Getting Around

Posted: March 19, 8:05 pm | (permalink) | (0 comments)

lacking a car when we travel by boat, we opted for a more playful form of transportation

One of the biggest adjustments we had to make when we started cruising was giving up our cars. Hard to imagine life in suburbia without a car, but it wouldn't exactly fit on the boat. It’s sometimes been a hassle, but there has been an unexpected financial benefit. I’ve read that the average cost of owning and driving a car in the US, including purchase, registration fees, insurance, fuel, and maintenance, is about $700 per month. Each month. Each car. Wow.

$700 a month can buy a fair number of taxi rides. We’ve learned to take the bus, and have gotten some insight into the life of people who can't afford that $700 per month and must rely on public transportation. It can be inconvenient, not getting exactly where you want, when you want. At the same time, we have met some interesting characters on the bus, that we’d never have met cocooned in the safety and isolation of a car, from the curly-haired guy with the parrot on his shoulder to the couple with the two-year-old so willful, and so energetic, that they had to keep her on a bright pink kid leash to keep her safe. When we really want to rent a car to explore the surrounding area, Enterprise has a fantastic deal for $10/day on weekends that we’ve taken advantage of numerous times.

But mostly, we’ve learned to walk, a lot. And that brings us to benefits number 2, 3, and 4. Good for the planet, good for my waistline, and, most of all, you get an interesting perspective on the city, perusing it at foot speed. Both Annapolis and St Augustine were laid out centuries before the invention of cars, and they’re scaled for pedestrians. Might as well explore them on foot, at an on-foot pace. The whole city changes, when you’re on foot. Instead of noticing things like parking spaces, traffic signs, you notice architecture, plantings, weather, even the texture of the pavement.

Some boats have space enough for bicycles. Generally, they use folding bicycles, made of marine-grade materials to be rust-resistant in the salt air of our everyday lives. At 33 feet, we don’t have even enough storage space to spare for that. Instead, we use folding scooters, driven by foot power, just like the one you probably had as a kid. Not only do they force us to go at a slow-enough pace to really notice our surroundings, but they are worth it just for the reactions we get from passers-by. It’s nice to help remind other adults that you’re still allowed to play even when you no longer write your age with a single digit!

The light-colored pavement I'm scootering on in the photo above isn't made of concrete; seen up close, it's lots of tiny seashells. Not to minimize the comfort and convenience of a car, but no way would I ever have noticed this interesting pavement, or gotten this up close and personal, had I been driving!

On a boat, storage is everything. Here, the scooter collapsed and ready to pack away

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Cost of Living ... Afloat

Posted: March 10, 10:26 am | (permalink) | (0 comments)

I love the conversations we get into when we tell people we live on a boat, year round, without a house or lots of “stuff.” Some people are amazed, some are clearly baffled, some ask practical questions, some shyly share their own dreams of freedom from the rat race. But some skeptically give us some version of “must be nice,” implying that only someone with lots of money would be able to buy a boat big enough to live on, much less travel in. There’s a cynical joke among boaters, when asked how much it costs, to say, “as much as you have.”

How much does a car cost? If you’re thinking, “new Mercedes from the dealership;” and I’m thinking, “used Chevy from Craigslist;” we aren’t going to be able to have a very productive conversation about the cost of cars. And it’s the same with living on a boat, just as it’s the same with the cost of the boat itself. How big? How new? What kind of amenities? You really need to know yourself pretty well to come up with a sustainable budget because you need to understand what creature comforts you require to keep it from feeling like you’re camping out instead of living at home. Bear in mind that there’s no right answer here. You don’t get extra points for living an unnecessarily Spartan lifestyle. But that definition of Spartan varies also. What you think is a luxury, I can’t imagine life without, and vice-versa. Like any other budget, land or water, it’s really about distinguishing between “wants” and “needs.” Having said that, understand that I can’t tell you what living on a boat and cruising would cost you. I can only tell you what it costs me.

So here’s what living on a boat and traveling costs the two of us in the southeastern US: on average less than $2500 per month. That doesn’t include the purchase of the boat itself or our medical insurance, and we don’t have a car.

$500 boat maintenance -- conventional wisdom in boating circles is to budget about 10% of the boat’s value for both long-term maintenance and periodic replacement of major systems like sails or engine; as well as annual upkeep like painting.

$400 food and sundries – everything we buy in the grocery store, including shampoo, sunscreen, cleaning supplies etc.

$100 drinks – booze really should be part of our entertainment budget, instead of a line item, right?

