Whistle while you work

Update:  by request, a photo of the hatch in question:

Gollum, gollum

Having plowed through most of the necessary jobs on Papillon, we have finally begun to tackle the cosmetics.  Erik has been looking forward to refinishing our teak since the day we bought the boat.  (And how do we know this is a boat-related task?  Because it is properly called "brightwork".  I'll only award that term a 6/10 on my nautical terminology list, because one could conceivably guess what it refers to, which is a major no-no in the sailing world.)

In her book on refinishing teak, The Brightwork Companion, Rebecca Wittman states that brightwork becomes an obsession, a descent into perfection.  It requires skill and a zealous perfectionism.  Clearly, just the project for Erik.  Brightwork involves stripping wood, removing all imperfections, then applying ten careful layers of varnish of varying but very particular composition and thickness, all in hopes of making the wood shine like a sheet of honey in the sun.  It is days and days of work.  And days and days.

(There are those of us who think life is a series of challenges to be joyfully overcome.  Then there are those of us who think life should come standard-issue with a bottomless pitcher of margaritas and an endless supply of books.  Let each of us refrain from judging the other.)

The hatch on the lazarette was Erik's first brightwork job.  A square of wood about three feet per side, it was sun-faded, peeling and cracked, as one would expect in bright sun and salty air.  Erik removed the hatch and lovingly scraped off the remaining varnish.  He filled the cracks with epoxy, sanded the wood and applied varnish for about three days.  The hatch looked gorgeous, even with five coats still to go.

And so, as I stood on the back deck and stared at the hatch, I wondered what exactly I should do.  I looked at the four tiny footprints in the freshly applied third coat.  I turned to Indy, sitting adjacent to the workspace, who was vainly trying to scratch wet varnish and newspaper from the soles of her feet.  I looked over my shoulder to Erik, loading scuba tanks in the dinghy, happy in his ignorance.
There was nothing for it.  As little as I wanted to do it, I knew the time was now.  The varnish was clearly still wet; maybe there was something he could do to recover the project.

My brother Colin volunteered to break news; like a coward, I leaped at the offer.  (Brave Sir Robin chickening out, that's me.) I watched the pantomime in the dinghy thirty feet away.  Erik moved rapidly through the stages of grief from Denial to Anger.  Then he got kind of stuck.  Arms wheeling like a windmill, theatre voice in full cry, he stormed onto the boat.  He was so loud that the Bahamian marina workers came rushing over, and this is not a rushing kind of country.

The girls clambered off the boat in alarm.  We deemed it prudent to absent ourselves for a while, so we went for a swim.  (Brave, brave, brave, brave Sir Robin!)  I was pleased to see Papillon still at the dock when we returned; I had fleeting fears of our things piled in a heap on the dock and Erik away with the rising tide.  On board, Erik was hunched over the hatch like Gollum, still muttering dark words about how sailors of olden days had it right in banning women from their boats.  His Precious was ruined, but he was on the mend.

After a brief mourning period, Erik picked himself up and started again.  Extra protection was added to his workspace, in the form of a rope fence and a rousing game of "stop!" played with Indy, driving home the rule to turn around whenever she approached the barrier.

All was happy again.  Two days post-disaster, Erik once again had his honey glass.  He cleaned his tools, put his things away, then went back to check on the hatch.

Only to find that, although he had taped down the plastic sheet under the hatch, one corner had worked its way free in the wind.  And blew onto the surface.  And stuck.  And it was covered in polyurethane.

And I am so glad we were away at the beach when it happened.

Good news, bad news

"Yeah, the blog is getting a little dry, isn't it?"
Well.  It seems my posts of late have failed to impress my bunkmate (and oh, the ingratitude! See if he gets another post in his honour.) Not that he doesn't have a point. Back in the chilly days of October, it was easy to be funny in a slipping-on-a-banana-peel kind of a way. As a person utterly new to sailing and, let's face it, hardship of any sort, it wasn't difficult to find things to grouse about.  My long-ago stint in Germany and working though the joys of the work permit system gave me practice in turning my teeny-tiny trials into something amusing. And, voila!  Instant blog.  It introduced a necessary element of schadenfreude to this enterprise: you, my dear readers, were far less likely to turn away in disgust from my privileged account of my two-year sabbatical if there were difficulties along the way. And there were. Many.

