My Biker Girl By Michael

Go Frances, go!

A cruising boat is no place to learn to ride a bike.

This was Windy's epiphany smack in the middle of the increasing and urgent chaos that characterized our lives these past 4-6 months. After much encouragement and several practice runs on the park field and on the sidewalk, Frances--the last of the Robertsons to abandon the training wheels--finally reached the point this evening where she can claim confidently and legitimately: "I know how to ride a bike!"

Now if only the girls were strong swimmers...

--MR

So Much, So Fast By Michael

Our new trailer friend

Today I invited a good friend and her family over for a farewell dinner and margaritas on May 21. The 21st sounded so far away, too close to the end of this month to be soon, so I was surprised when I realized it's this Saturday, 72 hours away. That's kind of been the way of things. If I were given to panic attacks, I'd probably be having them now. How can I possibly do all of the things and see all the people that I want before we leave D.C.?

I gave my official notice at work this week; my last day will be May 31. All of the outstanding house sale contingencies are out of the way, so we are nearly certain to become homeless on June 3, as planned. Last night we brought home the trailer we bought for the road trip.

Oh, and I lost my battle with the DMV. The powers that be insist there is no means for entering a non-D.C. address on their driver's license. Their advice? "You're gonna have to find a friend or neighbor who will let you use their address." Okay, I have just the person in mind.

--MR

What To Do? By Michael

So this past week I've been working to change our mailing address with magazines, banks, credit card companies, AAA, the girls' 529 plan administrator...the list goes on and on. So far, things have gone smoothly. But when I tried to change our address with the DC DMV, they balked.

Here's the situation: The day we close on the house sale, we won’t have a DC mailing address nor any material connection to the District. The DMV says they won't put an out-of-state address on my DC driver's license (the mail forwarding company we signed up with is in Florida). We're gonna need driver’s licenses in our new life (what if we rent or borrow a car?) and I don’t know how we’re gonna get them.

My argument to the DC government is that we are going to continue to file a DC income tax return and we are not intending to set up residency nor domicile in any other state. As I understand the law, for legal purposes, our residency or domicile remains in DC until we become domiciled in another state--and using a Florida-based mail-forwarding service is not nearly enough to do so.

Regular government bureaucracy can be trying, but when you have to explain the whole idea of sailboat cruising and our particular plans to every person up the chain of command, it takes it to a whole new level. I think they're gonna have to come through and allow us to retain our DC licenses with our Florida address printed on the front, I don't see any way around it. I’m waiting now for a return call from the director’s office at the DC DMV. Stay tuned…(and any advice or input is welcome).

--MR

Hitched By Michael

Grinding a hole in the frame

Sometimes things just go smoothly. It rarely happens, and it isn't the way of things, but sometimes--just sometimes--if your expectations are low enough and Murphy is out to lunch, things can go unexpectedly well.

A week ago, I had no idea folks installed their own trailer hitches on their vehicles. Of course, there are exceptions, guys like my brother-in-law Shawn who keeps industrial-grade welding equipment in his garage and will build a full-blown monster truck over the weekend out of scrap metal. I would expect him to install his own trailer hitch. But normal folks?

I found etrailer.com. They sell hitches and wiring kits for what seems like every vehicle on earth, for cheap. The hitch bracket came in a giant box with sparse instructions that had me detaching the muffler, unbolting a heat shield, removing the charcoal fume canister, enlarging existing holes in the frame, and drilling new ones.

I saw so much room for disaster. If the thing was tweaked and holes didn't line up, I'd be sunk. If my bit wasn't up to drilling through the frame, I'd be sunk. Could they really have configured this thing to fit just my vehicle? (It's not an F-150--how many 1999 Ford Escort Wagons are there with trailer hitches?)

Well, total success. The Dremel I bought recently for boat use was a huge help, making it easy to enlarge existing holes in the frame as required. I started this project tonight after work and was finished in a couple hours. I still have the wiring to do, but otherwise we are ready to buy our trailer for the Big Trip.

The appraisal is scheduled for tomorrow. Damn, things are happening fast. We've got our fingers crossed.

--MR

Compression By Windy

Packing up the house in preparation for moving is a huge task. My focus now is clearing the attic to create a staging area for stuff. What looks like an avalanche of crap (okay it is) is the beginning of our Boat, Storage, and Sell/Give piles.

