Taking Risks

Posted: July 26, 9:43 am | (permalink) | (0 comments)

[photo: s/v Elysium heads toward a new horizon]

Earlier this month, I wrote about a visit from a couple of guys I had met online, Dave Dawson and Casey Langness, a filmmaker and his cameraman who were working on telling storiesof living aboard and sailing. While we were sitting around chatting one evening after the days interviews were done, Dave asked, “Um, you know, I’ve been thinking about how we got here … you didn’t know me, save for a few posts on the internet … and you invited Casey and me into your home and contributed time and energy to our project … how did you decide to take that risk? How did you know I wasn’t another Craigslist killer?”

I thought for a minute about how to articulate what I was thinking, because “intuition,” while true, isn’t a very informative answer. How did I decide Dave was on the level?

The logical side of me did the logical things, I googled him and found a web presence consistent with the story he told about being a filmmaker from San Diego. I looked again at the comments he made in the web conversation where we met, and saw how he handled himself in conflict situations (calm and cool, didn’t escalate hostility). And most of all, he was looking for help doing something I believed in, something I wanted to contribute energy to. I saw that inviting a stranger into my home was a risk, but one that I had taken steps (research) to mitigate, and the remaining risk was a reasonable one to take in order to advance a goal that I shared – spreading the word about living aboard and sailing – and to have a new experience.

I’m lucky to have made a couple of new friends and learned new things, but it’s not just luck. You know the expression “put yourself in harm’s way?” Well, you can put yourself in luck’s way, too. Some kinds of luck don’t just happen … you have to put yourself out there, push yourself, expose yourself and get out of your comfort zone, to grow and have new adventures. Sailing provides so many examples of this, or could be a metaphor for other similar situations in life. The first time we sailed our little boat out of the bay and out of sight of land was scary – and if I hadn’t taken that risk and challenged that fear, I would never have had the experience of traveling to further lands. I could mitigate the risk by studying and preparing and making sure the boat was sound so that I wasn’t taking an unreasonable risk, but there was -- and will always be as with anything in life -- some risk. My first night passage was scary and felt risky too, but if I hadn’t taken that risk I would never have had the opportunity to have the truly spiritual experience of watching the sun rise over the ocean.

That’s the way it is in many ventures – whether in a small boat on a big ocean, or in everyday land-based life. As the old saying goes, to get the sweetest fruit, you have to go out on a limb.

Waves

Posted: July 22, 7:29 am | (permalink) | (0 comments)

Dan was born and grew up in southwest Kansas, son of a wheat farmer-stockman who was also born and grew up in southwest Kansas, as was *his* father, and so on. So what’s the trajectory that would lead him to become a sailor? It’s not like Kansas has a lot of seacoast to inspire his imagination from a young age…

I’ll leave the actual “how he got hooked on sailing” for another post, but here’s a thought. There’s a surprisingly similar mindset necessary for success and happiness on the farm or at sea. Sailing the ocean’s blue waves, and growing the amber waves of grain, both remind you of how small a single human is, set against the scale and power of nature. You must always be aware of the weather; its moods dictate what you can do on any day. The same calm patience that turns potential boredom into a meditative state applies whether riding a tractor back and forth plowing every inch of a field, or sailing at 5 knots toward a distant blue horizon. Being at sea far from help when something breaks means that your tool kit requires more than a cellphone and a checkbook; you need self-reliance, creative problem solving to jury-rig a fix far from a parts store. It’s the same way, on the farm. From Dan’s father’s house, you could not see another building except as a smudge on the horizon, so if a tractor broke in the middle of the field, you had a looooong walk if you couldn’t fix it yourself. Most of all, both life on the wheat fields and life at sea encourage independence and a love of solitude and wide horizons.

There, you see? Farm boy to sailor is not such a leap of faith after all!

Where Am I? And How Can I Find Myself?