The bad news for you is that now we are in a warm place. And let me tell you, even higher on my list of peeves than laundry that does not dry is being cold.  This is a bad thing for someone from Canada, and played no small part in my agreeing to this adventure.  Erik can confirm that I spend much of my life below room temperature.  In a cage fight between the laws of physics and my icy hands of death, you should definitely put the milk money on me.

I've drifted off topic.  Point: cold = bad.  Cold = Amy indulging in great pessimism.  But when the sun shines... ahh, then, my friends, everything looks rosy.  The anchor is dragging and we're drifting onto a shoal in the middle of the night during a sudden storm?  In the Chesapeake, I may have just had a heart attack and had done with it.  When in happened in Key West a week ago?  Oh, gosh.  I'd better skip on over and get that anchor up then!  La de dah de dah!  And I did, and we repositioned, and then there was a parade with rainbows and puppies and everyone got free chocolate.  Or so it felt like.

Still drifting off topic.  My point is really this.  The bad news for you, for me, and for this little blog, is that nothing crummy is as funny in the sunshine.  I don't feel as rotten about it, so I can't complain effectively, so you don't get the same thrill for not living on this boat, and can feel all snug and secure at home even though it is -52 Celsius and eight meters of snow have fallen in the past ten minutes.  Unless I can make you say, "Ha ha!  My furnace is costing me $400/minute, but at least I'm not on Papillon!", then I have failed at my job.

Well.  Now.  My chickadees, I promise you, trials and tribulations lie in store!  We haven't stopped fixing dead engines during the night.  We still find ourselves surrounded by cruise ships and freighters at 2am, wondering how we are going to cross the Gulf Stream without getting creamed, and are those two little sets of lights actually one tug-and-tow waiting to de-mast us with its tow cable?  Dangers abound!  Annoyances proliferate!  And as soon as I get accustomed to this lovely Bahamian weather, I'll once again be glancing at the sky with heavy-lidded eyes and a sneer, asking, "what have you done for me lately?"

But, to tide you over until I regain my customary pessimism, I present to you this short list of reasons you can be happy you are not me.

I Am Happy I am Not Frolicking in the Bahamas on Papillon Because:
1.  I don't have to toilet-train a two-year-old on heavy seas in a bathroom the size of a linen closet.
2.  I don't have to listen to Erik and the girls invent highly dubious rhymes all day long.  (If I have to hear Indy say, "Domo arigato for scratching my botto" one more time...).  Note to future teachers of Indy and Stylish: send all vocabulary complaints directly to my husband.
3.  I don't have to haul a man >1.5 times my weight up the mast to fix things.  And let him down gently again.
4.  No one shakes my shoulder at 2am to say, "It's your watch.  Wake me in two hours."
5.  I don't have to be the only sufferer of seasickness amongst a Crew Without Pity.
6.  If I forget to buy something at the store, I can get it tomorrow.  Supplies are less than a dinghy ride/two-mile walk/tiny grocery store/cab ride/dinghy ride away.
7.  I have more than one functional electrical outlet.
8.  I don't have to re-prime my toilet every time I go somewhere.

There.  That should do for a while.  So, feel good in your life choices, friends.  And don't pity me as I collect conch shells on the beach again tomorrow.  Tra la la!  I'll be back to my grim self soon enough.

You do a montage!

Greetings from this side of 2011.  I trust everyone made it through the holidays without too many thrills, spills, or pounds of turkey weight.

Taking a look in ye olde mailbag, our dear readership is inquiring Erik's lack of posting.  Since no amount of encouragement has yet produced the written word from my dear counterpart, instead I present:

What is Erik Doing?

 filling the diesel tanks

 in the engine room

 at the helm

 back in the engine room

 fixing the outboard motor

 doing something loud and messy

 adjusting batteries

 checking the zincs

 fishing wires

 up the mast to work on the lazyjacks

 still up the main mast

 reconfiguring breakers in the electrical panel

 adjusting the mizzen sail

 measuring and marking the anchor rode

I think we can sense a general theme, here.  Erik is busy fixing disasters, and, more recently, making improvements.  Erik’s motto is that everything can be improved, be it boat, house, business, country, person or attitude, and he works to uphold that principle on a daily basis.  So don’t hope for him to write any time soon; he’s busy setting a new antenna.

