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Countdown to cruising: 10 days to go

Michael finally wrapped the last spreader boot...standing rigging wire replacement is DONE!

Our race to be “ready” to leave the dock has officially begun. With only 10 days left to go we are literally making sure every last minute counts so we get our last few Must Dos done. While the list sounds basic: finish refrigeration install, pack spare parts and tools aboard, finish moving stuff from our big to our small storage unit, pack Leah’s old clothes up for Holly to wear over the next two years, sell camping gear, shop for and pile provisions onboard, decide which skeins of yarn to bring aboard from my two-crate stash, find room for 50 lbs of books, restock our first aid kit and ditch bag… well actually that sounds like quite a lot for the next 10 days. Which explains why for the past week we’ve been working non-stop from the time we wake up to the time we drop into our bunk late at night.

This part sucks, folks. I’m not going to sugar-coat it. While we have tiny flashes of excitement here and there that we are actually going to be cruising in 10 days, mostly we are just really anxious for this last part to be done with. We’ll leave with many many things undone but at least we’ll leave knowing we’ve given it our best shot at getting stuff accomplished while having access to our car and familiar stores while we can. After all, at this point the only thing that has to happen is making sure all the stuff piled on the dock is piled on the boat. All the rest will continue underway.

Even so, my lists of things to do/buy/sort/store/get is constantly running through my head and there are many moments each day where I feel like I’m teetering on the finest of edges between calm and completely losing it. I’m getting very good at focusing on what I’m doing, each minute at a time. Truly living in the now. Otherwise I find myself bouncing around between 20 things, and not getting any of them done. One of which is making sure our girls are fed and relatively happy: since they’ve been given pretty much free reign to our DVD collection and streaming Netflix for the next week I think they are doing fine.

Yesterday, Michael finished putting up the very last of our 22 new standing rigging wires, a huge job we are happy to have behind us. He’s putting the finishing touches on installing new shelves in our engine room which will house most of our tools and many spare parts. Nearly all of our mementos are sorted, crated and stacked neatly in our 5×5 storage unit. Our last unneeded valuables are getting sold via Craigslist and many more items have been donated to our favorite local thrift shop. Final doctors appointments and immunizations are done, summer clothes are onboard and folded away, our mail forwarding cued up with USPS. We officially sold our trusty Subaru today to a friend  (Thank You Angela!!) and will hand it off the night before we cast off.

Sometimes, when you look ahead too much and can’t stop thinking about how far you have to go, all you need to really do is look back and see how far you’ve come. Then you realize, you’re practically there.

Books as ballast

Wondertime's bookshelf. Already a bit crowded....

With nearly all systems ready and the standing rigging replacement just about complete, Michael and I have been left to concentrate on tucking away the hundreds of pounds of spare parts, tools, clothes, sails, toys, art supplies and books we want to take along into Wondertime’s cubbies. As it currently stands, by the time we get around to packing the food on board it appears that we’ll all be stuffing our pillows with dried rice and pasta. But as always, I’m sure everything will find it’s place eventually.

My job this week is to sort through the eight crates of books that have been in our storage locker and make the painful choice as to which ones go with us, which ones stay in their crates and which ones go on to new homes. This is no easy task: I’ve already weeded out our book collections many times previously, moving from house to house and then onboard Wondertime last year. The remaining ones are our very favorites and now it’s time to weed through them and pick out our very very favorites.

Today, I sorted through our three crates of sailing books. This actually wasn’t too difficult as many of them are collectibles we’ve already read so I easily filled a crate with those books. Others were outdated (but beloved) guidebooks from past cruises, favorite old “how to go cruising” books (before we found out the only way to really find out how to go cruising is to GO cruising), and a variety of reference books that we haven’t cracked since Google was invented. Another crate holds our favorite sailing stories. I will no doubt miss these and yearn to reread many as we travel (I am sure a fourth reading of Maiden Voyage is in my future). I am also fairly certain we will procure ourselves a Kindle or Nook at some point so I am just going to have faith that I’ll be able to access these stories easily one day even as they are tucked safely away in our storage closet in Olympia.

Finally, the chosen few were selected and packed into a relatively small cardboard box for transport afloat: Charlie’s Charts of Mexico, our Mexico Lonely Planet guides, Nigel Calder’s Boatowner’s Mechanical and Electrical Manual, our British Columbia cruising guides, a book on celestial navigation, our Storm Tactics Handbook, Spanish for Cruisers. Wondertime’s bookshelf space is at a premium and while I am the type of person that just loves to have books around because they look nice, only the ones that will actually be read and used make the cut.

That done, I am now moving on to my cookbooks, fiction books, general reference books, children’s picture books and children’s chapter books. I have a sneaking suspicion that there is going to be yet another round of book sorting.

We have sprouted!

We have finally done it! The crew of Wondertime has grown something edible! I am excited to announce that our sprouting experiment was a complete success. Not only did we produce crunchy, fresh sprouts on our first try, they were also delicious. We will definitely be keeping our sprout garden growing as we sail; we are all looking forward to having fresh crisp greens whenever we want, especially when land-based greens are in short (or non-existent) supply.

