Raft-Up: Counting Heads

Who Me?
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

"I feel like I'm forgetting something," I muse, staring at the skyline as if miles of ocean horizon can reveal the secrets of my forgetfulness. It is calm, cloudless, and unfortunately almost still as we crawl slowly off the Mexican coastline heading south and west for the equator.

Aeron helpfully peeks into the dodger locker, "Cat is here."

DrC grumbles something about fuel from the galley where he is preparing dinner.

Jaime more or less completely unhelpfully notes that she remembered to check her Facebook account before we left the marina three hours ago.

And then there is silence.

In case you haven't been following along, I have three children. Aeron, Jaime, and Mera. We all wait for a few breathless, still moments, the only sound the flapping of the main as it luffs in the gentle swells and off shore breeze. Almost as one, we turn to look at the smudge on the distant horizon.

"I'll look," says Aeron, jumping down off the cockpit seat and scrambling into the port hull.
Jaime, Dean and I don't move. We are all sharing the same, miserable thought. Oh shit. We left Mera behind.

It's not like we haven't done this before. In fact, it is something of a habit, leaving Mera behind. Mera is our quiet, studious, bookish middle child. For years as we learned to drive the boat, we would take Don Quixote out every Thursday night for the Elliot Bay Marina races. Roughly half the time, we'd leave her on the dock and for many of the remaining evenings we could honestly state after sailing for an hour that we didn't actually know whether or not Mera was on board. It got so bad that DrC insisted we put a check list on the helm: dock lines and fenders stowed, instruments on, electrical unplugged, radio on, Mera on board.

Fortunately, the silent miserable tableaux of the three senior crew of Don Quixote is broken mere moments later by a relieved, high soprano voice shouting up, "She's here! She's HERE!"

Maybe we are just rotten parents. If so, we're probably bad pet owners, too. Twice we more or less accidentally left Dulcinea behind. Once we left the dinghy behind. And on one memorable occasion, we kinda sorta accidentally snuck out of an anchorage in the wee hours of the morning abandoning a pair of particularly obnoxious 'buddy boats.'

Yet I must confess that my biggest fear cruising has never been that I would stupidly head off shore for a 2000 nautical mile trip one head short of a full deck. My children are clever, capable souls and can handle being alone for a few hours. At age 5, Aeron proved the point when we drove to the grocery store one day and left her at the marina. As an aside, this was also Mera's fault, as Mera's seat in the van was next to Aeron's. How she could get all the way to the store and into the produce section failing to notice something as loud and noisy as her sister was missing baffles me to this day. A panicky 15 minutes later, we arrived back at the marina and found Aeron eating donuts and entertaining the staff in the office where she had -- quite correctly -- immediately tromped after discovering that her bonehead family had driven off without her.

No, my fear is almost exclusively the loss of one of my beautiful family overboard in the night.

The odds of finding someone -- even someone wearing a life jacket -- in the middle of the ocean at night are astronomically low. If everyone else is asleep when you fall over, the phrase 'zero chance of survival' is not hyperbole. Beacons, personal EPIRBs, and proximity crew alarms all improve your odds, of course. These options were simply not priced in the affordable range a mere five years go, so the Conger family travelled from Seattle to Auckland without them. If we could have, we would have. If you can, do. If you can't...

Well even with all the fancy shmancy gear in the world, surviving a midnight fall off an ocean going yacht is mostly a matter of not doing it. Doctor, it hurts when I do this! Don't do that. My fear of falling informs our boat rules and gear. A simple but well-cared for system of jacklines, harnesses, clips, and life jackets tie the helmsman to the boat no matter what the weather. On passage, no one is allowed to step so much as a toe on the deck without this gear from the time the sunlight turns to burnished gold on the horizon to the moment in the morning where the coffee is steaming and its possible to read a book in the salon without additional light.

Misty Beaches
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

And still I am afraid. I still experience panicky moments when I come up at 2 AM for my watch and die a little when I can't instantly track Jaime's movements. Nights when I leap out of my cabin at 10 during DrC's watch, heart pounding, sure he's gone forever. I have tended the boat through 90 knot hurricane winds, managed sails while balanced precariously on the bimini  as we pitched in a heaving sea, leaped overboard at midnight to clear a prop with my feet when we were moments from being driven ashore, and watched my children leap like billy goats along a traverse in Zion with a 1000 foot drop on either side. Yet nothing -- absolutely nothing -- scares me like these moments in the night when I know with a certainty that leaves me cold that one of my loved ones is gone.

Our fears can not define the boundary of our existence or the limit of our reach. To watch my girls swim with whales, I have to let them stand watch in the night. To love them -- to let them live -- I have to trust them not to die. It's hard. It's so hard to count heads and come up one short. And yet every night, we do it anyway.

I keep counting and counting and counting until the number is five plus a cat, and every time the moment of relief is pure and fresh and profound.

