First Bites

If you're wondering if this will ever again be a blog about sailing the world, take heart.  We have resolved to make an offer on a boat this week.  Unfortunately we just heard that the boat that was edging towards the top of our list is under contract.  But the search continues!

Meanwhile, to paraphrase someone, life is what happens while you're looking for your next boat.  We had a big milestone yesterday - Eric's first solid food, which Alisa kindly delayed by a couple weeks so that I could be present.

I don't know if waiting for me to get back had anything to do with it, but he was clearly ready, following each spoonful of rice cereal with his eyes and leaning forward, mouth open, as they came within range.

The entertaining part for us was his reaction as each mouthful went down... apparently the sensation takes a little getting used to.

Another milestone passes...

~~~

Elias in his wooly mammoth mask.

The end.

Home

I went back to North America without a camera, so all I have is the five pictures that I took with my computer during the flights.

It was a work trip - one week in Oregon and two weeks in Alaska.

I don't miss Alaska when I'm gone, I think because I'm still enjoying our traveling so much.

But I was surprised at how powerful an experience it was to fly into Alaska on this trip - it was really a bit overwhelming to be back in that place.

Part of it is the scale and the beauty.  Alaska is so much more, and more beautiful, than anywhere that we've been lately.  The state is as wide as the continent of Australia, and you could lose New Zealand in Chugach State Park and forget where you put it.  I've always thought that Alaskans who go traveling to compare things unfavorably with home are particularly tiresome.  But when you return after an absence, the comparison with everything that you've seen since you've been away is inescapable.

But the draw of the place is more than the roadless mountains and wild rivers.  Alaska is just home, the place where we still have good friends in a whole bunch of different places, the place where Alisa and I each put our roots down seperately and then built a life together, the place where we plan to return.  We were lucky enough to be young in Alaska and to feel it as a place that was equal to our boundless energy, and now it's just part of us.

So I enjoyed the trip, and seeing our friends, even if about half of them did let me know that if only one of us could come back, they'd sort of prefer that it was Alisa and not me.  And when I got back to Hobart I found Eric with croup, and Alisa with a fever, and Elias with ants in his pants.  If we're lucky Alaska will be home again, but for now home is wherever the four of us are, and I got home just in time.

What do we want?

Heather asked, so here it is - the list of things that we are looking for in our next boat.  This will likely be most interesting for people who are really into sailboats!

1) A metal hull.  If we really want to sail the Northwest Passage, we want a metal hull.  Aluminum if we can get it.

2) An insulated hull.

3) Total length 39-42 feet.  A little bigger if we had to.

4) Three sleeping cabins.  One for us, one for the boys, and one for the survival suits/cockpit cushions/bikes/sails/deck awnings and everything else.  Or alternately, two cabins and some very serious additional storage space.

5) A cutter rig.  Or a sloop that we can convert to a cutter.  Or a ketch, if we had to.

6) A skeg-hung rudder.  Or even (god forbid) a keel-hung rudder.  But not a spade rudder.

7) A well-maintained boat, with good sails and standing and running rigging.

8) A u-shaped galley.

9) Big water tanks.

10) A hard dodger (optional!).

11) A specific set of bells and whistles: windvane, radar, a good autopilot, an over-sized windlass, over-sized anchors and chain, solar panels, life raft, folding propellor, wind generator, ham/SSB radio, steps on the mast, cruising spinnaker.  As many of these as possible.

12) 195 cm of headroom.

13) In our budget!

It doesn't seem like an unreasonable list.  But though we've seen many boats with eight or nine of these items, we've never seen one with ten or more.  

Some serious compromises seem inevitable.