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simplelife

Fulfilled

Jun 11th, 2012
by Sara.
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"Mom, I sure hope Tahiti has a playground!" Even after all these miles, a playground still excites the Wondertime girls like nothing else.

We just arrived in Papeete, Tahiti today and are tied bow-in to the downtown quay. We’re still rubbing our eyes, can’t believe we are really here. For some reason, arriving here on this iconic island on our own sailing boat makes the whole trip seem kind of shocking, in a good way of course. Tahiti is one place we’ve always wanted to go but never really thought we’d see. And now we are here taking in this lovely exotic city nestled on this mountainous green island, which appeared on the horizon this morning like a mirage.

On our two-night passage across from Fakarava, I made a list of things we needed to get and do during our time in Tahiti. I hear there are supermarkets here. I haven’t stepped inside a market bigger than a 7-11 in three months, since March. Food, we do need. Particularly Nutella. We are plumb out of Nutella. And vegetables of course. I’m craving a green salad the size of a turkey platter.

I tried to remember the other things that passed through our minds in the last few months, things we wanted to get when we had access to stores (and indeed, there do seem to be a lot of shopping opportunities here). I wrote down: “fill water tanks, get diesel, propane?”. I couldn’t remember what else it was that we wanted to buy when we next had the chance. Which was weird, because a hundred or two things have crossed my mind these past few months. An iPad would be nice. But not really something we need. We’re getting by with our quirky old PCs for now. The girls’ Crocs are holding up just fine, no one has lost their hat yet.

I really couldn’t think of anything else we really wanted to buy while we are here. Even the boat seems to have all her needs met at the moment (though there are a thousand things we’d like to do to improve her). The girls have plenty of clothes and toys and books (in fact we need to shed some of the outgrown ones).

It’s amazing, really, how easily our needs have been met, as we’ve traveled on our small boat over this past year. We swing, mostly, on our own anchor and chain, catch sun for power and rainwater for washing. Our wardrobes are simple: swimsuits at the beach, underwear when it’s just us onboard, shorts and t-shirts for when guests come over or we head into town. We always have enough food, although it’s certainly not fancy. Even in Fakarava we came across a box of new crop New Zealand apples for sale. They were the best apples we’ve ever had. Everyday we eat a bit of bread, some protein, something that’s come straight from the earth. A bit of dessert too keeps the crew happy.

Now we find coming to our first city since Cabo San Lucas, where we could likely get anything we wanted that our wants have gradually diminished when we truly have all we need.

Stories from the Sea of Cortez

Feb 19th, 2012
by Sara.
5 comments

We are now back in La Paz after spending three magical weeks exploring the Sea of Cortez a hundredish miles north of here. While our To Do List Before Crossing the Pacific consumes us now, we tried to put it out of our minds during our time up north and just enjoy exploring this stunning desert wilderness. Not having access to the internet certainly helped, and when our HAM radio went out with a pop and a puff of smoke in Agua Verde blogging and emailing ceased completely. We didn’t mind too much as it gave us even more time to soak in the beauty around us. Stories have piled up, as have memories of simply being together in the Sea.

A Surprise Reunion With Our Sailing Gurus

We waited in Ensenada Grande nearly three days for the northerly winds to die down which had turned us back while enroute to Isla San Francisco. We tuned into the Southbound Net one evening hoping to hear from our good friends that we’d last heard were on their way to Banderas Bay from San Carlos. Then we heard it, a booming check-in “TILLICUM!” that was so loud it was like they were right next door.

Turns out they were – just north of us at Isla San Francisco Robert and Rose on S/V Tillicum had made a surprise stop in Baja on their way south. Hailing from Sidney, British Columbia, we’d originally met these inspiring voyagers ten years ago while on our way to Mexico on our Alberg 35 and have kept in touch over the years. Two days later we were anchored right next to them at Isla San Francisco, where we’d also anchored together nine years ago, only this time of course we had our young girls to join us for tea in the afternoons. The crew of Tillicum, now well into their 60s, continues to inspire us with their endless youth and energy. They are now planning their fourth trip to the South Pacific — or maybe this time across the Atlantic — and shared hours of advice and stories for us as we plan our first.

Leah Turns Six

We officially celebrated Leah’s sixth birthday at Isla San Francisco. Earlier in the week at San Gabriel, we’d had a little beach party with our friends on Del Viento where all four girls ran around making sand dams and salty rivers for hours. At Isla San Francisco, we brought chocolate cupcakes over to Tillicum for another quiet celebration with friends.

A few weeks before, Leah was inwardly upset that there would not be a large gathering of her friends and a big party organized as we’d done in years past. But as her actual birthday approached, she was perfectly happy with our small celebrations of just a couple close friends, her family, a few small goodies and a day of sunshine and feeling special and loved. Another birthday to remember.

