Juggle Juggle

This blog is one of my guilty pleasures.  

I could be spending my time more profitably in terms of writing - where is that next book, after all?  

And time spent on the blog doesn't really "get" us anything.  (Except for the consideration from Cruising World for reposting it.  Thanks, guys!  And why do you still have that Del Viento character at the top of the page?)

But even though I can't always justify the time I give it, the comfort of keeping this little travelogue going, year after year, and with something of an audience to boot, is its own reward.

Looking down on Simon's Town from Swartkop

So in one month we'll reach the ninth anniversary of our departure from Kodiak.  As we've been meeting locals here in Simon's Town I find that I have fallen into a set way of explaining our backstory: We left Alaska with enough money saved to live on for two years.  Then I discovered that I could work on the boat.  And now we've been going for (almost) nine years.

We've been extraordinarily lucky that I can more or less earn a living at science from the boat.  In addition to keeping our finances afloat, the science also gives me an intellectual engagement that I enjoy very much (though at the expense of time for writing!) and when we return to Alaska re-entry into my professional world should be made a lot easier by the fact that I never entirely left.

I try to keep two research projects going.  That seems to be a good workload while we're sailing.  Just now I have two ending and two others beginning, so it's been a little bit of a crunch time.  The pictures above and below capture my split attention in recent days.

Science - the up close and personal view from my laptop screen

I'm sure I've written about this before on the blog - how it can be such a funny experience to be somewhere new, like South Africa, and holding back from exploring it while I work away on the boat.   Among many other delights, the Cape Peninsula, where we are, has some fantastic hiking.  I get out for an hour walk most days, but I've only taken time for one proper hike with the family in the month since we've been in Simon's Town.

But, as I've often said, no regrets,  The boat makes a pretty good office setting, wherever it is.

And that one family hike that I've been on, and that these pictures are taken from?  I wildly under-estimated how long it would take, and neglected to pack a lunch.  We got back to the boat at three.