THE LAST LOAD

My car has been a hapless storage unit ever since before we sold our house. Everything that can't find a place anywhere else, anything that's being ferried from one place to another, trash, it's all in there. And today it was too much.

"We have to bring the last load in!"

What a joyous moment! We're in! We're in!

It's a jumbled up mess. The bed in the aft cabin (now dubbed the studio) is not visible through the junk, er stuff.

The next stage will be to make sense of the piles and then stow them, but, did I tell you? We're in! We have containment!

For the first time since July 2008, all of our stuff is in one place.

Home.


(I accidentally left my camera in the car last week -- in intense heat. That's why the photo of the last load looks so blurry. No worries. All it needed was a good lens cleaning.)

GALLEY HO!

Can I just say I am flummoxed by how to organize a galley? We've attempted to pare back our kitchen supplies to the bare necessities, which begs the question: What are the bare necessities?

And once you've figured out what they are, where do you put them? The galley has a lot of small cabinets and compartments, some easy to reach, others deep under and behind other spaces, some underfoot. How do you decide where to put things so you're not diving head first under the sink every few days?

Enter Chef Rob Mitchell, professional galley tamer.

Rob has been working as a chef on yachts for a lot o' years and offered to help us get organized -- hey, we're not stupid (usually).

In preparation for The Galley Master, I pulled out everything I had haphazardly thrown into the cabinets and hatches and unceremoniously dumped it all on the salon table.

Rob breezed in and after five minutes of looking at our gear, sorted out about a third of it and said, "Keep this."

He then picked up a notepad and made a list of things like stainless steel measuring cups and spoons, a colander without a handle, stainless steel tongs, among other things, and said,

"Buy these things."

In 10 minutes he had accomplished what would have taken me several years -- if ever -- to figure out.

Then he looked through the galley and started stowing. I knew he would find appropriate places for all the pans and utensils -- which he did -- but I didn't expect him to sort through all our food and organize it.

Isn't food just food and you jam it anywhere and everywhere?

Not if you're smart. He arranged all the food by how and how often we will use it.

We now have a baking cabinet, an everyday/snack cabinet, a hidden storage area for things we won't use often (like dried beans and canned goods), etc.

Can I just say Rob Mitchell rocks?!??!?!?!

BUDDHA, AN ASHTRAY AND A MOUSE IN A RED GINGHAM DRESS

home |hōm|
noun -- a place where something flourishes

All those big plastic bins holding the last of our belongings are starting to feel like so many Pandora's boxes. Every few days we pull another one out of the car and release its content, every time left to deal with the consequences.

The truth is, we don't want any more stuff on the boat, but once it comes out of the proverbial box, we have to remember its history, judge its value, weigh its role in our future, and if we keep it, deal with the increasingly onerous task of finding a place for it on the boat.

Tonight instead of the painstaking process of pulling out each item and debating its fate, we played a game of Top Ten, taking turns picking something out of the bin until we each had 10 items. The rest would go back in the car and eventually be dispatched to Goodwill.

The bin held tools, cookbooks, folders, printer paper, books, charts and fabric, but except for a putty knife, neither of us chose those things with practical value.

Instead, Chip picked a small stuffed rabbit I gave him one long ago Christmas, a dog-eared notebook of song lyrics in progress and a Queen Elizabeth II ashtray given to us by a friend. I kept a decorative wooden mermaid, a tiny Buddha that Chip gave me and a little stuffed mouse in a red gingham dress made for me by my great aunt Flora when I was nine.

We've spent months stockpiling the practical yet impersonal necessities of life on a sailboat, the things that will help us survive. But today, we both felt the need to bring aboard the sentimental and fanciful essentials of living, the things that will help us thrive.

THE PRICE OF PLAYING

It is apparent to me at this particular waypoint -- having quite successfully planned the disposal of a lifetime of belongings and stepped across the water onto a boat -- that I maybe failed a little bit at projecting the emotional impact of removing my entire foundation, of willfully flinging the carpet out from under my life. I thought doing it on purpose would make it all fun and lighthearted.

And, god knows, there have been happy moments and those dividends will be paying us back for years.

But there's the proverbial moment when the Pink Panther steps off a cliff but has not yet begun to fall. No amount of jaunty in-air paddling can stave off the inevitable. Where's the fun in planning that?

