. I fixed this for potluck one night when we were all waiting out a storm at the Alligator River Marina in NC. This is easy to do on the boat because all the ingredients for the basic recipe are usually on the boat or you can substitute like items, plus it's one pot, and you can have it ready and just heat it up when everybody's ready to eat. Darnell, here's a recipe like you asked for and I hope others will add more.

Chicken Tortilla Soup
2lb of cooked chicken cut up into bite size pieces, or 2 cans of chicken breast meat
2-3 cans of chicken broth
1 can of Rotel tomatoes
1 can of chopped green chiles or jalepenos
1/2 medium onion diced
1/2 green pepper diced
4-8 oz of cream cheese (I use cream cheese in place of Sour cream on the boat because it keeps better)
1 can of corn (optional)
1/4 cup of uncooked rice (optional)
Cilantro chopped (add right before serving or use it as an optional topping if you or your guests don't like cilantro

Toppings

Tortilla chips (put 'em on the bottom or top, whatever your preference
Cheese
jalapenos
avocados
Guacamole
Sour Cream
salsa

Just throw all the ingredients in a large stock pot and let simmer all day or if you don't have all day just heat until cream cheese is melted and rice is done if you added it. Add cilantro right before serving. Top soup with whatever you like and enjoy.

Going Off: Intracoastal Waterway vs. Offshore Passage

Howdy everybody,
It's that time of year again. Everybody's stocking their boats up and getting ready to head south. There's just one question, do you do the ICW or do you bite the bullet and go offshore. Here's my take on the issue. As usual, it's completely unbiased.

I’ve decided to come out of the closet. I’m stepping forward and declaring my true feelings. I’m tired of pretending to be something I’m not. I’m a little nervous but I am unashamed for I know there are others like me out there. I know this because they’ve told me. Muttered under the breath confidences while surrounded by “normal” sailors. Somebody has to be the first to make the admission, so here I go.

“I hate offshore passages…..especially offshore passages at night.”

Already I hear the collective horrified gasps of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” sailing community.

“Infidel!”

“Perversion of sailing nature!”

I know. I know. Believe me I’ve suffered a guilt complex for years. It took forever for me to admit even to myself. Years of doing it but never really liking it.

So what is a sailboat’s first mate of a different persuasion to do? Well, for the last three years the cap’n and I have been fortunate enough to sail the eastern coast where there is a very handy solution to this problem. It’s called the Intracoastal Waterway. It has great scenery and the social possibilities abound with its parade of sun seeking boats. There are great places to dock or anchor. The best part is if you get into trouble you can pull in somewhere without having to call the coast guard to come out and get you. As a matter of fact, I feel it’s downright unpatriotic not to use the ICW. It took a lot of men a lot of years to dig this ditch for us. I guess somebody else didn’t like offshore passages either. We owe it to them to use it as often as we can.

So what’s the problem?

The cap’n hates it!

Okay, I admit it does get a little skinny here and there and it’s a little humiliating to have all your new friends hearing you hail Sea Tow on the VHF. These are probably the same friends you spent the night before espousing sailing wisdom to. But it’s only mud and as they say on the ICW and just about every other body of water, “If you haven’t run aground you’re either lying or you never left the dock.”

“I just can’t relax if I have to watch the depth gauge all the time,” the cap’n whines.

Relax? Oh yeah. Let me describe a relaxing overnight passage we did across the Chesapeake to Norfolk, VA. Yeah, I know it’s not offshore but it was doing a damn good impersonation that night. A fluke of nature? I don’t think so since it repeated itself a few days later on a true offshore from Wrightsville Beach to Charleston. All of you of the offshore persuasion can read on and reminisce.

It was a beautiful, clear starlit night. There was no wind, of course, and NOAA was predicting waves of one foot. We all know NOAA has a tendency to lie. The cap’n defended NOAA. He says the waves really were 1 foot or less it was the swells that were seven to ten feet. So it was just like one of those wonderful offshore nights. You know one of those nights where it feels like some demonic grandmother has lifted you up and is rocking you madly to and fro until you throw up. You dutifully pull your watch but even when you’re off watch there is no rest for the weary. Instead it seems you’re at the hands of some amateur magician who keeps levitating you of your bunk just to drop you a few seconds later. And he just won’t give up, he keeps trying over and over and over again. Of course, your stomach is levitating and dropping right along with your tired body.

