Since Kim and Mike left, we’ve gotten into a bit of a groove (yeah I know it’s been a week, but when there’s not much to do and the pace of life is slow, you get a lot more done). I wake up before David, usually around 6-630a, and start working. I work until 9-10 in the mornings, then we go wander around, or move the boat to somewhere new, or just hang out. David does his online stretch class at 4p, at which point I’ll work another 3-4 hours (I generally have meetings from 4-7p).
I was in a meeting yesterday when a bunch of paddleboarders playing loud techno music went paddling by… had to mute myself.
As for connectivity…
I am typing this while sitting in the marina in Grou (again) and there is wifi at the restaurant next door. I did buy a “burner” unlocked Android phone before we left that is just loaded up with eSIMs for different parts of the world. I generally use that, and it works really well (I just wait until I’m on wifi to do any large file transfers).
Afternoon working, gearing up to have meetings on the downtown canal in Sneek.
Seems we go to the grocery store every other day, but that’s not unusual as we do that in the Bay Area also. We are eating lunch on board (sometimes no breakfast), and most dinners. Yogurt in the morning, sandwiches for lunch, and most evenings salad for dinner. (No I have not lost any weight.) The food here, especially the bread, doesn’t seem to have as much sugar in it as we are used to in America. It also doesn’t seem to last as long – don’t know if that’s preservatives or what. The wine doesn’t have all the garbage we put into it either, and it’s cheap. You can get a good bottle of Bordeaux or Burgundy for under 8 euro.
Food is really inexpensive here!!! And really good – they don’t call it organic, they just call it food.
Speaking of food, if you didn’t know already, eggs are stored on the shelf in the center of the store and not in the fridge. You can buy blue Smurf ice cream at the shop in Grou. And, the Cheetos Goals are gross (I tried them, that was no go, but the ducks will love them).
Eggs on a shelfYuck
While we were in Sneek the last couple of days, we organized, cleaned, removed some unused items from the boat, and made it more “homey”. David met a mid-50’s antique store owner there who had been to Alameda when he was 6 years old, and remembered visiting an antique junk store there (David says the store is still there). We were able to get a framed triple Delft tile hanging from him… it was marked 35 euro “but since you are from California, I’ll give it to you for 25.”
Our framed tiles… they are hanging where a TV bracket used to hang with no TV. As I’ve always said, “you can’t get away from it all if you take it with you.” Yes, those are 2 clocks above the doorway… one local time, one California time.
We have a back porch.
In the evenings that seem to last forever, we sometimes hang out on our back porch and watch other boats dock (ooh wee let me tell you, so many people have a real special way of docking). We talk with each other, listen to music and read. We watch people walking dogs (and have a special affinity for people with Westies or Kooikerhonds). We try to translate Dutch signs. And finally, the sun might go down near 11p, and we hit the sack.
Sunset over Grou, around 11pm.
I knew about the standing mast route throughout Europe, and when I was in my 30s and just starting to talk about cruising in a sailboat, I thought it would be fun to sail across the Atlantic, drop the mast, and cruise the canals of Europe. But, I will say the motorboating has me hooked… sailing is a lot of work compared to this type of cruising (you have to put all your moveable stuff away when you go sailing, and sailing requires paying attention.) This is so much easier, relaxing, and requires a lot less attention.
So I go fill the port tank, and after a couple minutes I button everything back up and go back downstairs to turn the pump on to see if the water is working again. It’s not working the way I expect, so I go back outside to put more water in only to realize that I have put 2 minutes of water into the diesel tank.
Oops.
I immediately call David and he reminds me to turn off the diesel heater. I’m freaking out that I have caused a major problem because water and diesel is NO BUENO.
But I have to wash dishes!! So, I put another minute of water into the port tank (this time the correct hole), and the water fills up and flows onto the deck. I can’t imagine how this is the case, otherwise the water would have been working in the boat.
I come back downstairs after putting the hose away for the 2nd time, and open the port tank gasket. Sure enough the tank is full, and water blows up all over the place – on me and the floor.
I turn the water pump on and still… Not working. I look at the valves, and David has the port tank off and starboard tank on. I think to myself, “WHY did he ask me to fill the port tank when the starboard tank was obviously the one to fill?”
I get back off the boat, unravel the hose for the 6th time, and proceed to fill the starboard tank. I come back down to turn the pump back on, but I’m so annoyed now that I forget to run the faucet to get the air out of the system.
I decide to stop and call my friend Kim, but first I pour myself a full glass of red wine. I need to chill out. On my way into the cockpit, I set the wine down and it topples over, spilling an entire glass of red wine into the cockpit.
Now I’m pissed. And I have to grab the hose again for the 23rd time tonight to hose down the cabernet cockpit.
Finally, Kim convinced me that I should just abandon ship and go get a hotel room for the evening. I quickly check the Claremont, and am able to secure a cheap yet elegant luxury room there. David calls home and I tell him to go check into the Claremont and I’ll meet him there.