Posted: July 20, 3:10 pm | (permalink) | (1 comments)

When we needed a tow last Sunday, the first question they asked - after the obvious, what kind of boat, how many people, are you taking on water, kind of questions - was “where are you?” But what if I couldn’t tell them where I was? What if I didn’t know?

We could at least see some landmarks. “Maybe a half a mile northeast of Thomas Point light” is a reasonable answer, but not very precise; it’s not like we were the only boat in the vicinity. The towboat could have spent a lot of time meandering about that general area looking for us, if that was the best location information I could give. To be more precise, I could use the compass built into the binoculars and get an exact bearing on several known landmarks, and plot a position on a paper chart. When Dan was working with the sailing program at the Naval Academy, and teaching this skill to midshipmen, I was in practice and could even plot that sort of fix quickly and accurately. Or, I could press a button on my trusty GPS and tell them exactly where we were, within 50 feet or less.

We use GPS all the time when we’re sailing – its absolutely critical when we’re out of sight of land – and it makes it easier and safer when we’re in well-charted areas here in the Chesapeake. We have a GPS in the car, and even one in the cellphone. The latter, I’ll admit, doesn’t get used for anything more significant than checking in in social media. <*wink*>

Losing the ability to know exactly where we are would have been inconvenient for us during the engine failure on Sunday, but it’s easy to imagine far more serious consequences. The first one that comes to my mind would be a man-overboard situation – a person in the water is far harder to spot than a boat, and time is of the essence when the Coast Guard is searching. We’ve all come to rely on GPS … and yet I learned with some alarm that loss of GPS is a real possibility.

GPS is a satellite system, and it’s possible to have interference from atmospheric conditions, from sunspots, or mechanical failure. I’m not talking about those conditions that could affect the reliability of GPS. I’m talking about a proposal to FCC to allow a private company, LightSquared, to develop a new broadband service that would cause widespread harmful interference to GPS signals and service. According to FCC’s own report, “… all phases of the … deployment plan will result in widespread harmful interference to GPS signals and service and mitigation is not possible.”

So I’m going to ask you to think about these points posted on the BoatUS web page about this issue:

• Global Positioning System (GPS) technology has become embedded in modern daily life. Users include recreational boaters and commercial mariners, pilots, farmers, surveyors, construction workers, hikers, delivery drivers, dispatchers, lumberjacks, first responders, and emergency vehicles.
• LightSquared should only be given approval if it can be proven that there will be noGPS interference.
• In 2010 alone, 122 million GPS units were sold. Retrofitting legacy units to accommodate LightSquared’s needs is not feasible.
• Even if LightSquared moves to a lower spectrum, lab testing revealed many GPS devices still suffered from harmful interference.
• American citizens rely on the FCC to protect the bandwidth as a national resource; compromising GPS compromises American lives.

And I’m going to give you some links where you can learn more about this proposal.

The website for the Coalition to Save Our GPS points out that, “GPS has become a key component of the U.S. national infrastructure, the driver of a significant part of the civilian economies of the world, and the enabler of millions of professional precision uses and consumer benefits. The viability of the GPS signal is now threatened - ironically by what appears to be a misguided attempt to increase accessibility to broadband by creating a needless zero-sum result for customers who want both services."

Fellow boating bloggers Chuck and Susan posted this on both their Voyages of Sea Trekand Trawler Beach House blogs: “There has been a lot of discussion recently on how the U.S. government could possibly allow LightSquared, an independent 4G LTE provider, to put up 4,600 [transceivers] sending broadband data services in the L band with such power that could significantly interfere with nearby GPS frequencies. Possibly causing complete failure for a high quality civilian GPS like your automobile GPS, even under an open sky, and for critical units such as those used in aviation.” Think about that.