So let’s compare. The previous described relaxation versus going aground in soft mud and sitting back and tossing back some cold ones until Sea Tow comes to rescue you. Seems like a no brainer to me.

The cap’n won’t give up.

“It saves time,” he argues.

That’s a good argument but consider the following scenario. The story you are about to hear is true and not even the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

See the cap’n and I and our friends, Larry and Joan, at Point A discussing our sail plans over sundowners. The cap’n is adamant and a bit superior in his plans to go offshore to Point B. Larry and Joan demurely state that they have decided to do the ditch. See Mary (me) look enviously at Larry and Joan.

The next morning:

See the cap’n and I wave regretfully at our friends as they head down the ditch and we head out the inlet. It will probably be awhile before we meet up since we’ll be so far ahead of them.

Two days after departure:

See the cap’n and I drop the anchor at Point B. We are so exhausted we barely make it to the bunk before we crash. We sleep the whole day away.

Three days after departure:

See Joan and Larry wave gaily as they anchor next to us at Point B. See the cap’n scrubbing saltwater stalagmites that have formed over all outside, and some inside, surfaces. See me resecuring and restowing escaped stuff in preparation for our next relaxing offshore leg.

See Larry and Joan get into their dinghy to go explore town and get a bite to eat. Our dinghy is deflated and secured.

See Joan smile happily at Larry.

See me shoot daggers through my eyes at the cap’n.

The next morning:

See Larry and Joan heading back down the ditch.

See the cap’n and I following right behind them.

THE END!


38 days 'til back on the boat

By the way GW is getting pretty lonely down there as my only other first mate and I'm getting my feelings, but hey, it's not all about me, wait a minute, I guess it is since I haven't heard from the rest of you. You know being Catholic, I've got plenty of guilt to spread around.

Paying Homage

So now you've bought the boat and every waking hour thought and talk is about the boat. Get used to it 'cause it never goes away:

Paying Homage

We’ve all been through it! Our significant others decided to go live on a boat and take us with them. We took a look around and queried, “But what are we going to do with all of our stuff?” The answer was quick and flippant. “We’ll sell it! After all, it’s just stuff.”

So we, the reluctant partners, began the painful process of divesting ourselves of our prized possessions. We even felt a little guilty if we got emotional over our Grandma’s cherished silver tea set or the kids’ grubby Teddy bear. “How could we be so materialistic?” we derided ourselves.

Then in the midst of packing and tagging, what should pull up to our curb? A UPS truck? What’s this? Doesn’t he know we bought a boat? We’re selling things, not buying things. We have broken the unholy chains of materialism. Amen! Allelujah!! The doorbell rings…

I throw open the front door. My loins are girded for the battle against this dark angel of temptation whom I used to welcome with open arms. Of course, that was in my unenlightened days of catalog and internet shopping orgies. That was before I found my salvation in “The Boat”.

Chin jutting forward, I stated, “You must have the wrong address.”

“Is this number 10 Easy Street?”

“Uh, yeah, but…” I sputter.

“Just sign here, lady,” he directs right before he yells over his shoulder, “Hey fellas, start unloading.”

Wait a minute here! My eyes zone in on the dollies of boxes bearing a litany of names like West Marine, Boat US, Marine Electronics…. An ugly suspicion begins to form. My narrowed eyes search out the captain who has been cowering in the corner.

“But, Honey, it’s for “The Boat”, he stammered.

That’s when I had a revelation. For the captain, the boat had become a sort of goddess. He devoutly believed that we had to surrender all our worldly goods and make enormous donations to “The Boat”. In exchange, “The Boat” would provide for us a life of happiness and well-being. The captain believed our only path to salvation was to follow “The Boat’s” commandments. By doing this, we would keep “The Boat” happy and never suffer her wrath which could include such calamities as; dead batteries, high engine temperatures, and bad head smells.

For you poor unenlightened souls “The Boat’s” commandments are:

Thou shalt love “The Boat” above all other boats, and just about everything else except for your mate, although in some cases even the mate can be considered sacrificial.
Thou shalt never take “The Boat’s” name in vain.