At the same time that I'm sorting everything, I'm also trying to repackage things for the limited space we'll have on board. For the board games we are taking with us, I'm stacking all of the boards, bagging up their individual pieces, and chucking the boxes they came in. Repackaging games is unexpectedly satisfying.

--WR


All that packaging for what amounts
to a fistful of cards

Port Lights! By Michael

My mom and a port

While in California last month visiting all of our SoCal relatives, we got to see for the first time the seven new stainless steel port lights we ordered at the boat show last October. I asked the vendor, New Found Metals, to send them directly to my parent’s house. The plan is to pick them up from there on our road trip to Mexico, one less thing to schlep across the country.

Wow, are they beautiful—and heavy like cast iron. Three of the ten 1978-vintage ports on the boat are opening, but the rest are fixed, plastic, show evidence of leaking, and are no longer clear. I can’t stand the thought of removing and re-bedding the old port lights and we are eager for the additional ventilation these will offer.

Wow, are they expensive. But because they are an odd size (3x17), I was glad NFM stocks them as standard. But still, and even at boat show prices, the seven gorgeous port lights, screens, teak spacers, ss fasteners, countersink, and butyl cost more than two boat bucks. Putting aside the tangible benefits of ventilation and strength—and even putting aside the intangible benefits of aesthetic improvements and anticipated reduced maintenance—I justified the cost on the basis that we will get it back someday in higher resale value…no, stop laughing…c’mon…stop laughing...

--MR

Healthcare and Cruising By Michael

Several of the responses to my guest post on Get Rich Slowly (mostly an audience without a knowledge or understanding of the cruising community) asked simply, "What about health insurance?" As our departure date approaches, we are crossing one thing after another off our list(s). But one thing we haven't yet resolved is whether or not to buy health insurance (and not having health insurance does not mean not having health care).

Windy bandaged up and listening to her instructor at NOLS



In the United States, the cost of health care rightly leaves folks feeling like health insurance is an imperative. The employer-based nature of our health insurance industry leaves many folks feeling like maintaining a relationship with an employer who will make you a de facto member of a group policy, is an imperative. Furthermore, switching employers severs ties to that group and can leave you unable to join another group, should you have any pre-existing condition. Because illness and corresponding health care expenses are one path to personal bankruptcy in the U.S., it is understandable that the first mental roadblock when contemplating an adventure like ours is, "What about health insurance."

Well, we've already decided to leave the employer-based system and the only question that remains is whether or not to purchase insurance on our own, and if we do, what kind?
As I see it, there are three non-employer-based health insurance options for the U.S.-based cruiser:

• A traditional policy through a U.S.-based company like Blue Cross/Blue Shield. This can be either a policy akin to what most folks get from their employer (in terms of coverage and deductible limits) or it can be a high-deductible ($5,000 to $10,000) policy that includes defined lifetime caps.


• A traditional policy through a company based in the country we happen to be in for an extended period of time. These policies are used by cruisers who spend many months, or years, in one country. Mexico is the example I am most familiar with. In several ports of call, there are cruisers who have obtained FM3s, or long-term non-immigrant visas. They often carry insurance through Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS) and/or a private carrier. In both cases the costs are almost negligible.


• An international policy that provides coverage in any country. These policies are underwritten by non-U.S. companies and intended for long-term international travelers and feature high-deductibles. Not surprisingly, they universally limit to six months per calendar year the amount of time that can be spent in the U.S..

I've looked into the first option and the cost is prohibitive (roughly $7,000 per year for our family), even with a large deductible ($5,000). Even if costs were within our budget, coverage is not designed for folks who receive care outside of the U.S.. For us, this option is not really an option.

The second option, buying into the Mexican system for the time we are there, and perhaps supplementing this with a private carrier, is attractive, for the time we are in Mexico. I've read numerous accounts by cruisers in Mexico who have received excellent care, for everything from routine dental work to complicated surgeries. I have no reservations about Mexican health care for us and the total costs are comparable to what we pay in co-pays and deductibles in the U.S.. I've read that the annual cost of IMSS is $250 per person.