In Ague Verde, We Meet More Inspirational Canadians

Ken and Francesca are a retired couple from British Columbia who drive down from Canada to the little village of Agua Verde each winter. Their truck and camper was parked in an inconspicuous shady nook on the beach as it has been every winter for the past 10 years or so. We met them while wandering down the playa on our first day in the village. They took us under their wing, bringing us along on visits to their local friends’ homes, inviting the girls to visit the village preschool and personally showing us the painted caves that lie above the westernmost side of the inland valley.

Hiking our way up the cliff side to the aforementioned caves, Ken and Fran scrambled up the rocky hillside with ease while we huffed and puffed following behind. How we want to be like them, now and when we are approaching our 70s ourselves: full of life and smiles and energy and still excited to experience the new after years of exploring.

Holly’s First Day of School

The night before the girls visited the little preschool at Agua Verde, Holly could hardly sleep. She was so excited to be going to her first day of school, so giddy.

We woke up early that morning, ate bowls of hot oatmeal, got dressed in the finest school clothes we could find, piled in the dinghy and surfed into the village. We met the teacher at 9 am at the little one-room schoolhouse; she told us that there are usually 10 kids in class everyday and they are aged 3-5. At 6 they move on to the primary school on the other side of the village.

The room was small and simple but bright and had everything you’d expect in a preschool: tiny tables and chairs, walls plastered with the alphabet and numbers, a table of books, an art and science station. Over the next two hours the kids made a craft (painting glue over their printed name then scattering sand over it). The topic for the day was transportation; Teacher Sandra showed pictures to the kids of planes, trains, trucks then they gathered into a circle and played charades. Leah got to pretend to be a rocket, Holly a hot air balloon. The kids then cut pictures from magazines of things that moved and pasted them on a board, sorting by sea, land and air.

While 6-year-old Leah was quite frustrated at not understanding the language and was exhausted at morning’s end, Holly, at 3, didn’t mind it at all and asked when her next day at school was.

Perspective

We were anchored in Agua Verde when an enormous 160’ motoryacht joined us in the bay. Nearly half of the boat’s stern was dedicated to water and air toys: at least three powerboats tucked in several deck layers topped with a small helicopter. We were kind of awestruck at the arrogance of someone flaunting such wealth in front of a village of pangueros, with families living a life of such simple means.

The next day Ken and Francesca invited us to visit the home of their friends, Lenora and Alejandro, in the village. It was a lovely cozy home, painted in all my favorite shades of blue with a cool covered front porch where the family was gathered and a small garden out back. Francesca told me it was actually one of the larger homes in the village, with four rooms (a kitchen, the main bedroom/living room and a bedroom for their daughter and one for her son). Their home, like most others in the village, had a small 80-wattish solar panel and battery outside to power their lights and radios in the evenings.

Sitting in the cool shade of the front porch, we chatted with the family in our rudimentary Spanish. Michael, Ken and Alejandro talked about the solar panels most families now had in the village. “You are the velero with four panels, yes?” Alejandro asked us. We nodded, blushing with the knowledge that even our simple boat was adorned with excess.

The Los Gatos Hermit Crabs Come for a Visit

We spent a week in beautiful Agua Verde and could have easily stayed much longer but the time had come to boogie on south back to La Paz. Happily, while we had motored just about all the way up to Agua Verde we finally got to take advantage of all the nice northerly wind in the Sea to sail back.

The weather was fine to stop at Los Gatos, which is surrounded with the most amazing, smooth, bright red sandstone. It is just stunning and the rocks are perfect for scrambling around on.

Los Gatos is also home to herds of land hermit crabs and three of them came to Wondertime for a visit. Coco, Hermie and Sweetie enjoy raisins, carrots and most of all our leftover arracharra beef from Rancho Viejo here in La Paz. Our crabby friends will return to Los Gatos via our friends on Del Viento who plan to head up that way in the next few weeks.

One More Day at San Gabriel

We had 25 knots of wind blow us down the San Jose Canal and Bahia de La Paz back to Isla Espiritu Santo. It was a downwind boogie board ride that reminded me that (1) 10 foot waves are best spaced more than 10 feet apart and (2) these kinds of days are great for getting the counters and shelves cleaned off.

Anyway, we pulled into San Gabriel for the fourth time. I think this is our favorite beach ever; there is a salt water lagoon lined with mangroves that fills up at high tide which turns the beach into salty rivers as the water runs out with the tide. The girls can splash, and float, and build and bury themselves here silly. The sky is blue blue blue, the sand blindingly white and our favorite spot is edged with green mangroves with pink hills farther in the distance and the girls are just a blur, dashing and darting all over in pure play.

Our last morning at San Gabriel, before sailing to La Paz later that afternoon, I just stood on the beach here and took in the view around me, trying to remember all the details so I can return here again and again and again.