Thou shalt honor “The Boat” by weekly pilgrimages to the nearest West Marine Store.
Thou shalt not covet another’s “Boat”.

Thou shalt not bear false witness against “The Boat” by blaming her for mishaps that were really your fault.

Thou shalt give testimony to “The Boat’s” glory by speaking endlessly and exclusively about “The Boat”.

Thou shalt not leave “The Boat” for a house, condominium, or RV.

Thou shalt fervently treasure the hardships “The Boat” bestows upon you such as limited water, limited electrical capacity, and plentiful head smells, for these are the things that make you strong (in more ways than one). Do not congregate with those persons who would try to convince you otherwise.

Thou shalt not bring shame to “The Boat” by poor navigation, sloppy sail trim, or mortifying anchoring techniques.

Last, but not least,Thou shalt subscribe to every boating magazine available. Thou shalt go from port to port spreading their words of wisdom, thus increasing sales and the editors' cruising kittie.

*You also earn special graces from “The Boat” if you fall on the floor, contort your body, and speak in tongues while changing her oil filter.

I’m sure you’re asking if I have been converted. Alas, I’m afraid not. This year I brought aboard one box containing books and a video. Nothing to offer up to the goddess. The captain had thirteen boxes of offerings ranging from a new GPS (I guess she wasn’t happy with the three we already had ), countless shackles (before we had the boat, I was aware of only one use for shackles, but I’ll exercise ”restraint” and not go in to that),. I’m sure a sacrificial lamb is tucked in their somewhere. Is there hope for deprogramming the captain? About as much chance as that snowball had in hell. You can learn to live in harmony, though. It’s all about compromise and respecting each other’s different beliefs and callings. Remember my Grandma’s tea set? Why don’t you come on over to “The Boat” for tea and then we’ll do some penance by going shopping—for “The Boat” of course. Wouldn’t she look better with me in that cute little outfit I found.

Emergency Medications for Cruisers

I sent Kary May back to Great Guana Cay where she is probably busy picking splinters out of her thighs. Which reminded me that I probably need to restock our medical bag for the season.
A surgeon friend of ours was good enough to make us a list a couple of years ago and I thought I'd share it with you before you start heading out.

EMERGENCY MEDICATIONS FOR CRUISERS

INFECTIONS such as severe sinus infections, diverticulitis, appendicitis, prostatitis (men only duh), travelers diarrhea (from contaminated water) use Levaquin 500 mg. 1 pill every day for 10 (ten) days or Avelox 400 mg. 1 every day also for 10 (ten) days. Septra DS (Bactrim DS) 1 twice a day is also good. For skin infections from cuts, abrasions, burns, coral bumps, etc you can use Levaquin with the dose above or Penicillin 500 mg every 6 (six) hours. Penicillin is cheap. Levaquin is not but you should have it aboard for the more serious infections. Use your on board antibiotics only when a medical facility is not readily available. For a tooth abscess use Penicillin or Avelox. Penicillin has always worked best for me but if you are allergic to Penicillin, Levaquin or Avelox are OK to take. Urinary tract infections (burning on urination with possible blood or pus) can be treated with Cipro 500 mg. twice a day or Levaquin or Avelox in the dosage above. After a course of antibiotics, diarrhea (yellow stools) may occur. You may need Flagyl 500 mg. Every 8 (eight) hours for 10 (ten)days. Downside to this is that you can not consume alcohol. Bummer !

PAIN CONTROL For minor pain use Tylenol, Advil or Aspirin. For severe pain use Ultraset 37.5/325 mg. 1 tab every 12 (twelve hours) or Tylox (Oxycodone) 5/500 1 or 2 (one or two) every 6 (six) hours. These are potent narcotics and you should seek medical help soon. Most of these meds will require an RX from your Doc. as serious liver damage has been reported. . Check the label of your meds for contents.If you drink more than 9 (nine) drinks a WEEK , (not per day) you should NOT use Tylenol or Acetaminaphen