The eagle-eyed among you will also notice that, behind every wall panel, under every floor board, around every corner, something is hidden in Papillon.  And I mean that in a very Matrix-like way.  Not a surface exists on this boat that does not conceal a bank of batteries, engine, pump, alternator (now I discover we have three!), pillow block, flag locker, sail locker, locker locker, or plain old chest of drawers.  It is fascinating, the storage space build into this place.  Oh, no, wait a minute.  It is a complete and utter thorn in my side.

Last summer, back in the heady days of our sailing lessons, I bought a pair of deck shoes.  Lovely blue Sperrys.  Being a thinking-ahead sort of a person, I left them on board when I departed, reasoning that I would have no need of them back on land.

Well.  Here we are, three months in, and I still can’t find my Sperrys.  Every room hides about thirteen sneaky cupboards.  I swear we’ve checked them all.  Under the bunks.  In the walls.  Under the spare sails.  Under the couches.  Behind the couches.  Nothing.  And I cannot bring myself to replace them, though my loafers are now disintegrating, because the moment I hand over my credit card the errant Sperrys will leap from their hiding place to lounge in the middle of the salon.  No, I won’t have it. 

I think I’ll offer Indy and Stylish a dollar to suss them out.  That’s good parenting, right?

Christmas Past and Present

-->The Christmas of my youth was a rigidly formatted affair.  I say this with affection - it took none of the fun out of it for me - but there it was.  One knew that every year would follow precisely the same pattern as every other, to the minute.  The eleventh commandment: Thou Shalt Spend Christmas the Exact Same Way Every Year of thy Life.  Christmas Eve: 6pm N family party; 7pm church; 8:30pm K family party; 9:30 home, candle lit and to bed.  Christmas day: 8am wake up and wait to be allowed downstairs; 8:02am stockings; 8:15am breakfast; 9am presents; 11am watch movies in a chocolate-and-Pringles-induced stupor until 4pm L family Christmas.  Boxing Day (oh, look it up, ye non-Canucks): 3pm J family Christmas.  And so it went.  Year in, year out, decade after decade.  When Erik and I became an item and arrived at the dating milestone of “What about the holidays?”, I happily discovered that he and his family celebrate on Christmas Eve.  I endured the yearly eye-rolls for skipping that part of the schedule, we went to his parents on the 24th, his troupe of three was assimilated into the Borg of my family events on the 25th and 26th, and No Difficult Choices Needed To Be Made.  Hurrah. Even now, with children of my own, my family at large resists the changes that age and geography have brought, and insists we follow our ancient pattern as closely as possible.

And so, perhaps you can understand what a Big Deal it was when the family discovered that we would be away for Christmas this year.  More than one reproachful look was levelled in my direction, more than one subtle opinion lobbed across the dinner table.

This is not to say that Erik and I were blasé about the whole thing.  On the contrary, repetition had worn a groove in my soul, and I found it a bit wrenching to think of missing my very first Christmas at home.  Even when we lived overseas, we came home for those precious few days.  But this year, it was not to be.  And I was a little sad.

And then:

 

Yeah.  Swimming on Christmas.  Kind of takes a lot of the sting out of it.  And not to be callous towards you people living in a winter wonderland, but ha ha ha!

Frankly, we were lucky.  You’ve no doubt been too busy shovelling snow to follow our weather report, so I’ll give you the synopsis.  Weather in Florida this December: freezing.  And I mean, water-turning-to-ice freezing.  The whole month.  Maybe you aren’t boo-hooing for me that I only put on a t-shirt three days this month, but honest to Murgatroyd, was it so much to ask?  From Florida?

Throughout our cold, cold cold, oh-so-cold days and nights in the Chesapeake, Erik and I would huddle by the diesel stove and give each other knowing nods, whispering “Florida” like a holy chant.  We knew.  No matter it was unseasonably cold throughout Maryland.  And Virginia.  And both Carolinas.  And Georgia, which we skipped altogether because it was so cold.  We knew.  Florida was waiting, and with it the beaches and bathing suits.