The third option is a popular one. I read last year on Lin and Larry Pardey's blog about their 2002 research leading them to purchase health insurance through Lifeboat Medical Insurance. Another company I read good things about is Seven Corners and their Reside plan. (Note: Seven Corners happens to also be the administrator of the Lifeboat plan, though I think the underwriters are different, and the rates for Lifeboat seem to be a bit lower, but require membership in the Charter Yacht Society, only $25) I received quotes from both companies for our family at roughly $1,800 per year (Reside) and $1,500 per year (Lifeboat), with a $5K deductible. These companies are attuned to the needs of folks of all nationalities living and travelling all over the world.

Just based on blogs I've read, I suspect there are cruisers, and even cruising families, who do not carry health care insurance of any kind. For all of my adult life it would have seemed an insane proposition: considering whether or not to maintain health insurance. Even in the early stages of planning for this lifestyle change, we assumed we'd budget for the premiums of high-deductible private health insurance (often referred to in the industry as a catastrophic plan).

But I am no longer certain we will purchase conventional health insurance, perhaps at least not right away, perhaps not for the time we are in Mexico and have access to excellent care for very low cost. What we may decide to do is to remain uninsured while in Mexico, and purchase high-deductible international coverage when we leave. (The only hitch I imagine is whether a gap in coverage will present a problem when re-entering the market.)

Too, cruisers are a self-sufficient lot, often because we have to be. If you are anchored on a remote spot in the Sea of Cortez, you will address a whole range of injuries yourself that you would not think to address in a land-based U.S. life, simply because neither an ambulance nor a drive to the hospital is an option. Windy completed a comprehensive National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) First Responder course last year and she is busy putting together a comprehensive medical kit, complete with prescription antibiotics and painkillers.

Additional thoughts on addressing health care as we prepare to move aboard:

• Another consideration is the period of time between quitting my job and crossing the border into Mexico. During that time, we will be doing a lot of driving and I may be able to increase the coverage for accident medical insurance on our auto policy.



http://www.diversalertnetwork.org/



• What also warrants mention is the emergency medical evacuation insurance that Divers Alert Network (DAN) provides for a nominal annual fee ($55 per year for a family). They have a stellar reputation for repatriating insureds in the event of medical trauma (emergency medical evacuation). Joining this network is on our list of things to do before we leave.


• While advances in health care technology and knowledge in the United States are impressive, I think that the system under which that technology and knowledge are administered is messed up. First, for lack of tort reform in this country, the threat of litigation forces doctors to increase the number of interventions. No matter how advanced those interventions are, they are often generally counterproductive when they are unnecessary. In 2007, I wrote about this phenomenon (that is not me in the picture) in Mothering magazine with respect to pregnancy and our decision to home birth our girls. Furthermore, unnecessary interventions increase the cost of health care, along with the high cost of premiums doctors pay to insure themselves against litigation. These self-perpetuating factors are the reason our health care costs are the highest in the world. And because they are the highest in the world, all non-U.S. based companies that provide coverage throughout the globe, restrict access to care in only one country: ours.

--MR

The How Of It All By Michael

A few weeks back, I wrote here about an article I wrote for the personal finance blog, Get Rich Slowly. The article is about our decision to turn our lives upside down and is titled, "Sailing Away from the American Dream." That article is out today.

Our decision to drop out and sail the oceans of the world on a boat (more thoughts on this here) is the basis for interesting philosophical discussions with folks, especially other families, who are not so inclined. But before those discussions can take place, the big elephant in the room is the how of what we are doing. How in the world can we quit our jobs and live without working? The assumptions people have are usually expressed in questions that come up right away: "How long are you going to do this for?" and, "Is it your boat?"

If I answer, "Indefinitely," and "Yes," I'm bound to explain that we have not inherited a small fortune nor won the lottery. I usually offer that we are of modest means, but that we've been good savers and that the cruising lifestyle can be much less expensive than what most imagine. 

But the details about how we are making this possible usually go unanswered. Hopefully this article on Get Rich Slowly will provide those answers and thereby motivate others able and inclined to follow a similar path. Also, cruisers aboard Just A Minute provide their well-put perspective on the topic in their recent post, "About Money."

