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life aboard

Two Months.

Aug 29th, 2011
by Sara.
5 comments

how we hope to spend next week

We left Olympia two months ago today. In some ways it seems like we left E dock yesterday, but the heavy weight of our buckets of memories makes it feel like years ago.

Our friend and crewmember Garth will join us on Friday. If the weather forecast is still clear we will sail due south from Ucluelet towards San Francisco. Our plan is to stick to the inshore route, that is, 10-20 miles off the coast. This area typically has lighter winds although we will have to contend with more shipping traffic and possibly more fog. However should the forecast turn unfavorable we can easily stop in Grays Harbor, Newport, Coos Bay, Crescent City, Eureka.

We’re extremely grateful that we decided to sail down the west coast of Vancouver Island after all; the trip has given the girls and us valuable experience sailing in ocean swells and much greater confidence in sailing together as a family. It’s going to be a whole different ballgame sailing 24/7 for six or seven or eight days straight though without the chance to stretch our legs. I’m thinking it will be like our other long days off the coast have been with lots of naps and much of my time just spent preparing food and cleaning up the aftermath of meals. And hanging on.

For weeks I’ve been quite nervous about our upcoming passage, to the point where I’d be nearly shaking with anxious chills. This is my third trip down this coast and I know how ugly it can get out there. But as the time to depart has come closer I (we) have gotten more and more excited about simply being in California and all the new and old friends we are anxious to meet up with. Weather forecasting has gotten a lot better in the past 10 years and we’ve certainly gotten better at reading it. And after navigating around all these treacherous rocks and islets off Vancouver Island the past few weeks I’m truly looking forward to being out in clear open water for a while.

It’s been becoming more and more of a struggle to stay focused on the present, to savor these last days in the Northwest. At least five times an hour I think of the upcoming trip and what’s on our to-do list before we depart on Saturday and get a little shiver of nervousness and a flutter of excitement about the long glorious hours of sailing ahead and our landfall in an entirely new landscape.

So, today, two months after leaving in Olympia, we pulled back into Ucluelet which is our last Canadian port. We’ll do laundry again, buy some provisions, sew up some leecloths for the girl’s bunks, inspect the rigging, restock our ditch bag, button up down below, and head to the playground in town a few more times. The shakedown is over, now it’s time to sail.

Swimming on the Sunshine Coast (Garden Bay, Pender Harbour)

Jul 27th, 2011
by Sara.
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P.S. Loads of photos just uploaded to our Flickr account!

A cruising kid’s dream anchorage

Jul 22nd, 2011
by Sara.
2 comments

While Holly was napping today Michael, Leah and I were enjoying the afternoon sun in the cockpit. Michael was spying around our anchorage here in Cadboro Bay with the binoculars. He stops his scanning suddenly in the far end of the bay.

“A playground!”

The dinghy is launched and when Holly is up a shoreside excursion commences.

The girls of s/v Wondertime rate Cadboro anchorage as one of the best ever.

Books as ballast

Jun 6th, 2011
by Sara.
6 comments

Wondertime's bookshelf. Already a bit crowded....

With nearly all systems ready and the standing rigging replacement just about complete, Michael and I have been left to concentrate on tucking away the hundreds of pounds of spare parts, tools, clothes, sails, toys, art supplies and books we want to take along into Wondertime’s cubbies. As it currently stands, by the time we get around to packing the food on board it appears that we’ll all be stuffing our pillows with dried rice and pasta. But as always, I’m sure everything will find it’s place eventually.

My job this week is to sort through the eight crates of books that have been in our storage locker and make the painful choice as to which ones go with us, which ones stay in their crates and which ones go on to new homes. This is no easy task: I’ve already weeded out our book collections many times previously, moving from house to house and then onboard Wondertime last year. The remaining ones are our very favorites and now it’s time to weed through them and pick out our very very favorites.

Today, I sorted through our three crates of sailing books. This actually wasn’t too difficult as many of them are collectibles we’ve already read so I easily filled a crate with those books. Others were outdated (but beloved) guidebooks from past cruises, favorite old “how to go cruising” books (before we found out the only way to really find out how to go cruising is to GO cruising), and a variety of reference books that we haven’t cracked since Google was invented. Another crate holds our favorite sailing stories. I will no doubt miss these and yearn to reread many as we travel (I am sure a fourth reading of Maiden Voyage is in my future). I am also fairly certain we will procure ourselves a Kindle or Nook at some point so I am just going to have faith that I’ll be able to access these stories easily one day even as they are tucked safely away in our storage closet in Olympia.