I arrive 20 minutes later, meet him in the bar, and he’s already got a full glass of Alexander Valley Pinot ready for me. And it’s not all over the place. We enjoy a nice sized bed, beautiful shower (inside the bedroom even), heat and running water.
The next day the issues were resolved fairly quickly. Within 10 minutes of getting on the boat, I remember to run the water faucets to empty the air in the system, and voila… we have running water again.
The fuel is a bigger issue. However, David McGuyvered a water pump together, and we’ve gotten all the water out of the fuel tank. We have diesel heat again.
And the moral of the story is…
Don’t put something in a hole when it doesn’t belong in there… and whatever you do, save the wine.
For those of you interested in the McGuyver pump and getting the water out of the fuel tank:
We bought a drill powered pump from Harbor Freight for $14.95, and attached a clear hose to the outgoing port and a PVC pipe to the incoming port. Then, he opened the top of the tank where the sending unit is connected, and put the pipe all the way to the bottom of the tank. I held the clear hose into a 5 gallon bucket and David ran the pump using a drill.
The water goes to the bottom of the tank under diesel, so what you get when you are pumping out is water first then light pink then solid red showing through the clear hose (this is the point of the clear hose).
We filled 4 buckets (or 3 minutes worth if you are counting in minutes)!
After that, we poured some treatment into the tank to emulsify the water.
We ran the diesel heat first as it was the one running when I put water in there. We had some steam, but then it proceeded beautifully with no problems. By the time we started the engine the next day and let it run for a while, all the water had either been through the diesel heater filter or emulsified.
The photo at the top of the page is the McGuyver pump system. We will probably be “donating” it to the yacht club, as it’s a very good water pump and could be used to quickly empty someone’s bilge also.
(And as usual, Sabre build is so amazing it’s super easy to get into the fuel tank and get the sending unit off… not like Pru 1, where the fuel tank was under the cockpit and the builders assumed nobody would ever need to get into there.)
Anyone that knows David and me knows that we enjoy spending time in Europe. There are many reasons for this I don’t need to go into here, but if you know us, you probably already know why. We’ve always thought we’d eventually own a canal boat over there, but figured it was years off. There’s just so much upheaval a life can handle, right? HAHA. When the opportunity bites you in the ankle…
August 2018, first time seeing Compagnon
We visited with our friends Robin and Mike on their canal boat “Compagnon” in 2018 and 2019. We spent our time in Friesland, which is a province located in the northern part of the Netherlands. This province has about 700,000 people in a 2200 square mile area, so there’s not a lot of people. I think there are 2 cows to every person there. Friesland is a beautiful area, with a rich history. The people there speak Frisian (most also speak Dutch and English). The Frisian language is most closely related to the various dialects of Old English. Much of Friesland was Roman occupied (like the rest of Europe), so it has a very rich history.
When we first canal boated in 2018, I remember telling David I was concerned that I would get bored, it’s so slow, what are we going to do, etc etc (typical Kim worrying). Turns out, it’s amazingly calming, beautiful, and not boring to be slow. Much of Europe is covered in canals and rivers, so you can just go to the next town, grab a bollard and tie up, and hop off the boat and wander around the town you are in. It’s a beautiful way to see Europe, especially smaller towns you would probably never go visit by car (and especially as an American, you probably would never visit by car). Friesland is also a very boaty culture, with a vast history of maritime ventures. The boats are completely different than anything we have here in America, and we gawk regularly at boats we see.
Over the last few years, since 2018, David and I would occasionally joke with Robin and Mike about “selling us half interest” in the boat or “when you go to sell her we want her.” She’s a great boat… she’s got a cabin forward with a closing door, a cabin aft with a closing door, a raised salon over the engine, a small galley (big enough to cook in), and a huge head with a shower. She’s a 1974 Marek Dutch steel boat, and let me tell you the Dutch know how to build indestructible boats. I heard a few times from other canal cruisers that you “buy a boat in Netherlands and cruise it to France and sell it.” Apparently the French love Dutch boats!
Fast forward to end of May 2022, and we have already scheduled a trip around a wedding on Cape Cod. We were planning on flying into Boston, and driving to Vermont to see Sabrina, up into Montreal, over to Quebec, down to Gloucester to see Mike and Amanda, and then to the wedding. We were taking advantage of all the Fairmont retirement benefits we could, including staying in the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City. One early morning, we get a message from the Netherlands… it’s Robin, and she’s letting us know that they’ve decided to sell the boat, and if they list it with a broker it will be $10k higher than if they just sell it outright. “Do you know anyone that wants the boat?” HAHAHA seriously, that’s what she asked us! We knew that they’d just replaced the engine with a 2021 Nanni Diesel, and they’d barely broken the engine in (~50 hours). There we were, laying in bed, talking about buying Compagnon. It took us about 10 minutes of discussion, and we messaged back that we would buy her.