$200 communications -- includes two cellphones, internet service, and a mail-forwarding service so perfectly suited to our needs that it deserves a post of its own. If your mail-forwarding service is provided by a family member and you are content to catch free wifi hotspots instead of having an actual data contract, you will pay much less. I pretty much demand reliable internet; lacking it is my feeling of “camping out” – fine for a weekend, but not something I want for every day of my life.

$150 boat insurance -- varies according to your cruising area, your experience & record, and of course, the value of the boat. Ours requires us to stay north of the Florida line from June to November (hurricane season) or the rates go up. Way up.

$1000 marinas + fuel + entertainment -- At first glance, it seems somewhat odd to lump these 3 together. When we’re traveling a lot, making a lot of miles during the trips north in the spring or south in the fall, fuel can cost us $400-$500 per month. But then, during those traveling months, we aren’t staying in marinas very much. Nor do we go out much in the evenings; we’re just too tired. When we’re staying in one place, our marina costs and entertainment costs may go up, but we’re not paying for fuel. So it more or less averages out. For marina costs, the places we like to stay average on $2 per foot per night when we’re just staying a night or two (varies by location and amenities, but you can see the advantage of living on a smaller boat when paying by the foot!) or $15-$20 per foot per month for longer term (again, varies by location and amenities). Entertainment is generally books, museum and event admissions, dinners out, occasionally renting a car to explore the local area.*

$150 misc. -- includes taxis, laundry, clothing, all the other odds and ends of life. If the clothing budget seems small, remember that in this cruising life, you really don’t need much in the way of fancy clothes. I can go months between occasions that call for something more formal than a polo shirt and chinos!

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* Addendum:  Wise commenter "Chuckles" pointed out that this $1000 is flexible up or down.  You can spend less: you anchor out instead of staying at marinas; cook aboard instead of going to restaurants; read books or play board games instead of going to events; walk, bike, or bus instead of renting a car.

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Nothing To Report

Posted: February 29, 3:34 pm | (permalink) | (0 comments)

[photo: barge and backhoe; the view from the cockpit down the (very looong) slip we're in]

The tidal range here in St Augustine is 4 – 5 feet, and well, all that water has to gosomewhere when it ebbs. Where it goes, is out the inlet, and because the inlet is small, the water goes very very fast. The current can be intense, 4 knots at maximum ebb. (For comparison, the tidal range in Annapolis is only a gentle 1 foot, and currents are only rarely even as much as 1 knot.) We can only motor at 6 knots with the engine, which means that when the current here in St Augustine is at its strongest, we can’t move against it, we just have to wait it out. When boats come into the marina unawares and try to dock without accounting for the current, it can get … interesting. The current can push the boat off course, making it difficult to get into or out of the slip or stay centered in the fairway. You can get a lot of insight into personalities by how people respond to these surprises. Some yell, some curse, some panic, and some merely abort the attempt, learn from it and try again. Sometimes we just sit in the cockpit and watch the docking drama; it’s like free entertainment. I feel sympathy for the commercial tour boats on the dock that have to come and go by the scheduled departure time no matter what the current is doing. Recreational boaters like us, who have the luxury of time, just wait for slack tide when the maneuvering is easier.

But that fast current also shifts and changes the shape of the inlet – so much so that the original Spanish colonists called the entry the “Crazy Banks” because it was so unpredictable. In modern times, that shifting and depositing of sediments clogs structures that don’t shift, like marinas … so periodic dredging is needed to keep the slips deep enough for the boats to get in and out. They float a backhoe on a barge into the right location in the marina, and dig up bucketloads of stinking muck to be carted away. We watched dredging begin last week and saw the crazy current catch the barge, laden with tons of muck, and push it off course to crash into a slip next to ours. Yikes! That could have been our boat in there! Maybe it was karmic revenge for all the times we’ve watched and smirked at boats who were having trouble with the current, but this was waaaay too much docking drama for me!

