Going Home Again -- The Rest of the Story (It Ain't About the Sunsets)

After Northport, the weather forecasts became iffy for boating, so we headed back to Melissa's marina in Charlevoix to do some land-cruising.  Shopping netted us a new glossy black pearl teakettle, a stack of books from what she described as her favorite indy bookstore, a pair of earrings and some art cards. Dinners consisted of local fish and chips, in a different restaurant every night.

And after dinner, cocktails and conversation and sunsets.  Those higher latitudes meant long lingering twilight and on several nights, incredible colors.

While we were in Charlevoix, we looked at the stone houses by Earl Young. He wasn't trained as an architect, but had an artistic eye and a love of local stone as a building material.  These houses are a local historical landmark (set of landmarks?); here are a few of my favorites.

So romantic!

Love the way the stone is set to frame that arched window and doorway.

Here's a closer view of the window.

Maybe this house would be perfect for a hobbit?

Even the low fences have incredible detail.

A day outing with the boat on Lake Charlevoix yielded even more houses:

Huge.  Just ... huge! 

One way in which living on a boat has definitely changed my viewpoint forever, is the size of house that seems "reasonable" to me -- and it's more like cottage or cabin than palace.

Yeah, more my style.  Waaaay more my style.  And it's in Northport!  And it's even for sale! (Good thing Dan and Melissa convinced me that I wasn't really cut out for living in that small town permanently, as I explained in my previous post.)  

Of course, settling into even the cutest house would mean giving up our life on the boat, and I can't call that a good trade.

But you know, "the rest of the story" wasn't about visiting our favorite nostalgic places.  It wasn't about shopping, or boating, or sunsets, or houses at all.  It was about connecting up with the people that made our time so special...and so memorable.

Good friend, and our skipper Melissa at the helm of her boat.

 On the way home we met up with friend Cindy, a former colleague of Dan's.  We'd stayed very loosely in touch via Facebook, but although she knew what I'd had for breakfast that morning, we hadn't had in depth conversations about the big changes in each others' lives, like retirement.

Catching up on 11 years apart -- it was gonna take a very big beer to cover all that time!

Cindy literally knew what I had had for breakfast that morning, as I had posted something about "farm-fresh omelette where the locals eat, along with a side of sassy waitress" as our final breakfast before leaving northern Michigan.

The folks at Judy's can cook, but setting up their restaurant's Facebook page, not so much.  I helped out, while my coffee got cold.  Check out their page now!   

It wasn't just catching up with old friends, it was our first chance for a physical meeting with online friend, fellow sailor and writer Brian.  For an extra couple of hours driving time -- plus however long it took us to cross the border -- we could detour into Canada where I could put a face to the name behind the funny comments.  We followed his directions to his marina, but then the confusion began.  His blog is named "Dock 6 Chronicles" but did the marina even have a "Dock 6?"

Harry Potter had "Platform 9-3/4;" Brian said he was on Dock 6.  But the sign near the marina entrance only gives directions for Docks 1 - 5.  Okaaaay... If you'll forgive the pun, this is not a good sign!

But then, waaaay out at the edge of nowhere, peaceful and quiet...

Found it!  Brian and his wife Louise are delightful people. He had promised an evening where we would get our fill of rum and history, and he delivered.  

My guess is that you glazed over and scrolled quickly past the sunsets and houses, and slowed down a bit as you got down to this last half-dozen photos.  See?  It really is all about the people!

Awwww.....

Thank you all for reading, and thanx for your concern!  

I have absolutely the best set of friends, Facebook friends, readers and blog followers anyone could wish for - ever!  I got so many expressions of concern after I posted "How Does This Story End?" that I'm completely overwhelmed and humbled.  Thank you all, so very sincerely, and I'm sorry to have alarmed you.  Please rest assured, it was just a moment of frustrated funk - we're not moving off the boat.  (And I did get those shoes!)  If anything, all your concern has reassured me that we are on the right path, and that one of the wonderful benefits of this life is the incredible supportive community of friends that seems to come along with it.  We're planning on heading south again this autumn, mentoring several ICW first-timers, so there will be more stories ahead!

At the same time, we're refinancing our rental property, and in the midst of requests for documents of our income and taxes came this request for the underwriters who were trying to understand our big picture, why we own several properties but don't live in any of them.  They asked me to provide a "brief explanation on the living situation on a boat."  Yikes!  Where to begin?