I just want to remind you that we intended to do this all along, but not this soon. We always thought we’d have a boat in Europe, but it was “not now”.
Within a week, we’d changed all our plans in New England, bought our plane tickets to go to Amsterdam and we started the process of buying this boat (which David is fond of saying, “it’s less than the cost of a new Toyota Camry!”).
Looking out the starboard window at Bert’s yard.
We flew an overnight flight from Boston to Amsterdam (only 6.5 hours versus 10.5 from SFO). I made a friend with one of the flight attendants, and we are still in touch to this day! We arrived in Amsterdam Schiphol at 9am. The boat is in Grou in Friesland, which requires us to get train tickets to Zwolle, switch to a smaller train, and get off in Grou. To get to the boat, we either have to walk a couple miles (we are exhausted), or somehow get in touch with the lone taxi driver in Grou. I take a shot in the dark and add him to my WhatsApp and text him… and he texts me back. He says he will meet us, thankfully, and just like clockwork, Atiq picks us up and takes us to Technische Scheepsservice Bert de Jong (this is a fancy name for Bert de Jong’s boatyard, and just like that we are moving onto our new European boat.
After a quick nap, we realize that Bert’s shipyard is not close to town (about 25 minute walk), so we walk to town and grab dinner… that first day is a killer when you travel to Europe. You have to stay up until 9p to adjust quickly, so you drink a glass of wine then a cup of coffee… then a glass of wine then a cup of coffee… then a glass of wine… you get the point.
This is where things get a little squirrely. First off, Compagnon has been stored outside during the winters for the last couple of Covid winters, and the tarp blew off of her last winter due to some big winds. Bert tells us the next day we can’t store her at his yard anymore and that he doesn’t have room. Ummmmm…. well, here we are in a place we don’t speak the language with a boat we thought would be staying at Bert’s, and ummm… now what? Also, she needs a little bit more cosmetic work since the last time we saw her due to her being stored outside. That’s totally OK, it’s the nature of the beast, and it’s only cosmetic. Plus, we got this boat for bargain as far as we are concerned.
The next day, we decide to finally take her off the dock and go into the lake outside of Grou and get to “feel” her. Our plan was to go to Grou’s marina that afternoon, which meant we had to take her into a slip. David unties us from the dock, and I’m on the upper steering station. She feels mushy, not like I would expect a motor boat to feel. The wheel doesn’t stop when you go all the way over, it just keeps going around and around and around. The rudder angle indicator is not connected, so we can’t even tell where the rudder is. I hand the wheel over to David, and he realizes it doesn’t feel right either. We call Bert, and he has no idea. So, we decide to take her back to the end tie at Bert’s and sort out what we are going to do. Thankfully she has a new bow thruster, which helped us get her back onto the dock without hitting anything, but it was nerve-wracking there for a couple minutes.
It’s all about the hydraulic steering on the upper station.
We don’t know that at the time though. We were totally bummed out. Bert, who knows nothing about us, tells us that perhaps we should come back and charter next year and figure out if we really want to do this. But, it had nothing to do with knowing whether or not we wanted to do this, we weren’t sure what to do with what we had, and how we were going to get it fixed in a different country that spoke a different language than we do. Bert calls a broker in town, and recommends to us we sell her. So, we talk to the broker and list her with him, and decide to stay on her another 5 days until we figure out our next steps. I’m certainly not going to let our European vacation go to waste, so we start planning on a trip to Utrecht (this will be another blog post).
Lookit that 2021 Nanni Diesel! Right off the showroom floor!
In the meantime, both of us continue to feel a nagging feeling in the back of our minds…
“But the engine only has 54 hours on it, we’ll never have to replace it.”
“The bow thruster is in excellent shape, almost new even, and we don’t have to do anything with it.”
“Cosmetics, not a big deal, we can deal with that.”
And the big one was finally when we walked the docks in Grou and ran into another American couple who’d been cruising there for 25 years, and we “toured” their boat. Their guest area was the couch folding down into a slightly larger “bed”. We both spend time looking at YachtFocus.com (their version of YachtWorld), and realize that we have a very unique boat with the forward and aft cabin arrangement. We know we have a ton of family and friends who we want to come do this with us. And finally, the ENGINE… every single boat we looked at was going to need a new engine, and I knew what Robin and Mike had paid for this engine.
Compagnon has good bones, and a great heart. Finally, we took her off of Bert’s dock again using the lower steering station, and she did exactly what we expected her to do. It was a simple hydraulic problem, and not very difficult or expensive to fix.
So we delisted her and decided to keep her.