While I plan to supplement our cruising kitty by selling my writing, it may be that we find we need to stop along the way to make more money, by working in different places. If so, that will be a part of the experience—and we will embrace it. For us, this is a lifestyle change, an opportunity to expose our girls to an awful lot they could not possibly be exposed to in the lifestyle we are leaving. We are eager to take what comes and to do what we need to do, like we have done the past 14 years, and like at least a billion families do the world over, everyday.

--MR

Boat Cards! By Michael

Two big steps this week: boat cards and a mailing address.

Hoping to get carded

I didn't get the whole boat card thing before we left on our first trip. We had cards on board the first Del Viento only because someone gave them to us as a goodbye gift (thank you Larry). We were soon glad we had them. Cruising is a very socially transient lifestyle. Boat cards were a way for us to remember the folks we ran into. I can thumb through our collection from 15 years ago and recall people and events I may have well forgotten.

Rather than a photo on our cards this time, I commisioned a nautical artist in Washington state to sketch our boat. I heard  about Jeff Orlando from a post by Andiamo III, about how he drew the picture of their boat on their cards. When I got to Jeff's site, I liked his gallery of drawings and boat cards he's done for others. Using just a few pictures of our boat and a description of the scene I wanted, he did an outstanding job. He was generous with his time and just a nice guy.

Of course, before we could get our cards, we needed a mailing address to put on them. We ended up using St.Brendan's Isle. While I like the folksy, mom-and-pop quality of their competitor, Voyagers Mail Forwarding Service, SBI's reputation is stellar and they offer a mail scanning service that may alleviate the need for most physical mail forwarding. Though, given that all of our banking and billing has been paperless and online for years, we don't get a lot of mail that will have to be forwarded. But they also offer a service whereby they will acquire a boat part for you at their discounted rate and ship it out right away.

In either case, it is going to cost us about a quarter-boat-buck per year, and both companies will take care of renewing our USCG documentation each year (why isn't that online yet?!). We considered asking family to handle our mail, but the knowledge these cruiser-oriented companies have in getting shipments to far flung places in the least time, with the least hassle, and at the least expense, is worth the expense, I hope. I've heard countless stories of cruisers waiting months for a package, never getting a package, extorted by customs officials, or all of the above.

It's pretty exciting to have a new address (though Florida doesn't feel like us, neither of us has any association with the place--and I meant to put our boat's Washington, D.C. hailing port on the cards and forgot). It is one more bit of tangible evidence that this huge thing is actually coming to pass.

--MR

Thread Bare and Hanging in There By Michael

A very cold walk home from the bus stop tonight, and the winter wool coat I wear to work is thread bare, long over due for being replaced. I walked in the front door, greeted my girls, and headed straight for the back of the house to check the thermometer on the back porch. It lay broken on the ground, fallen off its mount. Crap, another thing busted.

The work sock of a soon-to-be cruiser

I returned to the living room to hang up my work bag in the coat closet; I do so carefully because the spine of the bag is broken and hanging it by the shoulder strap causes the bag to collapse on itself. I removed my shoes, no longer comfortable as they were before the insoles wore away at the toes and heel. I can feel the cool wood floors through the hole in the sole of my right sock.

This past weekend, I noticed that the squirrels chewed a large hole in the thick plastic wall of our backyard composter. Untouched by them for 10 years, we probably could have gotten $50 for the thing at our moving sale, now it is nearly worthless.

It goes on. We regularly hand-wash our motley collection of soup and cereal bowls because the few that remain don't get us through dishwasher cycles; seven of the original set of eight busted one-by-one over the past five years. Lately, we've been repurposing ramikins and our dainty collection of Chinese soup bowls--both also dwindling in numbers as they slip, one by one, through tiny, milk-slick hands. Windy's reporting a strange knock from the rear of the car and our living room furniture is cat-clawed. The finish on the dining room table is worn through and we used up the last of our firewood over the holidays. Frances's knees nearly touch her chin as she pedals her bicycle .

It feels as though everything around us is falling apart, disappearing, or begging to be replaced. We've maintained our house and ourselves, but our personal property that isn't going with us to the boat, is taxed, much of it used up or used beyond the point of donating it to the thrift store. It's hard to go out and buy new work clothes or cereal bowls when we know we'll only be using those things for a few more months (hopefully). We start a lot of sentences with, "If we weren't going cruising, we'd get a new..."