Compounding my concern, we were going to be gone for a bit. All night I had visions of coming back to find our boat crushed, ruined by a wayward barge. The marina’s pretty empty right now, it’s the quiet season, so the sympathetic manager allowed us to move the boat to a more out-of-the-way slip, although it is also rather too big for our boat. (Those who know our location in our Annapolis marina, may wonder if grossly-oversized slips are a kind of trend for us. Not by choice, but sometimes it just works out that way. In the Annapolis case, our big slip was the only one available at the time with a full finger pier on the outside of the marina.) Currently in St Augustine, the slip we’re in is even bigger than the Annapolis one. Here’s little s/v Cinderella, 33 feet long, tucked into a slip designed for a boat twice her size – rattling around in a 62-foot slip with no one on either side of her. Looks kind of ludicrous, and a bit lonely, but I slept much better with the near-certainty that no one and nothing was going to damage our home while we were gone. We even got an email from the marina manager while we were gone with the subject line “nothing to report;” assuring us that there had been no further incidents with the barge and our boat was just fine. Hmmm. You would think that a blog writer with “nothing to report” would be frustrated at the prospect of a blank page and casting about anxiously for some subject to write. But in this case, “nothing to report” suits me just fine!

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Rest Easy (at least for now) You Know Where You Are)

Posted: February 15, 4:22 pm | (permalink) | (0 comments)

Remember the controversy about GPS I wrote about last July? That there was a new company hoping to provide broadband service ... but their proposed spectrum would interfere with GPS used for everything from the military to your car's GPS to (gasp!) our boat's chartplotter? From this article, or this one, it looks like FCC has quashed the proposal indefinitely. Works for me; given the choice, I think it is more in our national interest to have reliable geolocation service, than for more people to be able to quickly upload their home YouTube videos.

Flight to Freedom

Posted: February 12, 1:04 pm | (permalink) | (0 comments)

 [photo: Members of Who’s Knockin’ Entertainment portray runaway slaves in “Flight to Freedom” event held yesterday at the site in honor of Black History Month.]

Some people I know travel with the apparent objective of collecting photographs of themselves with various iconic landmarks in the background. A tour through their photo album might be like – “Here’s me in front of the Eiffel Tower; and here’s me at the Grand Canyon; and here’s me at the Washington Monument” – more like a giant timed scavenger hunt through life than a viewpoint-widening adventure.

Here’s a hint: if the above describes your style, think about doing most of your traveling by car or airplane. Don’t travel by sailboat. It’d be waaaaay too slow.

On the other hand, if you’re all about digging deep and discovering unexpected tidbits about the places you pass through, then traveling and living on a boat may give you the time at each spot along the way to do that. That explains why, after we’d seen the major tourist highlights of the town (lighthouse, check; old fort, check; St George Street, check; Fountain of Youth, check), we found ourselves at an unprepossessing state park that just happened to be the site of the first free black settlement in the U.S.

The site itself is peaceful and parklike now; nothing remained of the wooden fort, Fort Mose, that once stood here. We strolled the boardwalk and watched the herons and egrets and wood storks that congregated there, and tried to imagine the scene here 250 years ago.

The famous “Underground Railroad” for runaway slaves ran to the SOUTH here, not north. You see, Florida was Spanish, not British. So runaways who were brave and resourceful enough to survive the flight through nearly 400 miles of swampy terrain between South Carolina and Florida could essentially cross the border into another jurisdiction. The Spanish welcomed the runaways and promised them freedom on 3 conditions: they had to swear an oath of loyalty to Spain, convert to Catholicism, and serve in the militia. Spain and Britain were (*ahem*) not on the best of terms during this period, so this was quite a win for Spain. They could chip away at the enemy’s economic resource, increase their own population, and fill their militia with intensely loyal motivated soldiers. What an amazing story! Remember I made a commitment to myself to read one non-fiction book per month? I just figured out what I want to read more about for February.
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More photos from this event are at Life Afloat on Facebook.

It’s Not the Gathering That’s the Problem…

Originally posted in the Annapolis Capital: February 7, 10:43 am | (permalink) | (2 comments)

[photo: Boats anchored in Annapolis harbor to watch the Blue Angels air show in 2009.]

…it’s what they do when gathered. SB 127, regulating raftups – or actually any gathering of 50 or more boats, whether tied together in a raft or not – has run into problems as it should have. The article in the Capital after the hearing last week highlighted two valid objections legislators had. The first is the obvious: it’s not about the gathering per se, it’s about the inappropriate behavior when gathered. Yes, excess drinking in a large crowd begets stupidity and bad behavior (noise, littering, fighting, trespass, who knows what else) that reflects badly on all boaters. DNR has a crappy job to do here when this happens, and deserves our support. But. We have tools/laws to address these things already, as has been pointed out in the article and my previous blog post on this topic. Too many boats in too small an area, congestion and safety issues, ditto – rules about blocking navigation channels already exist. “Common sense” here seems anything but common.