BURNS For minor burns (stove bites, 2nd degree sunburn or anything that blisters the skin, etc) use Bacitracin cream or Triple Antibiotic cream. Apply as directed and have an assortment of bandages, Telfa pads, Coban dressings and gauze dressings aboard. For severe burns when the skin is charred (fire, electrical fires or spark) use Silvadene Cream. Apply liberally, bandage and seek medical help fast. CHEST PAIN Carry aboard Nitroglycerin (not the explosive) tablets. Place 1 (one) tablet under the tongue and allow to dissolve every 5 (five) minutes up to three tablets. Start an Aspirin regimen of 325 mg daily ASAP. Seek medical advice faster. For preventative measures take one baby aspirin, 80mg per day

YEAST INFECTIONS (Women only, duh) Use Monistat (available over the counter OTC) vaginal suppositories or cream and apply as directed. You gals may have to take Acidophilus to replace the lost vaginal bacteria when using antibiotics.

ACID REFLUX DISEASE / ULCERS You can use Nexium 40 mg. Or Protonix 40 mg each 1 (one) daily. Consult your physician before beginning this regimen.

NAUSEA /VOMITING For your guests that may be not acclimated to the bouncing, rolling and pitching of boats, we use Dramamine or Meclazine both OTC. Scopolamine patches are also now available. For severe N/V Phenergan Suppositories work well.

MISC. For colds use OTC cough and cold drugs. Sudafed is good for runny noses and congestion. Benadryl 25mg OTC is good as an antihistamine and anti itch. Carry some sterile eye wash, antibiotic eye ointment, ear antibiotic and a bee sting kit as precaution. You should carry a 3 (three) month supply of medications along with whatever meds you routinely take and have prescriptions or copies of prescriptions for all drugs aboard your vessel.

And since most of us are cheap ass cruisers remember to ask for generics.

Kary May's Sexy Guide to Buying a Boat

I’d been in the Bahamas for several months when I noticed a strange phenomenon kept occurring. I’d introduce myself to someone and they’d say “I already met you over in Guana. Don’t you remember, you were dancing with that tree.?” It took a little investigation but I finally discovered that I had an evil twin that lived on Great Guana Cay. Her name is Kary May and she dances with trees and poles because, unlike men, they don’t spin her too fast or dip her too low but somehow she still manages to fall down.

Unfortunately, Kary May showed up last night and these are her ideas on how to buy a boat….

I’ve been racking my brain all week on how to help my cousin, Mary Kay, help you all figure out what kind of boat to buy. I pondered all of the advantages and disadvantages of every kind of boat and how to steer you towards the boat that was right for you. Power vs. sail, mono hull vs. multi hull, 2 heads vs. 1, propane vs. alcohol…

And then, as it is prone to do, my brain turned to the subject of sex. I tried to turn it back to task--think sail trim, think bow thrusters, think self-tailing wenches, but it all brought me back to “SEX”. How in the world is buying a boat at all akin to “SEX”.

And then it came to me.

All of the four main boat types that we encounter in our boating life share attributes with various suitors we have encountered or would like to encounter. We’ll call them Monohull Mike, Multihull Mario, Trawler Tom, and Powerboat Paulo.

Let’s start with Monohull Mike since he’s the one I’m more familiar with. He’s the kind of guy you take home to Daddy. Mike’s got clean strong lines and he comes from a respectable yard. He’s gonna get Daddy’s little girl home safe at night and he’s not gonna run out of gas on the way. He’s stable, he doesn’t move too fast and he’s got plenty of storage for his prophylactic safety devices.

Unfortunately , he only as room in his heart for you. He’ll gladly double date for an evening but only if it’s "dutch". He truly believes three is a crowd. His cockpit may be teenie but his heart his huge.

Multihull Mario: He’s the bad boy of the sailing world. The Monohull Mikes say he is unstable and doesn’t have the staying power. Mario says he likes being a little off balance and if he needs a little more thrust, that‘s what his jugs are for. He’s a party guy and his big cockpit will accommodate all comers. After you’ve multihulled you can try out the trampoline out front. Yee-Haw !!!

Trawler Tom: He’s the comfort food of boats. Just like a slice of Mom’s apple pie he’s a yummy piece of home. He’s got the back porch to rock away a lazy day with a good book. He’s got comfy chairs and real lamps. In his former life he might have been a Mike or Mario but he doesn’t want to work that hard on trim anymore, he just wants to get there. Lucky for us, he’s not in a hurry so he waits for the perfect moment, making the passage smooth and comfortable. And since he’s usually plugged in to a slip, you know what position you’re going to be in each and every night.