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

October's Raft-Up Writers

The topic this month is fear. We all have different fears and different strategies. If you haven't already subscribed to these authors, I encourage you to explore the excellent writing my fellows in Raft-Up:
2 Behan sv-totem.blogspot.com
3 Steph www.sailblogs.com/member/nornabiron
4 Stacey http://sv-bellavita.blogspot.com
5 Tammy ploddingINparadise.blogspot.com
6 Ean morejoyeverywhere.com
7 Lynn sailcelebration.blogspot.com
8 Diane www.maiaaboard.blogspot.com
10 Jaye lifeafloatarchives.blogspot.com
11 Verena pacificsailors.com
12 Toast http://blog.toastfloats.com
15 Dana svnorthfork.blogspot.com

Juicy News

Sundowners
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

Jaime wants to reboot. Actually, I think she just desperately wants to look amazing for The Ball in two weeks. I can't see how eating nothing but pulverized produce for a week is going to help attain that objective, but I m not 16. At 16 literally anything is possible. The real question isn't why Jaime is juicing, but why DrC and I plan to join her.

I confess that we come late to this fashionable new trend. As soon as I started researching the subject, it became clear that as far as health fads go, we are probably the last people in the world to the table. Maybe this was super hot while we were on Mexico or in the middle of the Pacific with no bandwidth. Regardless, we are complete novices to the notion of the Juice Reboot. Babes in the vegan woods.

Of course, normally we don't do stuff like this. DrC is both a qualified doctor of Western style medicine and a skeptic... Some would say a cynic,actually. We dont go much for hokkum, snake oil, or homeopathy. We are more the ibuprofen, fish oil, and water types. We never went Atkins and my South Beach phase never made it past the third day. DrC's first considered medical action regarding my health nearly 25 years ago was to force-feed me beef to address my anemia. And when I say force fed, I mean it, complete with two inch thick fillets, crumbled bleu, Ceasar salad with fresh garlic croutons, and a really fine Cabernet. He is a truly horrible beast.

So why a more than a little bit trendy fad diet? Maybe just because.

Because we want to eat less meat for health, environmental, and economic reasons.
Because we need to cut down on the caffeine and wine.
Because we have been eating way too much bread and processed food during the last year.
Because Jaime wants to and we are just that awesome at parenting.

Or maybe because DrC had trouble buttoning his top jeans button this weekend for the first time in his entire life.

So this week we embark on a 5 day Reboot. Actually, this week we prep. We need to scope our local, fresh produce, get a decent juicer, make meal plans, go shopping. We pinky promised to start reducing the processed, the white, and the booze. Jaime is pulling down recipes, DrC nutritional info, and me the meal plan recommendations.

The official juice-only days start Monday. I think I will blog it end to end. Reboots have been blogged a million times by people all over the world, so I will add precisely nothing to the conversation. There is, however, something delightfully naughty about allowing myself for the first time to consider blogging what I had for lunch. The slow slide into rut-dom over the last year has been depressing emotionally and creatively. Maybe a steady diet of nasty tasting smoothies will inspire me.

It's also possible it will just make me gassy.

Raft-Up: What's in a Name?

That Can't Be Right
Originally uploaded by toastfloats

It's a lovely Saturday afternoon, and I am standing on the dock at Elliott Bay Marina in Seattle Washington staring at the back of my boat. Hands on hips, head cocked at angle, I study the old style script lovelingly plasticized to the transom of our 380 Lagoon catamaran. There's no hope for it.

"Dean. It says Vancouver, BC."

He glances away from his self-satisfied perusal of the brand new, 4-foot tall reproduction of Picasso's Don Quixote sketch afixed to the bow only yesterday. He agrees, "It does."

I point out, "Dean. We're from Washington."

He returns his attention back to the loving perusal of our port bow and notes, "There is a Vancouver in Washington."

It's hard not to agree. I can read a map. I even got a ticket once in Vancouver crossing over the bridge from Portland. A real speed trap there as you cross over the Oregon border... you've been warned.

So I agree,"True." I stare at the graphic giving the problem further consideration and chew my bottom lip. "Dean, we're not even Canadian."

He finally recognizes that I face a deep moral quandry. I'm unhappy, and, good husband that he is, he walks down the finger slip, around the corner and drapes his arm around my shoulder as he pronounces cheerfully, "But we could be!" At my skeptical look, he waves an arm at the city and adds,"We might as well be!!"

I look at the sky line full of puffy clouds, sparkling waters, gorgeous mountain backdrops with tall pine trees framing a beautiful, bustling waterfront city. It does look like Vancouver. I concede, "That's also true..." But my reservations persist, and I must make the case for sanity. "I bet the U.S. Coast Guard doesn't have much of a horseshoes and hand grenades approach to port call signs."

This momentarily dims my husband's enthusiasm. The U.S. Coast Guard. Hadn't of that, had he. I start to feel a bit smug, "This has got to go Dean. We're not Canadian." It bears repeating. I like Canada. I like salmon and rockies as much as the next person, but my eh is more of a California girl uh, and I can not fathom why people watch curling. "We just can't pass."

We are different, Dean. My husband, my love, my insane captain. They are of Canada with a capital C, and we are a US flagged vessel with a capital U.S. So, "Call the graphics company and get them to fix it."

