But What About the Weather?

We get ashore somewhere, we start to meet non-sailing friends through the kids, and the question inevitably comes up: what about the weather?  Haven't you been out in terrible storms?

The answer is that we have been out in some sloppy weather, but we've had to go looking for it.

Get this: we sailed Pelagic from Kodiak, Alaska to Hobart, Tasmania.  Then we sailed Galactic from San Francisco to Hobart.  And in all the sailing that entailed, maybe 25,000 nautical miles, we never had a gale at sea.

Never had average wind speeds of 34 knots or more.  Like, not once.

Even now, after we patently went looking for bad weather in Patagonia and the Southern Ocean, we've never seen storm-force winds - average (and I stress average, since that's the definition) wind speeds of 48 knots or more.

And really, any well-found, well-handled boat, with sea room and no unusual issues like wind against current, should be able to wait out a gale without any drama.

OK - confession - I did break my ribs in a gale once...so I guess I shouldn't downplay the drama part too much.

But my point is that while we watch the weather very carefully when we're looking to make a passage, and we continue to be very humble about this undertaking of sailing the world in our own boat, we also have a certain amount of confidence with the issue of bad weather, confidence that's naturally accrued over the nearly nine years that we've been out sailing.

But, when you're starting out, or when you're still in the dreaming/planning stage, the idea of bad weather at sea can be frightening enough to make you not want to go at all.

This should not be the case.  There are techniques that can keep a boat safe in poor weather, and the habits of good seamanship will give you security against the unexpected...there's a reason that "a lee shore" is the sailor's answer to what she fears most in life.

But, when you are just starting out, you don't know those techniques, and you don't have those habits of good seamanship.  So, how do you learn that stuff without going through the trouble of going out and making your own mistakes?

All this is a lead-in to mention Storm Proofing Your Boat Gear and Crew, by Fatty Goodlander.  The book is just out.  I haven't had the chance to see it myself, but Fatty has been sailing the world since before dirt was invented - if I'm not mistaken, he and Carolyn are on their third circumnavigation.  And Fatty has raised the very humble art of magazine writing to new heights in his monthly column for Cruising World.  So all that bodes well for this effort.  If you're dreaming of the life afloat, or if you're already on your boat, and wanting to pick up some cheap knowledge for dealing with "what-if's" on bigger crossings, this book might be right up your alley.

Expert Advice

If you read this blog you'll know that Alisa and I are completely sold on the experience of raising our boys on a traveling sailboat.  Selling our house and quiting our jobs and sailing away from Kodiak when Elias was ten months old was a huge jump for us to make.  But we remain very glad that jump we did.

But - caveat emptor - it's a big jump, leaving behind the land life that you know and going down to the sea with your young ones in tow.

When Alisa and I were getting ready to leave, we of course had never met anyone who had sailed long distances with a kid in diapers.  And there was no comprehensive guide available for what we were planning to do. We could only find one quite limited book on the subject.  We each read it cover to cover more than once, willing the answers to all our questions to somehow appear from between the lines.

Into this breach come Behan Gifford, Sara Johnson and Michael Robertson, who have written a new book, Voyaging with Kids.

I "know" all three authors in an online sort of way, so I got an early look at the book.

And it's a fantastic resource.  Each of the three authors has sailed thousands of miles with kids of various ages, and they've tapped a wide group of other sailing parents to offer extra insights.

Voyaging with Kids is the book that Alisa and I wished had existed when we were getting ready to leave.  If you're thinking about going sailing with your kids, this book will answer your questions.  It will show you how you're not even asking the right questions.  It will show you how other sailing families have dealt with the rigors of the life afloat and made the family cruise a delight.

The book is available from L&L Pardey Books at a 30% discount prior to the official launch date. After October 1 it will be available at Amazon and other retailers.

You Can't Buy Reviews Like This

I know.  I've tried.
(That's a joke.)
My book about our first year and a half of life afloat, South From Alaska, was published in Australia, in 2011, by NewSouth Books.  I was very happy with the experience (a contract! an advance! on the shelf in the Sydney airport book store!), and extremely gratified by the reviews that edition garnered.  More about those in a minute.

The downside of publishing in Australia, though, is that ordering the book from outside the Lucky Country can take a very long time, and it carries the exceptionally high Australian price wherever it goes.

In the bad old days of publishing, the book would have been remaindered by now, the publisher would have offered me the plates if I'd thought to negotiate that item in the contract, and that would be that.

In the brave new world of the written word that we find ourselves in, there is another option.  Since the rights have reverted to me (I did think to negotiate that in the contract), I can publish a second edition myself.  Which is what I've just done.