A little bit of earth

Mar 30th, 2011
by Sara.
1 comment

I’m going to admit something to the whole wide world (well, at least the teensy corner that reads this blog): I. Hate. Gardening.

Seriously, I can’t think of anything I’d rather not be doing than getting dirt under my fingernails pulling weeds, planting bulbs, and basically doing whatever it is gardeners love to do that requires knee pads and rubber shoes. The weeds in the last two places we lived ashore completely took over the yard each and every summer. Embarrassing, really, but not enough so to overcome each excuse I was able to come up with to avoid pulling them. I really do think this is the biggest reason I love living on a boat: no need to touch dirt with my hands, ever.

However, let me be clear: I LOVE the idea of gardening. I love visiting gardens, lounging in gardens, enjoying fruits and vegetables grown in a small garden, and admiring my friends’ green thumb handiwork. I drool over the lovely landscapes in Sunset magazine. I even had a number of houseplants when we lived ashore and I enjoyed them as long as they didn’t outgrow their pots and just asked for a cup of water every month or two.

Our oldest daughter, Leah, on the other hand, loves dirt just about as much as I dislike it. She adores digging in it, planting things in it, finding worms in it, burying — shudder — her hands and feet in it. She relishes the feeling of cool gritty earth on her skin and under her nails. I suspect she has a bit of a green thumb.

From the time she was two she has begged me to plant things and since she has been the one to do the actual digging I have happily obliged. Last summer, Leah began drawing up plans to plant all sorts of crops on board our boat: tomatoes, basil, strawberries. This time, I had to patiently explain that we just are not able to cover our decks with pots of growing food as it is difficult to, well, sail with dirt flying around and stuff.

So with the arrival of spring recently her requests to grow things began to crop up again: one day she asked me if we could plant some chives. That I agreed to: I felt I could handle a small pot of greens, especially since they go so nicely with hot baked potatoes and butter. After procuring some seeds, we re-purposed a small plastic container (me having gleefully given away all our lovely empty ceramic pots last summer before moving aboard) and I, armed with a large spoon, headed up to the marina parking lot gardens to dig up some dirt. Back on the boat, I described to Leah how to sprinkle the seeds over the dirt and cover them up with a light blanket of soil.

Sadly, nearly a month had gone by and nothing seemed to be happening in this little pot of earth. I chalked it up to yet another of my failed attempts to grow something edible. But then, just the other day I glanced over at the little pot that has been living under our dodger and noticed something green growing in there. Either weeds are sprouting up from our borrowed marina dirt or we may actually have some chives soon.

I am now feeling quite buoyed by our gardening attempt and am ready to embark on yet another food-growing goal: sprouts! I found a delightful old book on sprouting while cleaning out my late mother’s cookbook collection last year and saved it, having heard about sprouts being the perfect thing to grow on a boat. With no dirt required(!) I think fresh crisp greens grown in a jar may be just the crop for us. I’ll keep you posted.

Contentment. Afloat.

Feb 24th, 2011
by Sara.
8 comments

Last night, I had to pause for a moment to wonder if I had lost my mind. I was returning in the dark from the shower up at the top of our dock ramp, wearing flipflops, in — I kid you not — the snow. And I didn’t even feel cranky about it.

Maybe I haven’t gone crazy. Maybe I’ve just grown kind of fond of this life.

If you had asked me a year ago, when we first launched the idea of moving onboard Wondertime in anticipation for our departure the following year (this year), I would have told you that while living aboard in the Northwest again was not my least favorite thing, it was still right up there. When we moved off our boat Rivendell in 2006 I declared that I was never going to live aboard again, not unless we are actively cruising. Somewhere sunny, hot and dry.

Here in the Northwest, Summer is two months long. The rest of the year, you have to walk through the sleet and snow to take a shower (if, that is, your boat’s shower is full of laundry and coats and cat litter like ours is). There are pools of water on the insides of lockers that are exposed to the cold hull and the walls have been drip drip dripping for months. Our head (bathroom) sink drains into our head (toilet) and I have to pump the water out of the bowl while I brush my teeth. The cat paces the floor, yowls endlessly, pissed off that it’s too cold to go outside. Children bounce off the too-close walls and I hide in the tiny head (bathroom) sometimes just to get a few moments of quiet. Until they find me (it’s not hard) and start pounding on the door….

But recently I began thinking about the future, thinking about what we’re going to do after our cruising kitty runs out in about two years. Of course we’ll still live on the boat while we work a year or two (or better yet, work as we cruise). What about when the girls are teenagers and need more space?