I vaguely, and probably inaccurately, remember a Sunday School story of a patient sage.  A cynic came to him, thinking to embarrass and mock him and said, "I will convert to your religion if you can teach it to me in the time that I can stand on one foot."  But instead of being angry, the wise man took the challenge seriously and replied to the mocker, "My religion?  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. All the rest is commentary.  Go now, and study."  (If anyone's got a better grip on this story than me, I'd appreciate more detail.  Jesus?  Hillel?)

Being neither patient nor particularly wise, I can't imagine how to explain life afloat succinctly.  I mean, I've written thousands and thousands of words about living on a boat, but brief?  Winston Churchill famously said, "Forgive me for writing such a long letter, I didn't have time to write a short one."  How do I "briefly" describe living on a boat? "Three parts magic, ten parts boredom, one part sunsets, one-one-hundredth of a percent panic?"  Certainly I'd best steer away from the cliches that only other boaters understand, "A hole in the water into which you throw money;" "A way of going somewhere very slowly at great expense and considerable discomfort;" "Imagine taking a cold shower while wearing your clothes and tearing up hundred-dollar bills;" "Keep the stick up, the water outside, and yourself inside."  Maybe I should just forward to the underwriters the wonderful turtle cartoon I got from my friend Steve. (You all saw this one earlier, "Why Liveaboards Don't Get Invited To Do Sailboat Races.")

If nothing else, trying to distill it into a one-liner has helped sharpen my appreciation this life. So, "Imagine exploring the country in a luxury RV ... living on a boat is kinda like that, only a boat has a much greater coolness factor.  It is more romantic, uses wind instead of fossil fuel ... and it floats."

You Can't Go Home Again ... Can You? ... Well, Maybe ... But Then Again ...

In 2002, we lived in a pretty-but-ordinary house in a suburb of Lansing, Michigan and had medium-stress careers -- Dan as a professor at a community college, me as a supervisor of 25 research scientists.  Every Friday afternoon at 3:00, Dan would show up at my office in an already-packed car and we’d make a quick getaway.  It was a 4-hour drive north to where our sailboat waited patiently on its mooring in front of a boatyard in a small town on Grand Traverse Bay.  Every summer weekend we made the trek, and recharged our mental batteries in this slow-paced, natural haven.  When we weren’t sailing or just relaxing aboard as we bobbed on the gentle waves or swimming in the clear cool water, we were touring the surrounding cherry orchards or vineyards or the historic lighthouse.

Our haven was the little town of Northport, Michigan, latitude 45 degrees, 21 minutes north – closer to the North Pole than the equator.  It’s a quiet town of only 600 permanent residents, with a small-town- America vibe, a grocery store, a liquor store, a hardware store, a couple of shops and restaurants, a marina and a boatyard.  It’s still the hailing port painted on our stern, and we remember it fondly.  We had heard vague news of it over the years; that its business had declined, it shrunk even more and almost vanished, then slowly began to recover as artists “discovered” it, but circumstances hadn't lined up for us to visit again after we left 11 years ago.

Until last month.  Our good friend and fellow boater Melissa has a pretty nice life - a house in Florida where she spends the winter, and a boat in the Great Lakes where she lives aboard in the summer.  This summer she was going to be exploring our old stomping grounds in northern Lake Michigan and invited us to join her on her boat for a week.  Brand new places to explore for her; a bit of a nostaligia tour for me.

Some things were as we remembered them; others were changed, evolved in unexpected directions.
====

I started getting excited on the drive up; cue the old James Taylor song, "...deep greens and blues are the colors I choose..." just as I remembered. 

Coming over the hill, my first glimpse of the Great Lakes, a.k.a. the "Sweetwater Sea" in 11 years.

We met Melissa in the charming town of Charlevoix

The marina was familiar, as was the street behind it.  

A fair amount of wine and lots of catching up filled the evening, then next morning we were underway.  Melissa's a former sailor who traded for a powerboat; I couldn't get used to the idea that a "good boating day" was flat calm, without the wind that we need to keep our sailboat moving.  Nor could I get used to the speeds she took for granted.  (On the other hand, with those white canvas triangles (sails) we have, the cost of fuel is not nearly as much of an issue for us as it is for her.  Tradeoffs, tradeoffs.)

A good day to be a powerboat.  Note the sparkling blue water, and the flat seas.

Our first stop was the vibrant “big city” of Traverse City, 45 minutes by car or 3 hours by boat. We remembered it as a tourist town; it has lots of recreation and cultural opportunities and is influenced by 2 colleges.  The main street had some shops and pubs that we remembered and some intriguing new additions.  We checked them all out and definitely made our contributions to the local economy.