And finally, I’m going to ask you to comment to the FCC. You can comment via the very easy to use BoatUS web page for this issue here, even if you are not a BoatUS member; or you can comment directly to the FCC here. If you comment via the FCC site, in the box which says “Proceeding Number,” type: 11-109. It is important to include this docket number with your comments. Then enter your contact information in the appropriate boxes. (Starred items, including your name or your company’s name, and your mailing address/city/state/zip, are mandatory.) After you type or paste your comments in the comment box and click “Continue,” a review page will load listing all of the information entered. If correct, click “Confirm.” If you have trouble, contact the FCC ECFS Helpdesk at 202-418-0193 or e-mail at ecfshelp@fcc.gov.

Thanx! And don’t get lost!

Fair Weather Sailors

Posted: July 19, 11:08 am | (permalink) | (3 comments)

[photo: sunset at La Trappe Creek near Cambridge]

Yep, fair weather sailors, that’s us. And the weather for last weekend was perfect, if you’re a sailor. Warm but not hot, a sky full of fluffy white clouds, moderate breezes. Okay, sign me up.

A few of our friends are former liveaboards and cruisers now living in Cambridge, MD. One friend in particular keeps posting tantalizing photos on my FB page, sunrises and marshes and flowers, while gloating about the peace and serenity and good life there. We’d never visited either by land or by water and decided, with 4 days of mild weather before us, that this was as good an opportunity as we were going to get.

We made only 3 nautical miles in the first hour and a half – heck, I can *walk* faster than that, so on went the engine and we headed down the Bay. After a pretty, and happily uneventful, trip, we anchored in La Trappe Creek, about 4 or 5 miles from town. Our Chesapeake Bay cruising guide gave this anchorage five stars, and their advice is usually spot-on, as it was in this case. Ah, bliss. Our boat is its own little world here, with everything we need – everything we OWN, thanks to living aboard and taking our home with us – set in this beautiful surroundings. An orange sunset sky, blue water, a glass of white wine … what’s not to like? And then the five-star anchorage became a million-star anchorage, as the night darkened and the moon rose.

We were so delighted with the spot that we decided to spend all 3 nights there. So next day, instead of taking the boat on into Cambridge to tie up at the free town dock (okay, really, a cement wall, but the encouragement to visit was there all the same) to meet friend Cathy for lunch, we decided to keep our great anchorage spot and use the dinghy to go into town. The Choptank River there was pretty wide-open, and here we were going out in the equivalent of a little rowboat. Other boats that I would think of as our approximate equals seemed HUGE as they passed us, and the water reminded me of how little we really are against the power of the natural world. But the dinghy’s outboard engine was running fine and fast and we were skimming along … until we were about 2/3 of the way there and Dan said, “Babe, uh-oh, I forgot my SHOES.” After living on the boat for days with no need to go ashore, you forget some of the niceties of civilization. But there was neither enough time, nor possibly enough fuel, to turn around and go back to the boat and then back again to the restaurant. Now what?

We ate outside on the restaurant’s deck and then after some teasing from Cathy, walked the few blocks into town from the free dock where we’d tied the dinghy. Cathy knew one of the shopkeepers – ah the advantage of living in a small town and shopping locally. Soon the barefoot boy had a new pair of flip-flops and we were off on our walking tour of downtown, narrated with historical anecdotes from Cathy – it was clear she really loved her adopted hometown. And on the return trip, Dan promised to keep his new flipflops in the dinghy from now on, to avoid the possibility of similar problems in the future.

Next day I just wanted to drink in the loveliness of the creek we were anchored in, so the day included nothing more strenuous than reading in the cockpit and a dinghy trip up to the head of the creek. I tried a short swim in the warm water, and was startled by little fishes that started nibbling at my toes. My friend Moni tells me that fish pedicures are all the rage in Europe, with a special type of fish to nibble the dead skin off your feet. Um, maybe not my thing, but it was nice to know that the creek was clean enough to support marine life!

