Dan and Jaye's cruising blog: Kumatage (reflections on the water)

As long as I’m on the general subject of downsizing – and I’ve got to tell you, I was utterly over-the-moon blown away by the feedback I got on “ Take It or Leave It ;” thanx everyone – I thought I’d mention a few more strategies that got us through the transition.  Of course keeping our possessions from accumulating, and keeping them organized is an ongoing project as we evolve, and things that once were useful or spoke to us are no longer relevant.  We take on new interests and let go of old ones, we learn what we needed to from books and pass them on, and technology changes.  And no matter how logical we are, those pesky emotions and sentimental attachments to items sometimes just have to be respected.  These downsizing strategies worked for us in the extreme constraints of moving to a small sailboat; a looser interpretation would apply to downsizers on land as well. On land, decluttering days were guided by British craftsman William Morris’ dictum: “Have not...

In an upscale suburb of Lansing, Michigan, a woman walked through her living room.  She picked up a perfectly shaped, intricately detailed red lacquer Chinese vase, and turned it over in her hands.  “Singapore,” she thought.  “1982. With my parents.  I spent almost a week’s wages for this thing; I’m not very good at bargaining.”  She sighed and replaced it on the shelf it shared with a stack of books, a crystal bowl from her wedding, and some oddly-textured cholla cactus wood from a vacation in New Mexico.    All of these things, these pieces of her history, were going to be left behind.  Who else could ever cherish these as she did, and understand their stories? I half-recognize her, pensive and overwhelmed.  She’s me, 10 years ago, sorting through a houseful of possessions deciding what to let go of, what to pack into storage, and what to take along.  It was a very emotional transition, disengaging from the accumulated treasures o...

This was written as part of this month’s Raft UP and I seem to have taken the story in somewhat of my own tangent.  To address this month’s questions more directly: What did you bring that you didn’t need? What did you leave behind that you wished you’d taken? What are your space splurges? What do you wish you’d known, that first year?  Here goes: Despite the massive downsizing, there were things that we took with us that we didn’t need.  One was most first-aid supplies, but those are a different category because you take along but don’t want to need.  The others?   The books and the pasta machine and the pastels?  Once we settled a bit into our new lives, I did get back to reading; although many of the books now are not the ones I brought; many of them came from independent bookstores in the places we visit and are specific to the local areas we’re in. The pasta machine is rusting in a bag somewhere as our creative cooking instead has evolved to incor...

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2012 We're In a Bit of Hot Water (I wish!) Our hot water heater died.  Fairly dramatically, as in “spewed water all over the cabin sole while the pump ran every few minutes” died.   This might be tolerable for a while in July.  But in chilly late November, hot water at home is one of those things we take for granted that I definitely did not want to do without.  So while Dan twisted himself into an impossible shape to climb into the locker and remove it, I got busy on the internet shopping for a replacement.  He was successful.  I wasn’t. Just a couple of weeks ago I had given a  talk to a group of retired environmental scientists  about our life on the boat and the science tidbits we encountered while cruising, and at one point talked about average water use in the U.S. and how we had to be careful of our use aboard; how we could make 120 gallons of fresh water for cooking, drinking, and bathing last 3-4 ...

Dan knows how to sew and cook, and this summer I learned that bluest of blue jobs, rebuilding the carburetor on our outboard.  Dan's grandparents divvied up chores on the farm this way.  Anything indoors was Mom and the girl children's responsibility, cooking and cleaning and laundry; and anything outdoors was Dad and the boys' job, plowing and harvesting and feeding the cattle and reroofing the barn.  And so many cruising couples we know do essentially the same thing: "she" cooks and cleans and stores provisions and chooses the window covers.  Sometimes she sews, even including the sails.  "He" makes the boat go and gets it there, changes the engine oil and takes the helm and chooses the anchor.  Um, yeah.  Having lived through the 1950s once (at least part of the 1950s, even though I was too young to really remember it) I have no wish to do it again, but that's what these roles remind me of. A fellow writer was working on an article ...

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2012 Of Well-Funded Adventures -- Or Not The Most Intriguing Thing I Ever Learned Over a Cup of Coffee So I had met this guy who called himself “Joe the Cobbler” in a sailing forum online.  We found ourselves arguing opposite sides of discussions on the value of a college education (even though he’s a college graduate), of anchoring rights (even though he’s meticulous about honoring the rules of the places he visits even when he doesn’t agree with them), who knows what else.  Ever since, we’ve eyed each other a little bit warily online…then came a discussion a few weeks before the election, when tensions were high everywhere, that looked for a moment like it was going to turn downright nasty and class-warfare-ish, and instead became a startling breakthrough that not all members of a labeled economic group like the 1% or the 47% think alike. Yes,  of course  this insight is not all that profound in “real life,” but on the internet...

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2012 Hurricane Prep Checklist Satellite view of Sandy (photo: NOAA) So, by the way, what did we do to get the boat - and us - ready for last week's superstorm? Our marina slip is new, it was rebuilt only 3 or 4 years ago.  It is surrounded by 8 stout pilings each about 8 feet tall, and it's oversize for our boat.  A 33 foot long by 11 foot wide boat in a slip that's 50x18 has lots of room to rattle around in.  And its sheltered from open water.  All of these were considerations in our deciding to ride out the storm in the slip instead of going to a mooring, anchoring in even more sheltered water, or hauling the boat to endure the storm on dry land. Our good friend David K. lives on his boat in the U.S. Virgin Islands and has survived numerous hurricanes. He warned us that it takes 4 days to have a hurricane: a day to get the boat ready, a day to have the storm, a day to rest, and then a day to put the boat back together - and tha...