The main shopping street is a mix of old buildings and new ones.  Some places, like our favorite brewpub from our time here 1998-2002, were familiar, as was the kitchen store and a bookstore.  Several other art shops and clothing stores and restaurants were new.  We did our best to visit them all!

This wonderful pocket park or plaza was in an alley on our way back to the marina.

Lighthearted - I guess that's the college influence.  Random public contributed art: yarnbombing a tree.

Closeup.

Even the water fountain got into the yarnbomb act!

After eating, drinking, and shopping our fill, we headed for Northport.  I wasn't sure what to expect. Along the way, we passed forlorn "Gull Island."

Sorry, this isn't much of a picture ... but then again, this isn't much of an island.  Some time in the middle of last century, if I recall the story correctly, a guy decided to try to build a house on this tiny private island that previously had been home only to nesting birds.  But the birds proved so aggressive in defense of their territory that he deemed the island uninhabitable, and the project was abandoned.  Only the chimneys and ruins remain.

Finally we came to the town of Northport, nestled in a curve of the hills.

Approaching Northport by water.  The collection of sailboat masts marks the municipal marina.

We pulled into the marina and settled in behind a newly-expanded breakwall.  The marina had gotten a major upgrade, new seawall and bathhouse, and was lovely, though almost unrecognizeable.  Directly in front of our bow was a farmer's market that seemed to consist almost exclusively of cherry products.  Our lunch consisted of freshly-baked cherry scones, then we picked up several bags of dried cherries for later.  There was cherry juice, cherry jam, cherry wine, even cherry salsa and a guy selling lovely wooden cutting boards and bowls made from ... you guessed it ... cherry wood.

Newly-improved marina boardwalk was just concrete sidewalk in our day.

Next, we went for a walk around town.  Of course, we needed a photo in front of the first "Northport, Michigan" sign we found, which Melissa graciously snapped.  

We made it!  We're ba-a-a-a-ck!

In fact, I got pictures of myself in front of every sign  reading "Northport" that I could find.  (I  won't bore you with all of them, I promise!)  But I loved the remodel of the post office.

No "Northport" sign, but I just had to sit on this bench in front of one of the artsy shops, since it matched my shirt.

We noticed many art studios and new shops.  We walked the half-mile or so to our old boatyard.  The walk seemed much shorter than it had 11 years ago; maybe its because we're used to walking those kinds of distances now that we're living on the boat and traveling full time.  Or maybe its because there were a bunch of new cottages filling what used to be wooded area along the road.  Hmmm...  Anyway, the good folks at the boatyard remembered us, and we spent an hour or so chatting and exchanging news: they bought out the boatyard next door; this guy retired and that one was still driving his meticulously-restored shiny red 1966 Mustang around town; the guy who kept his century-old wooden boat on the mooring next to ours moved to New England; and many more tidbits.  

When we got back to the boat and settled in for the evening with some cocktails, I was still on my nostalgic high.  "I could come back here..." I mused.  "What?!! Are you crazy?" burst from both Melissa and Dan at the same instant.  "Nice place to visit ... but why would you want to live here?  What would you do?  You'd be bored in a week!  And that's during summer!  There's nothing here!"

And when I stopped seeing what I remembered, and started seeing what was really there, I realized they were right.  There's such a thin line between restful and suffocating.  I didn't need undiluted calm, quiet relaxation, now that I no longer had a stressful job to need a break from.   I didn't need the comfortable everyone-knows-everyone-and-looks-out-for-each-other familiarity of a small town when I had the ongoing community of cruising liveaboard boaters for support, online and in physical "real life." I could go home again  ... that is, I could bring my body back to this place ... but I wasn't the person who fit there anymore.  That sounds sad, but it isn't; the baby bird doesn't fit back into the egg, either. 

Foggy misty morning in Northport

We had more adventures and a few more pictures, but this post is long enough, so I'll save them for Part II.

The Good, the Better, and the UGLY

Our diver, Dave from Annapolis Diving Contractors,  showed us a sample of what he scraped off our hull.  

The Good:

We got what first sounded like a junk-mail call yesterday, but it turned out to be a representative from Wells Fargo offering to refinance our existing mortgages with them to a lower rate ... without appraisals. We had tried to sell the townhouse earlier this spring; it had gotten lots of showings but no offers. For the townhouse,  the refi would turn it from a negative to a positive cash flow.  A couple hundred more dollars in our pockets each month?  Yeah, I can do that.  For the Arizona house, the refi means we pay $12 more per month, and pay it off 4 years sooner.  Yeah, I can do that too.