So, on this emotional plunge, I plummet through the emotional spectrum, anger then giddiness, then intense stress, then utter frustration. Chip and I go from hand-in-hand camaraderie at the sheer joy of accomplishing our goals to sniping at each other like siblings in the backseat.

We both feel scattered, shattered, fragmented, not in a tragic way but in an I-can't-find-my-pillow-and-I-want-to-cry and an I'm-falling-off-the-edge-of-the-world-holy-shit-oh-no-but-this-is-really-freaking-cool sort of way.

But doesn't that make sense when you think about it? Someone else lives in our house. Our old boat is now with new owners. Our belongings have been scattered far and wide, like little bits of us sprinkled all across the country.

I recognize that this sounds whiny and ungrateful, but what I'm leaving here is a blueprint for those who want to reboot their lives. Doing great things, making life-altering changes comes with sacrifice. It would be disingenuous not to acknowledge that.

When the stakes are high, so is the price of playing the game.

MOVE ABOARDS

I've developed a big crush on vacuum bags, so to speak. They make large, water-absorbing things small and waterproof. Awesome. That photo shows two memory foam pillows and a queen size comforter. (Every since I bought the extra-large vacuum bag, Chip has developed a strange fear of the shop vac.)

Slowly, things are finding new resting places inside the boat. The back bedroom is the staging area. One day it gets relatively clear. The next we bring in a new load. Sigh.

Very soon maybe we'll be live aboards, not move aboards.

ONE OF THESE IS NOT LIKE THE OTHER

Yesterday I walked into T.J. Maxx, a new store to me, and a new store to the Outer Banks. It was my inaugural shopping trip since moving onto a boat. I heard they have a kitchen section, and we need plates, bowls, cups, glasses (of the non-glass variety).

Inside the door, I turned to port, planning to do a full circumnavigation. The first section was luggage, none of it waterproof -- or collapsible. Jewelry and handbags, none marine friendly, none needed. Then the shoe department. I admired the cute sandals and colorful sneakers, but I'm already over quota in my own shoe department. Clothing, no. I have too many land clothes that get wrinkled, don't offer UV protection and don't dry fast enough. Towels? Not quick drying.

Here I was in a store filled with things that had zero relevance for me.

I was surrounded by women pushing carts filled with metal photo frames -- with actual glass in them, breakable dishes, lovely vases and cute jeans. Me? A hapless interplanetary visitor observing the strange ways of these earthlings ... and yet, wasn't that a memory of me doing the same thing?

Normal once but no more.

WAIT! Look: bamboo bowls! I bought five of them. Does that make me semi-normal? Pseudo normal? Abnormal? Paranormal?

This morning my sister called.

"Can I call you right back? I'm in the bath house."

Freak.

JUST ENOUGH

We slept the sleep of the exhausted last night, thrilled to have made it to the Outer Banks, and deliciously comfortable in our V-berth nest.

We're officially live aboards now, but for awhile we'll be moving-aboards.

While on the one hand, it's an amazing feat that we pared a houseful of belongings down to three carloads of stuff, stuff that fit beautifully into a fictional boat and a fictional cruising lifestyle.  But now that the fiberglass has hit the water, all that stuff seems, well, too much.

The boat is spacious in boat terms, but in house terms, we're pretty much moving into the equivalent of a nicely appointed garden shed.

As people stop by to see our new home, I watch their reaction, curious to see if, as I expected, they would view us a borderline nut bags. What I didn't anticipate is that people would look longingly about the boat, settle in and heave a huge happy sigh.

Many times already, I have heard, "This is really all you need, isn't it?"

They lament their full houses, crammed attics, bursting storage units. What a crazy, untenable economic system we've built. Truly, how can we maintain an economy that can only thrive if all of us keep consuming?

I'm not really doing my part to stop the madness. I've only traded in my jeans for new high-tech pants, ditched my rolling suitcase for a waterproof duffle, and given up stoneware for wooden dishes.

But one day soon, this tradeoff must end. The boat is a container. When it is full, there will be no marine trailer pulled behind us, no luggage rack on deck.

I look forward to that moment when we can finally declare that we've crossed the finish line, that what we have onboard is just enough.

RHYTHM & BLUE

After my first night alone onboard, I was chatting with a local and mentioned "that storm last night."

"Huh, I didn't even notice," he said.

