Posted on June 16, 2016
On “heading out”
We get asked this a bunch. “When are you heading out?” Sometimes, it’s just someone who wants to know when we’re leaving a slip, but I think most people mean it in the grand sense: “When are you heading out on this amazing life adventure?”
Uhm. We’re there.
I know quite a few people who had envisioned us sailing off the dock, across Lake Michigan, at the end of our party on Sunday. I get that some folks are able to prep for departure from their home marina, and when they leave their home base, it’s a big deal. For our family, leaving our house was our “heading out” moment. The rest of what’s happening right now is, I think, just cruising. We are certainly still in prep mode, but I imagine that a big hunk of the next several years will look a lot like today: stowing and unearthing gear, fixing broken things, waiting on a weather window. This is it, people–the glamorous life of cruising.
We are certainly looking forward to things being a bit more settled, though. Right now, the cello is in the saloon, and the kids still have Rubbermaid bins stowed at their feet. We just got the genoa bent on yesterday. The wind’s against us to cross the lake; we could maybe go tonight, but I’m not sure the boat will be quite ready, and that’s fine. This is really just our home now, and we aren’t feeling pressed for any grand gestures. Maybe we’ll head north on all this east wind, and cross from Port Washington or Sheboygan. We’ve got time.
Last night, we enjoyed harbor seats for a Lumineers concert, and this afternoon we’ll be meeting our fiend Nick as he sets up for an art fair steps from our harbor. We can’t quite keep moving at our pace from last week; we need to take it slower, not lose our minds, enjoy the calm.
On a related note, when people ask us where we’re headed lately, we tell them the North Channel of Lake Huron. It saves a lot of questions, and maybe it’ll uncover some good anchorage recommendations.
“Chafe gear” sold by West Marine–pretty much 1 1/2-inch tubular webbing–versus the chafe gear we plan to use. Thanks for the fire hose, Schroeder!
Updated on June 13, 2016
Offski
We’re off.
Empty versus full
After a very intense few final days that saw us running between boat fixes, shuttling gear and packing up the house, we were finally able to get out of Madison around 2 on Saturday. We were so extremely lucky to have the help of Michu’s mother, sister and boyfriend-in-law, to help us on Saturday morning. They were amazing–expecting to just drop by and pick up a couple of things, instead they ended up disassembling furniture, schlepping stuff to three cars, and moving tons of stuff into the sauna of an attic. Even with their help, we didn’t feel like we were going to be able to get the apartment cleaned out. Fortunately, we remembered–we now have staff! So we called the management company on Monday and asked to have it cleaned. A small price to pay to get us out the door.
Of course, out of the frying pan, into the fire; Saturday still saw us moving a final three carloads of stuff to the boat, throwing it all into the v-berh, and motoring the boat down the river to the Milwaukee harbor. We pulled into a berth at Lakeshore State Park and called it a night.
Milwaukee wasn’t exactly done with us, though. It was Pridefest this weekend, and we were treated to a fireworks show at 10:00 directly overhead. Pretty nice introduction to cruising life! Less nice was the techno music blaring until almost midnight. Coupled with the dramatic wind shift to the north and subsequent small craft warning, plus an injury to T’s foot thanks to the chaotic mess, we did not have a peaceful night’s sleep.
No rest for the weary, though–Sunday had us hosting a bon voyage party for over 100 people. After digging through four separate bins to find all the gear to make a cup of coffee, we moved the boat across the small harbor to the Discovery World pier and tried to get into a party mood. We gave up on getting the boat ready early on–there was just no way to stow everything, clean up all the boatyard grime and make her look her best. We figured our non-boating friends probably wouldn’t know the difference, and counted on the kindness of our fellow sailors not to say anything.
Our other strategy was to distract everyone with lots of flags. We have a full set of code flags, and decided we wouldn’t have a better chance to fly them. They attach to each other with toggles and loops, so of course the string on the bow separated as we hoisted. Fortunately, F. was waiting for her chance to go up the mast; we hoisted her to the first spreader, and she walked out and retrieved the flags for us. So much easier to yank her up there then to send the heavy old adults!
