by Michele | Jun 13, 2014 | Preparation Stage
Don’t let that innocent smile fool you, this is the face of a master of destruction
Living on the water comes with the inherent risk of losing items to the drink. I just didn’t realize that it was more an inevitability than risk until we moved on board with a three year old and two dogs. Never mind my natural capacity for not paying enough attention to my surroundings (see Getting Our Sea Legs).
Can you tell he’s excited about searching the mud for my keys?
One of the first rules that Dan instituted was “Never have your keys in your hand when getting on and off of the boat.” Alas, he knew me too well. One morning while Dan was at work, I was in the process of getting myself, Carter, and a large bag of laundry off of the boat. As I swung the bag of laundry onto the dock, I released the bag safely…and my car keys right into the water. I was honestly in shock and just stared at the ripples for a few moments before I could even think about anything. Our dock neighbor Gary, who I mentioned in the First Taste of the Cruising Community, graciously attempted to find my keys in the near zero visibility water but wasn’t able to locate them. Now I had to wait for Dan to get home and tell him that I had, in fact, done what he always told me not to do and that now he would have to dive in the disgusting water to find my keys. He only gave me a small “I told you so” and was able to find my keys, along with those of another unfortunate boater from the past.
Oops…
On our first day in Lantana, the water and I had a rough time together. It was a beautiful day and so I allowed Carter and the dogs to stay out in the cockpit while I made lunch for us down below. I regularly checked on Carter and would find him looking out and the water or petting the dogs. All was well…or so I thought. What Carter was actually doing was taking every loose item in the cockpit and throwing them overboard one by one to see if they would float. This included our hose nozzle, the dogs’ 2 leashes and water dish.
Gavin after his little “swim” and bath. He had a rough day.
I was so angry I could hardly see straight, so I sent Carter to his room before I overreacted and went back to making lunch. That’s when I heard a very strange noise from outside. I went into the cockpit to investigate and found only Winston topside looking straight down off of the transom at the water. Gavin had attempted to jump onto the dock to catch some landing ducks and, as his coordination is about as advanced as mine, fell straight into the water. I quickly climbed down the dock ladder and called him over to me as he sloppily dog-paddled his way around the boat. I’m sure the two of us would have been quite the sight to see as I had to get in waist deep to hoist him out as he flailed desperately trying to get out of the water, which he hates. He was none too happy with me as I had to spray him down with fresh water again.
At least I was able to rescue my shoe!
Our current tally is as follows:
Lost
1 bottle of lemon juice (thrown by Carter)
1 dog dish (thrown by Carter)
2 dog leashes (thrown by Carter)
1 hose nozzle (thrown by Carter)
1 small toy car (accidently driven in by Carter)
Dropped and Recovered
1 fishing net (bumped in by a friend)
1 car key (dropped by Michele)
1 wet dog (jumped/fell in)
1 shoe (knocked off by Michele)
Found
1 car key
I think that makes the score Davey Jones 6: Us 1: Tie 4. We’re hoping to even the score with some fishing and lobster diving in the near future.
by Michele | Jun 9, 2014 | Preparation Stage
People on the west coast of Florida have the advantage of seeing the sun set over the ocean, but there’s something about an ocean sunrise that leaves me in awe. Maybe it’s because I am so rarely able to watch the sun rise or maybe it’s the reminder of my quiet early morning drives to work with Carter half asleep in the backseat. Sunrise may not always be as spectacular as the reds and oranges of sunset, but I love to watch the quiet beauty of the world waking up to the pinks and blues of the morning.
Last week was my first opportunity to watch the sun rise in our new marina in Lantana. While I’m not usually up in time to see it, I was glad to be awake on this beautiful morning.
by Michele | Jun 6, 2014 | Preparation Stage
The first of many wipe-outs as he got used to wearing shorts and flip-flops
We’ve now survived our first month on the water! Things are starting to feel more like home around the boat and we are slowly uncovering all of the mini-projects that will be keeping us busy over the next few months. All of us are adjusting fairly well, but it feels like we’re all toddlers learning how to walk again on the boat.
