I have a new way of being. I've had it for ten minutes already, and it's really working well, so I thought I'd tell you about it. We have finished the bottom paint, and Kalliope is back in the water. The sailing guys are coming tomorrow, to familiarize themselves with the boat but more importantly to help us move her to a more convenient slip down the waterway, where it's easier to get out to the ocean. This means that by tomorrow morning we need to have Trio closed up for the winter, the yellow truck secured, and Kalliope ready to move. There is a lot more involved in that than I can say in one sentence.

Now the inside of this boat is still a mess. A more organized, cleaner mess, yes, but still a mess. Shit has happened. Stuff has come up. Emergencies have been attended to. Here's is Bob's to-do list: tighten headstay-fill water tanks-strtn handle and tighten baby stay raise rear swim ladder install dinghy instll jerry cans chek run gen set chek record f.filter res.disconnectbattsTrio.... that is half of it. Notice how it all starts to run together into gibberish? Here's my list: make a comfortable, attractive home out of this boat! But-- and here's the big realization: it is more important that Bob's list (which involves sails, and electricity, and the engine, and not sinking) get done. He is making the cake. I am merely icing it. And even though it would be bad form to show up anywhere, on this continent anyway, with an uniced cake, it can be done. It's still a cake, and you can still eat it. Hence, my New Way of Being: I am a drone. A serf, a peasant. A Catholic nun. A Buddhist priest. I am without needs or desires of my own. Tell me what to do, and I will do it. And, FYI, if it has anything to do with ropes, you better tell me how to do it too.
In five days, come hell or high water, all the really important stuff will be done, and we will be sailing to Florida. When we get there, we will throw the anchor down and go swimming. The next morning, I will get up early, unearth my new bottle of Murphy's Oil Soap and scrub these dirty floors. That, for me, will be the icing on the cake.

Order Out of Chaos

My friend Nancy used to say, when we worked together at the Post Office, that she liked making order out of chaos. I do too. Which is a good thing, because the boat is a horrible mess-- was when I got here a week ago, still is today. And Bob and I have both worked, steadily, ten to twelve hours a day every day since then. Doing what? you might ask. Well, for one thing, we have delved into all but two of the sixty (count' em, sixty, at least) separate cupboards, lockers, and hidey-holes on the inside of this boat. Most of them were filled with stuff, all of which needed to be identified, cleaned, labeled, evaluated (does it still work?) then either moved to storage in the yellow truck, thrown out, or, more often, stored somewhere else on Kalliope in a way that made sense to us. And it turns out this all takes time. But despite the mess that surrounds me even now, we're beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel. Which is good, because, once again, our plans have changed. We are no longer on our own (ever-expanding) timetable. We have signed up with other people! Three other man-type, sailor-type friends have offered, for fun, to help us sail Kalliope to Florida, not on "the ditch", but on the deep blue ocean. Departure date is February 4 (weather permitting) and we need to have this boat ready by then! I gotta get back to work!


PS We put the last coat of bottom paint on yesterday~~~
PS 2 The photo at the top is of the Navigation Station, Day 1. I still haven't figured out how to add captions....

Making Lemonade

January 15, 2009

I had lemons today, but I didn’t make lemonade. This is not a metaphor. I have had, in the fridge, lo these many weeks, a mesh bag of maybe a dozen lemons. They were left over from, what? Wassail for Christmas? Wassail for my mother’s birthday? No…oh, I remember. Some knock-‘em-dead booze recipe suggested to me by a sympathetic liquor store attendant, when he heard we would be spending Thanksgiving in a too-small cabin, for too many days, with too many relatives. He thought it would be good anesthesia. Which it was, I guess. Thanksgiving was fine.

But all these lemons. They were packed in the car yesterday, along with the potatoes and onions from under the sink, and my clothes and laptop and all the other stuff that has sustained me in this last month or so in Charlotte, away from Bob and the boats and the eternal mess and the worse-than-camping-ever-was conditions. I should not lump those all together. I enjoy being with Bob. Yesterday I was going back to the boat, and Bob, who has meanwhile been working on the engine and other manly things. It was time for me to start my part of the process of actually getting ready for the trip to Florida. You know, wiping counters and hanging curtains. That sort of thing.

But it’s cold in Florida today. And, not coincidentally, it’s cold in Holden Beach too. The little online weather page I look at says it will be only 17 degrees there tomorrow morning. And with just one tiny heater on each boat (any more than that would blow a fuse), it isn’t going to be much warmer inside either boat than about 40 degrees, at best. Call me wimpy, but that’s too cold for me. So I unloaded the car, partly, and lugged the potatoes and onions and all twelve lemons back up three flights of stairs, along with my laptop and a few other essentials. Then I put the bag of food (too big to fit in the fridge, without taking everything out) out on the balcony for the night (against the wall of the condo, where it wouldn’t freeze). This morning I looked at the bag and thought 1) I better bring it in, and 2) this sure is dumb, schlepping all these lemons around everywhere I go. I know, I’ll make lemonade!