In this way, the Robertsons began austerity measures long before they were The Thing. And while this has been good for the cruising kitty, the side effects are not pretty. We've become a rag-tag bunch. Only eighty days remain before the house goes up for sale...

--MR

Digitize Me By Michael

All to be turned into ones and zeroes...

Tonight, all of my life in pictures, about 2000 prints, are in a USPS truck, somewhere between Washington, D.C. and West Berlin, New Jersey.

These include prints of model planes taken by the 10-year-old me with 110 film. Prints of family vacations, parachute jumps, my first motorcycle, my second motorcycle, cars I've loved, and women who were part of my life. Prints of scuba diving trips and waterski trips and friends with whom I've lost contact. Prints of the first Del Viento and the cruising adventure that inspires us today. Prints of Windy when she was still a relative stranger, our early life together, our Humboldt apartment, and our Mexico engagement. Prints of our first house and our early efforts to fix it up...prints of my life up until 2001 when we bought our first digital camera.

For about 11 cents a print, a company called FotoBridge is going to scan them and send them back to me with a DVD containing the digital files. I think I will destroy or give away all but a very few of the prints I get back. It's much easier to view and share digital photos. Once I get these uploaded as digital albums on our Kodak Gallery site, I look forward to sending links to folks who have forgotten these photos exist, folks who shared all of these experiences with me. Isn't that what they're for?

Of course, the point of all this is the 9 bulky, empty photo albums Windy and the girls brought to the Goodwill today. Spring feels like it is around the corner and we're deep into down-sizing mode. Windy's on a tear with her Craigslist app. A framing nailer, computer armoire, maple table, and two fire wood racks are gone. Hundreds of books sold and given away. All of our CDs are digitized and gone.

If the FotoBridge experiment with my life's memories is successful, Windy says her pictures can go too. That's about 9 more albums gone, less stuff to sell, give away, or move. We are indeed getting lighter and it feels like progress.

--MR

My Big Girl By Michael

Not quite 700 pounds of paper...

Windy returned from Puerto Vallarta with 700 pounds of paper in her suitcase. Del Viento's previous owners (Dream Catcher) saved and left aboard every manual, receipt, log, note, and more --including paperwork from the owner before them (Texas Swan) and the owner before them (Second Wind).

Hundreds of pages stuffed into cracked vinyl notebooks and expandable folios filled to bursting, rubber bands stiff and brittle. I spread everything out across the dining room table, and then across the dining room, reading and sorting and making piles. I am grateful for all of it, her history.

Each page bears the marks of time, many stained with the rusted imprint of a paperclip or staple long deteriorated, all with the lovely old-boat smell of saltwater and diesel. My associations with these things are exotic, juxtaposed against our pedestrian urban lives.

Oh saltwater and diesel, how tantalizing--intoxicating!--this long-ago-familiar scent. My pulse quickens.

I hold each page close, trembling, and breath in deeply...and sigh...like smelling the clothes of an absent lover. Even though our pre-purchase Mexico interlude was short, my memory of her remains clear. I look at her picture daily, admiring her sheer, her overhang beckoning. Holding her paperwork is a reminder that we'll soon be together, reunited.

Oh, my heart is heavy for my 27,000-pound girl.

--MR

Packing up Christmas

This year was our 10th and last Christmas in our D.C. home. It's hard to believe. Our tree for next year is roughly 11 inches tall and is already aboard Del Viento, waiting for us.

Enjoying our "Last Christmas"



Bye bye beautiful plastic tree!



We'll bring the stockings and decorations Grandma Frances made



Three whole FoodSaver bags full!

Shopping With Dad By Windy

"Girls! Look no further. I found the perfect thing to buy with your gift card. This way!"

Mike traversed Toys"R"Us, taking Frances by the shoulders and propelling her past the My Little Ponies and Purple Sparkle Rainbow Whatsits, Eleanor in tow. At the far wall he gestured grandly at the box he'd staged on the floor.

What they didn't buy

Silence.

"What is it?" Eleanor said.

"It's a really cool radio controlled boat! For when we're living on the boat!"

The girls regarded the box tentatively, then glanced at me, looking for reassurance.

