Steve's Musings

(By Steve)
Here we are, three weeks since we moved aboard and two and a half weeks since we set off cruising. This Blog entry is a reflection of the experience so far. As I sit here writing it, I am in the cockpit of the boat. The engine is having its daily run to keep the refrigerator and freezer cold and charge the batteries, although the wind generator is well able to do that in the stiff North West breeze. We are in the middle of two cold fronts, one went through yesterday with a few minutes of very heavy rain, the second will come through today though the rain seems less likely. The temperature is in the mid 70’s, quite comfortable with shorts and a teeshirt even with the 15 to 20 knot breeze.

THE LIFESTYLE
This is like nothing else I have ever experienced although I have only ever really experienced working or school for as long as I can remember. It is completely different and a little bit strange to be truthful. It is so different I cannot even say what it is like, but I can say what it is not like...
It is not like a holiday in the sense that it is open ended and there is work to do every day to live (see below).

It is not like chartering a sailboat because it is open ended and there is no schedule dictated by the date that the sailboat must be returned and pre-conceived notions of what one wants to achieve during the charter. For example, today we could have moved further up the Keys to Marathon and anchored there for a while, but except for the promiximity of shops and other facilities there is in fact little difference so we decided to stay put and so some of the jobs and projects on the list - one of which is this blog entry.

It is not like work. There is work to do to live, but it is not work in the sense of creating value for others (or yourself) in the form of money which you then give to someone else to do the things you need to live. The work is more directly connecting with living. Making sure that the place you live keeps working, preparing food and moving about.

I think those who say it is a ‘way of life’ have probably got it about right. That in this way of life you actually live on a sailboat is probably a variation of the way of life. Other variations are probably roaming the country / continent / world in an RV, on a motorbike or in a series of modest rented homes.

SAILING AND LIVING AT ANCHOR
There is a huge amount to learn about everything in this way of life but there is , for us, the most to learn and practice about this. We are not lifelong sailors, taught by our parents when we were young and therefore it comes naturally. I guess we are past the absolute beginner stage, but still nowhere near what you would call experienced stage either. This is a strange place for us to be. In our previous lives we were experts in our field, people paid money to hear us speak about what we knew and paid us serious amounts of money to come and do what we did for their organisations. The good news is we once didn’t know how to build, run and fix service businesses, but we became very good at it over a period of several years.

We have touched the bottom or run aground seven times in three weeks. This is in part a reflection of the very shallow water in the bays in which we are anchoring and in part our inexperience. We have found ourselves over canvassed once. We have managed to successfully refuel twice, but have yet to venture into any unfamiliar marinas. We have dealt with a number of mechanical failures.

This newness and lack of experience is the thing that is the most scary aspect of the lifestyle, being the ‘captain’ adds to the pressure because if you don’t know what to do then who does?? The logic in you tells you that you can master this, after all many others do, but I think it is only experience that can truly build the skill and confidence that is required. In the meantime it will continue to feel a bit scary. I know now that with this, as with many other things I have done in life, I will become competent, then good and maybe even one of the best there is, but you will never know all there is to know about it or be skilled in every aspect of it. I am pleased we started now. I suspect that five years from now we would have thought the whole thing too difficult.

I am optimistic we will master this, we have come further than most who embark on this dream. We learned to sail, we bought the boat, we acquired enough resources to live comfortably indefinitely, we quit our jobs and we left pretty much when we planned to. This puts us in the very small percentage of people who dream about cruising and who actually go. Maybe we have done the hard bit? A guy who did some work on the boat for us before we left and had spent several years cruising said in his opinion the hardest bit is leaving, once you’re going then you find a way of solving the inevitable problems that crop up from time to time.

We are both ‘foodies’ so food was going to be an important part of whether this lifestyle would be acceptable or not. When we were both working and well paid restaurant bills would run into £ 100’s per month, we like our food! This has been one of the most pleasant surprises for me. We had worked at being able to cook good food simply before we set off, this seems to have paid dividends in that the food has been excellent. We are eating much less of it than we were but what we are eating is very high quality. Examples included; Thai Green Curry, Variety of Meats and Fish off the grill, Chicken in White Wine Sauce, Paella, Pasta, Cheese, Hard Sausage, Home Made Bread and Muffins, Bacon and Eggs, Pancakes. The alcohol intake is down as well, we have a cocktail around sundown and a large glass of wine with our meal at night.

Health was another big motivator for giving this lifestyle a try. I had spent three years living in a hotel, working 14 hours per day and eating and drinking far too much, often of the wrong things. At 20 stones something had to be done, climbing stairs had me breathing noticeably and running was not a pretty sight. We have no scales on the boat, but the clothes are a good indication that the weight is coming down. This lifestyle is not ‘hard labour’ but it does make you agile and deliver mild exercise whether that be trimming sails, hauling water, walking to the shops or riding a bike. I suspect that I am close to three stones lighter than I was at the end of October and should, by the Spring, be in the 15 stone range. This is a good weight for me and as importantly I should be stronger, more supple and fitter.