So that’s exactly what I set out to do. I rolled all these stinky little half-dried up lemons on my cutting board, and (lacking a juicer of any kind) squeezed out, by hand, the tablespoon of juice inside the first lemon, together with the nine seeds and the pulp. My hand was hurting by then, so I stopped and took stock. And decided, all saints and positive thinkers and my mother-in-law forgive me, not to make lemonade.

So if you have a good use for eleven oldish lemons, let me know. Otherwise I guess I’ll schlep them down to the boat in a few days, when the weather gets warmer, and Bob and I will drink that knock-em-dead drink together when we finally get the boat cleaned and ready to go. Then I’ll only have ten lemons left….

About the Legs

Okay, just one quick clarification, because there seems to be some confusion. And if there's a way to put captions under pics on this thing, I haven't figured it out yet. The legs in the (previously published) photo below, shapely though they may be, belong to Bob. That's a storage space in the cockpit of Trio (boat #1), and he's working on some propane lines in there. Here's a better pic. If you're willing to work in a place like that, you should at least get credit for it.

One

Happy New Year to all. I, personally, hope for what we all hope, but I'll settle for World Peace. 

Okay, down to business. "This here" is intended to be a blog of what Bob and I are doing these days, with an occasional bit about Kai. Who is fine, riding his bike, at the moment, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, with a bunch of kids from NC State Bike Racing Club. Bike racing is the new passion, replacing Ultimate Frisbee first as a way to strengthen his knees against lots of injuries, then as an end in itself. Okay, I'll stop (mis)speaking for Kai. Except to say that we had a great Christmas vacation with him, at the condo in Charlotte, and he'll be back at "State" in a few days, where he's doing well and having fun.

Okay, (yeah, I know I've said that twice already). I can see the problem here. I just want to jot down some thoughts, but they need to be the kind of thoughts that everyone will want to read, and they need to be clear and informative, and not insulting in any way to anyone, and then when I read back over them my writer's instincts make me start editing, and by that time half the day is gone and I wanted to just spend maybe fifteen minutes catching everyone up. I've never written a blog before so I've never actually experienced any of this but I can see the handwriting on the wall. So to speak. But I see no way around it. I shall write this first, catch-up entry rather carefully, and from then on, I will attempt to simply post, and not labor over the wording, tone, etc. So do your part and try to read future posts in a glowy, pinkish light if you can, and feel free to post comments, positive, negative, or indifferent. I think that would be fun for all of us. Well, maybe not indifferent. "I just read your latest blog entry and am writing to tell you that it made no impression on me at all." Yeah, leave those out.

Okay, onward and upward. Oh, God, there's too much to tell. And I'm starving. I will go eat, and when I come back I'll knock this thing out.

I never left. I stayed (still starving) and skimmed my journal entries for the last year (thank God for them; they (and Rudy, a.k.a. Bob) are my memory). Without further ado, our year in review:

In November, 2007, Bob said "Sayonara" to the folks at US Tire, where he'd worked for 14 years. It being an uncomfortable time of year to work and live on an unheated boat, even in the South, and Bob feeling a little paralyzed by the huge change in his life, we all stayed at the condo in Charlotte for the winter of 2008. Kai worked that semester doing a co-op for school, at Duke Energy in Charlotte. Bob read a lot. I went to the library every day and got him books and while I was there, wrote a novel. In about three months. I know that sounds weird and maybe impossible, and it actually was weird. The thing kind of flowed out of me, like I was channeling someone else. I've shopped the book around to a few publishers, with only polite refusals so far, so I guess if I was channeling, it wasn't Jane Austen. But I haven't lost heart. I've started another (even more channeled) novel since, and written a bunch of short stories.

In early April we went back to Holden Beach, to the boat, and re-commenced working on it. Spring and summer was a happy, innocent time, it seems now, made up of hard work on Trio (teak refinishing for me, endless priming of the hull for Rudy, replacement of hatches for both) time at the beach swimming and basking in the sun for me, endless sweating, much boatyard camaraderie, helping of others, others helping us, occasional evenings out where the contrast of actually being clean for once, in clean clothes, wearing jewelry! (me) eating a cooked meal, seeing new people was so refreshing that the effects would last for days.

The next phase began in late August. We explained it to each other like this: I had to go North for family reasons, and had spent several days away, living in a nice hotel, taking showers, sleeping in a big bed, turning on the gas fire in the corner of the room when I was chilly, eating delicious food prepared by anyone but me. Oh yeah, using a toilet that you just sat down on and then flushed when you were finished. The easy life. And I came back to the boat, and its constant layer of boatyard sand/old paint/fiberglass residue/sandblast residue over everything, and still the endless sweating, and suddenly, with the feeling of fall looming and the ocean growing cold, nothing was charming any more. I was tired of living in a construction zone. And I flipped out, for a few days. Poor Rudy, so confused at this change of everything in me. This sea-change. This unpredictable woman. But I began to settle down again one morning when it occurred to me that the mistake I was making was actually quite simple—I was thinking too much, about the future especially. I needed to think only of the day in front of me, and that way I could not only cope, but return once again to a semblance of contentment.
Early September, 2008
We buy another sailboat. I know, I know. We've heard it all. I'm just going to make this short and sweet: the price was right. AND she was all set, ready to sail. NOT a project boat. So the idea was for us to move onto this boat, where Sanity and Order and Cleanliness could reign. And we could sail her, any time we wanted. Meanwhile we would keep working on Trio, and when Trio was finished, we would sell one boat or the other.