Finally, the chosen few were selected and packed into a relatively small cardboard box for transport afloat: Charlie’s Charts of Mexico, our Mexico Lonely Planet guides, Nigel Calder’s Boatowner’s Mechanical and Electrical Manual, our British Columbia cruising guides, a book on celestial navigation, our Storm Tactics Handbook, Spanish for Cruisers. Wondertime’s bookshelf space is at a premium and while I am the type of person that just loves to have books around because they look nice, only the ones that will actually be read and used make the cut.

That done, I am now moving on to my cookbooks, fiction books, general reference books, children’s picture books and children’s chapter books. I have a sneaking suspicion that there is going to be yet another round of book sorting.

We have sprouted!

May 25th, 2011
by Sara.
1 comment

We have finally done it! The crew of Wondertime has grown something edible! I am excited to announce that our sprouting experiment was a complete success. Not only did we produce crunchy, fresh sprouts on our first try, they were also delicious. We will definitely be keeping our sprout garden growing as we sail; we are all looking forward to having fresh crisp greens whenever we want, especially when land-based greens are in short (or non-existent) supply.

For simplicity’s sake, I went ahead and bought a sprouting kit online which included a quart-sized Ball jar, sprouting lid and organic alfalfa seeds and instructions. When the kit arrived we set about sprouting by:

  1. soaking a few tablespoons of the alfalfa seeds in the jar in a dark place overnight (or about 8 hours)
  2. draining the seeds and placing jar back in their dark cupboard with the green lid down and the jar at a 45 degree angle
  3. rinsing and draining the sproutlings twice a day
  4. four days later our little sprouts were ready for….

 

Interview with a (soon to be) cruiser: Leah

May 23rd, 2011
by Sara.
4 comments

In case you haven’t seen the Interview With a Cruiser Project website do head over there (after reading this post of course!) and check it out. Livia of Estrellita 5.10b maintains this collection of interviews with cruisers who have/had been out there for at least two years with a new interview posted each Monday. It is fascinating; what strikes me is how differently we all do the same thing.

Another family, currently on the east coast but setting out any day on a looong drive to their new-to-them boat Del Viento down south  in Mexico, posted a couple of interviews with their soon-to-be-cruising two daughters. To add to the little collection of soon-to-be-cruiser interviews, here’s Leah’s take on our whole endeavor:

How old are you?

Five.

What is the name of your boat?

Wondertime

What are you going to be doing this summer?

Hmmm….sailing?

What is your favorite part about living on a boat?

Looking for sea creatures.

What is your favorite thing to do on the boat?

Playing horse!

Is there anything you are afraid of about being on the boat?

The dark.

What don’t you like about living on the boat?

There’s nothing I don’t like.

What are you going to do when we get to Mexico?

I would like to go ashore and look for sea creatures. But I don’t know because I haven’t been there yet.

What is school going to be like next year?

I don’t know.

What are some of the rules that you need to follow on the boat?

Don’t go on the deck without a life jacket. No playing on the steps!

What is your room like?

Lots of stuffed animals. And anchor chain.

What will you do when you are bored?

Play with My Little Ponies.

What are you most excited about traveling on the boat?

Snorkeling!

An addition to the fleet

May 16th, 2011
by Sara.
1 comment

Almost the entire summer last year we scoured Craigslist in search of a sailing dinghy. At the time, we didn’t have any intention of taking one cruising with us (where on earth would we put it?)  but we yearned for a little sailing boat to take out after work or on the weekend, one we could rig up quickly and be off sailing in minutes, unlike the hours it takes to get the big boat ready. Besides, sailing little boats is such a sweet lovely pastime: the big boat takes us places but a little 8′ or 10′ boat would just take us around in quiet joyful circles. Our search for a small, affordable boat was fruitless and before we knew it fall had arrived and it was soon much too chilly to mess around on the water much.

With so many projects underway and tasks to check off we haven’t even had time to think about starting up the search for a small sailing boat this spring. But what has happened so many times to us happened again: what we stopped searching for found us. This past weekend our dock neighbors and friends, also a liveaboard family of four, found a great deal on a larger fiberglass sailing dinghy. They’d toted a Walker Bay 10 with them all around the Puget Sound, sailing around countless anchorages with all four family members plus their dog aboard. We were honored when they asked if we’d like to have their beloved dinghy.

Of course we gratefully accepted, rigged the little boat up, bundled up the girls and Michael was off with them on their first dinghy sail. She scooted along our bay in about 5 knots of wind. “We’re gliding!” Leah beamed as they silently circled the bay. It was not the type of dinghy we had been searching for, but with the incredibly easy sailing rig, stable and indestructible hull our new little Walker Bay seems to be just right for now. Besides, with four people on board we are bound to need more tenders.