The party itself was wonderful and exhausting. We were right about our non-sailing friends; they all seemed to think the boat was incredible, and for the most part larger than the expected. We took over the dock, and the kids clambered all over the boat like little monkeys. Michu and I spent the whole time saying hello, check out our boat, we love you, goodbye–over and over for five hours. There were a lot of tears, and a lot of happiness and excitement. Even though we only expect to be gone for two years, the party felt like a real break from our land life to our cruising life.
And Pridefest rocked on. This time around, not even the thumpin’ bass could keep us awake.
So this morning, we enjoyed Michu’s sister ferrying us around for a last run to West Marine and Ace Hardware; we had some down time exploring Discovery World; we attempted to unpack; we enjoyed having just our family around. We are still wildly disorganized; I swear, I have about $500 worth of food on the boat at the moment, but all I could pull off for dinner was pasta with jarred tomato sauce. I mean, I bought the kids roller hot dogs for lunch. Roller dogs, people! What is going on?! We are out of time and space, letting the kids stay up too late and eating meals at very weird hours. We probably smell pretty bad–there’s no shower included with this fine pier, and it’s a bit public for a cockpit shower. We’ve obviously brought too much stuff with us. The kids would like to do all kinds of fun things, and we keep having to put them off while we work. We’ve only traveled a distance of about five miles. But we’re here! The cruising counter at the bottom of the page has started counting up instead of down. The cars are gone, the house is empty, and we’re officially cruisers.
Posted on June 10, 2016
Launch Day
Today I find out if any of the five new through hulls I installed leak.
For the past month I have been so buried in the boat projects, that I have barely payed any attention to the world around me…. Serious tunnel vision. I feel like one of those WWII soldiers who, because of radio silence, had no idea the war was over. Definitely stuck in my on little world of problem solving.
Milou is coming along nicely… All of the outside below the waterline work is done–bottom paint and through hulls. At the last minute we decided to remove the toilet from the aft head; so instead of replacing the two thru hulls, I simply yanked them out and glassed in the holes. Something about a boat with two less holes feels good.
I have spent days of work in tidying up the wiring. I have now followed every wire on the boat, finding more than one “Oh my god this is a fire waiting to happen–how did I not find all of that before?” The new DC breaker panel is in. What feels like miles of new wire has been put in and I wish I would have weighed all of the old “wires to nowhere” that I pulled off; I am guessing it was something like 20 pounds of junk wires.
There is so much that is not done. “It’s OK, Michu, you will do it all while you are on the way!” Well, it doesn’t feel OK. The solar panels are mounted on the arch but not yet wired in. I still need to figure out how I am going to run all of the wiring through the arch.
Self steering is almost done – all of the components (minus the rudder angle sensor, I had to make a shelf for it so the geometry would work) are in, but the system needs 3 hours of me working in little holes, connecting wires.
My custom nav/instrument pod is installed and the wires are all in there waiting to be connected. Again, I need to spend an afternoon sitting there connecting wires.
My dinghy needs a lot of work. I have a seat and oars to install. The outboard is currently stuck in reverse, and running on one of its two cylinders. I have the parts to fix the shift linkage. I hope the dead cylinders are a carburation issue; otherwise, I will need to find a charge coil somewhere.
The boat is a total mess. Deb has started to move our entire life from house to boat–seriously cramping my ability to do work. But I’m pretty sure living on the boat is the point of all of this… tunnel vision.
So: organize, organize, organize. My various projects are in little piles scattered around the boat; this will no longer work. Milou has to become a primary living space, no longer my shop. So I have to stow everything and get out the tools and supplies as need to complete one specific job at a time.
We have returned from Milwaukee. Here is how it went down:
Milou is now in the water floating; she looks pretty good. I feel bad because I owe her a serious cleaning. And it would have been good to give her a nice buff job.
After running our transom into the outboard on the boat behind us (Milou is fine, the outboard could use a new cover, total gong show) the yard guys managed to get us launched. I hopped down below to make sure none of the through hulls were leaking and was surprised to find more water than I had ever before seen in this boat’s bilge. I was sure we were sinking. I am embarrassed to say the bilge pump was not hooked up at the time. I had it disconnected while I was fixing the final wiring horror, and the yard guys interrupted me to launch the boat. If the pump had been hooked up it would have kicked on well before the boat made it to the river; all the water had accumulated in the boat from the spring rains. The yard had place the boat in a very bow up position. A little bow up is standard, to help the water drain out of the cockpit. Milou was popping such a wheelie that all of the rain water had accumulated in the stern between the hull and liner under the kids’ bunks and then it rushed forward once the boat was on the level.