Myrna and Jim in Grou
Everything went great after that. We left Bert’s, and motored over to the Grou Marina. We pulled her into a slip. Unfortunately, we were running out of time, so we just sat put. And the storage issue as well as the question of who was going to work on her was also resolved in that time we were sitting put. We met our new friends Myrna and Jim, who are Americans who have also been cruising in Europe for many years. They originally knew our friends Sylvia and Michael (Dustin’s parents) from cruising in Mexico on a sailboat. Myrna had told us about Jan Smid in Jirnsum (the tiny town over), and they had been storing (“winterstalling”) there for many years. They just pull the boat up to the dock, grab their stuff, tell Jan what needs to be worked on, and he winterizes the boat and stores it inside for a couple hundred more than she was stored for at Bert’s. Extra added bonus is that we don’t have to do any of the winterizing, other than laundry and that kind of thing.
All in all, it was a bit of a crazy vacation, and we flip-flopped twice on a boat we both really love. But, we are both very happy with the way it all turned out and can’t wait to go back to Netherlands next year for THREE WHOLE MONTHS. We both can work from there part-time (instead of “Coffee and Stretch” at 7aPST, David does “Wine and Stretch” at 4p), and I can run my business from anywhere. Most of all, we are thrilled that we achieved a goal we had, albeit a little earlier than we intended, and we are super excited to be able to host our friends and family in a place that (I’m betting) they’ve never been before. With the list we’ve given Jan, she’s going to look like a different boat when we see her again… and we cannot wait. I’ve already started looking for flights!
Finally, what we’re doing is not hard. We just decided to do it.
We’ve made a few life decisions to live cheaply.
We live on a beautiful 40′ sailboat, we both drive used (and owned) cars and have for a long time, and we bought a boat in Europe for less than the price of a Toyota Camry.
The experiences David and I are having together are priceless though, and I feel richer than rich that we are partners and this is the way we have chosen to live our lives.
Not to get philosophical here, but you just have no idea how long you are going to live, so if you can live your dream now, it’s time to get on the road and get it done. Now. You could be dead tomorrow.
In the time we stayed in Grou, we biked everywhere, including to the train station to travel 100km away. We visited the Tall Ship Races in Harlingen, and saw more tall ships than I knew existed in the entire world. The sun didn’t go down until close to 11p (we are at 53 latitude there). So we’d pop open a bottle of 4 Euro wine, play chess and stream the jazz radio station from Seattle.The Dutch have some very funny signs. This one says, “Fast without poop? Put it in the trash can!”This is one of the town Skutsjes out practicing in the “lake” in front of Grou. This is a MASSIVE sailboat. David doing his stretch class, and me working. Prettiest little street in Grou. By the time we left Grou, we knew most of the 3,000 residents of the town. (OK, maybe not 3,000, but we knew a lot of people.)Compagnon at Bert’s dock.The galley… 2 burner stove, oven, and a fridge. Big enough to cook a dinner for 4!Inside the salon looking towards the aft cabin. Excellent mattresses in there!Pretty Compagnon.
A few weeks back, when we were holed up at our friend Elisa’s place (between when the boat would be ready and when we had to leave the condo for the last time), David and I were interviewed for a Latitude 38 podcast. Neither of us knew what to expect, but what it ended up being was FUN! The end result can be found here:
My friend Moe Roddy interviewed us on Zoom, and the audio department at Latitude 38 did a great job piecing it together. I really feel honored to have been included in this elite group of people that have been interviewed before and after us.
Thanks Moe! And THANK YOU Latitude 38 for this cool opportunity!
I haven’t written a blog post since December 2021, which is crazy because a lot has happened since then. I’ve been thinking about another post for the last few days, but I’m struggling with where to start.
But first, we are now living on the boat full-time at Richmond Yacht Club. Through some divine intervention, we did get legal liveaboard status early this year, much sooner than we thought we would. We were in the middle of boat projects when it happened, and there was no way we could move onto the boat at that point.
To recount the last 8 months in quick bullet order:
We had a living situation set up in Berkeley hills that allowed us to housesit for a friend and work on the boat. That situation didn’t work out as planned in January.
Around the same time that wasn’t working out, the owners of the condo we used to own asked if we wanted to live in the condo 3 weeks a month and move onto the boat 1 week a month (they were not living in California but traveling here for business, so this arrangement worked out fine for a few months). When we moved into the condo, Ernie wandered around like he owned the place, and settled right in. It was a bit weird, because it did feel like we owned the condo still – we’d sold our couch to the buyers, and a few other things, so some of the furniture was previously ours.
In February, we obtained liveaboard status. This was the point where my anxiety over our “vagabond” living situation chilled out, because no matter what happened, we now had a real legal place we could live.
In March, we traveled to Mexico and raced in Mexorc. Originally, I was not going to race, but the combination of being with friends and it being a “bucket list” race for racers as well as stupendous sailing in Banderas Bay, I basically started up racing with this regatta.
At the end of April, I went to Los Angeles and spent the weekend with other girlfriends to celebrate a friend’s birthday. It was a blast – we visited the Getty Museum (and ate lunch there), and wandered around downtown LA. I have a new appreciation for LA. I also came back from there with Covid, so spent 2 weeks living with another girlfriend who was there who may or may not have also gotten Covid. What happened in Covid Club stayed in Covid Club.