Crazy story about having to get the paperwork printed out, signed, and faxed back in before the rates went up next morning, and having had an eye doctor's appointment so my eyes were dilated and I couldn't read said paperwork.  By the time late that evening that I could read, when we tried to print it out, we discovered that our printer was kaput, and it was too late to go to Best Buy to replace the printer or Kinko's to pay to print the stuff out.  Luckily, with the help of friend Phil, who has an office here in Annapolis, and a race with the evening's scary big thunderstorms, everything finally was printed, signed and faxed in on time.  (And sure enough, rates went up by almost 1/2 a percentage point today!)

The Better:

So, when is it good when someone says he doesn't want to see you any more?

When the someone is your cancer doctor!

That's what Dan's oncologist told him this morning! He's graduated! No need for further cancer monitoring. Of course, he does need to see his regular doc and neurologist every year, but being "medically boring" from a cancer perspective is news worth celebrating! I previously wrote about this two years ago, when we celebrated "Alive for Five!"

We considered going out for a nice dinner to rejoice in the news, but decided instead to donate the money to cancer research.  (Anyway, we had just gone out yesterday and my waistline didn't need another high-calorie meal.)

The UGLY:

According to our diver Dave, this has been a record year for fuzz growing on hulls here in Back Creek.  Our wonderful copper bottom paint made this removal easy, but look at this stuff!  He estimated that he removed 600 pounds of it.  That'll slow us down.  (Squeamish alert: there are little maggoty-looking worms that live in this stuff.  When Dave made them homeless by cleaning the hull, some of them swarmed onto him.  Eeeeeuw!) I'm really really glad Dave likes his job and is good at it, because although I love diving, I just don't think you could pay me enough to go into this water.

All in all, a very delightful and productive day!

How Does This Story End?

No, these aren't my new shoes.  But I live a rich fantasy life.

I’ve been in a major funk.  Major enough to make Dan ask, “Is it over?”  (“It” in this context referred to our time of living on the boat, not, thankfully, our marriage.) “Do you want to move ashore?”

Maybe the funk is contagious.  I’ve been thinking recently about the variety of reasons that the cruising/liveaboard dream ends.   Money runs out, health deteriorates, family needs help.  One couple we know ended the liveaboard phase of their lives when their boat proved unseaworthy and started twisting and flexing in a storm.  Another couple moved back to shore after they successfully completed their planned 4-year voyage around the Atlantic.  But for some other friends, nothing concrete, reportable, or dramatic marked the end -- they simply decided that cruising wasn’t being fun any more, and put their boat on the market.  “I miss long hot showers … and toast,” Ean explained in an email to me. "Turning live fish into dead fish makes me a little sick to my stomach. … I don’t even like nature.  You know what they say, ‘you can take the boy out of the city...’ You hear ‘secluded anchorage;’ I hear ‘solitary confinement.’ What WAS I thinking?” 

But I think the thing that put me into a funk was my BFF Karen’s cute new shoes.  We visited her a couple of weeks ago, and I complimented the shoes, and she suggested going to the store where she had just bought them – on sale! And she had a 30% off coupon! And they had them in my size!

The question was not in finding or affording them, but where to put them.  Every liveaboard we’ve ever known has had the issue of limited storage space aboard.  Our total indoor living space is, after all, less than 200 square feet.  Personal possessions are minimal in this lifestyle.  Generally that minimalism has felt freeing.  Sailnet poster “elspru” explains that “being on a travelling sailboat isn't so much about luxury of the body, unless very cozy simple living is your version of bodily luxury, it's more about luxury of the soul and mind, having many different experiences, seeing beautiful scenery, interacting with new people.”  So here were these cool bronze and black ballet flats -- that were right in front of me, that I had in my hand and could easily afford.  But I couldn’t have them -- unless I could find a storage space for them. The situation just awakened my inner girly-girl and she was pissed! Thus my obvious funk.

Remember the old Monty Python skit about “The Royal Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things?”  That’s what my storage life is like, all the time.  Our galley is a study in organization, nesting pots and pans and bowls, collapsible silicone colanders, and multi-use gadgets.  Two cubic feet holds what would have filled an entire cabinet in our kitchen on land – but it’s impossible to get any one item without moving four more items first.  And the shoe locker we share has room for about six pairs each, no more.  Compared to the space available, it sometimes feels like we have just a bit too much of everything, in every category – too many clothes, too many shoes, too many books, too many tools. (I know, I know, a very “first-world problem” to have, right?) So I either take my best estimate of the most useful item in each category and move the others off the boat – and then get frustrated when I later discover that the one that would meet my needs perfectly, is just the one I got rid of a few weeks ago – or I keep them all and cram them into an already-overstuffed locker and can’t access any of them easily.