Powerboat Paulo: Ah…the elusive dreamboat that surges through our sodden dreams. He’s aloof and definitely high maintenance. Paulo may not know his way around a stuffing box, but what the heck, he’s got others to do the grunt work for him. He’s so sleek and sophisticated, we’d be happy just to polish his doorknobs. Ahh….but for most of us he is just a dream.

So there you go, Kary May’s guide to boat buying. It’s just so hard…uh, I mean difficult to choose. I think I’ll take one of each.

Is my mind in the bulge, uh, I mean bilge or do a lot of sailing terms have sexual connotations? I can think of dozens. How about you? How about sharing them with us by posting them under the comments tab at the bottom of this post.

Rule Four: Home is where the heart is

I know , I know, I know!
The Annapolis boat show is coming up and your cap'n is lathering to get out and get a boat. A word to the wise, read my article "Smitten" on this blog to see what happens at the Annapolis boat show. Believe me they all look good! And I promise next week's blog will be about what boat will suit you. But for now, I have one more thing you need to discuss before you even buy the airline tickets to the boat show. By the way, it's probably too late to get a room.

This topic may not seem significant but it will influence what kind of boat you buy and where you choose to sail and, once again, the cruising kitty. Better to get it out of the way.

How often will you travel back home?

This may not be of much concern if you are living aboard part time and spending the rest of the time at a land-based home that is conveniently located for trips to your favorite F&F’s(friends and family). You must keep in mind though, emergencies and important events that you will need or want to attend will sometimes happen. To illustrate this during our first year and a half of living aboard full-time four out of our five children got married, one parent died, one parent broke his hip and we’ve had two grandchildren. We made it back for all of the weddings, the funeral, and one grandchild's birth. However, we were either in FL or the Bahamas which is a 1 or 2 day flight to anywhere in the US. These are just the big events. With the high cost of travel this subject needs to come up in the arguing, I mean “setting the rules” stage of planning. Don’t forget to include trip expenses in the cruising kitty. Be prepared for the emergencies and be honest about the non-emergencies you expect to attend back in that other life. I can’t count the number of fights, I mean discussions, the cap’n and I have had over about what constitutes an emergency worthy of a trip home. How does this affect what kind of boat you're going to buy? Well, if you are going to stay in easy reach of F&F's you probably don't need a bluewater cruiser. Which is what the cap'n and I bought because we should have done all of the Caribbean and crossed to the Med by now. Instead, we found a place just 90 miles off of FL that some ski jets have made it to on one tank of gas and we fell in love. We've been there for four years but in our defense we've stayed at a different cay every year. By the way cap'n say's we're going further south this year. All of our boater friends just laugh.

Okay I'm getting tired of getting no input from my fellow first mates, I'm thinking of starting a roll call just like in school:
Dori (Sol y Mar)
Doris (Exit Strategy)
Cindy(?) It was one of those nights
Jill (JillyQ)
Pattie (Blue Dolphin)
Phyllisx2 (Chapter X and Mollie 2)
Marie (Typee Mistress)
Susan (Perpetual Motion)
Lynn (Boomerang)
Susie (Blue Jacket)
Ami (Mon Ami)
Ruthie (Galena)
Mary (I love that name) (Who Cares)
Linda (Ciganka)
Cat (Catherine) (Highland Wanderer)
& Many Many More
Hey gals,
All you have to do is click on that tiny comment tab on the bottom of this post and say "here". I know none of you are shy. I've danced around poles with you.
.........

Love you all!
Safe sailing

Mary

Hitting Rock Bottom

They always say the first step toward recovery is admission. We made our own painful admission in one of those all too common, smoke filled rooms where lost souls gather for comfort and that shaky support that helps people like us to keep going in the face of momentous adversity. We sat uneasily in a darkened corner of the room, interlopers amidst the familiar crowd. Finally someone spied our shrinking forms in the gloom and started toward us. As he neared and glimpsed our ravished faces his eyes widened in sympathy.

“What the hell happened to you?” he roared.

