From Where to Where?

Leaving Opua at dawn

I have mixed feelings about being in internet range again after seven weeks of being away from all things networked and interconnected.

Actually, I lie.  

In this day and age, I think that getting out of touch of the web is one of the best things that you can do for yourself.  I can't wait to go get lost again.

But it was heartening, when I reconnected to the blog after all those weeks of just sending in posts via the HF radio, to see the comments that showed how much people seemed to be enjoying our dispatches from never-never land.

It's a different thing entirely, writing via the radio, without either the aid or the distraction of pictures.  I must say that I enjoy it.  Pictures are such poor things for telling a story.

[This is where I remind myself of some things that pictures can never tell you about this passage.  Like pissing on deck in a gale, and the wind swirling around you so that you suddenly get this faint taste of urine from the air…Cruising World magazine ain't never going to tell you about that.  And also, how I started off carefully mopping saltwater from the cabin sole, and wiping it down with a rag rinsed in fresh, just to keep everything nice-o…but how everything devolved until our cabin in back was a soupy mess of discarded boots and raingear, waiting for their next run on deck.  And how Elias suddenly wised up to the fact that his bunk in the bow is actually the crappiest spot in the entire boat to sleep, and his decision that the very best bunk, the port side settee with its cozy lee cloth, was his and his alone.  That kind of thing.]

Still, pictures have their place.  So, if you haven't already gorged yourself on everyone else's scearrhea (that's compulsive online over-sharing, natch), I offer this brief photo-travelogue of the 23 days that took us from Opua, New Zealand to Tahanea Atoll, the Tuamotu Archipelago, French Polynesia.

The route looked something like this

Lunch on the back deck on the first day, Cape Brett in the background

Juvenile wandering albatross joined us once we were out of sight of land

Skua chasing a wandering - I think Alisa IDed it as an Antarctic skua

The crew, they are...

…all happy.

More stuff than normal seemed to break on this passage - these Schaefer fittings on the inboard end of our mainsail battens are…well, kind of crap.  Tend to strip out if the sail slaps.  Thank your ever-luvin' god for West System epoxy.  There are very few things I wouldn't want to go to sea without…West is one of them. 

Keeping the program moving while the epoxy cures on the main - staysail set with the jib poled out to windward

The crew, they're still...

...happy, though Alisa is strapping herself into the galley and cooking in raingear

And, actually, Eric isn't that pleased.  The poor guy never got over seasickness - a concerning change from his normal two-days-and-it's-over routine

Putting in a reef.  I'm a poor log-keeper, so I lost track of the number of reefs I put in and shook out…but it was tons

Then we got smart and hove to to let a low pass in front of us.  But the low stalled out and parked over Galactic.  Wrong call - we had been making a steady 8+ knots on a beam reach, and might have been heroes if we'd only kept it going.  No big deal, we just ended up hove to for an extra couple of days, waiting for it to stop blowing.  (This is where I defend our 23-day passage time by noting that we were hove to for five days.)  Except that I did take that one poor step below and broke my ribs.  Now that changed the tenor of the passage.  This pic was taken a few days later when the wind was down and we were moving again under staysail alone.
The waves, oh they're big enough. 

The Kodiak mantra - "Sure hope this weather holds!"

Eric was reduced to sleeping on the sole in the saloon

"C'mon, Mike!  If we barberhaul the cunningham like <<grunt>> this, we can get another eighth of a knot out of her!"

"We don't know any better!  This is the only life our parents ever gave us!"

The kids are totally unflappable about it all.

Only five days from the finish…and poor Eric is green again

A sign of the tropics - the first flying fish on deck.  The boys ate it for breakfast

We had a visit from whales - Sei or Bryde's - way out there in the blue blue world.  One came up a boatlength away from us...

Meanwhile, we're getting soooo close.  We're getting northwesterlies on the back side of a front.  Everything is fine as long as we don't catch up with the front

A squall 24 nautical miles long...

And finally, at dawn, a tuna just outside Tahanea

You never met a kid so proud of himself

Eric and the perpetual spaghetti factory

Inside the pass, and the water suddenly so flat

Blessed Tahanea

Anchor down, awning up, sushi for dinner

More to come soon.

Status Check

Bring it.

The rig - it checks out

The times come when I'm swept away by the excitement of what we're up to.

All the mundane concerns of boat and life drop away and I think of the names.  Rapa Iti!  Rapa Nui!  Pitcairn!  Puerto Natales!

All of it is legendary to me.  All of it.  Places I never thought I'd see, as much as I might dream.

I consider what we're about and I upgrade the Galactic status meter -  from "Viva!" to "F*ck Aye!"

The only higher level on the meter is "Getting Jiggy With It".

We've been there before. And it's a wonderful place to be.

Stars in my eyes…And the family home at anchor

Alisa is back to nearly 100% of her considerable pre-shingles strength.

No matter how many little jobs I find to worry away at, the boat is about as ready for sea as we could want.

