One Down – One to Go

Thank goodness that the primary elections are over. In my area we had a huge number of people running for everything from US Senate to State Legislature to local School Board.

Everyday our mailbox was crammed with campaign flyers. Full color. Glossy Paper. So large that they barely fit the mailbox.  Not to mention the lawn signs.

What’s amazing is the thousands of dollars some people spent trying to get a part time job that pays $35K per year.

Public Service?  Yeah, right!

How about public payroll?

How about the huge retirement benefits of public office here in Florida? That’s my bet.

I’m not looking forward to the next level of campaigning.

Dark Skinned People – Are We Coming Full Circle?

When I was a kid, dark skinned people were commonly called “colored”, officially called Negro.  Over time the term changed to African American, then to Black and most recently to “People of Color”.

How long before “People of Color” gets shortened back to just “colored”?

It will be interesting to see the next stage of this terminology.

Stormy Weather

Why do I find storms to be so stimulating?  I’m not talking major storms. I’ve never experiences a tornado and I hope I never do; but I’ve been in two category 1 hurricanes and I don’t want to see anything any stronger than that.

But I love the standard garden variety storms.  Lightning, thunder, rain – sometimes heavy- and wind gusts. 

For some reason they make me feel more alive.  I get to experience a power far beyond our puny human efforts control our world. It puts things in perspective.  I feel that I’m part of the natural world not just our man made society.

Glad it's over

These days, I’m relieved when the holiday season is over.  That’s quite a change from the past.

In my working days, I truly relished the holiday season.  Christmas shopping was fun and we’d go all out on gifts and wrapping.   The days off from work were savored.  New Years day meant the end of the fun and heading back into the usual workday grind.

Retirement put a different face on it.

Christmas on the boat meant scaled down celebrations because we had no space for a Christmas tree; nor did we have space to store frivolous gifts that we might have given one another in previous years.

Now that we’re back living on land, we find that holiday season has taken on yet another character – for many reasons.  A small condo means that we can’t have a huge 12-foot Christmas tree.  In fact, a real tree is very impractical.  Living on retirement income after the recession means that the gift budget is tight so we can’t indulge in the excesses of the past.

We did have a great holiday season.  We were able to roast a turkey again for Thanksgiving.  We did have a very pretty artificial Christmas tree decorated with the ornaments that had been in storage while we were cruising.  It was fun unwrapping them after so many years.  And we exchanged gifts as usual and revived our old tradition of a whole ham for Christmas dinner.

But since every day is a day off, the sense of “specialness” (I know that’s not a real word) was just not the same.  Maybe we should have made a point of participating in more holiday events.  We’ll give that a try next year.

As it is, I’m just glad to be rid of the holiday advertising and hype and junk mail from every store in town.  Glad to get back to normal, whatever that is.

 

Happy New Year!

 

Tempus Fugit

Wow!  It looks as though I haven’t had any thoughts in more than two years.  I guess some people would say that’s not a big surprise.

Much has changed since that last post in March, 2010.

In June of 2010 we sailed to New Bern, NC because we’d never been there. The plan was to stay the whole summer instead of heading to New England as we usually did.  It was fun because New Bern was celebrating its tri-centennial and there was a lot going on.  It’s a great little town and we had a good time.

As we were preparing to head back to southern waters in November, Neal had a freak accident.  Trying to get the dinghy in place on the foredeck, he was knocked overboard when the dink shifted.  It’s a long story, but I’ll cut to the chase by just saying that he was rendered unconscious due to ESD (Electrical Shock Drowning) – a phenomenon that occurs in fresh water when there’s stray AC electrical current in the water. I was able to reach him and when I got his head above water he was not breathing.  The rescue squad arrived and got him to the ER. He spent a few days in the hospital.

It was a long recovery and there are lingering after effects. 

After two years living in the marina in New Bern, it was clear that Neal no longer has the stamina for offshore cruising.  We decided to find a home on land.

So we’re now officially CLODs (Cruisers Living On Dirt) and settled into a condo in Florida.

Neal has resumed his cooking adventures. I’m back into my genealogy projects.

 

With any luck I’ll have some more thoughts before another two years passes

The complexity of simplicity

This is aimed at land based readers. Our fellow cruisers are in the same boat – so to speak. It was inspired by one of John D Cook's blog entries

We lead a very simple life. Or do we? Living on a sailboat, we’re off the grid. No car. No cable. In fact, we do not own a TV. We don’t own a land-based home. We’re free to travel the seas as we please. It sounds sort of like a simple life. Some people who do this truly do simplify their lives. The purists enjoy the challenge of leaving technology and convenience behind.

I thought it would be a simpler life, and in some ways it is; but we’re not as tough as the purists who get their fresh water by collecting rainwater, go to bed when the sun goes down, use the sun to heat water for showers and do laundry by hand. The true purists don’t even have marine toilets on board – they use a method called “bucket & chuck it".

Budgetary issues dictate that we must be very prudent about when we splurge by tying up at a marina slip. We anchor whenever possible or tie up at a mooring ball.

Rather than living the easy middle class existence we’d had on land, we now live a more complicated existence. We rely on laundromats – hauling laundry and supplies back and forth. We’re thrilled when we’re at a city that has good public transportation. The grocery shopping list is limited to what we can carry.

We make our own electricity. And we’re both electricity hogs. We use our computers to get news, stay in contact with friends and family, and for some entertainment. We stay up and read. We have solar panels that do a good job, a wind generator that needs repair just now, and a portable Honda generator for which we have to haul gasoline.

Our fresh water tanks hold 150 gallons. When we run out we can either head for a marina fuel dock where there’s water available, or haul our 6 gallon jugs in the dinghy to a water source. Four 6 gallon jugs at roughly 50 pounds each (because we overfill as much as possible) make a water run a bit of a workout. No we don’t fill the tanks to capacity – we just get 4 jugs of water at a time so we’re doing 1 water run each week when we’re at anchor or on a mooring for any length of time.

Our two 10 pound propane tanks (for cooking) last a long time but when they need refilling we can’t take them in either a bus or a taxi. Replenishing propane means either getting a ride from someone or renting a car.

Except when we’re at sea, the toilets drain into holding tanks. Some places have pump-out boats that will come to us, but when that’s not available it’s a trip to a marina dock that has pump-out.

And then there’s mail. We use an excellent mail forwarder so it’s not an issue but just one more thing that’s not as simple as on land.

Ah, the simple life. Last Fall when we were taking a vacation, my daughter said “But you’re always on vacation!’ Yeah, right.

But I’m just explaining, not complaining. Some day we’ll be ready to become CLODs (Cruisers Living On Dirt) but not just yet.

Accepting Reality

It is pretty clear that we'll stay in Vero Beach again this year until it's time to head north.  Bad colds and the lingering coughs took a good two weeks of feeling completely whipped.  But we're still in slug mode.  There are lots of things we need to do but neither of us has gotten our act together enough to do them.  If we're not careful, we won't be ready when we need to be.

I really wanted to go to the Bahamas again this year.  It's too late to go now.  I'd thought for a while that it would just be great to go someplace else.  But where?  Florida south of us hasn't had much warmer weather than we've had.  Not worth the effort. And we heard yesterday that the train of cold fronts we've had here have affected the Bahamas, too.

I guess the upside is that I've tried a few new recipes that turned out pretty well.  Always nice to add some variety to the menu.

At least with the full enclosure around the cockpit we can sit outside and read.  On a fully sunny day it gets like a sauna up there.

So how do we get ourselves motivated????  Maybe by beginning to plan where we'll stop when we leave here.  Time to get out the guide books.