The room quieted and all eyes riveted to us. Next to me, the captain cleared his throat and muttered, almost inaudibly, “We, uh, hit a reef.”

A murmur rushed through the room. Arms were thrown about our shoulders, beers were thrust into our clammy hands, and we were welcomed into the fold. The meeting place was a funky little bar called “Coconuts” in St. Thomas and the injurious reef will remain anonymous since we don’t know the statute of limitations after hitting a reef. With the captain sprouting two fresh black eyes and me, the first mate, sporting a sutured hole in my bottom lip (before the stitch job, the captain observed that I was the only woman he knew that could close her mouth, pinch her nose, and still breathe) we spent the evening being regaled by stories and stories of boat mishaps. Each story grew in grandiose stupidity. That was our first bare boat charter. You people who consider putting your boat in charter, remember this. I wish I could say we’ve never run aground again but we continue our active membership in the “Bottom Dwellers Anonymous Club”. Luckily since the reef incident our groundings have been on friendlier bottoms in our own boat and none have required trips to the boat yard or emergency room. We even have our favorites! Lets see…..

There was the time we were headed out of the Chesapeake City anchorage. Concerned about the current pushing us starboard, we fought to stay in the middle of the channel when you could say we found “higher ground”. After several attempts to get off this mass of earth smack dab in the middle of the channel, we decided to kick back and have a couple of cold ones and wait for the tide to rise. Hey, why didn’t we think of that before we pulled up anchor? Since we were the morning’s source of entertainment for fellow boaters and the patrons of the restaurant off our stern, we decided to partake in some of our own side-poking. We especially enjoyed the smaller powerboats that would buzz by us in the channel, slow down and quizzically circle the boat and then question the obvious.

“Are you guys aground?”

“Nah”, we replied, “We just got tired and thought we’d stop and have a beer”.

That was about 10:00 a.m. and three hours later the tide finally lifted us off and on our way.
And then there was the time coming out of Annapolis. It was a gorgeous late September day when we left our dink tied to the mooring and headed out with two non-sailing guests for an afternoon of sun and sail. Shanna and Danny from our land locked hometown back in Kansas. had come out to visit us and see what a bay looked like. The captain was at the helm (although the captain disputes this, claiming our friend Shanna was at the helm, but that’s not the way the rest of us remember it). I was assisting Danny in raising the main and putting out the headsail. The wind was light. The bow dipped then rose to crest the foam and then…..
“Oh, sh--!” was heard from the cockpit (this indisputably from the captain) as the boat came to a graceful stop. Once again our fellow boaters displayed an uncanny grasp of the obvious. Most astute was the captain of the water taxi who helpfully told us,

“If you all get on the other side of that big white marker (obnoxiously noticeable off our port bow), you’ll be fine.”

Apparently he was not observant enough to notice we were not moving. Tow-Boat US to the rescue. Thank God we had the insurance!

Our latest mishap happened right south of the Carolina Beach Bridge. We were following a boat that we had noticed bumping bottom several times in the course of the morning trip down the ICW. Yep, that’s right we were knowingly following this boat. Now there could be several explanations for this: (A) We thought they might dredge a channel for us, (B) The Pied Piper Syndrome, where we are inexplicably drawn to one of “us”, and imminent peril, or (C) sheer stupidity. Luckily, we had sort of planned on another “occurrence” and had arranged for alternate means of rescue. Obviously we’d had this kind of trouble before. This time we had our own personal towboat following a few miles behind us. Tow- Boat “Next”, a 40 foot Sea Ray and her crew John and Justine, had befriended us months before in Block Island and had served on and off as our “scout” and rescue boat since. We highly recommend this arrangement. Once again, we provided entertainment for the passing rubberneckers.

In closing, I’d like to offer a bit of advice. Next time you’re chuckling at another boater’s misfortune remember, “There but for the grace of God, goes you”. And for all of you thinking it was sheer stupidity that landed us in the last predicament, believe me there were plenty of “followers” that we had to frantically direct to the real channel instead of the one we had just made. I won’t mention their names since anonymity is a right of the members of this non-exclusive club.

Our numbers are great and growing all the time. Just remember, we’re your neighbors at the dock, we’re the couple you met in the laundromat, we’re the boat you’re following right now…..Oh, Sh--!!!