David and I started racing the San Francisco ocean racing series on Adrenalin, a Santa Cruz 50, which took us out into the ocean. It was more experience for me than David, as David has been doing these races for many years on different boats.
We finally moved aboard full time on June 27, 2022, amidst the end of a battery upgrade project and 5 days before we departed for Europe to our new-to-us boat in The Netherlands (another post to come on that).
As of this writing, we’ve been aboard for 2 weeks now and heading into the 3rd week. I have been asked if I’m good with this lifestyle, and I am… it’s simple, quiet, pleasant. I don’t miss the space we had before, and I’ve set up “office” on the nav station. It’s intimate and you certainly have to be able to get along well with the person you live on the boat with, and we do get along great. (Truth be told, David and I did have a couple of issues, but we fixed them. I think it’s near impossible for that must adjustment in such a short time and not have some upheaval in your relationship.)
When I wake up in the morning, the cool breeze of the water comes through the hatch. I poke my head out of the companionway to take the dog for a walk, and the first thing I see is water off of our “back porch.” On those afternoons where it’s beautiful outside, we can sit in the cockpit and read and have dinner out there.
I’ve learned I just don’t need a lot to be happy. Frankly, I don’t think anyone does, but that’s just not the way the world works!
In honor of our one month anniversary of “living” on our new boat, I thought I’d catch the old blog up with everything that’s happened. Hard to believe it’s only been a month, because it feels like it’s been so much longer.
First off, yes, it’s been a challenge as well as easy all at the same time. We moved from a 2300sf house in Port Townsend to a ~180sf boat. This was not the plan, but it’s the way it turned out. The plan (which turned out was a loose plan) was to housesit in the Berkeley hills for friends of ours starting on November 1. A few things delayed that entry date, and we ended up on the boat temporarily until they were ready to leave the house. It looks like things are going to start to come together the way we thought they were going to somewhere around the 2nd week of December. After having been on the boat for a month now, and making this boat a home in the last month, I’m going to be sorry to say goodbye to her for now.
Why are we leaving then? We don’t have the permission from Richmond Yacht Club to live on her yet… there’s a limited number of liveaboard slots here, and we don’t have one of them. The good thing is that there are some boat projects that need to be done that are difficult to accomplish while we are living on the boat… simple things like replacing the galley faucet. That requires the water to be turned off on the boat, and if it’s not done within the day, then you don’t have running water that night. Engine maintenance on the engine requires taking over the area right next to where I’m working, and it would be distracting and need to be cleaned up nightly so we can continue to live here.
Anyway, we will be staying aboard close to a week a month until we get the status we need, and maybe a couple of weeks a month and cruise the bay, staying at different docks and learning anchoring and how this boat reacts. All good stuff.
Things that I’ve learned since “moving aboard” on October 31:
I can adjust to living in any space, even one this small. Emotionally, it’s not been an easy adjustment for me, especially feeling like we don’t have a defined place to live… knowing we’ve been on a deadline to abandon ship due to the liveaboard status… and the delays with the housesit… but, we have gotten through this month together.
This boat feels large to me, and for a boat it’s comfortable. The last boat was 4 feet smaller, and 3 feet less wide, but I never felt like I could comfortably live on that boat. The layout and the space on this new Prudence is perfect, and she has a lot of storage.
David and I fill up the 30 gallon holding tank within 2 weeks (in other words, 2 of us can pee 30 gallons in 2 weeks). We also use about 120 gallons of water every week and a half.
This life is going to work out pretty well. This life is simple… I paid bills yesterday… No car payments, no house payments, no boat payments, no utilities (for now). Verizon for the phones, and I also have a MiFi that I use for boat internet (speed is better than the wired internet we had in Port Townsend). Garbage gets taken off the boat, I shower every day in the marina shower (I don’t have to clean it afterwards, there are housekeepers at the club for that). Even doing laundry hasn’t been that much of a hassle, though I will admit I do take our clothes most weeks to the wash and fold in town and someone else does it. On Monday, I took the sheets and clothes over there, and 2 hours later everything was washed and folded (by me). I also took my computer and worked on emails and a couple other things while I was there, so it wasn’t wasted time at all.
The Projects
We’ve done a few projects while we’ve been on the boat. The first and most important was replacing the morse cables that run from the throttle and shifter to the engine. When the boat came back from the yard, the shifter snapped when the boat was backed into the slip. It needed to be replaced anyway as it was super stiff, so it was not a surprise that it snapped. We replaced the morse cables on the previous boat, so didn’t think this project would be a big deal… that was our first time, so 3 days seemed about right.