The other problem with the bill as currently written was also described in the article and blog post. Well, if the “official” organizer of an event is on the hook for permits and insurance, then just get together “unofficially” via social media and word of mouth. But something that came out in the hearing went beyond that and really scared me. Annapolis sailor Dave Skolnick testified against the bill at the hearing. He reported that “When asked about spontaneous gatherings of boats (they don't have to be rafted up, just ‘gathered’) the response of DNRP was ‘we would respectfully break them up.’" Really? Break them up and make them move? Just for being there? Not being rowdy, noisy, trespassing, drunk, lewd, or littering, not obstructing navigation, not doing anything except being anchored there? I really doubt that that was the original intent, but am I the only one who’s finding this scaaaar-y? Yikes!

Dave, who is also on the Board of Directors for the Seven Seas Cruising Association, went on to say, “There is no question that the drunkfests are a problem. As currently worded, the SSCA Annapolis GAM, the Island Packet Rendezvous, the trawler rendezvous, the Annapolis 4th of July fireworks, pretty much every weekend in summer at Solomons, Worton Creek, Dobbins, St Michaels, and a myriad of other places around Chesapeake Bay [would also be affected by this bill].” By the way, if you haven’t heard of them, SSCA is not exactly the kind of organization that you would associate with over-the-top raftup revelry. They are an organization supporting the liveaboard cruising lifestyle. One of their strongest traditions, that all members pledge to uphold, is to leave a “clean wake;” that is, “to show respect for others and for our environment so that those who follow in our wake will be warmly welcomed.” (I’m quoting from their website here. They’re a good group that we’re also members of.)

Dave volunteered to help with rewording the bill so that SSCA can stand in support, and has been working with Boat/US on this issue. If you would like to stay informed, you can write to Dave at sb127@auspiciousworks.com.

“You Can’t Miss It”

Posted: February 6, 1:25 pm | (permalink) | (2 comments)

Now, I don’t know about you, but anytime anyone says “you can’t miss it,” when giving me directions, is when I start to get nervous … because it’s those directions that invariably get me lost. It’s like some kind of a jinx. The landmarks that one person notices just may not be important enough to another person to even make it onto their radar. We used to joke about it when we lived in Wyoming; people would always give us directions like “It’s easy – just turn at the second street after the big steakhouse.” Well, we are both vegetarians, so we’d just never have made note of the location of the steakhouse, it would not be relevant to us … and we’d get lost.


Sometimes, though, even when the landmark is relevant, it can be trouble. We had been invited to a Superbowl party last night, and the host’s directions included this statement that sent my antennae up: “Just after you make the turn onto my street, you’ll see our house on the left,” he said. “You can’t miss it, there’s a boat I’m working on in the driveway.” Well, I thought to myself, based on my track record, I probably can miss it. But it’s a boat, so I thought that maybe my chances of spotting it and making everything come out okay are better-than-average – at least compared to the likelihood of me registering a steakhouse. So we’re following the fairly straightforward map he sketched for us, and we turn onto his street in a residential area just a couple of miles from the marina. I’m looking for a little dinghy-size or Boston Whaler-size fishing skiff on a trailer in a driveway. Instead, just past the corner … There was a boat in the driveway and it was HUGE! The simple 1-story house was dwarfed by a beautiful classic 38-foot full-size, ocean-capable sailboat up on jackstands dominating the driveway, and half a pallet of exotic hardwood. I’m so used to the sight of boats on jackstands in the industrial scale of a marina that I forget how large it really is – our size cruising sailboat can be 10 or 12 feet high on stands, and 35-45 feet long. Our host was right! I literally couldn’t miss it!


(Oh, and for the record, we weren't particularly invested in the outcome rooting for either team, although I love hard-fought close games, which this one definitely was. More than anything, we found the party a fun excuse to hang out with other boaters. And hang out we did, chatting about boats and cruising dreams and plans and adventures until we totally lost track of the time and finally got to bed at 1:30 this morning!)

Yup. It’s still there.

Posted: January 30, 8:46 pm | (permalink) | (0 comments)

“It” is that provision in the First Amendment that insures “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” The First Amendment doesn’t limit the number of people who wish to assemble, their purpose for assembling, or limit their assembling to on land versus on water. And the First Amendment says nothing about getting permission to assemble.