The thought of moving off the boat one day made me panic a little. I realized: I don’t ever want to move off of our lovely, simple home. The cold and wet are temporary. But even with them, this winter has been a joy. The girls and I baked sun bread inside our tiny galley oven yesterday while snowflakes fell silently on deck. It was cozy and special. I realized that I like living with the true essentials, that every time I need to buy something new it just feels like adding clutter to my life. Having a simple wardrobe and a handful of pairs of really good shoes that I replace when one wears out is fine by me. I like living with the weather so close: we rock like a giant cradle when the wind blows and the blue sky is right there above our hatches when the sun does come peeking out. The girls’ art hangs everywhere around the cabin and I change our beautiful gallery constantly. There is no need for any other wall decorations. I love sleeping just feet away from my growing girls, so close that I can hear them breathing at night.

I am 35 years old. Every one of my post-toddler years I’ve had this feeling, this thought, that someday, my real life would start. Maybe once I had finished nursing school, or signed that book deal, or sailed across my 360th degree of longitude. I always had the sense that I was preparing for something, only I was never really quite sure what. Troubling, really, as years are passing quickly by.

Michael and I, our life has zigged and zagged around with boats and trips and houses, but the one common thread has been our love of the sea. We tried a comfortable “secure” life ashore but the longing was always there, no matter how hard we tried to bury it and tell ourselves that we loved land life. We realized we were living someone else’s dream, still beautiful, but all we truly wanted to do was get back on the water. So we did, and started planning the next Big Trip. But over the past seven months of living back onboard both of us came to realize that it wasn’t just the trip we loved, it was all of it. The planning, the getting ready, and just simply living on a boat. The trip, we look forward to sure, but it’s just part of the whole adventure of our life.

Recently, a few weeks ago, I had a moment. It truly was a moment of revelation, a defined piece of time with thoughts suddenly clear as ice, like you read about in books sometimes. I was standing in the center of our boat and realized that the unfinished feeling that has always haunted me was, completely, gone.

This is my life.

This is all I ever wanted.

It’s been years in coming but I can finally say that I’m content. Afloat.

Stuff it.

Jul 24th, 2010
by Sara.
1 comment

Day and night, for weeks on end we’ve been sorting, tossing, packing, stacking, moving, cleaning, selling, giving away, organizing, and analyzing each and every item we own. Well, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. Or maybe it’s not. It sure feels like that’s what we’ve been doing.

We have lived on land for three and a half years after living aboard for seven. You would not ever guess this, if you could see how much stuff we have accumulated in that relatively short time span. When we moved to our rental house from the house we sold a year ago we filled a 24′ Uhaul van with not an inch to spare. And that was after giving away a ton of stuff.

We ask ourselves: how did we get to this point where all this stuff seems to run our lives? We don’t even shop all that much (except “we” sure are weak at Costco and Target and ebay). But somehow it’s just come rolling through the door, cluttering our rooms and our lives and now we have taken on the task of getting rid of nearly all of it.

This is not easy to do in several ways. When I thought about this the other evening, collapsed into a heap of exhaustion after another day of sorting and packing, I realized that I have held nearly every item we own, and have had to decide: take to the boat? keep in storage? sell? give to the thrift shop? It hasn’t been physically taxing so much, although I’m sure I’ve walked at least 10 miles this week back and forth and across the house while sorting. Rather, it’s this mental decision-making process that has turned my brain to mush.

We are getting rid of nearly all of our furniture, except for a couple small things that have been in the family for a long time. Everything else has gone up on Craigslist. This can be delightfully quick and easy, like the young college student couple who came to our front door, handed us $150 for our dresser, popped it in their van and drove off. Or, it can be a time-wasting nightmare, like the guy we’ve emailed back and forth about the intimate details of our $20 computer chair for two days, then he was supposed to come by two nights ago at six, never showed, then promised to come the next night, never showed….

Which makes us want to do with everything what is really fun: sticking it out on the sidewalk and putting a free sign on it. When we were moving aboard for the first time 11 years ago, we were down to the last items in our apartment and just put them all on the sidewalk as we had to be out that day. An older  fellow of clearly modest means walked over and saw the microwave sitting there.

“Are you giving this away?” he asked us.

“Yes, please take it if you want it!” we replied.

His face beamed as he picked up the unit.

“Wow, thanks so much! I’ve never had one of these but have always wanted one.” and he carried his new prize down the street pleased as punch.

We’ve never forgot the joy this fellow felt at his free gift and have since much preferred just putting things out on the sidewalk with a big free sign on them. This time too, I’ve seen people walk away with lamps, dishes, toys, art, cds, books tucked under their arm, delighted with their new found treasure. And I grin too, much more satisfied than the dollar or two these things would garner at a yard sale.

As I type this, it’s Saturday. This will be our last night on land. Tomorrow, we’ll haul the most important items to Wondertime. It will only be a carload or two. Everything else — and I can’t even remember what now that it’s gone — will be out in the world maybe becoming someone else’s important thing instead of gathering dust in our closet. It does feel good to set this stuff free.

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