Picture this: the early morning sun has woken you by slipping through the windows, brushing your eyes with warmth and light. It’s so quiet… The boat is almost imperceptibly rocking and there is a gentle spring breeze caressing your face from the open porthole next to your bed. A stretch of your aching muscles reminds you of all the work you put in yesterday… Continue reading “Breakfast Aboard Devilfish”
I will start this post out with a statement and the subsequent questions it has raised.
When I was a little boy, my days after school were spent out on my grandparents farm. It was a magical place, complete with an old dirty barn and acres of pasture. As most boys would, I spent a great deal of my time in the old barn rifling through all of the farm implements, scrap wood and wire, tools… My grandfather was a tool guy. He had a tool for most things and another tool for everything else.
Much of this stuff had been collected for many years and really showed its age. Imagine hand drills and old rusty saws, mixed in with brand new gig saws, electric saws, and an old table saw…(The only tool I wasn’t allowed to touch…Think severed appendages…) Now the reason I was always messing around in the barn was in order to build things with all of the wonderful scrap wood I could find there. And what did I build, you might ask? Boats. I always built boats.
The farm had three pastures of cattle grazing land and meandering through all three was an irrigation ditch. I spent hours of my youth on that ditch… Wading, basking, and floating boats. I built various types of boats: Long and fast, round and maneuverable, and ornately styled ones (that usually sank like rocks.)
My parents helped a lot. They sent me on a fantastic sailing adventure in the San Juan Islands not once, but twice! (www.soundexp.org) I absolutely loved it.
We vacationed on Orcas Island where I got my first taste of the helm!
This boat building continued for most of my youth… stopping sometime before I discovered cars and girls… but I never really got them out of my head.
Fast forward to 2014. I’m a relatively successful airline pilot enjoying living in Manhattan. I spend my days flying airplanes and enjoying all of the delights The City has to offer.
I’m in my 18th year of marriage now and suddenly out of the blue my beautiful bride says something to the effect of: We should buy and boat and live on it.
BANG! Full stop.
Suddenly all of the love of boats comes flooding back. I was dumbstruck. I think I mumbled something lame like: That sounds like fun. I’m not sure If I fully believed her. Moving out of our awesome NYC pad had literally not been in the cards 30 seconds prior to this statement. But she was serious.
That brings me to why I think I’m married to the best girl in the world:
Debby is fond of telling me that I’ve always had the sea in my blood. She, of course, is right. (lesson one for all newly wedded men.) I just never realized how much it was in her blood. We’ve been married long enough to be at that finish the other’s thought point. I feel like we are one person some days. She knows everything about me, good and bad, and she still likes me! I for my part can’t believe how lucky I am to have her! I have found that illusive mythical sea creature… That mermaid of lore… I have found a wife that genuinely and passionately enjoys sailing and living aboard a boat!
When d and I moved aboard, (selling most of 20 years worth of possessions) and took on this totally new lifestyle, she didn’t even blink. Give up our amazing NYC apartment… No problem she said, “It was my idea!” When we had huge issues with the initial purchase and pre-launch refit, she hammered through it like a trooper. All of the cleaning, scraping, chipping. The lack of hot water. No toilet while I fixed ours… Everything was accomplished without a complaint, and with complete solidarity with me. Not only is she mentally on board, but I literally couldn’t have accomplished most of my repair work without her. From the beginning we have attacked this move with the belief that she should be able to do anything I can do. She is fully committed to this process. She is learning to drive and land the boat. She is learning all of the sails, lines and rigging. She will be a fully qualified Captain…err, Commodore! Her touch is everywhere aboard Devilfish. Her focus on this life is complete.
Debby has been asking me to write a blog post for some time… sorry for taking so long darling. May this be the first of many… assuming you all want to hear my thoughts in the future.
Happy Valentines Day love! May our adventures never end!
I’ve mentioned electrics aboard. We have 30 amps of power running to our electrical panel and bad things can happen if the power needs go over that or have a big sustained draw. By “bad things” I mean tripping a breaker (which I have done), or overheating the circuits, or something else which is mysterious and ominous.