Pfft.  Wrong.

Anyway, nuts to you, Florida.  We’ve had our fun, but, sunny or not, we’re pulling up stakes from Key West next week and heading for the Bahamas for...

Can you guess?

That’s right.  A belated family Christmas.

Happy Holidays!

Ahh, the Space Center - the gift that keeps on giving.  This blog is going on hiatus until the holidays are over, and I find another good (read: unsecured) internet connection.  Merry Christmas, all!  

(Indy had fun, I swear she did.  It was just really, really cold the day we were there.  Really.)

Calling All Worrywarts, or, Next Stop, 1996!

As this little blog has grown, I have gotten the odd bit of mail from you, my dear readers.  Most of it is kind.  Some of it is mystifying.  But much of it comes from landlubberly types.  With that in mind, it is time for the educational (or, as Stylish, age 3, would have put it, edumacational) portion of our blog.  This will take the form of a Q&A with concerned readers Heckle and Jeckle.  Today's topic is:

When do we call the Coast Guard?

 

"I'm concerned about this sailing business, old bean!"

Heckle & Jeckle:  Look here, Papillon Crew.  Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.  You move around too much.  You don't move around enough.  Your track goes higgeldy piggeldy, hither and yon.  Your track has gaps.  Your track goes impossible places.  You stopped in the middle of the ocean.  All you do is write blog posts.  You never write blog posts.  You don't answer emais.  You don't take calls.  All this makes me anxious.  How will you ever get help without us?  We're calling the Coast Guard.

Papillon Crew:  No, you're not.

H&J:  But...

PC:  No.

H&J:  Oh, come on...

PC:  No.

H&J:  Fine then!  Explain yourselves.

PC:  Avec plaisir.  Let's go through our issues in order.

Complaint #1:  I disapprove of your frequency of movement!

Response:  In the early days, we moved almost every day.  That is because a) we needed the practice, and b) it was getting very, very cold in the Chesapeake.  And if there is one thing I object to in this life, it is being cold.  As we reached points south, the weather improved.  (Well, not here in Florida, apparently.  It is frigid here.)  Otherwise, hurray.  And so we started to linger.  Contrary to what you may think, we are out on this tub to loaf about in the tropics.  We aren't trying to circumnavigate, or race, or do anything else that would involve a lot of moving.  Yes, we want to have fun sailing, but we also want to drop anchor and swim.  And make sandcastles.  And fly kites.  You get the picture.

Summary:  We'll move when we feel like it and not before.

Complaint #2:  Your tracker is misleading, confusing, and makes me worried! 

Response:  Our Spot, while a nifty little gadget, has its flaws.  First, it will only track us for 24 hours at a time.  After that, we have to press the button again to keep it going.  That may not sound like much, but we're usually otherwise occupied on passage with things like fatigue, feeding children, and whichever alternator has caught fire that day.  So, a few hours go by before we remember Spot.  Thus, the gap.

Also, batteries die.  With the aforementioned feeding and fires, we also don't always have time to change out batteries the moment Spot dies.  Result: more gaps.

As for the funny tracks, Papillon is a sailing vessel.  When we need to muck around with the sails, we turn head-to-wind.  It may look like we are veering off-course, but really we're just changing something.  Keep watching and... see?  Back on course.

As for those mid-trip float-abouts, they are occasionally a necessary evil for rather benign reasons.  If we find that our current course and speed will get us into port in the middle of the night, we need to choose: speed up or slow down.  Unlike in a car, there is only so much velocity-adjustment you can practically do.  Tides, currents, wind speed... all of these things constrain us.  Once in a while, we'll choose to heave-to and just float around for a while on a calm day.  That may get us in at 7 am instead of 3 am, which is much, much safer.

Summary:  Spot is spotty and sailing means funny tracks.

Complaint #3:  Your communication stinks.

Response:  Well, now.  Our boat has an aluminum hull.  That means we live in a big Faraday cage.  We don't get signals down below - not internet, not cell phone.  And the honest truth is, as time goes by, more often than not we forget we own these fancy devices.  We're busy doing math with Stylish, or reading a book to Indy.  We've wandered off to the craft fair in town and forgotten to turn on the phone.  It isn't that we don't love you.  We are just doing other stuff.