First edition

The Kindle edition is out now, for $5.99 US.  The print edition is coming, just as soon as a proof copy can reach me in New Zealand.

I'm very happy that this new edition will make the book more easily available to readers - as John Cheever put it, you can't write without readers - the relationship is precisely like a kiss, something you can't do alone.

In this second edition I'm also able to address NewSouth's decision not to include photos, which was my only disappointment with the first edition.

Second edition

And now for those reviews (and a couple blurbs):

"A book that speaks to both sides of the brain simultaneously and without contradiction…prose so beautiful, and with such a dose of self-deprecating comic relief, that you yearn to be there with them." - Cruising World

"Litzow is a talented writer…evocative and powerfully visual." - The Age (Melbourne)

"Eminently readable." - The Sydney Sun-Herald

"As a sailor who raised his daughter aboard, I was touched by this book.  Litzow writes from the heart." - Cap'n Fatty Goodlander, sailor and writer

"Mike writes well and with utter honesty about the sometimes overwhelming sense of responsibility he feels when he and his partner Alisa take a toddler to sea. He clearly shows the stress this places on their marriage and how it is balanced by the rewards they and their slowly maturing son reap. Essential reading for anyone contemplating voyaging with very young children." – Lin Pardey, author of Storm Tactics Handbook, Self Sufficient Sailor and Bull Canyon

If you've already enjoyed South From Alaska, consider taking a quick detour to Amazon or goodreads to leave a review and help other readers find the book.

Many thanks, Mike

And Setting it Straighter

All joking aside (and who can resist being dismissive when someone says something nice about you in public?), that was really a very nice write-up from Fatty in CW.

From the Art Department

Well, I look at the blog and see it's been five days since I wrote about being alone on the boat, working away, while Alisa and the boys are back in the States to visit family.

I pass each day with tools in hand, yet my list of accomplishments fails to live up to the promise of all this uninterrupted time.  Surely mounting the new solar panel on the stern arch couldn't have taken two day?

But, never say die - I'm going to clean up this boat (neatness has slipped a lot) and go to bed, confident that tomorrow will surpass all standards for getting-er-done.

I'll leave you with these products of the Blue World Press art department - the draft cover and maps for the long-awaited US edition of South From Alaska. 

I'm very happy with how they're turning out…

Three Thanksgivings

Three Thanksgivings?!

So this is the story of how four expat Americans managed to avail themselves of three observations of that most American of holidays, Thanksgiving, even though they found themselves spending November in a country that observes Guy Fawkes Night.

The first Thanksgiving we owe to plain confusion.  It was a wholesome family affair - Alisa read some stories about the first Thanksgiving to Elias as we motored out to the Bay of Islands, and we had a family feast in our beautiful anchorage at Urupukapuka Island.

The only problem was that we were a week early.  Alisa had glanced at the calendar and mistakenly decided that November 21st was Thanksgiving.  Some American yachties eventually warned us of our error, but we decided to go ahead anyway - the large chicken had already been bought (turkey being hard to come by) and was thawing in the fridge.

We had a family dinner that was very low-key and also just perfect, and we figured that was our holiday.

But then the plot twists of the traveling life began falling down all around us...

First, through the offices of a kind reader of this blog and a string of quick emails, we found ourselves invited to an improper Thanksgiving dinner (Pad Thai) on the proper date (November 28th) on board the yacht St. Jude (named after the saint of lost causes).  The sharp-eyed reader will recognize this as the boat of famous American sailing writer Catty Goodlander, author of the best-sellers It's a Lazy Woman Who Can't Find Her Husband Two Jobs and Corporate Men Make Better Sailors.  Here are pics of all of us on Thanksgiving proper, as taken by Elias.  You can see everyone's reaction as we wait...for...Elias...to...take...the...pictures.  That's Catty, of course, and her isn't-he-a-saint First Mate, Gary.

We met up with St. Jude in the neighborhood of Kawau Island, whence they had travelled to attend the annual Thanksgiving blow-out, given the Saturday after the actual holiday by another set of well-known American sailing/writing pair.  The cognescenti among you will know of whom I speak by the name of the cottage-scale boatyard in their front yard, famous around the world to those who honor the ancient tradition of ferro-cement boatbuilding techniques:

This of, course, would be the famous Parteys, who have launched a thousand sailing dreams with their famous motto: "You'll never regret having that extra piece of gear".

~~

Ok, enough of the humor - I'll leave that to the professionals.  The folks in those pictures are Cap'n Fatty and Carolyn Goodlander, and Lin and Larry Pardey.

In France, mountain climbers and sailors achieve general fame.  Like, rock star-level fame.  In the States and Canada, though, climbers and sailors become well known only to other climbers and sailors, so they at the most become semi-famous.  Which these four are.