Just before we were married I purchased an itsy-bitsy ficus tree. It wasn’t much to look at, no braided trunk or bonsai-type shape, but he was cute and tiny. I planted him in a miniature pot and we moved him to our first apartment.
As he grew so did the size of the pots. He got taller and taller, losing almost all his leaves if he got too much sun or not enough sun or we forgot to water him or watered him too much. I used to worry about how temperamental he is; no more.
In the two months since we moved aboard time has both sped up and slowed down.
We no longer are counting back to our move-in date worrying about what an imposition we are being to whomever we are living with. Instead we are counting back to our move-in date and wondering where the days have gone. Summer is over and Fall is here. We have spent nearly every evening in our cockpit: watching the sunset, looking out over the lights of lower Manhattan and enjoying our zillion dollar view. Really and truly living our dream.
Funnily enough, the impending Tropical Storm didn’t weaken, didn’t turn South, and didn’t do what we wanted it to. So strange…
There was my Better Half, alone in Beaufort, NC, relying on the kindness of strangers (Lou and Nancy from Barry Duckworth, we are forever in your debt). I was in The Commune, commuting to New York, trying to make money and be a productive member of society. And, for a little while, we had a third member of our relationship: Arthur, as he came to be called.
The boat we bought was named something that we didn’t care for, does not match our personalities or reflect who we are. It is also number IV in a line that we did not initiate (as a note: number III broke up and sank in the ocean; I don’t want that kind of juju…)
Therefore we are going to change the boat’s name.
We have had a name picked out for a long time, back before we had bought this boat. A historical name that means something to us; however, we haven’t officially renamed our boat yet.
The funny thing is that we have gotten a lot of flack for wanting to change the name. People we don’t even know have told us that it’s bad luck and shouldn’t be done. (On second thought, we have experienced extraordinary bad luck so maybe there’s something to that….)
While we were battling the elements on day 2 CoastieGuy was doing his best to keep the mood light. He said that we should name the boat Dameon. I said Lucifer. We all laughed. All things related to demons, the antichrist, and satan were thrown around.
Then CoastieGuy came up with the best name of all time:
Rosemary’s Baby
As I may have mentioned, AllesGirl and HerSpouse are moving to Berlin, Germany (not Berlin, New Jersey, as was a common misconception among some of The Locals). This means that the four of us, in addition to forming a Commune and being generally goofy, are all downsizing, getting rid of a lot of things, and basically Making Big Life Changes. We decided to pool our resources and have a moving sale to end all moving sales at the beginning of the Summer.
We did.
It was a lot of work.
We made some money.
It was worth it (barely).
We took no pictures because we were too busy.
We didn’t eat lunch because we were too busy.
We sold a lot of stuff.
There were some unscrupulous people who stole things. We figure that if you steal from a yard sale you are a kleptomaniac, are very bad off, or are a jerk.
It’s hard to see your things go to strangers for less than a 10th of what you paid. However, it’s just stuff and was weighing us down…
Freer and lighter, we are doing our best to move on with the business of living bigger and better lives full of excitement, not stuff.
My better half returned from looking at the disaster that was our boat. I needed to know how big things were so we could buy a new:
stove (you know… to cook). ‘Cause ours is now garbage.
refrigerator (you know… to keep food cold). ‘Cause the previous one caused our boat to rust.
There are many people in the sailing community who exist and have long, happy lives without refrigeration. They buy eggs and store them and turn them over and everyone is fine without cold food.
Some people are able to function without stoves and do things with candles and alcohol or something magical and are happy with what they have.
I am not one of those people. At least, not right now. It’s possible that in a couple of years, or months, or weeks I will think differently and be fine with warm eggs and curdled milk. At this point I feel the need for the comforts of my heretofore privileged and easy life.
Here is the schematic that the boatyard sent to us with dimensions
Ok. Good to know what I have to work with.
By the way: HAVE WE FOUND ALL THE PROBLEMS???
Sailing Devilfish 