The first indication that this project was going to be a pain in the ass was learning that the cables were 22′ and 26′. On the last boat, they were only 8′ and 9′, so even though we’d gained only 4 feet on boat, we clearly gained a more complex system. Getting into the steering pedestal was not a problem, and that’s where the “fun” started. There’s not a direct access from there to the engine, so the cables go down the pedestal, wind back to the stern of the boat, go around and do the hokey pokey a few times, then down into the aft cabin, underneath the aft cushions, under the water heater, under the floorboards, and then into engine. And, all along the route, they’ve been zip tied to prevent chafing and keep them in place.
The first 6 hours we cleared the path, and we were elated because it was “so easy” and “we know what we’re doing”, so what we thought we were within a day of being done. We were only 4 days off. I also forgot to mention the reason we were in a hurry to do this project immediately is that we were living on board and using the toilet, and as mentioned before, it takes David and I 2 weeks to fill up the holding tank together. Prior to that, 5 women (me included) had been on board and I had not emptied the tank when I brought it back from that weekend. The tank was now full, and we couldn’t empty it without being able to move the boat.
Good thing I had used a Temp-o-Head before; it came in handy for a week.
After 4 days of having the boat somewhat apart, calling our fellow Sabre 402 owner Sam for “tech support”, calling Edson Marine, calling Sam a few more times, and hitting Google, David finally completely unlatched the cables, reran the cables, and got the engine hooked up. Finally we could take the boat over to the pumpout dock and start using the actual toilet again.
The other project we’ve started has been replacing the sink faucets. The faucet in the V berth has been replaced, and it brought the whole room together. After we start housesitting, we’ll be able to replace the other 2 faucets. I’m looking forward to “modernizing” the space.
All in all, it’s been a great experience so far. Frustrating at times, but I feel like we’re finally doing what we’ve talked about doing all these years together.
In the next episode, learn how we start getting rid of the mounds of stuff we moved down here!
It’s been many weeks of chaos, living on the edge, packing, sorting, throwing away, pawning stuff off on neighbors, and things are finally feeling a bit more “normal” again. OK, it hasn’t been living on the edge, and our new lives are far from normal, but since last Thursday I’ve been able to get back to work part of the day, we’re sleeping well, and David is teaching his morning stretch classes without any issues. I’m also back to getting coffee in bed every morning thanks to my amazing husband, even if “bed” means the V berth on the boat.
We left Port Townsend on September 29, just a month beyond a full year since we left Point Richmond, CA. The weeks prior to that involved getting rid of stuff, storing what “little” we wanted to keep in UBoxes (those remained in storage in Port Townsend), and loading the 15′ moving van in the rain with the rest of the stuff we didn’t know if we were going to need or not. The first night, we stopped at David’s sister’s house in Eugene and set up our bedroom set there. She had just bought a 4 bedroom house, and didn’t have enough furniture. We can now drive 8 hours north and sleep on our bed and eat on our dining room table, and it helped her out too.
From there, we worked our way over Siskiyou Pass in a sketchy torrential downpour, and spent the night in Shasta, CA. It was LOVELY to see snow all over Mount Shasta. We’ve passed by here many times in the last year, and it’s looked like a big brown molehill. Shasta Lake had a lot more water in it too.
We arrived in Richmond on Sunday, October 31, at 5p… just as the Richmond YC’s Great Pumpkin Race was gearing up for the party. What a homecoming! We saw most of our friends, some of our new Pacific NW friends, and got to hang out in our club which we hadn’t had the chance to do since before Covid. The next day, we unloaded the truck full of more stuff than we should have brought IN THE RAIN. In the rain up there, in the rain down here. The difference between the two is the PNW gets rain all the time, and California needs it. So, we now have a storage locker full of stuff we need to find a place for on the boat, or ditch it and call it a day. (Yeah, some of it will go back up to Port Townsend, because wherever we end up after this next part of our life’s journey will involve reacquiring everything that’s in those boxes.)
We’ve been living on the boat since October 31. This is a temporary situation until we can temporarily move into the temporary house sit up in the Berkeley Hills. That should happen in the next few weeks, at which point we can really start ripping into the boat and taking care of the bigger projects that need work. We have a long list, though every day I look around and am grateful that David and I made this happen. This boat is STUNNING… it’s like our own little Craftsman cottage. I mean, the drawers on this boat are dovetailed… on the front AND the back. I don’t think I’ve ever even owned antiques that had both sides dovetailed.
And even though we’re back in Point Richmond and we know everybody and the lay of the land, things feel different. We’ve changed a lot in the last 14 months. We have grown together, we moved to a beautiful place, and met some amazing people. David retired from a full-time job, which has opened up both of our possibilities for freedom from being locked into the 8 to 5 grind (I already had that, but with him unlatched, we are both free to move about the cabin.) David loves racing, and I’ve started to get involved in it too… and we’re getting opportunities to travel and race which we did not have before. David has started racing with different people, which I’m very happy for him about.
After years of begging Ernie to go to the bathroom on the last boat, he doesn’t seem to have a problem with this one at all (crossing fingers this new habit of his remains when we go to Angel Island). On the last boat, he would walk halfway up the deck and pancake, scared to go any further. On this boat, he trots around it, lays on the deck, likes to sit on the bow and watch the water and the world go by. His life is a little nicer down here too, because he gets to lay in the sun and there’s more things for him to look at than hanging out at the foot of my desk all day long.