We are thoroughly provisioned.  One vast locker has been reserved for six months' worth of duty-free beer.  And the weather forecast promises a spell of settled westerlies.  Our departure cannot be far away.

We cannot prepare to sail without going sailing.  A two-reef day in the Bay of Islands served nicely

There are a lot of other things that I think about when I'm not feeling expansive and making jokes to Alisa about the Galactic status meter.

But the internet is not the place for too much honesty.  The Rebel Heart blog taught us that, if we didn't already know.

A seven-year-old can fit in my beer locker

The real stuff, the deep stuff, the stuff that can't be splashed on a Facebook "status update" with a trio of exclamation points - that stuff needs to be digested, to be worked through for a time, and then written in a book, meticulous draft after meticulous draft, until you're sure that you've got it as near to right…as you can.

Enough to say that I have the concerns of a father, and when I get tired of thinking of those I can always contemplate the divine mystery of how in the hell we might some day end this long long long sailing vacation and come to rest somewhere ashore, in some semblance of a stable life for the second half of the boys' childhood.

There have been sleepless nights.

My consolation, aside from the endless hours that I get to spend with my boys, and my wife, day after day, is that my motives are the purest imaginable  - I operate out of an enduring, and unshakeable, confusion about what life is, and what we're meant to do with it.  So I just operate on instinct, and Alisa and I decide that being sedentary is not what we want to do with this gift of being human...

The cognoscenti will recognize this as a starter motor.  The truly "switched on" will see that two of the three bolts holding it in place have given up their posts and gone home to the oily pan beneath the engine, where they seem to believe that they belong, and left their old friend the starter motor hanging by a few threads of the third, and last, bolt.  This is demonstably not a blog about boat maintenance, but really, you have to wonder.  Why do gremlins like this make their appearance just prior to a big passage?  And what does it mean?

Boat Life, Just Life

Science experiment

Elias is seven.  From this sample of one, I have deduced that seven year old boys are old enough not to want to cry when they're upset, but young enough that they can't always help it.

For the last week we've been in a forgotten little estuary next to the first capitol of New Zealand where visiting sailboats congregate to make their final preparations before leaving for the tropics.

The kids whom Elias and Eric played with in Whangarei are of course not here, and the boys are keen to interact with some peers.  Knowing that we also need to recycle some books and toys, Alisa took matters in hand and announced over the daily radio get-together that she was organizing a kids' book and toy swap on shore.

Our boys arrived at the appointed time brimming with excitement at the prospect of new possessions, and with two bigs sacks of their own stuff to trade away.

A few other sailing kids showed up.  But none brought anything to trade.  Eric, who we have realized really should have been in preschool during our three months in Whangarei, screamed and hit.  Alisa, who was recovering from shingles and doing laundry, had to call me on the radio for child-minding backup.

That's never happened before.

Undaunted, Alisa drove the boys around the anchorage in the dinghy the next day, asking boats if they had children aboard.  They need some mates, she said to me.  They look at other kids with longing.

And - success!  A Swedish boat, in the throes of their last 48 hours of preparation for going on passage, did have kids on board.  And yes, they would like to trade some books.

Elias ended up staying on board their boat for a play while Alisa went to do some chores ashore.

When she came back she could tell that something was wrong.  And when Elias got back on board Galactic he sprinted for his cabin, trying to stifle his sobs.

It turns out that he gave away some of his very best books, and somehow got nothing in return.  And he didn't know how to speak up and explain that he wanted to trade, and not just give the books away.

Kids' books on Galactic get used.  We read them so many times that the boys learn entire books by heart, word for word, before they can read themselves.  Individual books become associated with a hundred different bedtimes, and rainy days at anchor, and long afternoons on passage when the boys curl up with Alisa in the cockpit to read book after book after book.

So poor Elias, who is learning his way with possession and acquisition (central actions in our culture, after all), was heartbroken to see these old friends going away without anything to take their place.

It was one of those moments of paternal empathy, when you watch your kid learning his way in the world and getting bruised in the process.

And, Elias was running into the exact kind of situation that bothers adults all the time.  Buying and selling, trying to carry yourself in a way that keeps you from being taken advantage of, trying to be savvy without hurting others - this is so much of the business of life.

I guess that's why I don't think of what we're doing as "cruising" - that solipsistic concern with amp-hours and crevice corrosion and osmotic blisters and so on.  All that stuff is really very secondary.  Living on a boat is, at this point, just living to us - living with a constant family togetherness, so that there are few moments in each other's lives that go unobserved.

Housekeeping is...

…a funny thing to do for someone who lives on a boat.  But there are three housekeeping issues that I wanted to address:

First, the recent layout change was in part motivated by the desire to fix the problem of the blog crashing on iPads.  It seems to have done the trick on Alisa's device, but if anyone continues to have trouble, please let me know in a comment.

Second, the radio show This American Life has an upcoming story on the Rebel Heart rescue.  If you live in America you can listen on public radio this weekend, and they'll also post the show on the web soon after it's been broadcast for anyone to hear.  This American Life can do very good long-form journalism, and it looks like the Kaufmans found a great platform for telling their story.