But a story in today’s Capital, “Police Want to Control Size of Raft-Ups,” seems to me to risk unintentionally tangling with that First Amendment right. “Senate Bill 127 would prohibit anyone from holding a marine gathering of 50 or more boats without first obtaining a permit…”

Of course, there are safety limits to the right of assembly – just as movie theaters have occupancy limits, 800 boats gathering on a small river create a situation that goes beyond congestion and into the realm of blocking the waterway and compromising safety. Even the organizer of the Magothy River “Bumper Bash” has acknowledged that it has gotten out of hand. Seems that the bad actions of a few have again spoiled it for us all. Acknowledged, there are costs to the taxpayers when an event is large enough to need some presence by local law enforcement. Those costs shouldn’t be passed on the general public, but isn’t that what our boating fees are for? (Or, part of what they should be for?). We already have mechanisms for dealing with improper behavior, such as drunkenness and littering and excessive noise, and don’t need new laws for that. Then it gets complicated.

Here’s the complicated part. The text says, “marine gathering.” Is that a raft-up? Must all the boats be tied together? As written now, maybe not. What if there are 51 boats anchored individually or rafted in twos and threes over several acres in a creek or harbor, socializing together? If they don’t block navigation, or create unusual potential for safety concerns, should that also be regulated? I’m thinking that the proposal addresses something that needs to be addressed, but needs more consideration because as written, the vague and general wording can lead to unintended consequences and over-regulation.

Pirates!!

Originally posted in the Annapolis Capital: January 15, 11:05 am | (permalink) | (0 comments)

 [photo by Tiger Lee; used with permission]

Real pirates are bad guys. We all know that, right? So why are we so fascinated with pirates in popular culture? Modern Hollywood pirates are swashbuckling rogues... (What does that phrase mean exactly? And why do we always use it to describe these guys?) They are made out to be more rebels and adventurers than historically-accurate cruel pariahs, kind of a nice image of freedom and independence if you spend your days in a windowless cubicle, or are under about 10 years old.

Anyway, we’ve also fallen prey to pirate-mania while we’ve been here, and options seem to be everywhere. We went for a New Year’s Eve party sail with the singing, storytelling, Disney-style pirates on the Black Raven on our dock. And for contrast, we visited a fantasticmuseum here totally devoted to real pirate history. I was particularly fascinated to learn about several women who dressed as men and ran away to sea...and had pirate careers. We picked up a few books from our local used book store and did some reading on the internet. Our curiosity grew until several weeks later we signed up for – get this – swordfightinglessons with local pirate photographer Tiger Lee.

Special note to our families who read this blog: We’ve learned about Sir Frances Drake’sand Francisco Menendez' privateering activities here in St Augustine; and learned that the infamous Blackbeard hung out in the North Carolina waters that we’ll pass through on our way back to Annapolis this spring. But don’t worry about us running into modern pirates on the waters of the ICW along the way, okay? (Except maybe at the gas pump!) The swordfighting lessons are just about getting into the spirit and being a bit goofy and a unique form of exercise.
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Not Quite Your Ordinary Fitness Routine

Originally posted in the Annapolis Capital: January 11, 12:36 pm | (permalink) | (2 comments)

A dock fender does double-duty as an accessory for core-strengthening exercises. Other parts of this workout use the mast and winches for arm muscles, and include balance exercises made more challenging by the boat's motion.

An article in yesterday’s Capital states that becoming more physically fit was the number one New Year’s resolution this year. That made me smile because, yep, I’m another one who has “working out more regularly” on my list. I’m a true believer in physical therapy. It has resolved a combination of back issues that left me with a limp; thank you Jen and Kari atFitness Forum! But – and this is a pretty big “but” – it only takes a few weeks of slacking off before the back spasms recur. Normally, when you’re discharged from physical therapy, they provide you with a set of exercises you can do at home to maintain your muscles, or come into the gym and work out on your own. Well, I don’t have a home with a floor I can work out on. My floor moves constantly, bobbing with the waves; and instead of being wide enough to stretch out on, it’s designed to be close and snug for efficiency. Nor can I go into the gym; here I am a thousand miles from the specialized equipment they have for me to work with. Now what to do?
Fortunately, Kari’s father was a liveaboard for a while, so she totally understood the constraints of our life on the boat. She designed a custom routine for me, using things we have at hand, that Jen modified as I became stronger. Each exercise can be done in a very small space, although in the course of a workout I use almost every inch of the boat for one thing or another. I’m pretty confident you won’t find these in any workout book (maybe we should write our own?) The rewards of diligence are dramatic – 2 hours a week of working out in exchange for being comfortable for the other 166 hours? Now that’s what I consider a great return on investment. The other benefit? It’s quite a conversation-starter with my dock neighbors!