And that's the kind of storm it was, the kind that passes without notice on land. In a house, with the doors and windows closed, with the heat on, it's easy to sleep in total ignorance of what transpires just beyond the walls. But on the water, a thin piece of floating fiberglass separating me from the wind and water, I live at the whim of nature, unable to shut it out.

I watch the barometer for changes. I check the tides, the wind prediction, the radar. Three times a day, while preparing meals, I turn on my new talk radio: marine radio channel 1, DJed by a cold automaton droning about wind direction and wave height and small craft advisories.

I've settled into the sounds of my boat and the water on her hull. My ears have tuned to the new normal and prick instantly at change, an unexpected bump or a wind shift.

My sleep is at the same time soothed by the roll of water passing by and peppered with alert for the midnight call of my boat needing assistance.

My muscles are sore from constant motion, subtle as it is in this quiet marina.

All my senses are adjusting to a totally unfamiliar world.

Sometimes I peer out the port, 30 yards down the dock, at that other world and ponder lines and crossing them, waves and wind, and what a difference a few yards can make.

ALONE ONBOARD

Boats are a noisy business. The wind plays a soulful, murmur overhead answered below by the random clanging of water, a constant reminder that I'm sitting in a floating fiberglass tub. The lines groan in the cleats, and the occasional halyard raps a metallic drumbeat, the boom squeaks on its hinge. Throw in rain clacking onto the fiberglass deck, and it raises quite a racket -- especially on your first night alone at the end of a long dock.

Chip returned to the Outer Banks yesterday to take care of the wine shop for a few days, leaving me and Good Company to take care of each other.

Once the darkness settled over us, and the storm moved in, the volume went up.

CREEAKK. "Oh no, what's that?"

SPLASH. "Oh no, is that a leak?"

POP. "Oh no, are we hitting a piling?"

That was how my night was going.

Along about midnight, I was lying in bed when a sharp KNOCK, KNOCK brought me straight up, hair standing on end. For all the world, I could swear someone had just reached up out of the water and knocked on the hull -- right by my head. BWAAAAAHHHHHH.

Forcing myself to think through what just happened, I realized it was the spring line rubbing against a stanchion, something that happened several more times in the night. Each time it knocked, it was a little less frightening.

The noise is part of this very big learning curve I'm climbing. I don't know yet how to filter the sounds, which ones are just your run-of-the-mill, regulation boat noises, and which require my immediate attention. So, for now, they all do.

That's me. Relaxing in the din.

HAPPY EARTH DAY, EARTH!

Chip and I both have tree hugger tendencies, not in a tree hugging way but more in a reduce, reuse, recycle way -- except for hating that song. (THAT sentence could use some editing.) One of the things that attracted us to sailing was the potential to go mostly off the grid. 

We'll use some diesel fuel when we can't sail. We'll fill up our water tank until we install a watermaker that converts salt water to fresh. We'll use propane to cook. After that, we're on our own.

Reduce is not so much a concept as a constant awareness. The second I started filling the water tanks myself -- with a hose -- and monitoring usage on a gauge, I became much more aware of my slovenly water habits. I no longer let the water run like a Bernini fountain. I wet my hands, turn it off, lather and turn it on for a quick rinse.

When we're not plugged in at a dock (which we won't be when we're cruising full time) we rely on batteries that have to be recharged from either running the engine or using solar panels. That too can be monitored, including our current amp usage. No more blow dryers, no more leaving lights on when not absolutely necessary. No more microwave, TV or toaster. We now have a hand-crank coffee grinder and  a hand-crank blender. All other kitchen gadgetry is gone. And, you know what? I don't miss it at all.

We now have to search out places to dispose of trash, which makes me more careful about producing it. No more paper napkins. The same fate awaits the paper towels when we leave land.

Soon we'll even abandon those carbon-emitting cars and fly on the wind.

Happy Earth Day, Earth!

STORM BEFORE THE CALM

Moving onto a boat is messy.

Good Company has tons, really tons of storage, and it's all hidden, which in the awesome category means all your crap is hidden from view. In the not-so-awesome category, it means all your crap is hidden from view. It takes some real organizational skill to find a logical place for everything and then, just as importantly, remember where that logical place is. We have to either work together, keep a list or give each other tours of our stowing. Otherwise it's a big, not fun game of I Don't Spy.