"Yes dear."

I then promptly forget about the graphic faux pas. In our flurry to cut the lines by May, I have many 100s of tasks to accomplish. Even in the simple realm of boat branding, there are boat cards to design and print, an embossing stamp to order for official paperwork (which we never in five years of cruising actually used, by the way), t-shirts to buy, and a flag to sew. We take pictures for the web site, which is a design effort in and of itself. I iron our logos on to hoodies for cold weather, and then I register the svdonquixote.org domain in addition to toastfloats, toastworks and pretty much every variation of wemustbecompleteidiots.com.

Which is why in May 2008, we cut the lines and sail away from Seattle on a boat proudly flying the U.S. flag and the home port esignia of our neighbors to the north.

No one noticed.

The U.S. Coast Guard didn't notice.

The Canadian Coast Guard didn't notice.

The Mexican Armada was most interested in our completion of the "Did You Have a Satisfactory Boarding at Sea Experience" card. I'm not sure they even checked if we had visas and the legal right to be in the country, let alone whether the home port emblazoned on the boat was the same as the home port specified in our boat documents.

Proudly Bears the Don Quixote Logo
Originally uploaded by toastfloats

French Polynesia never looked at our boat, let alone the back, and while the Cook Island folks were thorough, we were checked into the country at a port where every resident of the island had a vested interested in assuring our safe and happy passage through their island nation. I don't think Tonga realized we had a boat, though they did go to great lengths to discuss the proper disposal of our trash.

You know who notices our fraudulent logos?

You got it. Canadian yachties. Every single one dingies up and finds out to their great dismay that we are Seattlites. We've faked them out. We are not carrying a cache of CBC shows. We don't watch hocky. We're clueless about the latest doings of the Prime Minister. Fortunately, Canadians a generous people. And frankly, we are from Washington. Which has a Vancouver. It might as well be Canada.

And we're all a very long way from home. Pass the Molson.

More Raft-up

Dana svnorthfork.blogspot.com
Jane morejoyeverywhere.com
Behan sv-totem.blogspot.com
Lynn www.sailcelebration.blogspot.com
Verena pacificsailors.com
Diana maiaaboard.blogspot.co.nz

Another Self Portrait

Another Self Portrait
by toastfloats

The answer to why we stopped sailing is highly dependent on a number of factors: who you ask, when you ask, and whether or not we have had anything to drink.

The short answer most consistently proffered is that we ran out of money. It's easy to understand. Frankly, most folks can't imagine how we could afford to take off so many years anyway. Admitting that the cash is gone seems a logical barrier to further adventuring. But of course, it isn't strictly true. We didn't run out of money so much as we ran out of liquid cash. We could have stopped and worked briefly then continued (as did our good friends Totem). We could have made money en route (as do our good friends Ceildyh). We could have sold everything we still own and liquidated the rest of our savings (as have too many boats to name). The last thing I want to do is discourage people from cruising based on the mistaken notion that it can't be done on limited funds. It can.

And weirdly, the real problems with money started on landing in New Zealand. It's like Murphy -- having largely left us alone for major problems for nearly five years -- decided to move in. It started with just landing in the country: cat ($1300), medicals for immigration ($750), immigration ($1500? I can't remember… I was in a daze), Dean's medical reinstatement (a couple of thousands to various folks… and yes it was all legal), and a thousand dollar transformer so we could plug into New Zealand shore power. Then my nose decided to implode ($5000 USD deductible), the heater melted ($2700), and the batteries exploded (will be ~$2500). Self inflicted wounds include a latte'd laptop ($1000), a trip to the States (~$6000), and an iPhone ($350… yes, I got a 3GS unlocked ). The van was a few grand, school uniforms and "donations" another two, and a business wardrobe for me which probably set us back at least 50 dollars.

It's hard not to buckle. We can not can not can not get ahead which is an awful feeling. I try to console myself with the knowledge that if even half of this crap went down while we were sailing around last year, it would have bankrupted us. With money coming in, we can basically -just- keep up. But it would be nice to catch a break.

Or a job. A job would be good.

The radio silence on the blog these past months resulted from the fact that I finally did get some work. A former employee of mine moved on to bigger and better things, then revisited his past by to hire me as an editor. It was surprisingly fun work to dig into my technical writing roots. The documents were some of the most technical I've ever read, let alone edited. I learned about touch sense capacitors, oscillators, and methods to send IP packets over an electrical power line. I totally geeked out. I actually -- wait for it -- learned how to use the Equation Editor in Word. The single most important lesson from this experience was that Microsoft Word sucks. It is horrible. I will pay clients from now on to switch applications.

Aeron Peace Out
by toastfloats

Now, I have a new client, the IS team at Tegel Foods. For Americans, think Foster Farms with a Kiwi accent. They want to upscale the docs and training for the self-rolled software systems. I very much look forward to this. The project is in my favorite zone of work -- build awesomeness from raw materials and get paid.

Paid is good.

So if Murphy will just park his ass someplace else for a few months, maybe we can finally start saving for Jaime's college education. Gotta start somewhere.