Then came our “twenty minutes of happiness”, as Rudy called it. The honeymoon phase, where we looked at each other a lot, and at this beautiful, ready-to-sail boat, and thought how the heck did we luck into THIS??? Why did they sell her so cheap, what’s wrong with her, isn’t she beautiful, this boat is OURS!!! And everyone coming on board to see her, and proclaiming that we “backed into a great deal, there”, and slowly Rudy gets proud, and I get relaxed, and we start to realize that we have a new boat! And I start cleaning every corner, and going through cubbies FILLED with sailing equipment of all kinds, all clean and in good order and well-labeled, and I am in heaven. For 20 days. Exactly.

Next Phase: After a night or two, we had to admit: the berth on the new boat, now called Kalliope, was very very small. And the berth is the bed, so this is important. I couldn't turn over in the night without hitting my knees on the ceiling. It's not called a ceiling on a sailboat, but it's hard all the same. So Bob decided to remodel the berth, which was a good idea, and needed to be done, and in retrospect I can say that he did a beautiful job, but the fact that Kalliope, which had for twenty days been a blessed little oasis of serenity, now was crawling with the dust and noise and mess and did I say dust? sawdust in absolutely every crack and crevice, covering every inch of this boat that I had so joyfully cleaned and begun to make ours.... it did me in. We were having a miserable dinner in the cockpit one night when Bob suggested that I might want to consider returning to the condo until he could get the work done (he wanted to do engine work as well, and replace lifeline stanchion bases, and on, and on), so that's what I did. That night, as a matter of fact. I came back to the condo, where I take showers, sleep in a big bed, and write. It's lovely. I miss Bob, but I have the chance to do things with my family, and with my friends here. And Bob has the freedom to work and make a mess and stay up late and sleep late and make more messes...with nobody bugging him about it.
I've been back to the boat to help with the work. Kalliope is out of the water now; Bob has stripped off all the old bottom paint, and together we put on two new coats of rather frighteningly bright turquoise. Don't worry, that part will be under water, eventually. On purpose.

Kai came down for a few days and he and I organized all the stuff in the yellow storage truck, with Bob's permission, even though he is now forced to call me every few days to help with reconnaissance of some tool or other. Bob came back to the condo for Christmas, and is back at the boat now. Kalliope is almost sorted out, according to him. Well, okay, he still wants to clean out the bilge, change the engine oil, adjust the valves, service the Gen set. I don't even know what a genset is. (You can see I even wrote it differently the second time, just in case.) Gennsett. Jensette. Gin set. I think it has something to do with the generator though, and not what kind of cocktail we'll be having when we move into the NEXT PHASE, which is actually the reason I started this blog.

And if you're still with me, well, you're quite a trooper, aren't you? Have you gone to get something to eat yet? I haven't.

Phase Soon: the one in which we put the boat in the water, where (folks say) it was meant to be all along, and start down the ICW towards Florida, and blue skies, and swimming.This will be our first trip, our first vacation, our first time to try out this new life that we've been working (and working, and working) towards for so long. Just Rudy and I, and the relative peace and quiet of this intracoastal body of water (the ICW, also known as "the ditch", on which one can navigate from New Jersey to Texas, without ever having to go out into the big scary Atlantic Ocean.) Our first destination is Jupiter, Florida, where a friend of mine from college is arranging a slip, temporary work for both of us, and a modest welcoming parade. Just kidding, Steven. We're hoping you can find us a spot where we can anchor out. We'll arrange our own parade. We also have a friend whose Mother lives in Key West and has a nice long boat dock behind her house, so we've been busy learning her favorite flowers, likes and dislikes, etc.

That's about it, so far. When I started this Blog, I was supposed to fill in a title for it, and since I hadn't thought up anything clever enough to be an actual title, I just put in a filler, "not sure yet". I mean, I can't even call it by the name of the boat we'll be sailing, because we don't know what boat that is. And as far as I know right now, when the weather gets warmer we'll come back to NC and try to finish up work on Trio, but then come fall who knows? So for now I think I'll leave it. People are always asking us when we're taking off "to sail the seven seas" and we almost always say some version of "We're not sure yet." So be it. Stay tuned, and I'll try to keep you posted.

We wish you

Love and Peace and Joy and Happiness and Enough Money that You Can Give Lots of it Away to Deserving Charities ~~~

Suzy, Bob and Kai