Plus, the internet hates us, and that is that.  Connections have been worse and worse as we moved south.  And I just won't waste an hour every night trying to suck my email over the three seconds of connection I manage to grab.

Summary:  Our boat is rejecting your call. Don't take it personally.

Complaint #4:  You have no concept of safety and can't take care of yourselves, you tiny babies.

Response:  Hold on.  My eyes have rolled right back in my head and I can't see to type.

Ohhhkaaaay.  Here's what we've got, just off the top of my head, in case of trouble:

Warning systems: Fire alarms.  Carbon monoxide detectors.  Erik's inhuman hearing.  AIS so big ol' ships know we're there.

Preparedness training:  Man overboard drills.  Fire drills (kids included).  And I mean full dry runs, right up to mock-activating the life raft.

Response systems: Fire extinguishers.  Fire blankets.  Self-inflating life raft with food onboard. 

Communications:  VHF to talk to your friends the Coast Guard.  SSB for offshore.  An EPIRB registered to our vessel which automatically gives all of our information to the Coast Guard, and has its own GPS unit.  It is independent of all other boat systems, and would go with us if we abandon ship.

Natural suspicion:  I don't pick up hitchhikers, and if you think I'm inviting anyone strange onboard without pointing a flare gun in their face, you don't know me very well.  We will radio for help for other people, but my kids come first.

Summary:  For reals, we know how and when to get help.

H&J:  Yeah, okay.  I guess you've thought of a few things.  But I want to be connected to you right now!

PC:   Tough nuts.

H&J:  Hey!

PC:  No, seriously.  During university, I spent a month on my own in Indonesia for a research project.  There was rioting in Jakarta just before I went.  Towns I visited got burned down after I left. And did anyone panic because they couldn't reach tiny Amy during this dangerous time?  No.  Because it was 1996.  No one expected me to have access to a phone or email during those prehistoric days.  Everyone had to trust I was okay, and wait for a postcard.

So here is the deal.  We are all going to pretend that it is 1996.  Jump into your DeLorean and visit us in the past, because that's where our communications systems are living.

 "Could you give Papillon a message for me?"

H&J:  We're still calling the Coast Guard.

PC:  Like fun you are.  Those people are busy with real problems - real problems, incidentally, that we have heard and even helped with on our aforementioned VHF radio - and they don't have the resources to hold your hand.  Plus, if we get blacklisted for fake calls, you'll feel guilty forever that we can't get help when we need it.

H&J:  You're mean.

PC: I've come to terms with that.

This post is dedicated to the real Heckle and Jeckle, who are unrelated except in their well-meant concern for us.  And I'm sure they have learned their lesson. 

Adventures on the Space Coast

We have just arrived in Fort Lauderdale after a week in Cocoa, FL.  Despite the bitter cold, we found it a lovely town.

To date, I’ve avoiding writing a list of our adventures.  What is more boring than reading someone else’s blow-by-blow of their vacation?  I might as well just give up right now and buy myself a powder blue, elastic-waistband granny suit and a slide projector.  “And here we are passing red buoy number 30.  And up ahead, you can see the green daymark...”  I’m asleep already.  But I am going to take a little break from my random storytelling to recount our trip to the Kennedy Space Center.  Because it was AWESOME.  It was, in fact, SO MUCH BETTER THAN WHATEVER YOU DID YESTERDAY THAT I NEED TO GLOAT IN ALL CAPS!

As a young Amy, I briefly entertained notions of becoming an astronaut.  This dream was sidelined in part because I lack any discernable blood pressure.  On the plus side, I’ll probably never have a heart attack.  On the minus, my vision often greys-out from such simple activities as riding a roller coaster with a loop in it.  Or standing up.  Anyway, I imagine that circulation and the ability to retain consciousness are advantages on a space mission, so tough for me.

When I realized that Cape Canaveral was an easy stop for us on the boat, I couldn’t pass up the chance.  Stylish and I have been working on a Space unit for school, so, bam!  Instant field trip.