We don’t take quiet and calm for granted; Port Townsend was teeming with relaxing and safety. The Bay Area not so much… though living here at the yacht club is calm and quiet. When we hear sirens, we note that we haven’t heard many of those in the last 14 months. Anyway, I won’t go into all the ways the Bay Area sucks, because it really doesn’t in a lot of ways. I’m looking forward to going to an art museum in the next couple of weeks… and I did go to Trader Joe’s last night, so for those of you in Port Townsend that are from here, you probably can read between the lines!
Speaking of rain, we had an “atmospheric river” come through here two days ago. 45+kt gusts, boat heeling in the slip, and it just rocked us to sleep. It was kind of nice. No leaks on the boat either… she’s dry.
The journey has started finally… many years in the making, many years thinking about it individually and together. To hell with status quo!
We’re leavin’ together But still it’s farewell And maybe we’ll come back To Earth, who can tell? I guess there is no one to blame We’re leaving ground (leaving ground) Will things ever be the same again?
I played piano at a friend’s wedding that took place in Stern Grove in San Francisco. It wasn’t the first time I’d ever played piano for a wedding; I’ve been doing that since I was about 13 years old, with my first performance at my mom and Carl’s wedding. I played Bach’s “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring”. If you’ve ever heard or know this piece, it never ends. Ever. Ever ever. It just goes and goes and goes. At 13, I had no sense of the fact that I was just playing for the walk down the aisle… I was playing to hear myself play. Kind of funny when I think about it. Anyway, the last wedding I played with this wedding in Stern Grove, for my friends TJ and Meghan. She had picked out “Lo, How A Rose E’er Blooming” by Franz Schubert. He decided he was going to also walk down the aisle before her, and I was to play a “classical” version of “The Final Countdown” by Europe. Still one of the funniest things I’ve ever done, morphing this silly 80’s piece of music into classical, and I swear not that many people were aware of it at that time.
Anyway, this song has been going through my brain since October 1. We’re in the final three weeks of living in Port Townsend, living amongst much of the stuff we’ve surrounded ourselves over the years, and heading off into a life of who knows… who knows if it will work out, who knows how it will feel, who knows if the boat will be big enough, who knows? And I keep reminding myself that in reality, you just never do know anyway, so really who knows?
Yesterday morning, I had a weird adverse reaction to getting rid of our couch. IT’S JUST A COUCH. But, I like it and it’s comfortable and we’ve had it less than a year. I don’t think it actually had anything to do with the couch. I think it was the sudden “it’s time to let it go” that I had not planned for, even though I know that it’s coming. Also, we can’t land back in the Bay Area until Halloween weekend, so I had to push everything out a week. Not a big deal, gives us more time to get together with people we want to see up here. Just a lot of logistics.
Logistics
lo·gis·tics/ləˈjistiks/ noun: logistics
the detailed coordination of a complex operation involving many people, facilities, or supplies.
This operation is quite complex. Some stuff is going away, some is going into long-term storage, some is coming with us to the Bay Area (and even some of that is coming back up here into storage when it’s time to leave the Bay Area by boat), some is getting sold to neighbors, some is going into the garage sale this weekend, and some we’re giving to our favorite people. We have a staging area in the now empty guestroom with multiple piles, so at least we can continue to live in here without it driving me bonkers (I’m one of those people who hates disorganization; it drives me nuts.)
And in other news…
David spends his days packing and working in his shop when it’s not raining outside (winter is here btw). I’ve been trying to focus on work. David has been cooking every night within the weight loss plan I’m following, and as a result we’ve both lost weight. I’m almost 20 pounds down, and he’s probably close to 20 pounds down too. Last weekend we went to Eugene, Oregon to visit David’s sister Wendy, and enjoyed visiting a winery in the Willamette Valley. We’ll be heading north from the Bay Area to visit her regularly. On the way back we stopped to see our friends Michael and Sylvia at their new two story houseboat on one of the rivers just outside of Portland in the small town of Scappoose. As lovely as that place is, it made Port Townsend look like a metropolis.
Onward. Uncomfortable. Too bad so sad nevermind it, it’s ok. Moving forward. It always works out. My pal Pam says I have a lucky cloud over my head. I’m counting on that.
“Taking on a challenge is a lot like riding a horse, isn’t it? If you’re comfortable while you’re doing it, you’re probably doing it wrong.” ~ Ted Lasso
Yesterday, David graduated from the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding Marine Systems program.
The pandemic-year class that David was in was full of really interesting people. Some veterans, some that were looking to start a different career, some who were retired. Most everyone was from different parts of the country and had moved to the Port Townsend area specifically to attend this school. They are all interesting people.