Rule Three: Living Your Boating Lifestyle

Now that we have a breather from hurricanes. Let's get back to "Rules". I know your captain is getting anxious to get out there and buy a boat but there are a few more things to discuss.
One of them is what kind of lifestyle do you envision if you decide to take the plunge.

Just as you don’t spend all of your time in your house on the land you won’t spend all your time on your boat. What environmental conveniences or entertainment do you think will be necessary for your happiness and well-being on a boat? The standard (dirt-dweller’s) impression of cruising is sailing from one isolated paradise-like anchorage to another, spending everyday frolicking in the sand and water. Truthfully, there are many boaters that pull into a dock, plug in the electrical cord and don’t leave for months. They meet regularly for bridge games and drinks. They play tennis. They form yacht clubs. There is a myriad of lifestyles to choose from. Some are more expensive than others but inexpensive doesn’t necessarily mean deprived. One of the basic lifestyle decisions is where you want to cruise. Does he dream of Arctic endurance trials while you’re dreaming of tropical indulgence? Are you on the same time table for your cruise. Does he want to push on to a new port every night getting to some unnamed destination while you want to spend time enough to get to know the locals and maybe even become one? Do you require a daily hot shower, coiffed hair and manicured nails? While many hard scrabble cruisers may scoff at these needs, if they are important to you you’d better let it be known. Believe me there are well groomed people out here too, author not included, so it can be done but once again you have to plan for it by choosing a boat that can supply the electrical and water capacity necessary, or a dock and location that provides the necessary services. Do you live for golf or tennis or whatever? Once again it can be done but make sure you cruise where these things are available. These are just a few of the lifestyle questions that need answered because it will influence what kind of boat you buy. It will also influence the cruising kitty needed to live the lifestyle that is acceptable to you. It's better to make your needs known now before you end up with a boat that cannot provide them or a budget that won't support them. And remember...you can compromise but do not cave in.

As always, I'd love to hear from other First Mates or First Mate Wanna Be's on this topic. Please!
Just click on the comment link on the bottom of this post. You no longer have to register. Just click Name/Url and put it your name.

Also you can email any of my posts to friends by clicking on the envelope.

Also,Also,I have been trying to get the advertisements more relevant to this site and it doesn't seem to be working on the main page but if you click on the "Link" on the bottom of the posts those advertisements seem to be more for the boating stuff we or our captains love.

One more thing.... I have added links to my favorite boating websites and blogs on the left side of the page under "About Me"

Oh yeah, if I get lucky enough to actually have readers that follow this site, I'd love to know who you are. You can register in the Fellow First Mates section also on the left side of the page underneath "My Blog Sites. Don't be shy.

Have Fun!