And last: our first-ever business plug on Twice In A Lifetime!  (Totally unsolicited, I assure you!)  If you find yourself in need of sailboat blocks in New Zealand (if it hasn't happened to you yet, it will, believe me), get in touch with the New Zealand Garhauer shop.  Well, not a shop - it's run out of a very nice couple's garage in Paihia. Their prices are the only good deal in New Zealand.  They'll pick you up from your boat if you don't have a car, will drop parts off, and will let you exchange if you lose your mind around all the shiny yacht jewelry and choose the wrong block.  Five-star Galactic rating.

~~~

Shower time for a four-year-old
who can't bear to get water on his face

Meanwhile, back in our daily narrative…  Well, what to say - parenting in our ultra-nuclear family mode (nearest grandparents/aunts/uncles - five thousand miles away!) can be tough.  Motivated by the desire to fit in a "science experiment" from the curriculum that required internet access, Alisa did a big school day for Elias yesterday.  Education ran into the afternoon, which it rarely does on Galactic.  All this time she was watching Eric, too, as I had gotten up at 0530 to fit in some writing, then made breakfast and launched into my boat day (buy a shiny Garhauer block!  set up the new boom vang!  free up the corroded petcock on the muffler!, etc., etc.).

In her still-fragile state, it was too much of an effort for Alisa.  The pain of the shingles on her face came back in a big-and-bold, enough-to-make-the-toughest-woman-I-know-cry kind of way.

We assume that she'll be well enough to go on passage next week, and so have been keeping the pressure on to get the remaining boat tasks and life-before-we-lose-internet-for-a-month tasks completed.

But pushing to get everything done is obviously not what Alisa needs right now, and we'll have to counsel ourselves with patience, even as the month of May, precious for Southern Hemisphere voyaging, passes away, day by day.

What We Do

Leaving Whangarei Heads...

…after another birthday.

We're regaining our mobility on Galactic.  Alisa came through the shingles without any involvement of her eye, though she is still not recovered to the point of being ready to go on passage.

Being in no mood to wait for helpful winds to get north, we availed ourselves of the motor to transport our hopes and dreams forty miles up the coast to Whangaruru.

There we spent a weather day at anchor and rediscovered the dynamics of family life on a traveling boat.

Days at anchor are days of obligation for us.  I need to write, and I need to do the science work that is paying our way.  Elias needs to do his school work, he needs to wrap his head around the intellectual foundation that our culture can provide him.  Alisa needs to teach him (since I am writing and doin' science) and she needs to provide meals.  And Eric needs to be four - to play and discover and be joyful and cranky and utilize his super-abundant energy.

So - imagine partitioning those obligations between the saloon and our aft cabin.

100 Newtons of automatic fun

Convalescence, and a four-year-old's nap

If my work requires less-than-perfect attention, I can do it at the chart table while Eric plays in the saloon and Alisa and Elias pursue education on our double bunk in back.  But there's no way I can write or do the harder tasks involved in research while being interrupted to adjust a Playmobile knight everyt three minutes.  ("Daddy, can you put his hair on?")

That leaves me in back, in the splendid isolation offered by one thin door, while Alisa, Elias and Eric have Group Interaction up forward.

Let me tell you, there is a reason why four-year-olds are not invited into classrooms full of of seven-year-olds.  It doesn't work too well.

I mean this as no accusation against anyone ashore who choses differently, but there's no way we would homeschool if we were ashore - we'd send our oldest child out the door every day, to discover the world and his place in it.  But as long as we're living on a traveling boat, homeschooling is the only option.

The sailing part of sailing with children isn't nearly as attention-grabbing for us as the more mundane aspects of living our four lives so much together, in this strictly limited space.

On the left, mixed authority (parent/teacher).  In the center, a scholar.  On the right, distraction.  

Brother lashes out against brother.
For the sheer joy of it.

Being four

Meanwhile, the Biggest Passage We've Ever Tried (New Zealand to the legendary Austral Islands, southernmost French Polynesia) is drawing ineluctably near.  After all these years, doing big trips with the kids still makes me nervous.  I guess there would be a problem somewhere if it didn't make me nervous.  After the Kaufman rescue, and conversations with some cautionary friends in Whangarei, the nerves were perhaps reinforced this year.

But the boat is in quite good nick, and I reflect on all of the successful passages that we've made so far. The weather for the trip has been looking quite good recently, and I find myself thinking of the upcoming trip with quiet optimism.

The Years

April 29, 2010.  Royal Hobart Hospital. 

April 29, 2011. Half Moon Bay, California.

April 29, 2012.  Hobart, Tasmania.

April 29, 2013.  Hicks Bay, New Zealand.

April 29, 2014. Urquharts Bay, New Zealand.

 Yes, that is a sword cake above, and below.  Alisa solicits requests for birthday cake themes.  And swords are very much on the collective boyhood mind of Galactic.