Michael is on the aft deck as I type this, taking measurements to see if we can fit some davits to accommodate our growing fleet. Looks like we may be cruising with a sailing dinghy after all.

A light, a friendship, and a job done

May 2nd, 2011
by Sara.
2 comments

Eric and Angela, s/v Rouser (Tenacatita)

When we were getting ready to set off cruising in 2002, we received an innocent email from a couple also gearing up to head south that year. The crew of s/v Rouser, Eric and Angela, lived south of us in Olympia (we were still in Seattle at the time), had just found our blog, and were excited to find another couple getting ready to set sail that was also well south of retirement age (27). Since we had never sailed to the south Puget Sound before, we took a week in late July that year to meander down that way and get a personal tour of the town of Olympia from our new friends. We hit it off right from the start and made plans to meet up again in San Francisco in a few weeks. Which we did: right after Michael and I passed under the Golden Gate, Eric and Angela zoomed out in their dinghy off Sausalito to greet us, having arrived the week before.

We sailed together for the most part of the next six months, exploring southern California and the Channel Islands, sailing across the US/Mexican border together, Baja California, crossing over to mainland Mexico to Puerto Vallarta, then down to our most southern anchorage of Tenacatita, where we stayed for a month in January-February 2003. I remember countless evenings spent with what soon felt like old friends: laughter and food and drinks, hikes, exploring small dusty Mexican towns, our New Years road trip inland to Guanajuato, bonfires and music on the beach, sailing side by side to a new destination.

And then, as it always does with while cruising, it came time to say farewell. Rouser was preparing to puddle jump to the Marquesas that spring and had decided to sail farther south to Zihuatanejo to depart from. We were heading north to spend spring in the Sea of Cortez. The day had come when we had to part ways.

It was a teary afternoon; we said our goodbyes quickly. We said we would keep in touch via email (which we did) and visit together in the future (which we have). Angela is from Minnesota so we gave them a copy of Lake Wobegon Days to read on their way across the much bigger lake. They gifted us with a nice tri-color/anchor light that they had as a spare, inscribed. I think Michael had always lamented that Pelican did not have a tri-color at the top of her mast, which would be much more visible at night than our deck-level navigation lights when sailing. We were touched that our friends wanted us to be visible too.

Eric and Angela made it all the way to New Zealand, and we made it all the way back to Seattle. Our gift never made it to the top of Pelican’s mast for reasons I can’t recall now. But we’ve toted that bubble-wrapped light around with us for eight years, through another boat and two houses. Now on Wondertime we were hardly surprised to find out that she didn’t feature a nice tri-color light, but a burned-out rusty single anchor light at the top of her mast.

Now she does. Our beloved gifted tri-color light is sporting new high-efficiency LED bulbs up at the top of Wondertime’s mast. We now shine brightly in the night sky. Friendship made visible.

The Ship’s Cat

Apr 7th, 2011
by Sara.
6 comments

Over 12 years ago, Michael and I were spending a Saturday morning browsing the cat department of the Seattle Animal Shelter (always a dangerous thing to do) when this small, brown and white tabby striped kitten reached her little snowy paw out of her cage, hooked Michael’s arm with her delicate claws, looked up at him and mewed.

We named our new cat Xena and she settled into our small Fremont apartment rather well, joining our other cat Precious (who was not entirely thrilled about the new family member but soon grew fond of her anyway). Our small warrior cat proved to be quite the adventurer: we would find her clinging to the tops of doors on a regular basis and she could leap nearly five feet into the air to catch a toy birdie.

So when a few months later we moved aboard our first boat, Jenny P, Xena was in cat heaven. She took to boat life right away, loving all the fresh sea air, bird watching, cozy spots to snuggle into and nap, soaking up the rays of sun on deck, and plenty of leaping and climbing. Sure, we’ve lost her a few times (like when she ran off the night before we left for Alaska and we finally found her the next morning three docks away) and she’s gone overboard too many times to count. I’m pretty sure Xena is living her current life on credit but she’s still here with us, now aboard Wondertime and no doubt looking forward to adding more stamps to her passport.