"You put it in the water and you'll be able to stand on the dock and drive it around with the remote...it goes really fast!"

"Oh," they say together.

"Here hold it," Mike says, thrusting the box toward Eleanor.

Both girls take a step back.

"Dad? If we buy this, how much will we have left on the card?"

"Well, the boat actually costs a little more than what your card is worth, but if you reeeeally want it, I'll pay the difference."

"Thanks Dad, but..."

"AND...you can each pick out something from those bins we passed on the way in."

Eleanor and Frances have now edged their way to the far end of the isle.

"Hey, wait guys. Look, all radio controlled vehicles are 25% off!"

--WR



What they did buy (Thanks Aunt Andrea!)

Inspirational Television By Michael

Is TV still as bad? Yes.

Remember The Love Boat? In a weird way, that terrible and top-rated television show of the late seventies is responsible for my interest in sailboat cruising.

In 1979 I participated in a fundraiser for my 6^th grade class, a magazine sales drive. About that time my folks returned from their first trip aboard a cruise ship, inspired by The Love Boat. Eager to read more about cruise ship vacations, they took a look at my list of magazines and bought a subscription to Cruising World. When the first issue arrived, it was clear they didn’t get what they expected.

Ten years later, they were still subscribers. I’d grown up without a sailboat, but with a magazine at home that gave me a knowledge and understanding of the cruising lifestyle. In my 20s, buying a boat and living aboard seemed as viable an option as securing an apartment. After living aboard for a short time, I learned that almost all of my dock neighbors were planning for departure. It took only a hint from a sailor I trusted to shift my perception away from the notion that I needed a boat designed by Colin Archer, Carl Alberg, or Robert Perry to plan a cruise of my own. The idea of a coastal cruise in my small production boat was born. For seven months spanning 1996 to 1997, Windy and I sailed from Ventura to Key West.

During our trip, we were on the lookout for other young cruisers and found few. Greg and Danielle Podlesney of Uhuru were among the few. Our wakes were in sync for a few months and we buddy boated. Eventually, we ended our cruises, sold our boats, and launched land-based lives. We settled on different coasts but kept loosely in touch and we each bought a house and had two kids. The Robertsons maintained careers, while the Podlesneys maintained their own businesses.

Now, 14 years later and all in our forties, both families are dropping out and heading off on paths radically different from how most Americans live their lives. Coincidence? This blog chronicles our big shift and Project Pragmatizo chronicles the Pod’s upcoming adventure in an RV they transformed.

My conclusion is that a taste of a different lifestyle should be encouraged for anybody in their second decade, if just to illuminate the possibilities. I think it helped offer us a unique perspective in our fourth decade. Of course, a big thank you is due also to Captain Stubing and his ABC crew.

P.S. -- I would love to find out where the first Del Viento is today—reportedly purchased from me by an Austrian couple for use in the Bahamas; I know that Uhuru was lost off the Pacific coast of Baja several years ago, two owners later.

--  MR

First Contact By Windy



Del Viento's home for now

Last week I saw our boat for the first time. (In fact, it was the first time any of us have been aboard since we took ownership last June.) I arrived at the small, private marina in Puerto Vallarta where we are renting a slip until we move aboard. After the bump and surge and dust of the local bus, the marina was positively serene. It is a postcard of cozy multicolored villas, skirted by palms and giant bird of paradise plants, and with a small, still harbor home to fishing boats, sailboats, and a couple large power boats. I walked down a brick and stone path and stood for a long moment regarding our boat with excitement and a pinch of fear.

Until that moment, I don't think I'd acknowledged, even to myself, my quiet fear. What if upon boarding I realize we'd made a big mistake? What if I find the cabin dark and claustrophobic? Most of all, what if I can't imagine our family living happily there?

The long, narrow, plastic ports squinted at me. The teal canvas looked cheerful and sharp. And then I was aboard and turning the key and shoving the companionway hatch open, feeling so completely focused and thrilled to be there.



Excited to be there!

Heat billowed out of the hatch, carrying the smells of diesel, mildew, and head.  I scanned the interior. Nothing obvious was wrong, but everywhere my eyes rested there were surfaces to oil, or polish, or clean. My strongest initial impression was that this boat really needed someone to inhabit it--which is what I was there to do, if only for a week. (Note: our boat sitters are excellent and conscientious. My impressions did not stem from any negligence on their part; on the contrary, they have gone above and beyond more than once.)