I resisted my initial urge to taste the water, to see if was rain water or the more vile Kinnickinnic river water. Instead I had the guys hoist the boat back up while I grabbed some jumper cables to hotwire the bilge pump. Oh, you are wondering where is has 3700 gallon per hour Big Dog back-up bilge pump? Yeah, still in the box, one of those project for me to get to while we travel. After all of the water was out, we lowered her again. I checked all of the through hulls and noticed my galley raw water intake was barely leaking. One more hoist, some additional teflon tape and now the boat is water tight, from below. Still have to seal up all of those places rain water can get in. Another job for during our travels.
Posted on June 8, 2016
The perfect is the enemy of the good
“You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the water slide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute.” — Tina Fey
I know y’all are looking for updates. We’re working our collective butts off over here. Still on track to leave the house Saturday morning, but there’s a long list of Projects Not Done at the boat. We’re trying hard to keep in mind a few things:
- Our non-sailing friends will not notice the things that are not precisely Bristol fashion at the party on Sunday;
- We can work on the boat while we travel. We WILL always be working on the boat as we travel, anyway; and
- The perfect is the enemy of the good.
That last sentiment is the one I keep pushing into Michu’s head. I have been told, affectionately I’m sure, that I can be a bit, ahem, rigid; but Michu’s the one who loses his mind a tiny bit when the trim is off by a quarter of an inch, or there’s a gap in the cork. Are you familiar with the Pareto principal? From Wikipedia:
The Pareto principle or 80–20 rule is a 20th-century analogue. For example, it commonly takes 20% of the full-time to complete 80% of a task, while to complete the last 20% of a task takes 80% of the effort. Achieving absolute perfection may be impossible and so, as increasing effort results in diminishing returns, further activity becomes increasingly inefficient.
Perfect enough.
Updated on June 4, 2016
Final Sunday Round-Up!
‘Cuz next Sunday is our Bon Voyage party. Y’all come!
- The whole family’s heading to the boat on Sunday; it’ll be the first time the kids have been there since August. We’d hoped to have things picked up, more or less, but of course that didn’t happen. SO–all hands on deck to clean up, and they won’t be able to really get situated in their rooms until they actually move aboard.
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Just a few replacement thru-hulls waiting to go in… The end-of-the-week head scratcher is how to fit the liferaft on the coachroof, under the boom. We delayed getting the liferaft to put as much time between installation and recertification, but now we’re pressed to get it to fit securely. Michu’s fabricating something.
- Typing this one up in advance; due to a miscommunication with the cable guys, we are without internet until Monday. Sure, it’s a taste of what’s to come, but our offline systems aren’t organized yet, and it turns out we need the internet to finish those tasks! We still haven’t found an offline editor that we like for the blog; I’m in the basement of the kids’ school at the moment while F’s at fiddle, slurping up the WiFi. We’re not ready!
View from the local library. Excellent WiFi two blocks from our house. - The refrigerator works and it is awesome. We still have a couple of incandescent lights to switch over to LED’s in the main cabin; on land, in hot weather, without being able to dump heat into the water, the fridge used as much energy as one non-LED cabin light. Freezer freezes. Stuff is cold. AWESOME!!!!!!
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Considering installing old toilet at the helm. - Decided it was a good idea to rip out a bathroom. The tiny head between the kids’ berths is plumbed for direct discharge overboard–i.e., not legal in the US. It was going to be a backup for emergencies; a holding area for spare parts; and a second toilet offshore. Instead of being a not-very-useful bathroom, we decided instead it should be a totally awesome walk-in closet. Even though it doesn’t add that much space in terms of cubic feet, it makes configuring that storage so much easier, aaaaaand we got to pitch a truly vile toilet. Hopefully we don’t regret the choice.
What do you think? Convenient, right?