Well.  The Center did not disappoint.  We took a bus tour of the facility, saw the launch pads, the enormous assembly building (which is so tall that it was actually in view from the ocean for hours as we came into Cape Canaveral), actual rockets, space gear.  We touched a moon rock.  We saw an IMAX movie about Hubble, which was simply beautiful.  My favourite part: moving through the nebula below Orion’s belt.  Stylish’s favourite part: an astronaut eating lunch in space, spinning his tortilla around.

We met astronaut John-David Bartoe, an expert on the outer layers of the sun, who gave a great little talk.  Stylish spoke with him afterwards, got an autograph and a photo.  (We learned through this chat that a prominence and a filament are really the same thing from two different angles.  Are you geeking out right now or what?)

Indy greatly disapproved of the astronauts’ suits on display.  She tapped on the glass and yelled, “Take the helmet OFF!” at each display.  (Only Alan Shepard was spared this harangue, as his suit wisely had the helmet tucked under one arm.)

Now, no trip is complete with a trip to the gift shop.  Stylish has recently been granted an allowance, to do with as she pleases.  (There is nothing like a disappointing purchase to teach you the value of being choosy with your money.)  Carefully hoarded dollars in hand, she went through the two-story gift shop like a pro, considering and discarding options with efficiency.  And what did she choose in the end?  Pink glow-in-the-dark nail polish.  Nothing says “I visited the Space Center” like glowing fingernails.  And while I am not a nail polish kind of girl – I’m kind of proud when I manage to brush my hair in the morning, now - I can’t fault her choice.  When I was six, I got a bottle of Cabbage Patch Kids peel-off nail polish for Christmas.  I painted, dried and peeled my nails for three days straight until the bottle was empty.  Watching that burgundy-coloured goo turn to rubber and then peel off as though it had never been there?  Magic.  And if that stuff had glowed?  Pah.

As if all this space tourism weren’t enough, there was a SpaceX COTS rocket launch scheduled for the next morning.  The girls and I patiently did school on deck (one of us always on Rocket Watch), and then, at about 10:45, there it was!  A super-bright light shooting into the sky, leaving a gorgeous, puffy contrail.  Hooray!  Take that, traditional schooling!  I might as well retire my teacher’s cap right now, because I’ll never top that.

I'll leave the last word to Stylish.

Laundry Day

There are aspects of being an at-home mom that are great. Spending time with the girls. Not having to drive to work every day. Those are true bonuses.

But I don't love cleaning. I love a clean and tidy house... I'd just rather not be the one to put it in that condition.  I do it anyway, but there it is.

Nonetheless, if there is one domestic task that I almost enjoy (and what a ringing endorsement that is!), it is laundry. Back on land, Monday was laundry day. Strip the beds, sort the clothes, and get a load into the wash. Erik and I bought a Miele in Germany a decade ago, and it has faithfully followed us from country to country ever since. And for those of you who have never had a German washing machine beat your whites into submission at 95 degrees Celsius for three hours, I say you've never had really clean clothes.

So it was somewhat of a let-down to me to attempt laundry on the boat. We'd talked about installing a machine, but that takes more water than we can justify. So, the marina and local laundromat it is. Bag up the clothes, stagger out to the facilities, haul out your bag of quarters, and we're off.

Well. Not only are those off-brand machine not my Miele (oh, the stains that remain!). That's bad enough. But worse is the Not-Really-A-Dryer. These units masquerade as dryers, sure enough. "Oh, hi!" they say. "Yes, sure, I'm a dryer. Give me $4 and I'll show you!" These mimics heat your clothes. Yes, they get them nice and hot. But they do not dry. At all. No matter how small your load, no matter how many quarters you plug in. Humidity = 100%, baby.

Don't believe me? Well, check it out.

This is my nightmare.  A week of soaking wet (but hot!) laundry hanging in our salon.  Because we had nowhere else to put it!  And the dryer ate all of my quarters!  Of course, it was quite cold the night we tried to dry it, so the boat was closed tight and we turned on the diesel heater.  Erik woke in the night and condensation was weeping off every surface.  The salon was wet for a week, and the laundry took at least three days to dry.  And even then...

So.  Laundry: no longer my favorite domestic activity.  I think I'll pick cooking, at least until the first time I'm trying to prep something in thirty-foot seas.