Next morning, Sunday, we were up before the sun, hoping to start our sail home before the bay got too crowded. It was an odd sensation where we felt the time pressure to be headed home before Monday morning, like we used to have to do when we had regular jobs – but in this case it was not because we had to be back to work, but because we wanted to be plugged in to air conditioning before the week’s heat set in! We were able to sail the first part of the trip, but the wind lightened up and the currents were against us, making the water choppy and slow, so again we motored. We passed Sharp’s Point Light, and Bloody Point, and had just reached Thomas Point Light about an hour from home when suddenly the engine revved to maximum but our forward speed slowed to a stop. A quick look showed that – again! – the v-drive had failed as it had on our way home from the Bahamas. Okay, up go the sails, we’re a sailboat, we’ll SAIL home (however slowly). But, we’re also a sailboat with an unlimited towing option from BoatUS, so ultimately we had them bring us home. Ironically, the wind picked up again part way back, making me wish we were still sailing, (I always wonder why a sailboat would call for a tow, when it has those canvas triangles for propulsion) but then the wind died again so I felt vindicated in our call for assistance.

(Snug and safe and cool in the marina, now. Shear bolts did their job – they broke when they were supposed to. What would you rather replace – 3 bolts that cost a few dollars, or a v-drive for a few thousand dollars? I thought so. Now, just to find out why they broke…stay tuned.)

The Wine Cellar

Posted: July 14, 10:31 am | (permalink) | (0 comments)

So, Dan Blaker asked in the comments yesterday about where the wine cellar is. Hey, the fine life is much appreciated on this little boat! Actually, we do have a wine cellar, the photo is a repost of a photo that accompanied my blog post from October 2009 showing my husband (confusingly for the purposes of this post, also named Dan) stowing a case of Spanish wine that was a bon voyage gift from good friends and marina neighbors Juan and Maria.

The common wisdom is to store wine below the water line, where temperatures are moderated by the sea. If they were stored high, the daily fluctuations would be rather like storing wine in the trunk of your car, too warm by day then cooling down at night … not conducive to good quality! A number of cruisers we know store their wine in the bilge. Okay, it is below the waterline, but the “yuck” factor of the bilge is just too great for me. Not to mention the possibility of dripping oil, shower scum, or possibly compromising the bilge pump (which in a worst-case scenario could sink us). None of these sounds desirable for the wine either. On our boat the good wine is stored in a dry locker under the V-berth. Added bonus – it’s a bit of a hassle to retrieve from there, encouraging us to savor it for special occasions only!

Dan Blaker also asked about laundry … Yes, we I do have a washing machine on board as well. <*holds up both hands and wiggles fingers, grinning*>

(Hey, the humidity is gone and the breeze is picking up, more boat tour photos next week, but for the next few days, we're going sailing!)

A Tour of Our Boat

Posted: July 12, 6:29 pm | (permalink) | (2 comments)

After last weekend’s frantic pace, what I really wanted was some quiet time this weekend, anchored out with just the reenergizing peace of nature; a misty Chesapeake morning was calling. Alas, it was not to be. Before they moved, the Mexican Café on Bay Ridge was the hangout place for our marina gang – but since they moved to West Annapolis, well, I can’t have more than one of those margaritas and drive home safely! (and if I did, I certainly wouldn’t admit it publicly, here in the newspaper, you know?) So marina neighbor Charlee suggested the perfect alternative – if the Café has moved too far from our homes, let’s bring our homes to the Café! The plan was that a group of us liveaboards would anchor or raft up in Weems Creek and *walk* to dinner. A hilarious, and slightly rowdy, Saturday evening ensued.

On Sunday, I did get my misty Chesapeake morning, sitting in the cockpit with Dan, sharing a cup of coffee before the heat came up, watching the herons and the recreational crabbers doing their respective things. As we sat talking quietly, a small powerboat containing two women roughly our ages came past, very slowly, looking closely at our boat. Did we know these people?