A strange aspect of the lifestyle really is there is no deadlines, most things can be done tomorrow. Having said that there is always something to be done.

Water consumption is something we are coming to terms with. We seem to be using about 7.5 gallons per day and we carry 200 gallons which should give us about a months worth. We wash up once per day and shower every other day.

On the fuel side we used about 25 gallons in two weeks to run the engine about 40 hours (a combination of motoring and running the engine daily for about an hour and a half to work the refrigeration, produce hot water and charge the batteries).

BOAT SET UP
Generally speaking, I think we have chosen a good boat for what we are doing. The boat is very comfortable to live on and feels very ‘safe’ even when the waves are quite big. Day before yesterday coming out of Key West into the Atlantic swells, the bow would plough under the water in the biggest waves, but the boat felt OK. The boat is not a racing boat (too fat and heavy for that) and she doesn’t sail to windward that well, but that is a small price to pay for the relative comfort and sturdiness.

Like most cruising boats we spend a lot of time at anchor and, unlike chartering or sailing for shorter periods of time there is often nowhere to go but an anchorage when the wind gets up so the anchor and rode (or ground tackle) is key. I think this is the best kit that the previous owners invested in. We replaced the chain and the rope as part of the preparations as well. We have anchored in winds gusting up to 40 miles an hour and so far the anchor has held rock solid. It seems to dig in well, this I know because I am the person who has to break it out of the bottom with a manual windlass!

One thing that is on the list of things of fairly major things we should have had done before we left is either made or had made a dodger (this is like a windshield that goes in the front of the cockpit). This would have added greatly to our comfort when on deck sheltering us from wind and spray when sailing and wind when at anchor. Other than that no other requirement for major modifications have come to light yet.

The dingy we are still getting to grips with. The ingredients are right, a 10 foot inflatable with a blowup keel and a 10hp engine. What we still need to sort out though is:

Stowing the kit that needs to go in the dingy with us when we leave the boat (lifejackets, dingy anchor, chain and lock to secure it to a dock, handheld VHF, torch, etc., etc.). The real answer I think is a dingy bag which will go in the bow of the dingy tied in. In the short term an old back pack will do until Katherine gets round to getting the canvas for one and making it (Westmarine want a mere $70 for one, more than we spend in a week on food!)

Consistency with which the dingy will ‘plane’ (rides across the surface of the water on the bow wave at relatively high speed and with relatively low throttle setting). Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. I expect this is a combination of the motor is still quite tight and will loosen up and gain power once it has run a few hours, the way we load the dingy, and the angle at which the motor sits which is adjustable. I guess we will need to experiment with all these variables until we get it right.

BOAT MAINTAINANCE
I expected some of this and a certain amount of ‘shakedown’ was I guess inevitable, but the list has been a little longer than I expected. On reflection, this was probably foreseeable in that the boat has not been really used ‘in anger’ for several years and it is an old and well used boat. Hopefully we are getting to the end of the period where there is something new to fix every day. In some senses this is and always will be an integral part of the lifestyle. I guess buying a new boat would get rid of it for a while, but the half million would have put a big hole in our income! The list of stuff fixed so far:

Transmission Cable though we need to replace this when we get a chance.
Heads pipe leaking which just needed a couple of clamps reseating.
Front Macerator switch replaced.
Leaking port resealed and there is another one to do.
Headsail repaired where some stitching on a seam had chaffed through.
Wind generator blades replaced after it shed one in the 40-knot winds. This is a really important bit of kit which allows unlimited use of laptops and other seemingly essential bits of electronics without running the engine other than to recharge the refrigeration
Prop shaft stuffing box tightened up
Replace the original outboard lifting sling which was a bit precarious, we don't need $1500 of motor going in the sea!!

The good news is none of this is a major deal and the preparation seems to have paid off. The major systems are working well. The engine uses very little oil (les than a pint in 50 hours), runs nice and cool and has good oil pressure despite its age and high running hours. Having used the boat for a while, I expect many of these hours have been run at very light load to charge the batteries, make hot water and to work the refrigeration.

MONEY
It’s really early days here to know how this is going to work out. To date, leaving aside the costs of fixing the shakedown cruise list of faults, we have spent about $500, looks like we will spend about $300 per week. This is the first time we have ever recorded what we have spent. Katherine is in the process of building a spreadsheet which I am sure will find its way on the blog when it is done. Early signs are that we will spend about what we expected to spend and less than income from property rentals and investments which seems like good news.