My mom arrived that evening and we spent a productive six days scrubbing, inventorying, measuring, and making a few simple repairs. Each evening we rested over a delicious meal and a margarita at a local restaurant, and each morning we started up again. By the end of the week, we'd covered every inch of the boat.

Aside from adding a thousand and one items to our to-do list, I learned that the Fuji 40 has an incredible amount of storage for the size of the boat, miles of headroom, and woodwork of rare beauty and precision--after 30 years each drawer glides smoothly into place and doors close with a satisfying click. The topsides are functional and free of ornamentation, with wide side-decks and and an expansive foredeck. In short, it is a lovely boat with a superb layout, and I can't imagine a better choice, either aesthetically (for me), or functionally (for my family).

Remaining are the needling fears I have been aware of since we began our 5-year plan. I fear for the safety of my children aboard--though rationally I know they will be safe. I fear for our finances--well that one isn't irrational at least. I fear leaving everything and everyone behind, not returning. Yet, I'm comforted that these fears amount to little compared to my overwhelming feelings of excitement for the adventure before us.

--WR

An Ode

Latitude 38, November, 2010

Tonight, I asked Windy to not renew our subscription to Latitude 38. It seemed to her a weird request.

Every month I look forward to the newest edition arriving in the mail. I've considered feigning sickness on those days, just so I could beg a bit of quiet time alone in bed, free of parenting and household responsibilities, to dive into the latest issue. (I subscribe because the magazine, while free and widely available on the West Coast, is no place to be found in D.C.).

I've been reading Latitude 38 since the early nineties. I recall quarter-mile walks from my boat to the marina village at Ventura Harbor to pick up a few copies of the latest issue for myself and my neighbors, spending the next few hours in the cockpit, making my way through it, reading nearly every word, tearing out snippets from other cruisers writing from the far away places I planned to visit. I remember when color first found its way into the newsprint rag, first on the cover, then on the insides. I remember as the world wide web dawned, the publisher, Richard Spindler, opining confidently that there really didn't seem to be a need for an online presense for the magazine, that things would remain as they were, analog.

I remember when Latitude 38 sponsored and launched the first Baja Ha-Ha in '94. In fact, I remember that when we untied the docklines and headed south in 1996, we didn't participate in the Ha-Ha only because the nominal (and reasonable) entry fee would have busted our cruising kitty. We were low-budget cruisers; the entry fee was something like $85 bucks. I remember while cruising Mexico, in Mazatlan, hearing on the morning VHF net that a fellow cruiser had returned from the States with a few copies of Latitude, hot off the press--and the scramble to get my dinghy launched in a bid to secure a copy.

So, tonight I asked Windy not to renew. Not to renew because--assuming we've sufficiently appeased the real estate gods and our house sells quickly after listing it--we will not be here for all of the next 12 months! It's hard to justify the $50 subscription when I can read it online. In addition to just plain cutting costs for the sake of this trip's kitty, we will be using a mail forwarding service and want to minimize the amount of stuff they have to ship to Mexico. Ending our Latitude 38 subcription is the first concrete step towards that effort and it really brings it all home. We...are...leaving. The chair I'm sitting in now as I type this, the living room around me, the sounds of the bedtime routine drifting down from upstairs: we are leaving it all. In months. Whoa.

--MR

Moocher

A while back, Windy found an excellent book swapping site called BookMooch. It’s literally that, a book swapping site. Not a dime changes hands (except between you and the post office). In short, you get a point for sending someone a book they request, and you lose a point when you request a book from someone. It is very cool, kind of like a babysitting co-op. You also get 1/10^th of a point for each book you list and 1/10^th of a point everytime you leave feedback for someone who sends you a book. If you send a book outside of the U.S., you get three points (and you lose three points when you mooch a book from overseas).

I don’t know how we accumulated the hundreds and hundreds of books we did, but we can’t take them with us on the boat, so I’ve been slowly getting rid of them over the past couple years. Everytime I’ve come up with a stack I am ready to part with, I list on Amazon those that are worth something, and give the rest away. Since discovering BookMooch, I’ve allowed folks to mooch about two dozen books I’d have given away. It’s gratifying to send these books to those who are eager to read them. Tomorrow a paperback copy of Thoreau’s Walden heads to Greece and Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is off to Canada.