This week has an extra large learning curve. Fortunately neither of us knows much about the systems on this boat. Fortunately? Yes, we're on equal footing here. We learn it together and then we both know how to use it, start it, stop it, furl it, fix it, raise it, lower it, dewinterize it, everything. There are no reluctant, "dragged aboard" members here. (And since you brought it up, can we stop with the sailing mag articles about reluctant female sailors?!?!)

So far:
--Dewinterized, cleaned and filled the water tank. Great water pressure!
--Turned on the refrigerator/freezer.
--Puzzled over the bilge pump until we realized, it doesn't work. Got it fixed.
--Got a quick lesson in our packing gland from the helpful guy who repacked it.
--Learned how to furl sails on Harken furlers. Only had to redo one of them.
--Rerigged some of the furling and jib lines. We'll see how that works out.
--Put on the dodger and bimini. For a while we were wearing a big Sunsail shroud, but we got it eventually. I do hope someone was watching.
--Learned how to use the dinghy davits and hoisted the dinghy -- after pushing it across the street on a dock cart, pulling it through the water and over a floating dock.
--Played with the GPS enough to navigate around the GPS. Now on to the bigger picture.

Our original hope was to cross the Chesapeake to Annapolis today as a shakedown, but the boatyard forgot to fix the masthead light when they went up this morning. IF they get to it later today or first thing in the morning, we might be able to cross.

OVER THE EDGE

We arrived in Rock Hall at Good Company today hoping to find her ready to go in the water -- or perhaps already there.

A big NO on that. The boatyard had not yet replaced the strike plate on our newly finished toe rails. The packing gland had not been repacked. Never underestimate the value of being there, face-to-face, OR bringing along a free Chip's t-shirt to the yard manager.

We left to eat lunch and run through our shopping list at West Marine. That run-through cost a whopping $735, but if you're ever planning on visiting us onboard, we bought you two really nice life jackets on sale @ $119. Cheap for saving our lives this month and your life on down the water. (Instead of spending the $250 times two on offshore life jackets with harnesses, we decided to buy the less expensive in-shore versions. We'll drop the $$$ on the other ones once we're close to going "offshore.")

Back at the boatyard, we found this:

We're in the water -- and without me fretting and freaking as the put her in the travelift, drove her a block and dumped her in. Just as well.

It'll be this spot overnight, and a run up the mast by the boatyard to fix some lights in the morning.

We're in the water! It's official.

HOME IS WHERE THE BOAT IS

Last Sunday when we arrived in Rock Hall, we carried the Froli bed springs from the car, up the ladder, over the transom and into Good Company. Frolis are plastic springs made to go under the cushions on a boat to take the place of box springs. You assemble a base that adjusts to the odd shape of your bed, and then attach the springs, different colors represent differing firmness, so you make it soft under your shoulders (me) or firm under your hips (Chip). It's sort of the cheap, marine version of the Dial-a-Bed.

Since we bought those springs -- at the Annapolis Boat Show in 2007 -- we moved them into Isabella, out of Isabella, to the beach apartment, to the rental house, and now, finally, into Good Company.

And Sunday, as I was hunkered down in the v-berth, hooking little plastic pieces together, I asked myself, "Why am I so friggin' happy?"

My self snapped back, "Well, duh! You've been totally disassembling your life for the last three years. Now you have finally started rebuilding."

And, damn, if my self wasn't right. I was experiencing utter joy at having turned the corner and plopped right down in my new life. My days of tearing apart and breaking down are behind me.

Now, I am home. Cleaning, building, nesting. Finally.

And when I finished assembling little plastic wheels and springs, I had exactly one left over. A perfect fit.

THE DIRT

2010 marks the first year in 15 that I haven't had some small patch of earth to claim as my own, the first that I haven't indulged that springtime urge to peel back the still cool sod, to breath in that musty, primal aroma, to plunge my hands into the deep pulsing rhythm of our planet.

But there are things that must be traded for life on the water. Dirt would be one of those things. Cute leather boots would be another, but that's a topic for another day.

Last week I was walking into Ace Hardware, past the rack of pansies. The smell of potting soil wafted by and gripped me with a sense of nostalgia and sadness that I wouldn't be planting a garden.

A few days later I was walking into Home Depot, past the bags of grass seed and fertilizer. The smell of chemicals wafted by and filled me with elation that I wouldn't be burdened with a lawn this year.

I'm so fickle.