My knee-eye coordination is somewhat lacking
Living on a moving object tends to be more dangerous than you’d think…especially for the less coordinated like myself. Going on and off the dock seems to be my most precarious for me, as I tend to misjudge the height of the stanchions and give my knees a solid beating. The first week on board I was sure that Dan or I were going to give ourselves a concussion with the number of times we both hit our heads on various areas of the boat. We didn’t end up with one, but Dan did procure our first boat-related broken toe as he slipped while getting into the cockpit. Chock that one up to getting our sea legs, I guess.
Judging by the nasty color of Dan’s toe, we’re pretty sure it broke.
Carter’s had his own injuries from our new life. He is still adjusting to losing the extra protection of always wearing pants. His knees were in pretty rough shape after his first few high speed wipe-outs in shorts. He’s started to get more cautious about his running speed on uneven surfaces, but not without learning the lesson the hard way a few times.
Battle wounds from the kamikaze fire ants
Last weekend, we went out to Indiantown to get another few boxes off of the trailer (almost done unpacking!). As we were walking back to our car, Carter suddenly let out a panicked cry “Mommy! Ants!” He had stomped his way right into a fire ant hill and the ants were on a mission to get him off. And they didn’t say please. Dan grabbed Carter and started swatting off any ant he could see as Carter was crying “get them off, get them off!” Those little guys really held on tight too. We finally got all of them off and Carter’s clothes thoroughly checked before I was able to talk to Carter about it.
“Carter, did you know you were stepping in an ant hill, honey?”
“Yea, I did.”
“Why did you step on it? Those ants didn’t like that very much.”
“I just wanted to help them make their hole bigger, Mommy. It was too small.”
My poor, sweet little boy.
by Michele | May 29, 2014 | Preparation Stage
Dan going up the mast for the first time after borrowing a neighbor’s block and tackle.
Over the last 3 years of planning, Dan and I have talked with multiple cruisers in person and through email, getting A Little Help from our Friends. Everyone we talked to was more than willing to help us in whatever way they could. It’s only logical that we would see the same kind of spirit in the community once we started living aboard, but to be honest we have been awed by the help we’ve received in these first few weeks aboard. It’s amazing how magnanimous people can be towards complete strangers simply because we are now part of the boating community.
As I mentioned in The First Move, Dan and I received our first taste of the friendliness of boaters as we were entering the marina in Stuart. Since we were coming in after hours, there were no marina employees available to help us pull in but we got expert help from other boaters instead. I honestly don’t know if we would’ve made it into our slip safely without the help of Jim and Sandra on Alpha Lady and Gary and Georgette on Two G’s. As we all started introducing ourselves, Georgette brought her cats out and Sandra mentioned that she had been looking for a new cat since their last one had passed a year before. We instantly brought out our cat, Nala, who we had been looking to find a new home for since we had accepted Dan’s new job. She was a good cat, but 2 dogs, a cat, and a 3 year old on a boat was just too much for me to handle. Sandra and Jim instantly fell in love with her and told us that if we were really serious, to bring her over to their boat later that night with whatever cat paraphernalia we wanted to get rid of.
We were serious and after grabbing dinner and talking to Carter about the situation, brought Nala over to Alpha Lady (a beautiful 61 foot 1981 Hatteras). Nala would certainly be living in luxury here. Jim and Sandra invited us to stay for drinks and I’m glad they did. After the stress of the day, we were nearing the end of our rope. In fact, if it weren’t for the ability to relax with them and laugh off the crazy events of our car that morning and our difficult parking I believe that we may have thrown in the towel that night. Luckily, we’re still moving and were treated to even more kindness by others through out the next week that we stayed in Stuart.