Many of my sailing books have already been mooched, but I still have titles available from the Pardeys, the Roths, and Tania Aebi—mooch ‘em quick.

--MR

West Marine v. Defender



"Thank you Auntie Julie and the Ryans!"



At the U.S. Sailboat Show in Annapolis this year, we were on a mission: we were there to buy, we knew what we wanted, and we were price sensitive. On the first day, we walked back and forth between the West Marine and Defender booths, our lists in hand, taking notes and taking pictures of price tags with our iPhones. That night, we reviewed all of the data and surprisingly, neither retailer emerged as the clear winner. West Marine beat Defender in some cases, and vice versa. I was surprised because I expected Defender to undercut West Marine with few exceptions.

Before casting off on my first voyage in the mid-1990s, I lived two-and-a-half miles from the Ventura, CA West Marine store. During the three years I worked to ready the boat, I drove back-and-forth to that West Marine hundreds of times. I heard often from friends on the dock that Defender’s catalog prices were much lower than West Marine's prices, and they were. For the larger purchases that my big-boat dock mates made, I'm sure Defender made sense. But this was the pre-Internet era and Defender was strictly a mail-order operation. For the smaller, frequent purchases I made over that time period, the cost of shipping and the receipt and return hassle didn’t make Defender a better value to me.

Of course, over the past 18 years the marine retail landscape has changed. With Internet sales common, free or discounted shipping the norm, and sales tax the exception, the West Marine store’s brick-and-mortar value is diminished—especially given their recent dilution of their once legendary return policy. Young folks today never use the words "mail order" and Defender is now an online retailer--and so is West Marine.

Windy is planning a Mexico trip to the boat now, for the first week of December. She’ll take a bunch of measurements while there. When she returns, we’ll be able to finalize a list of the remaining items we need to purchase and bring south with us. I’ve already begun scoping out retailers for some of the purchases we have yet to make. I know now that it will not be just a West Marine v. Defender battle. At home, and now that the 'boat show specials' are over, there are hundreds of online retailers, including Amazon, competing in the marine retail area. Some are specialized (www.riggingonly.com) and others compete more broadly--all of them are eager for our business.

--MR

Empty Nest

Adorable Jewel

A few weeks ago our house swarmed with life. It practically bulged with the sounds, sights, and smells of two kids, a dog, two cats, ten tadpoles, two chickens, and at least twenty monarch caterpillars.

This morning it is quiet. The girls and cats are asleep. The tadpoles turned frog and are on Roosevelt Island, busily gobbling bugs and looking for protected places to hibernate. The caterpillars sprouted gorgeous wings and flew away (we'll meet up with them in Mexico!). The chickens moved across the alley to live with our good friends Jana and Shawn. And the dog, Honey, even she's gone.

Honey

We didn't expect Honey to live to sixteen, yet somehow we also didn't expect her to ever die. For years Mike has been saying, "What about Honey?" For about three years I said, "Don't worry, there's no chance she'll be around when it's time to leave. She's so old. She's so big." But over time I began to question our situation myself.

Over the past few years Honey had had two strokes and one strange period of several days, probably also some sort of stroke, where she lay, unmoving in her bed. (Mike and the girls were away and I feared she'd die and they'd return to bad news.) Yet, for all of these strokes--each time I absolutely knew it was the end--she recovered. In fact, for a dog in her teens she recovered brilliantly.

So it was a surprise when, on a day like any other, with no signs of infirmity, she quietly passed away. And it was sad. I felt no sense of relief, just loss. The girls and I cuddled up and we read The Tenth Good Thing About Barney, which a friend loaned us.

A while back I wrote about our pets and our tentative plans for them as we transition to the boat life. Seemingly overnight our pet predicament is resolved. Even the cats, that we will keep until just before we leave, have a good home waiting for them with Jana and Shawn.

Mexico Bound

Our home is getting quieter. The early morning sounds of clucking hens and the clicking of nails on hardwood floors are gone, soon to be replaced by the creaking sounds of our old boat and the gentle slap of water against her hull.

--WR