For simplicity’s sake, I went ahead and bought a sprouting kit online which included a quart-sized Ball jar, sprouting lid and organic alfalfa seeds and instructions. When the kit arrived we set about sprouting by:

  1. soaking a few tablespoons of the alfalfa seeds in the jar in a dark place overnight (or about 8 hours)
  2. draining the seeds and placing jar back in their dark cupboard with the green lid down and the jar at a 45 degree angle
  3. rinsing and draining the sproutlings twice a day
  4. four days later our little sprouts were ready for….

 

Interview with a (soon to be) cruiser: Leah

In case you haven’t seen the Interview With a Cruiser Project website do head over there (after reading this post of course!) and check it out. Livia of Estrellita 5.10b maintains this collection of interviews with cruisers who have/had been out there for at least two years with a new interview posted each Monday. It is fascinating; what strikes me is how differently we all do the same thing.

Another family, currently on the east coast but setting out any day on a looong drive to their new-to-them boat Del Viento down south  in Mexico, posted a couple of interviews with their soon-to-be-cruising two daughters. To add to the little collection of soon-to-be-cruiser interviews, here’s Leah’s take on our whole endeavor:

How old are you?

Five.

What is the name of your boat?

Wondertime

What are you going to be doing this summer?

Hmmm….sailing?

What is your favorite part about living on a boat?

Looking for sea creatures.

What is your favorite thing to do on the boat?

Playing horse!

Is there anything you are afraid of about being on the boat?

The dark.

What don’t you like about living on the boat?

There’s nothing I don’t like.

What are you going to do when we get to Mexico?

I would like to go ashore and look for sea creatures. But I don’t know because I haven’t been there yet.

What is school going to be like next year?

I don’t know.

What are some of the rules that you need to follow on the boat?

Don’t go on the deck without a life jacket. No playing on the steps!

What is your room like?

Lots of stuffed animals. And anchor chain.

What will you do when you are bored?

Play with My Little Ponies.

What are you most excited about traveling on the boat?

Snorkeling!

The Ship’s Cat

Over 12 years ago, Michael and I were spending a Saturday morning browsing the cat department of the Seattle Animal Shelter (always a dangerous thing to do) when this small, brown and white tabby striped kitten reached her little snowy paw out of her cage, hooked Michael’s arm with her delicate claws, looked up at him and mewed.

We named our new cat Xena and she settled into our small Fremont apartment rather well, joining our other cat Precious (who was not entirely thrilled about the new family member but soon grew fond of her anyway). Our small warrior cat proved to be quite the adventurer: we would find her clinging to the tops of doors on a regular basis and she could leap nearly five feet into the air to catch a toy birdie.

So when a few months later we moved aboard our first boat, Jenny P, Xena was in cat heaven. She took to boat life right away, loving all the fresh sea air, bird watching, cozy spots to snuggle into and nap, soaking up the rays of sun on deck, and plenty of leaping and climbing. Sure, we’ve lost her a few times (like when she ran off the night before we left for Alaska and we finally found her the next morning three docks away) and she’s gone overboard too many times to count. I’m pretty sure Xena is living her current life on credit but she’s still here with us, now aboard Wondertime and no doubt looking forward to adding more stamps to her passport.

On the other hand, we have not been so sure. Having a cat on board, and a geriatric insanely talkative one at that, is a lot more work than, well, not. You throw in two small children and you pretty much have the potential for mind-reeling chaos at any moment. There is cat litter, food, shots, vet visits to deal with. Hairballs. Yowling. There is being awakened at 5 am by a whirling snarling hissing sound up on deck, which is what happens when the neighbor cat down the dock tries to sneak aboard and Xena finds out. When we are sailing, Xena insists, without fail, that she be sitting upon a human’s lap. She is growing more and more nervous in her old age, taking to pacing the boat, yoooooowling. My pillow is her favorite place to sleep but it’s also her favorite place to clean her butt. She has invented this game which she must call Travel Around the Boat Without Stepping Upon the Floor (basically leaping from table to counter top to stairs and back again) but she is just not as agile as she once was and there are claw marks everywhere where she has tried to save herself from, gasp, touching the floor.

Besides the day to day annoyances of having a boat cat, there is also the question of what we’ll do with her when we want to travel inland in Mexico and elsewhere. It would sure be nice to not have to worry about procuring a catsitter. If she is still around when we sail to New Zealand, we are just not convinced it’s worth paying the thousands of dollars it currently costs to import a foreign cat — and likely a 15 year-old one — onto Kiwi soil.

A month or so ago we made the final decision, after hemming and hawing for months, that this time we’d be sailing cat-free. We had started talking with some friends and family members and had a couple possibilities for a nice quiet place for Xena to stay to live out her senior years. It really was the sanest, best decision.

Then just a few days ago, the girls and I were walking down the dock back to the boat after an outing. Xena came running out to meet us and started rolling at our feet on the dock in greeting. Holly leaned down to give her a hug, and in her adorable 2-1/2 year-old voice said: “I love you Xena!”

My heart darn near burst.

Well, that’s it then. We are suckers for our furry friends as always and as inconvenient as having feline crew is, Xena is part of our family and our girls simply adore her and Xena adores them. We can’t imagine not having her along. She’d be pretty upset if she found out we were heading for the sun, anyway. Mexico was always her favorite country.