Gary and Georgette on Two G’s were incredibly helpful to us as well. They were parked in the slip directly next door and generously offered their help on multiple occasions. We decided after Friday night on Alpha Lady that we would stay in the Stuart marina until we could hire a captain to help us move the rest of the way to Lantana. However, that left us with the problem that we had no car to get Dan to work on Monday. We had spent Thursday night dropping off our Jeep in Lantana since we believed we would only be in Stuart for one night and we left our Scion in Indiantown. Gary and Georgette graciously offered us the use of their car to go pick up our Scion so that we didn’t have to rent a car for the day. Multiple times during the week Gary helped me to load and unload Carter and the dogs while Dan was at work and even went snorkeling to help me find my keys that I dropped next to the dock! That’s way above the typical neighborly friendliness that I’ve been accustomed to in the past!
Dan was able to help our neighbor in Lantana park his boat as others had done for us in Stuart.
We are very happy to be a part of a community that looks out for each other and was so quick to include us. We hope to be able to “pay it forward” to others in the future.
by Michele | May 23, 2014 | Preparation Stage
Carter is quickly becoming climatized, it was 85 degrees in this picture!
Even with our bad luck on a Friday, Dan and I still decided to leave for Stuart after lunch that day. We really wanted to be able to reach Lantana before Monday when Dan’s new job would start, especially since we had already dropped off one of our cars there on Thursday night. We prepared ourselves (again) to leave and shoved off with some help from the marina worker. As the boat started reversing, however, Dan quickly realized that he had underestimated the power of prop-walk when reversing a large boat. While we had read about it before, we had never experienced the effects ourselves and so were not really prepared for how to deal with it properly. Dan quickly adjusted his plan for getting out of the marina safely and got us into the canal, but we realized that we were going to have problems at the end of the day getting the boat stern-to the dock.
The water really starts pouring in quickly
Before we could worry about that we had the locks to transit. As we got within approximately a mile from the locks, we radioed in to let them know we were coming. We were somewhat surprised when the reply was a sarcastic “I can’t see you yet.” Apparently, at the St. Lucie Locks they won’t even respond to information until you are within sight of the operator. Luckily, everything still went quite smooth once we got into the locks as we had hoped when watching the previous day. The only negative about going through the locks was the dramatic decrease in wind when you are inside. The drop in wind and requirement that everyone be wearing life-jackets made for a very hot crew, as we haven’t yet purchased the inflatable PFD’s. After that experience, we certainly can understand why the inflatable kind are so much more desirable.
The view coming up to the Roosevelt bridge
The next obstacle we had was the Roosevelt drawbridge that we had to go through. According to bridge schedules online, the bridge opened every half hour on Monday-Friday. As we were getting close to the bridge, we thought we would have about a 20 minute wait until the next opening, so Dan slowed us down quite a bit in order to come to the bridge right at the opening time. About the time that we were coming into full slight of the bridge, we could hear over the VHF radio another boat requesting the bridge to be opened. The operator responded that he could open it but that a train would be coming through soon and he didn’t have control of when the secondary train bridge would close. We had no idea we could’ve just requested the bridge to be opened and we definitely didn’t want to wait for the train, so Dan threw the throttle down to try to beat the clock. We radioed the operator to let him know we were coming and he assured us he would keep his bridge open for us but again warned that he had no control over the train bridge, but it “wasn’t moving yet”.
Let me just say that you should never be in a hurry on a sailboat. Even going as fast as our engine would push us, we were definitely moving at less than 10 miles an hour. Some people joke that taking a sailboat around the world would be faster if you just walked and I can see that they weren’t entirely kidding. In any case, we got past as the lights started to flash announcing the imminent closing of the train bridge. We could now see our home for the evening but still had to figure out how to come into it safely. We had to pass the marina by a fair amount before turning back towards it to stay in the channel; we definitely didn’t want to bottom out after a long day.
As we came around the corner of the docks to get to our assigned slip, we had a moment of panic. The time had come to park the boat, and we were in the inside corner with boats all around…no room to maneuver at all. Amazingly, there were people walking down the docks near our slip who asked if we needed help docking and we accepted. With their help and the help of our new next-door (next-slip?) neighbors, we were able to wrangle the boat into the slip and get her all tied down. Our first journey had come to an end with no damage to life or property. I’d call that a success.
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.