On the other hand, we have not been so sure. Having a cat on board, and a geriatric insanely talkative one at that, is a lot more work than, well, not. You throw in two small children and you pretty much have the potential for mind-reeling chaos at any moment. There is cat litter, food, shots, vet visits to deal with. Hairballs. Yowling. There is being awakened at 5 am by a whirling snarling hissing sound up on deck, which is what happens when the neighbor cat down the dock tries to sneak aboard and Xena finds out. When we are sailing, Xena insists, without fail, that she be sitting upon a human’s lap. She is growing more and more nervous in her old age, taking to pacing the boat, yoooooowling. My pillow is her favorite place to sleep but it’s also her favorite place to clean her butt. She has invented this game which she must call Travel Around the Boat Without Stepping Upon the Floor (basically leaping from table to counter top to stairs and back again) but she is just not as agile as she once was and there are claw marks everywhere where she has tried to save herself from, gasp, touching the floor.

Besides the day to day annoyances of having a boat cat, there is also the question of what we’ll do with her when we want to travel inland in Mexico and elsewhere. It would sure be nice to not have to worry about procuring a catsitter. If she is still around when we sail to New Zealand, we are just not convinced it’s worth paying the thousands of dollars it currently costs to import a foreign cat — and likely a 15 year-old one — onto Kiwi soil.

A month or so ago we made the final decision, after hemming and hawing for months, that this time we’d be sailing cat-free. We had started talking with some friends and family members and had a couple possibilities for a nice quiet place for Xena to stay to live out her senior years. It really was the sanest, best decision.

Then just a few days ago, the girls and I were walking down the dock back to the boat after an outing. Xena came running out to meet us and started rolling at our feet on the dock in greeting. Holly leaned down to give her a hug, and in her adorable 2-1/2 year-old voice said: “I love you Xena!”

My heart darn near burst.

Well, that’s it then. We are suckers for our furry friends as always and as inconvenient as having feline crew is, Xena is part of our family and our girls simply adore her and Xena adores them. We can’t imagine not having her along. She’d be pretty upset if she found out we were heading for the sun, anyway. Mexico was always her favorite country.

A little bit of earth

Mar 30th, 2011
by Sara.
1 comment

I’m going to admit something to the whole wide world (well, at least the teensy corner that reads this blog): I. Hate. Gardening.

Seriously, I can’t think of anything I’d rather not be doing than getting dirt under my fingernails pulling weeds, planting bulbs, and basically doing whatever it is gardeners love to do that requires knee pads and rubber shoes. The weeds in the last two places we lived ashore completely took over the yard each and every summer. Embarrassing, really, but not enough so to overcome each excuse I was able to come up with to avoid pulling them. I really do think this is the biggest reason I love living on a boat: no need to touch dirt with my hands, ever.

However, let me be clear: I LOVE the idea of gardening. I love visiting gardens, lounging in gardens, enjoying fruits and vegetables grown in a small garden, and admiring my friends’ green thumb handiwork. I drool over the lovely landscapes in Sunset magazine. I even had a number of houseplants when we lived ashore and I enjoyed them as long as they didn’t outgrow their pots and just asked for a cup of water every month or two.

Our oldest daughter, Leah, on the other hand, loves dirt just about as much as I dislike it. She adores digging in it, planting things in it, finding worms in it, burying — shudder — her hands and feet in it. She relishes the feeling of cool gritty earth on her skin and under her nails. I suspect she has a bit of a green thumb.

From the time she was two she has begged me to plant things and since she has been the one to do the actual digging I have happily obliged. Last summer, Leah began drawing up plans to plant all sorts of crops on board our boat: tomatoes, basil, strawberries. This time, I had to patiently explain that we just are not able to cover our decks with pots of growing food as it is difficult to, well, sail with dirt flying around and stuff.

So with the arrival of spring recently her requests to grow things began to crop up again: one day she asked me if we could plant some chives. That I agreed to: I felt I could handle a small pot of greens, especially since they go so nicely with hot baked potatoes and butter. After procuring some seeds, we re-purposed a small plastic container (me having gleefully given away all our lovely empty ceramic pots last summer before moving aboard) and I, armed with a large spoon, headed up to the marina parking lot gardens to dig up some dirt. Back on the boat, I described to Leah how to sprinkle the seeds over the dirt and cover them up with a light blanket of soil.

Sadly, nearly a month had gone by and nothing seemed to be happening in this little pot of earth. I chalked it up to yet another of my failed attempts to grow something edible. But then, just the other day I glanced over at the little pot that has been living under our dodger and noticed something green growing in there. Either weeds are sprouting up from our borrowed marina dirt or we may actually have some chives soon.

I am now feeling quite buoyed by our gardening attempt and am ready to embark on yet another food-growing goal: sprouts! I found a delightful old book on sprouting while cleaning out my late mother’s cookbook collection last year and saved it, having heard about sprouts being the perfect thing to grow on a boat. With no dirt required(!) I think fresh crisp greens grown in a jar may be just the crop for us. I’ll keep you posted.

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