by Dan | Apr 10, 2012 | Preparation Stage
So our most recent learning to sail expedition started out exceptionally poorly. We had just lowered our boat into the water and tied her off. Kyle was parking the Jeep while I was loading the boat with our toolbox (you never know) and other doomsday supplies and Carter was chilling on the bench beside Michele. The winch handle was chilling beside Carter. Carter has recently learned how to throw things, hes actually a pretty good shot for a 16 month old. While Michele turns to me and in the split second she isn’t directly looking at Carter (before you blow up and call child services, we all had life jackets on and Michele had a hand on Carter), he decides it would be a good idea to chuck the winch handle into the river. Now the winch handle is chilling (literally, the water is around 55°F) under 7 feet of Chicago sewer run off (Illinois River). After much debate and consternation, it is voted that I shall be the one to retrieve the handle. Oh joy. A change into swim wear, 15 minutes of hypothermia inducing water, and the winch handle is retrieved. Not a good beginning for our second voyage. If we want to sail around the world, we have to start somewhere.
Some of you have hopefully read my too-funny-to-be-true story about my first venture into the world of sailing the high seas (or the Illinois River)… Everything that went wrong last time went right this time. Not exaggerating. Learning to sail the easy way indeed.
Our second voyage, 5 miles. Click to enlarge.
We were a little nervous about our new motor, it being a trolling motor and all. That little champ had no problems moving our 25 footer around the harbor and out into the open ocean (river). Once we cleared the mouth of the harbor we were able to successfully point our bow to wind. No windex though, that was a casualty of the last excursion. Bow pointed to wind, it was almost trivial to hoist the main, lower the keel, and sail up wind. Yes, I sailed up wind. In a boat. I was beginning to write off as sailor’s salty stories the tails of beating to wind for hours. Last time, I couldn’t point within 30 degrees of the wind. But it happened this time.
The wind was around 10 knots according to the weather man, but it was more like 3 knots gusting to 14 knots. This made it quite difficult to tack for us newbies when the wind was at 3 knots. We ended up cheating (only a little, mind you) and using the motor to help swing our bow through the wind. During the gusts it was another story. Being a sailor of but two voyages, I didn’t expect the boat to make any noises (and maybe it isn’t supposed to). When we were pointed approximately 40-45 degrees off wind the boat would begin to hum. At first we thought we had hit ground, but we were moving far too fast to be dragging our keel. Then we noticed that the boat only made the sound when we were pointed windward as much as possible. I still don’t know if that is supposed to happen or if I narrowly escaped my boat exploding.
For the return leg of the journey Kyle took the tiller and we sailed at a run back to home port. What took us an hour and a half into wind took around 20-30 minutes returning. We were able to lower the main and motor into the harbor like we knew what we were doing, which we didn’t. All in all it was a more successful voyage than I could have hoped for, especially after the previous debacle/attempt at wind powered locomotion. We are following our dreams. It may be baby steps at a time, but it is comforting and exhilarating knowing that we are moving in the right direction.
by Dan | Apr 7, 2012 | Preparation Stage
Kayaks are one of the early purchases
Michele and I have been wondering, “What should we buy now for cruising later?,” as well as its reciprocal, “What should we hold off on buying for cruising later?” These questions are more complicated and nuanced than at first thought.
The cruising community is great! There are so many cruising families willing to share their hard earned wisdom with us. One of these is the family of the S/V Totem. Behan of S/V Totem is detailing what people in the planning stage can buy early that will help later when they start cruising. Perfect for Michele and I!
So far Behan has covered books, personal gear, and water stuff (she calls it games… scuba is more than a game for me!). I really took note of part three of her series when she talks about scuba gear. I had incorrectly assumed the gear would be cheaper in the tropics due to so many more people being involved in scuba versus Illinois. I just bought a SCUBA set that I will use to become an instructor as well as while we are cruising. Before reading her post, I had assumed SCUBA gear would be cheaper in the tropics.