It turned we didn’t know them; they were just truly admiring our boat’s classic lines. And yes, I’m pretty susceptible to flattery. They told us their names were Alice and Tish, and they were amazed that we had lived on this relatively small boat for almost 10 years now. After we chatted with them a bit, we invited them aboard for a tour. Tish explained that she was also a fan of small-space living (on land) – she lived in the basement apartment of the house she owned and rented out the upstairs. She loved having a place for everything, everything in its place, and not too much of anything. I told her that on the boat we had everything you would have in a land-based home: a place to eat, a place to sleep, a place to socialize, a place to sit and think.  And we have all the modern comforts: heat and air conditioning, electricity, hot and cold running water in the galley (kitchen) and head (bathroom), a shower and a toilet.  I showed her around the storage features that allow us to fit a full-size life into a small space – the fold down table and guest bed that pulls out from the settee in the main salon, the bolsters that hold our off-season clothing and spare bedding, the file cabinet in the dining table, the sliders and tipouts, my clothing locker (all two feet by two feet by four feet tall of it). Okay, yeah, it was a little odd opening my kitchen cabinets – er, galley lockers – for inspection by someone I’d just met. But still, I didn’t have the impression that either of them was intending to intrude, just that they were genuinely interested in learning how we made our way in the world, and whether there were any lessons that would apply in their own, somewhat more conventional, land-based lives.

So here’s an opportunity: next month, on August 13, at Gangplank Marina in DC, a group of liveaboards will be doing the same thing we spontaneously did last weekend - opening their boat/homes to total strangers, a kind of “Parade of (Floating) Homes.” Their motivation is exactly the same as the reason I started this blog – to educate people about this life and the diverse group of people who choose to live it.

Here's a mini photo-tour of our home, as we showed Alice and Tish on Sunday morning. 

 I,and our Sunday morning guests, love the classic lines! Photo by James Forsyth

The main salon in its daytime configuration.

Table folded out for a dinner party.

Drop the table leaves back down, and fold the bed out for guests.

The galley has everything a land-based kitchen does - fridge, freezer, range, oven, and two-basin sink - just more compact.  

Creative storage is everywhere; no cubic inch is wasted.  Here's my file cabinet, hidden in the table.

Moving forward, here's the v-berth tucked snugly into the bow of the boat.

Clothing locker, with room for both hanging and folded clothes.

Shelves above our bed in the v-berth.  Most of our books are digital, but we have a few reference books that really do better in hardcopy. The brass rails keep them from falling down underway.

  

Our favorite part of the boat, the cockpit, as we like it best...filled with friends.

Telling Stories

Posted: July 10, 4:50 pm | (permalink) | (0 comments)

If great minds don’t think exactly alike, at least they can sometimes run in similar directions. In my last post, I mentioned planning to profile a few of the folks in the liveaboard community, to help dispel the myth that we’re all rebels and dropouts and losers. Seemed like almost the next day I saw a note in one of my online sailing forums from a filmmaker who was working on a documentary on sailing and living aboard. This guy was looking for folks in the D.C. area to stay with and visit for a couple of days, and interview them about their boat, their sailing experiences and what it's like to live on their boat. Hey, wait – that’s ME! That’s MY idea too! I LOVE the idea of helping people understand the liveaboard life!

So that’s how we met filmmaker Dave Dawson and his cameraman Casey Langness. I posted back a reply, and an exchange of emails and a couple of phone calls followed, and then there we were at Union Station picking up our 4th of July weekend guests.

We had a fantastic time! They were superb guests, very low maintenance and at the same time very curious. We set up interviews for them with a few of our friends spanning a range of liveaboard lifestyles – younger and older, single and married, world cruisers with 30 or 40 thousand nautical miles and those whose sailing has mostly been confined to Chesapeake Bay. Dave asked wonderful questions – it blew me away that he learned some things about our friends in their 1-hour interviews that I hadn’t known after 5 years of friendship! Although, I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised, that drawing-out process is part of what makes it an insightful conversation... and of course, part of the job if you’re trying to tell a story.

It was a very packed 3 days. In addition to the interviews, we managed a short daysail and a windshield tour of the monuments and landmarks in the District. They even made time to take in the fireworks.