Fender Dockline Shuffle: Docking the boat

The cap'n said to lighten things up a little:
Nobody told me that when we bought a boat I was supposed to magically transform into some kind of superwoman. You know, the “able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and stop runaway freight trains” kind of gal. Except in my case, I was expected to spring onto rickety old docks from a moving boat and stop our fifteen ton boat from crashing into said dock with its attending fleet of shiny boats and their very interested crews. This is a pretty tall order for a girl who’s adolescent athletic prowess consisted of a fervently whispered, “Please don’t let the ball come to me. Please! Please! Please!” In fact, the only thing I like about long trips is the fact we don’t have to dock. If the cap’n didn’t insist on docking every now and then to get fuel, we probably would have already completed a couple of circumnavigations.
Before we bought our boat we had never had the opportunity to practice docking. We had taken several charters and while they never explicitly said we couldn’t dock their boats, the fact that they drove their boats out of the dock at the beginning of the charter and then came out in a launch and brought the boats back in at the end of the charter was a big hint. We didn’t mind, we liked it that way. Now if we could just get somebody to do that with our own boat.
It doesn’t help that my docking history has a rather auspicious beginning. It should have been simple! It was slack tide and we were told to tie up at the end of a
T-dock. It was even slack water. Perfect for a first-timer. I was nervous but eager as I stood at midships with bowline in hand. I kept my eyes trained on the dock of which we were slowly coming along side.
“Closer.”
“Closer.”
“Not yet, just a little bit closer”
“NOW!!”
I took the leap. Gracefully (I’m sure) I arced to the dock. Softly I landed on the balls of my feet. I wobbled. I stepped back with my left foot (We’ll have to take points off for that.). The right foot soon followed and found nothing but air.
“Too much momentum,” I muttered as I dangled from the bowline on the other side of the dock. Although I despaired of ever winning the gold medal in the docking olympics, the ever present observers of all things asinine bestowed upon me the honorary title of “Lady GoDiving”. I would like to clarify that I was wearing clothes that day.
Early on in our sailing days we were assured by old salts that docking would be no problem because of those “omnipresent” dockhands. We soon found out that their presence is only felt between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and it seems they are bestowed with the same passive-aggressive sense of humor that you usually find in bridge tenders, but that’s another story. You know the routine. It goes something like this:
About an hour away from docking…
“Marina Anywhere, Marina Anywhere. Agur’s Wish…”
The answer comes quickly and clearly.
“Vessel calling Marina Anywhere, this is Marina Anywhere. How can I help you, cap?”
After you state your desire for a prestigious spot at their beautiful marina, you are soothingly assured that your request will be granted if you just call back when you get a little closer.
Fifteen minutes away from the marina…
“Marina Anywhere, Marina Anywhere. Agur’s Wish…”
Dead silence…
You repeat, “Marina Anywhere, Marina Anywhere. Agur’s Wish…”
Faintly you hear, “Vessel “crackle, crackle”. This is “static, static, garble, garble”.
“Marina Anywhere, this is Agur’s Wish. We have reservations tonight at your marina. Can you give us directions to the dock?”
With handheld plastered to your ear you can barely hear,
“Keep going on your current heading until you reach “crackle snap pop” dock. Your slip is the “static, static” dock on the “crackle, buzz” side.
“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. Could you repeat what you said?” you implore, a little desperately.
“You’ll need a “crackle, crackle, snap” side tie up.”
“Will there be somebody there to help us with our lines?”
The response is clear this time.
“Oh, yeah. There’ll be somebody there to, “snicker, snicker” help you, alright.”
Now the real fun begins. You dash for the binoculars and frantically begin searching for either a sign from God or a guy in khaki shorts and raybans nonchalantly waving his handheld at you.
Finally you spot him, (not God, the guy in the raybans). He summons you forward casually indicating your intended dock. He watches coolly as you race to tie dock lines and attach fenders. Just as you finish securing the last fender, his lips curl in a cruel little smile.
“Oh by the way this is a stern in only dock”, he says.
As the captain tries to explain to the unconcerned dockhand that your boat doesn’t drive well in reverse, you frantically race to untie and retie dock lines and detach and reattach fenders. Meanwhile the captain is busy trying to convince the butt end of your boat that it’s supposed to go into the slip and as usual it’s acting like the stubborn ass it is and is instead heading for the bowsprit of the boat in the next slip
All the while the evil guardian angel dockhand is keeping watch with his benevolent smile. Finally, much like a cat with a dead mouse, he tires of playing with you.
“Oh, alright, I guess you can come in bow first”, he relents.
Once more you do the fender/dockline shuffle while he guides the captain to bring the bow in closer….closer…keep coming…Crash!
“Whoa! Perfect!” he exclaims.
Finally the catastrophe is over and the boat is miraculously tied up safely for the night. The captain and you are settled in the cockpit with potent sundowners. Suddenly a hapless sailboat comes rushing in on the current. The panicked expression on the first mate’s face is easily recognizable. Your head swivels and you spot the same dockhand sauntering toward the last empty slip which just happens to be right next door. The captain and you look at each other. You know what you have to do. You jump off the boat and race to the empty slip, ready to do what you can to save your comrades from the evil grip of the dockhand, or at least minimize the damage to your boat.
Of course, the whole time I’m thinking…
“Please, please, please don’t throw the dock line to me!!”

P.S. To all dockhands every where, I have realized that the “evil dockhand” is a psychotic hallucination brought about by a fear of docking. The perceived evilness rapidly disappears the minute we are safely secured at the dock. Past and future “Muchas Gracias” to those that prevent imminent peril to life, limb and boat if us boaters were left to our own devices.