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| Taken during our recent trip to Shedd Aquarium. Can you ID it? |
As a scuba diver I would also recommend fish identification books. One of the best is Reef Fish Identification: Florida, Caribbean, Bahamas which is obviously for Florida, Caribbean, and Bahamas. Paul Humann has many other books as well for the different regions of the world. Fish identification books will be great as Carter begins to explore the colorful depths with us… the ocean will be our classroom.
Behan’s list will help Michele and I as we canvas garage sales and clearance aisles between now and cast-off. Having lists like hers lets us know what is OK to buy when we see a great deal and what is best to wait to purchase.
by Dan | Apr 4, 2012 | Preparation Stage
Our Plan B for money issues while cruising is for me to be a PADI SCUBA instructor. I’ll cover everything that entails in the future (check out our To-Do page in the mean time), but for now you get to see Michele and I in Batman/Cat woman mode. Sorry about the poor image quality, we forgot our real camera and used a cell phone instead.
Living in Illinois and being relatively new to the awesome world of SCUBA, we have always rented our gear. The cost around here for a complete gear rental is only around $50-$60 per day, so it was cheaper than buying our own set. With me completing advanced class and starting training for Divemaster in May it has become cheaper to own my own set of gear. SCUBA gear is like anything else… you get what you pay for. I really need the gear that I am purchasing to last because our income while cruising will be significantly lower than it is now. That means no running out and re-purchasing a $2000 gear package. I’ve ordered a complete SCUBA gear set that I will do a review on once I get it wet, but for now we can show off our flashy new wet suits.
Instead of the multi-hundred dollar models we decided to go with an entry level (but highly rated) surfing wet suit. Surprisingly surfing wet suits are commonly recommended over SCUBA wet suits due to the suits being built to withstand the rigors of chafing on a surfboard, the sand, rocks, etc. We settled on the [amazon_link id=”B000OC8NAS” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Hyperflex Cyclone[/amazon_link] series for around $100-$150. Same material, same material thickness, etc but half the cost.
by Michele | Mar 31, 2012 | Preparation Stage
I like lists. I just think that lists help keep you on track and give you a good overview of your goal. Therefore, we have created a list of the things that we plan to get done over the next few years as we wait and plan. As we (hopefully) get things done we’ll post about it, and we’ll also keep a separate page available that we will check off as we go. We’ve got our fingers crossed that we get all of this done faster than we think, especially the money part!
Click the button below to check it out.
To-Do List
by Michele | Mar 28, 2012 | Preparation Stage
So, last night I was getting a glass of water for myself after dinner from our refrigerator. We have an ice maker which has a dispenser on the freezer door for our “convenience”. The problem is that it actually isn’t very convenient at all. In fact, I stood at my freezer door for a good thirty seconds and had exactly 3 pieces of ice plop into my glass. I realized, as I was standing there dehydrating, that it would have been significantly faster to just open the freezer door and scoop the ice out manually. The funny thing is, our ice dispenser has been this slow for the last 4 years, and I still continue to sit and wait for each piece of ice to make its way into my glass.
This got me thinking about the illusion of convenience. How much time and money do we spend for something to be more convenient, when it would have been faster and easier to do it the “hard” way? Our dishwasher is another good example: I completely clean off all of my dishes in the sink before I put them in the dishwasher because I don’t trust it to wash my dishes properly. Then what is the point of the appliance I continue to use every day?
Sometimes it’s just too easy to get suckered into the marketing tactics that say the newest gadget will help you save time because we agree with the basic assumption. You need more stuff to deal with the fact that you don’t have enough time. Personally, I know I don’t have enough time, that’s why I want to get rid of the stuff.
We are normal (well ok, not so normal) people that have a dream to see the world and live life as it was meant to be. We both have successful careers in the healthcare industry, even in this terrible economy. We want to break free of the current cycle of trading time for dollars and dollars for more and more things we don't need. So, we have decided to forego the fruits of our economic success and "retire" well before we are 30 and set out to see what is over the Horizon.