Elias and Eric pose with Taliesin, the Pardey's self-built, engineless, a hair-under-30-feet-on-deck cutter.  There are only a few famous yacht names - Joshua, Wanderer, Spray, Tzu Hang, Gypsy Moth - and I reckon Taliesin can hang with at least a few of that crowd.    

The Pardeys threw down, as we say in the home country, meaning that they were very hospitable.   Lin was kind enough to pass along an invitation to Galactic through the Goodlanders, saying that no Americans should be left out of the party. 

It was raining, so the tables were moved inside, and they achieved their biggest-ever sitdown crowd inside the house - 33 people.  There were two turkeys and all the traditional side dishes, though kumara was of course substituted for sweet potatoes.

And it was a raucous-fun group - Kiwi neighbors and American sailors, for the most part.  Lin remarked that all of the couples at the dinner save two were, or had been, voyaging sailors.  So the conversation was loud and non-stop.  We all had something to say to each other.

Alisa's contribution - pumpkin, pecan, apple

It was a real treat for me to grab a quiet chat with Larry in the pre-dessert lull.  The seamanship that he and Lin brought to bear on their own voyages...well, it's enough to say that they played the game at a different level from most of us.  If you've spent a year traveling on your own boat, close your eyes and imagine sailing on and off the anchor every single time.  And then imagine doing that since 1968, when they launched their first boat, Serrafyn.

When NewSouth asked me for ideas for people to blurb South From Alaska I came up with Fatty's name, and he graciously agreed.  It was a hoot to finally meet him and Carolyn on their new boat, Ganesh (that's the god of lost causes, a mere saint not being up to the task in this case).  The Goodlanders are great fun - plus, Fatty has a real sword on board, which our boys found irresistible.

Alisa and I have always enjoyed the company of sailors who have been going for decades, and still have a gleam in their eye to show how much fun they're having.  But you can also go a long time without running into those folks - most of our crowd are lucky to get away for a few years before heading back to what's reputed to be the "real world".  Meeting these four was a great validation of how well the sailing life can work out, how rich and fun it can be, even as the years turn into decades.

I'll say "thanks" for that, three times at least...

A (North American) Review

From the latest Cruising World:

The Last Winner

OK, we've got the winner drawn for the last book giveaway - this copy is heading to Edwin, in Liverpool, New York.

And once again, it was great to hear from so many readers of the blog - but note that the galactic.seas email was just set up for these raffles, so if you want to get a hold of me it's probably best to comment on the blog....

And thanks again to New South for the giveaway copies!

The Last Raffle

I flew up to Queensland last weekend to speak at the annual literary lunch for the Ipswich Friends of the Library.  All in all it was a good time - there was a good turnout, I got to visit with some of the Queensland family, I was able to remind myself what it's like to wear the Australian uniform of board shorts and thongs, and I met a reader of the blog.

Going up to Ipswich to talk about South From Alaska was also a bit of a homecoming for me, as my Dad's family is from Ipswich - if he'll forgive me, I'll share a photo of him from a few years back as an Ipswich school boy.

 

So, going up to give this talk reminded me that it's time for the fourth, and last, giveaway of a copy of South From Alaska.  As before, all you have to do is email galactic.seas@gmail.com and put the word "book" in the subject line.  I'll choose the winner randomly one week from today - that's the 23rd of October, Hobart time.  Postage is on me, anywhere in the world!

(And, I'll close by mentioning that someone told me the price of the book on the US Amazon site has dropped from the ridiculous levels it was at, so if you don't win this last time, you might have to break down and buy a copy!)

South From Alaska - In Ipswich

If you're in the Brisbane area, mark this coming Saturday on your calendar - I'll be giving a talk about South from Alaska at the annual literary lunch for the Ipswich Friends of the Library and Information Service - 10:30, October 6, Ipswich Library, 40 South Street, Ipswich.

Would be great to meet some readers of the blog there!

And, a(nother) winner...

Ok, the winner of the third monthly book giveaway is one rvennis, from somewhere in Canada....

Great, as always, to get messages from people entering.  I've got one more of those publicity copies left, which means that there will be one more chance to win a copy in October.

And, there's been a good unanticipated side effect of doing these giveaways - hearing from people who want a copy is motivating me to get going on publishing South From Alaska in North America.

Getting a book published is the only task I can think of that is so spectacularly uninviting and generally not-fun that it can make the actual writing of the book seem pleasant.  But still, these things have to be done...

Meanwhile, school holidays are officially on here in Tasmania.  So once we take care of a day or three of boat jobs, and once the wind dies down enough for us to back out of the marina pen safely, we're going sailing...