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2012 Provisioning Up Every cruising blog seems to have a photo like this.  Shopping for all this food was the easy part.  I'm going to stow it  where  exactly? “You should bring enough food to be able to live off your stores for 3 months without ever seeing a supermarket,” advised our experienced cruiser friends as my eyes widened.  “And 6 months for things where you really want your specific brand.”  It was late springtime in Annapolis and we were planning our trip to the deserted Bahamas Out Islands for the coming winter.  “Okay, then,” I responded with a calm I definitely did not feel, while trying to decide if I needed my regular brand of organic, fire-roasted, petite-diced canned tomatoes or just generic canned tomatoes.  This was going to be the real deal – just us, deserted tropical islands.  No grocery stores.  No  people . That summer was the planning time.  For months, I kept...

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2012 Loss of the Bounty Bounty , in happier days Well,  here’s  the post I didn’t want to write.  While we were hiding from hurricane/superstorm Sandy, the wonderful historic ship was sailing from New England to their intended winter port of St Petersburg, FL, which meant that they were sharing the Atlantic with Sandy.  And as you probably learned by now, it’s been all over the news, they didn’t make it.  The Coast Guard staged an heroic rescue, saving 14 of the 16 aboard; the ship sank in the Graveyard of the Atlantic off Cape Hatteras.  The captain apparently went down with the ship – poetically appropriate for the period, tragically romantic, but horrible – and another crew member was lost. Why were they out in the storm?  Were they so schedule-driven as to take a foolish risk?  The same modern weather forecasting ability that told us the storm was coming, also allowed them to know where the storm was. ...

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2012 Sandy (Part 2) Back aboard, we and the boat are chilly but ok. Wind gust of 90 reported last night at Bay Bridge. Storm center (not an "eye" because it wasn't officially a hurricane when it came ashore and mixed with the cold front according to NWS) stalled over Baltimore area last night at midnight - we noticed an eerie drop in wind speed around that time before it abruptly started up again.  Had we been aboard, we would have watched the low pressure  peg the dial  on our barometer (938 mb?) Water here at our marina is to the stringers but not over the docks; or about 2-3 ft above normal. No major casualties; a couple of shredded biminis. . Taking the day off to rest, recover, and process the storm. And to raise a glass to all who were on duty during the storm yesterday - Navy, Coast Guard, LEOs, ... and our excellent marina staff.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2012 Sandy! (part 1) We've stayed aboard for 3 other hurricanes - Lenny (St Thomas), Isabel and Irene (Annapolis). But this Sandy scares us. Not so much it's strength, done that before, but the immense size = long duration. We took ALL the canvas off Cinderella and tied her with 14 docklines. She's centered in the middle of that giant slip we live in; we almost needed to use the dinghy to exit.  The slip is ridiculuously overbuilt - 33 foot boat in a 50 foot slip, plenty of room to rattle around in, and 8, 8-foot pilings.  We left about 5 PM yesterday, and are hanging out in our marina's lounge. With its leather sofas, flat-screen TV and microwave, etc, we have all the comforts of home. More comforts than home, actually, we don't even have those things on the boat. Plus, we're on the second story, no flooding, no trees around to fall on us, and a good view of the creek. Met up with friend Dave last night, he's riding it out...

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2012 A Bit of Public Speaking (Image from  http://www.pivotalpublicspeaking.com ) There’s an oft-quoted statistic in business and self-help books that says it is very common to have a deep fear of public speaking. I was most definitely born without that gene. What can I tell you? I’m a Leo, and if you study astrology it claims that Leos  like  being the center of attention. So when a friend asked if we would please please  please consider hosting a session on resources for cruisers traveling the ICW, I secretly considered it an opportunity to accomplish several things with a single act. (“Two birds with one stone,” and all that, but I hate that analogy, since dead birds just don’t make me happy.) We could pass on to other cruisers the wonderful mentoring that we had received from James and Ellen before our first trip, and … we could get the requester in our debt for doing something that was really not very unpleasant at all. Nev...

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2012 Raft Up: Fear A bolt of lightning = a bolt of fear for me My grandmother was a fearful person and a famous in our family for worrying.  If we were late arriving for a visit, the cause wasn’t simply that we were delayed in traffic.  Undoubtedly we had gotten into a serious wreck, or gotten lost in a dangerous area of town and been attacked, or (who knows?) washed away in a flood or struck by lightning or eaten by dinosaurs.  She gets a by on this fear: there are family stories about how she, and her brothers and sister, were smuggled across WWI Europe as a nubile teenager.  I don’t doubt that the things she saw and experienced in those days earned her the right to nightmares. My mother grew up with a mother who was always, always, looking over her shoulder and imagining that bad things had happened/were happening/were about to happen to her family.  So, growing up with that kind of discomfort, no matter how much she wo...