The 2021 Marine Systems class at the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding
Yesterday also made me think about the circle of our lives in this past year. This time last year seems like such a long time ago, because we managed to pack in a lot of life in the last 365 days. We came up here for David to change his life; it’s so important to me that he be happy and enjoy his life.
David learned a lot in these 6 months, including what he was really good at (diesel mechanics), and what he wasn’t so good at (I’ll let him tell you about that). But, he persisted, and he finished, and I’m proud of him for sticking it out despite his frustration and aggravation (mostly at himself).
Congratulations David on making a HUGE life change, and walking away from your 23 year career for a different future and realizing that…
You get out what you put into this life.
In a year, it’s easy to trace the path of how we ended up where we are now. A year ago if you’d told me that we would be gearing up to move onto a 40′ sailboat to prepare to go cruising, I would have wondered what gummies you recently ingested.
Rent what is probably the only rental house in Port Townsend on a road trip up here in August 2020. (There’s a serious housing shortage here… 10,000 people in the town, and 5,800 houses, many of which are owned by Bay Area people). They don’t call this place “Berkeley North” for nothing!
Leave Point Richmond September 29, 2020. At the time we really thought we would be settling here in the PNW, because Port Townsend was just a larger version of Point Richmond without the large metropolitan area. Neither of us realized what living in a super rural place meant at the time… or what being 2.5 hours from the airport really felt like. (It doesn’t feel good.)
Get on the waitlist for a 36′ slip at Port Hadlock shortly after arriving in Port Townsend. We start to learn how really difficult it is to find a slip in the PNW.
Within 6 months, decide to sell our 36′ boat at Richmond YC because we can’t get a slip in this area.
The new owner of the 36′ boat calls me one morning to talk about the cabinets in our old condo that we had built, because she has the same floor plan and wants to do the same cabinets. During the conversation, she finds out we’re selling our boat, and within a week she’s bought our boat.
As is typical of Murphy’s Law, the boat goes into contract the same day we get a slip at Port Hadlock.
We start looking for another 36′ boat in the PNW. Turns out 36′ boats are as rare to find as size 8 women’s shoes during a shoe sale.
I contact Port Hadlock a month later, and ask to get put on the 40-42′ slip waitlist. She tells me they just had someone leave a 42′ that very day, and asks if I want it. Is that a rhetorical question?
We start looking for a 40-42′ boat, and finally buy one after 5 months of searching.
David officially retires from a real job and decides to do part-time physical therapy and part-time working on our new boat.
And just like that, we take the steering wheel and turn right again, and decide now is the time to get on with the next phase of our lives.
So, here we are within a month of leaving Port Townsend and heading back to the Bay Area, but not back to who we used to be.
We went through an interesting twist this weekend when we started to consider spending another season here in Port Townsend. It was an 18 hour discussion, which resulted in us staying the course that we’d already discussed.
Ultimately I don’t know if it was fear of making a drastic right turn here, fear of the unknown, or just talking about making sure we’re doing the “right thing”. Definitely for me, fear of the unknown does crop up occasionally and is always there in the undercurrents of my brain. Then, I have to remind myself that I never actually DID know what was coming next, and that it’s important to just enjoy the moment and be…
grateful that I’m still upright and breathing.
My brother and I the day I was married in 1991.
This has been an ongoing theme throughout my life. I was first married at 23 years old to a man I met when I was in college. I was the lead alto sax player, and Paul was the lead tenor sax player, in the Boston Conservatory Jazz Band. He was cute cute cute, and was pursuing his degree at MIT (dude graduated top of his class in Electrical Engineering, so he was a smart man too). Every other girl coming out of college was getting engaged, and I wanted to get engaged too. Fear of the unknown drove me to control the entire situation, which resulted in sitting in a mall parking lot “getting engaged” right after we had bought the ring (together) at Zales in the mall.
I had other girlfriends who were getting magical romantic proposals, and as I aged (and now divorced) I realized that I had really shorted myself the
“magic of life”
by worrying about what I couldn’t control but faked myself out to believing I could control it.
Fast forward to meeting David, and even though this same personality quirk was there, I committed to letting myself not get in the way of life. When David asked me to marry him, not only did I not believe him (in fact, my response was “are you fucking with me?”), but David also waited until we were high above the Napa Valley in a hot air balloon trip I had actually bought HIM for his 50th birthday. It was truly romantic and magical and everything I thought only other girls lived through (but not me). Not only all of that, but I ended up with the partner I always wanted, because I stopped trying to control everything. Anyone that knows David knows that he is stubborn and has very firm well-established boundaries. Nobody gonna control that man other than that man.
At 53 years old, I’ve learned to live with this need to control things, and recognize when I’m slipping into these old patterns. I’ve become better at controlling my fear.
When you are making an audacious right turn, and about to jump off a cliff into an abyss you know little about, it’s best to just hold your breath and trust that you will get through this no matter what. The pay off of the experience is better than not experiencing it at all in my opinion.