And the Book, Again

Well, it's coming - the spring school holidays are nearly upon us, and we can untie from the dock and go sailing for a couple weeks.  Man, can I not wait.  I just need to figure out a way to talk Alisa into being the one to dive down and clean the crud off the prop before we go...

Meanwhile, though, it's time for the third (and nearly last!) monthly give-away for a copy of South From Alaska.

You might remember that I've got a few promotional copies on hand and, since the book is only published in OZ, I figured it would give folks a chance to get a copy.  Anyone, from inside Oz or out, is free to have a go - all you need to do is send an email to galactic.seas@gmail.com with the word "book" in the subject line.  I'll choose the winner with a random draw one week from today - that's Wednesday the 5th of September, Hobart time.

~~~

A Winner!

Well, everyone will have to forgive me - I'm two days late on the drawing for the book.

Alisa tells me that everyone cuts a writer a little slack when it comes to being on top of the details.  I don't know if that's true for "everyone", but I do suspect that one of the cornerstones of my happiness is the fact that she certainly has an understanding attitude when it comes to be and details...

But enough of that...the winner for this month is Dan from Vancouver.

And once again, I loved getting the messages from people who were entering.

If you weren't lucky this time around, you'll have another chance next month.

(I wonder if Moitessier ever raffled off books?)

Raffle #2

I was happily surprised with the response for the first book giveaway last month, and it's time to do it again.  As a reminder, I've got some publicity copies of South From Alaska that are looking for a home.  And, since the book isn't easily available outside of Australia and New Zealand, I thought it would be nice just to give folks a chance at a free copy.  Anyone, from Oz or elsewhere, is eligible - just send an email with the word "book" in the subject line to galactic.seas@gmail.com.  I'll choose the winner with a random number generator one week from today (around 0922 July 15, Hobart time).  Postage is on me.

Oh, and, Adam - did your copy arrive?

And, a Winner...

So a copy of the book is heading to the UK - to Adam, in Lowestoft.

Something that I didn't expect from this little experiment was how fun it was to get messages from the people entering.  Even with the comments, this blogging thing is mostly a one-way street.  I guess that's just an immutable characteristic of writing, no matter how the technology changes.  So it was cool to just hear from a bunch of readers for once...

I'll do it again in a month.

And thanks to NewSouth for providing the copies of the book to give away!

12 Hours To Go

Just had a look, and there has been quite a nice response to the book raffle.  The draw will be at 19:24 Hobart time, or about twelve hours from now.  If you're interested in winning a copy of South From Alaska, send an email to galactic.seas@gmail.com, with the word "book" in the subject line.

Book Raffle

I've got a few publicity copies of South From Alaska from the publisher.  What to do with them?

Well, I figure that since the book is published only in Oz, it might be nice to give readers outside the Lucky Country a chance to get a hold of a copy.  So I'll try an experiment here, and give a copy away.  If you're interested, send an email to galactic.seas@gmail.com, with the word "book" in the subject line.  Anyone, from Australia or elsewhere, is free to have a go.

One week from today - let's see, that's next 19:24 on Thursday, the 14th, Hobart time - I'll use a random number generator to choose from the entrants.  Postage is on me.  And don't worry, of course I won't put your email on the blog or anything like that - I'll just identify the winner by first name and city.

If this experiment works, I'll give a copy away every month until they're gone!

ABC Local Radio

Well, late notice, but I'll be interviewed about South From Alaska on Hobart ABC local radio tomorrow - Sunday - around 1030 in the morning Hobart time.  That's 936 AM in Hobart, or listen online if you're outside of Hobart.

Launched

Yesterday was the launch for South From Alaska.

This is the first thing that I saw when I showed up at the bookshop - the sign out front advertising the event.  (Notice the author's name!).  A less resilient person might have seen a bad omen...

But it went great.  We had a fine turnout, and the response was good.  I spoke for about 25 minutes, showing images from our trip and reading passages from the book.

You could look at an event like this as a bit of a chore, but I decided at the outset that I would just enjoy the authorial moment of it all - the chance to read a bit of the book to an audience, and to be in a room full of readers, and to just celebrate the book.

And that's pretty much what it was.

Invitation

So this is for the Hobartians in the audience.  

You are cordially invited to the event for South From Alaska that Fullers Bookshop is holding this Thursday.

I'll be reading from the book and sharing a few images from our voyages.  I've already met a few fans of the book here in town, and I've got to say that meeting readers is a real kick.  So if you've enjoyed the book, or this blog, come on down, and bring a friend.

New South Publishing is kindly throwing down for the first $200 of refreshments.  The event begins at 5:30, and Fullers is asking people to RSVP at 6234 3800.