In between work, when they were just hanging out with us, Dave and Casey shared their life stories too. For every quirky fact about sailing that we offered, they educated us on cool behind-the-scenes tricks of the film trade. I just love understanding how things work! Must be why I chose to study engineering in college. I was somewhat startled at one point during our sail to realize that Casey was filming a tight close-up of my hands, coiling a line; he explained that this footage will most likely be used as some kind of filler - called B-roll - while a voice is telling some different story, to keep it visually interesting. (And yes, they still call it “footage,” “film,” and “roll” and so on, even though it’s all digital.) I’ll be anxiously awaiting their finished product, and hearing our and our friends’ stories from Dave’s perspective. Until then, his blog will have to suffice; he writes about his visit in posts titled, “Washington DC and Annapolis,” and “Happy Birthday USA.”

Clarification: I’m “Houseless,” not Homeless

Posted: June 16, 10:48 am | (permalink) | (2 comments)

I believe one of our jobs as members of the human race is to help build the world we want to live in. Part of the world I want to live in is one that is welcoming and understanding of why I choose to live not in a suburban house or city apartment, but full time aboard a sailboat. That was why we picked Annapolis, advertised as the Sailing Capital, for our home, and why I started this blog – to help increase the community’s knowledge of what living aboard is all about.

So I think I have some work to do! I really feel a need to respond to two views quoted in Elisha Sauers’ recent article “Back Creek Could Get Anchoring Restriction.” Her article nicely presented views on both sides of the issue of transient –and in some cases long-term – boats anchoring in a cove near the dinghy landing at the end of Sixth Street. It is a convenient location for many, but at the same time, boats anchored there improperly can complicate access for other boats in nearby marina slips, or drag and cause damage.

The first quote I’d like to respond to comes from the manager of Mears Marina, proposing the anchoring ban. She says, "Really, these people [her slipholders] are paying to be here, they're paying into the establishments here, they're paying taxes here, they're contributing to this economy. The others [anchored boats] aren't contributing anything to us." I disagree – I think that anchored boats contribute to the local economy, just not to the marina segment. Many of the anchorers are visitors passing through Annapolis on their way north for the summer or south for the winter. If it were me, I’d pick someplace more tranquil if I was just going to stay aboard my boat for the night. Otherwise, why anchor in a city, near a convenient dinghy landing, if you don’t intend to go ashore? And do what, ashore? Tour the historic district or the Naval Academy or other tourist attractions, go out to dinner, contract for boat repair work. In other words, spend money in our town. Tell friends about your experiences, move on, return, repeat.

The second quote I’d like to respond to is one that compares anchored boats to a “homeless person living in a box in [your] apartment complex." I think this is a bad analogy for two reasons. The first is that an apartment complex is private property that someone living in a box is illegally encroaching on, while the cove on Back Creek is public property and, at present, anchoring there is legal.

The second reason I think this is a bad analogy gets to exactly why I started this blog: liveaboards are not homeless. We have homes, just, floating ones. When I first moved aboard I was pretty quiet about where and how I lived, especially with my new boss, wary that he also might have fallen prey to the image that liveaboards were a bunch of rebels and dropouts and losers. (I blogged about it back in my very first post.) Indeed, there are a few liveaboards that fit that image. But the vast majority of those I’ve met are instead an intelligent community that includes many professionals with an adventurous side. There’s a lawyer I know who so loves life on a boat that she owns two boats – one in D.C. close to her office, and one in Annapolis for weekends. There’s a couple raising their young family, a retired physicist, a shopkeeper, airline pilots and nurses and artists and computer systems analysts. To help further dispel that wrong impression, I’ll try to occasionally profile some long-term Annapolis liveaboards in this blog.

(Side note: I commented in the original article that I think long-term (we’re talking *years*) anchored boats have essentially taken a section of the creek that is public property for themselves, which is wrong; I think it’s equally wrong to take public property and deny others access for the convenience of a private marina. I think banning anchoring should be a last resort after we’ve exhausted all the other options in the existing framework. That includes having the concerned marinas post signs informing visiting boaters of the current regulations prohibiting anchoring within 75 feet, and giving the harbormaster the resources necessary to enforce those regulations quickly and aggressively. The public meeting on the anchoring issue is at 7 p.m. June 28 in City Hall. I’ve unfortunately got a previous commitment; wonder if written comments can be submitted on this issue?)

[photo: sign on a piling in a marina on Back Creek]

Art Afloat

Posted: June 7, 6:42 pm | (permalink) | (0 comments)

Part of what seems to intrigue people about our life afloat is how we can squeeze a 21-st century life into the tiny space of a boat. After writing a couple of stories about how liveaboards cope with extreme space constraints, I thought it only fair to present the other side of the coin, a liveaboard who didn’t let square footage constrain her at all.

For many liveaboards whose passion is boats and the sea, no space-related compromises are necessary. Many other liveaboards tailor their lifestyles to the space by giving up some land-based luxuries or hobbies. (To pose an extreme example, I don’t know of anyone who has a billiard table or model railroad on their boat.) But local liveaboard silversmith and fiber artist Brenda Rajkovich and husband Matt, a Marine Lt Colonel did the opposite, -- they adjusted their expectations of life aboard, and even their choice of boat, to have a place for the art which is her passion. When something really matters to you, you make space in your life to make it work. “My art is part of who I *am,* not just something I *do*,” she explains.

 [photo: Brenda demonstarting a "drop spindle" for making silk yarn in the main salon of their boat]

Moving aboard and cruising was something Matt and Brenda thought they’d be doing after retirement. But life afloat doesn’t always coincide with long-range plans. Three and a half years ago, Matt was stationed in Iraq when he learned that his next assignment was going to be at the Pentagon. They started researching the DC area in preparation for the move and learned that for the price of a small condo inside the Beltway they could buy a boat – and have about the same amount of living space (!) – so they decided to accelerate their liveaboard plans. Back in the States, Brenda researched boats with the help of friends and a yacht broker who she said “treated her like a daughter (or maybe a granddaughter?)” and communicated with Matt -- still in Iraq -- by email. One of the more unusual constraints that she presented to their broker, the late Bill Marrow of Adventure Yachts, was the need for a dedicated space to serve as a studio, and storage to accommodate jewelry making supplies, glass kiln, and even a spinning wheel. They settled on the traditional lines of a 43-foot PanOceanic pilothouse cutter built in 1982 that they named “Surly Mermaid” and share with their yellow Labrador retriever Leo. The deal was closed while Matt was still overseas. “I’d seen pictures that Brenda emailed me,” he said, but they owned the boat before he ever set foot on deck. They estimated that as much as 40-50% of their total storage is devoted to supporting her creative endeavors. Brenda admitted ruefully, “If reading was my hobby, we could have gotten a much smaller boat.”

Living on the water has influenced her art. “I was setting up a collection of jewelry for a show,” she said, “and when I saw it set up it was like, OMG, it’s all blues and pearls.” I also saw a lot of silvery swirls, echoing ocean waves, in the current work spread out on her work table the day I visited, as well as the pieces displayed on her website. Living aboard has also influenced the kinds of art she is doing. When they lived on land, she had a separate building for a studio and she did more variety of arts – basketweaving, painting, quilting – that all require lots of supplies and space. The biggest change in her way of life, she said, was deciding how to limit herself to just a few of these arts as part of the move aboard. She kept jewelry making because it was her number one priority, and she retained knitting because it was both relaxing and not so space intensive. That practicality went somewhat by the wayside as she is constantly discovering new ways of expression; she recently discovered fused glass.

 [photo: the ocean-influenced jewelry on Brenda's work table the day I visited - blues and greens and pearls and swirls]

These days, a watch berth in the sunlit pilothouse is her main studio. The creativity in this couple isn’t limited to artist Brenda. Husband Matt’s creativity is seen in the storage ideas here. It is evident in the work table he designed and built that swivels and stows. A wall organizer for nautical signal flags has been repurposed, now beads and wires and other supplies are neatly pigeonholed in it. In a real-life swords-into-plowshares analogue, jewelry-making tools are organized in a case originally designed for an M-16 rifle.

 [photo: Brenda at her work station in the pilothouse]

Brenda gives Matt credit for not stopping her from bringing things aboard – a recent acquisition is a metal-rolling mill, both heavy and large – although he applies the efficient thought processes of his military career to help prioritize purchases, with a decision matrix that considers both how often something is used and how important it is to creating her vision. Although Surly Mermaid was purchased with an eye toward creative opportunities and space is large, it is still finite.

What’s next? They are currently in the process of designing a custom bluewater 61-foot aluminum schooner. Integral to the design is a “trade space” – a large open area that could be an art studio, a space for teaching spinning, or a cabin for charter guests. Their dream is to take the boat across the Atlantic to cruise the Mediterranean, but, says Brenda, that’s flexible. “If we never leave the Chesapeake Bay, I’m okay with that, too.” What’s not flexible is that they will always make room for her artistic endeavors.

 [photo: the cockpit on a sunny day is a relaxing place to spend time with the spinning wheel]

Downsizing - with digital aid

Posted: June 5, 3:52 pm | (permalink) | (2 comments)

[photo: all our electronic "toys"]

As we prepared to move from our house on land to our boat, family photos were scanned, food-spattered cookbooks were turned into tidy computer files, favorite music cds were ripped to an iPod, half a file cabinet of income tax records were replaced with their electronic versions … I can’t overstate how much of an impact digital media has had on our ability to downsize. What was a long shelf – or an entire bookcase – of music or cookbooks now fits in my pocket.

I think, though, that the most dramatic change in our lives has been from digital books. We both love to read – we’ll enjoy a local history book in the cockpit while relaxing at anchor in a new place; or a rousing mystery to pass the time on a long uneventful watch under way. Of course storage of enough books to keep me entertained for a week or two underway becomes a huge issue; I can finish an average novel in a single afternoon. We can’t possibly store all the books we’d want to keep. When we’re in a slow period we’ll have books everywhere – on every flat surface – stacked on the rails alongside the hull near the bow, on top of the wet locker, piled at one end of the settee. So now all that clutter is gone, replaced with a pair of e-readers.

At the same time, I miss the spontaneity of marina book swaps. When we’re on the move with no fixed address, we don’t have a library card, and even if we did, we couldn’t get back to the library to return the books we’d borrowed- we could be several hundred miles down the waterway by then. Sure, we could buy books, but then we’d get into the storage issue again, see above. Most marinas and major ports have book swaps, where people get to take a book for every one they leave. So you pick up a batch of books in one place, read them while underway, then drop them off at the next port and get a new batch. So you always have fresh reading, but at the same time, it’s really catch-as-catch-can and you never know quite what you’ll be getting. Sometimes it can be very interesting to get a glimpse of the people who’ve come before you at a particular marina – I once found a cache of French novels, another time came away with an armful of political analysis and naval history – and all too often, nothing of real interest or mental stimulation, Westerns or romances or “beach reading.”

Hard to know what I enjoy more – the e-readers have all but eliminated our clutter problem, but they’ve also changed the *way* we read. We can buy digital books anywhere we have internet, don’t have to find a bookstore, and the storage is never an issue. But I’ve really gotten into rediscovering classics, things that are in the public domain and hence available for free. Sometimes I’m rediscovering stuff that was first required reading in high school, but what the romantic in me really loves is that many books old enough to be public domain coincide with the golden age of sailing exploration and pirate ships.

[photo: what I miss - the haphazard serendipity of a marina book swap]