Was this going to be the way our liveaboard lives ended?  Not with a bang, but with a whimper?  I always joked that our “exit plan” when we get too old and feeble to live on the boat, is to find or fund an assisted-living marina.  Was I really going to cut it short instead just for storage space for pretty new shoes?  Dan was super supportive through all of this angst (obviously, it was about more than the shoes).  Karen reminded me that every lifestyle, every situation, every decision, includes an element of compromise. (Wise girl, it’s not for nothing she’s my BFF). 

This story doesn’t have a happy ending, or a sad ending, or a funny ending, or really, any ending at all.  Because our life afloat didn't end over this mini-crisis after all. Karen’s right, it is all compromise.  This life afloat isn’t exactly perfect but it’s pretty darn good.  And it’s a balance, because even the best life has some bad days.  I don’t remember exactly what got me out of my funk and got me back on track; there was no specific event.  There’s still gonna be some great days, and some grumpy days.  My funk just began to lift, and then lift further.  We sorted through lockers and organized shelves and donated items to Goodwill and The Clothes Box.  We still store all our things on top of other things.  I can have anything I want; I just can’t have everything I want. (At least, not all at the same time). 

All our galley stuff: neatly stowed

The exact same stuff, no more, no less, spread out. (The nesting pot-and-pan set stows inside the pressure cooker, which is why you don't see it in the first photo.)

= = = = 

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Why Liveaboards Don't Do Sailboat Races

(from my friend Steve P.  Thanx for my daily chuckle.)

Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff

Tidal height predictions for Rock Hall for May 26.

For the holiday weekend we planned to sail to Rock Hall with friend Phil.  He’d never been to the little historic town on the Eastern Shore.  The weekend getaway also would be an excellent chance for us to see how compatible our two boats were on a longer trip – handy to know, since he was one of the folks we had planned to sail south to Florida with this autumn.

The first test came with the weather forecast for Saturday: near gale-force winds.

“What do you think?” Phil asked.

“I can’t tell you what to do,” I replied, “but I’ll tell you what I’m going to do … which is to delay my trip until Sunday.  This is supposed to be fun, and beating into a gale for 4 hours is not my idea of fun.”

I was encouraged when he agreed.  We called the marina to change our reservations; they were really quite understanding about it all.  Even though it was a holiday weekend and they had a cancellation policy that entitled them to charge us the first night’s dockage, the manager told me she’d waive the fees.  “I’m not going to penalize you for weather beyond anyone’s control,” she told me.   Ah, small-town friendliness!

So we got together in Annapolis Saturday afternoon to go over some of the trip details.  Phil is an engineer by training, like Dan and me, so the planning was careful.  “Here’s my dilemma,” he explained.  “I have a small boat and not a lot of extra power, so I’m trying to decide when to leave.  If I go early in the day, the wind is light, but the current against me is the strongest.  If I wait until later, the current is milder, but the wind will be stronger.  It sounds like a trade-off, can’t win.”

I was remembering some challenging times in big currents in Georgia, and was pleased that our future travel companion was taking trip-planning seriously.  “Actually,” I countered, “current isn’t such a big deal here in the Chesapeake.  The worst foul current on the trip will be near the Bay Bridge, and that is only about ¾ of a knot; not very much or for very long, and certainly not something that will control our trip planning.  But I’d like to consider the height of tide when we get into Rock Hall Harbor; the entry is known to be shallow, and low tide tomorrow is at about 3:30 PM, right about the time we’d come in if we leave mid-morning.  Ideally, we’d come in on half-tide rising, but that’s not going to happen; by the time it’s half-tide rising it’ll be getting dark and the marina staff goes home at 5.”

Back and forth we went, plotting the wind against the tide and the time of day against our convenience to make the trip ideal.  Every scenario had its drawbacks.  Pour another glass of wine and think some more.

I pride myself on my navigation, but I just couldn’t make this simple 4-hour trip come out without leaving at 5 AM, or getting in after 8 PM, neither was an acceptable option.  Or fighting foul currents, or risking coming into a shallow, unfamiliar harbor when the tide was at its lowest.  I was staring at the tide chart again when it struck me: I had been so focused on not arriving at the bottom of the tide curve that I forgot to look at the total size of that curve.  Phil is from Maine where the tides can be 11 feet; and I was thinking of the 8-9 foot tides in Georgia, so that’s what was the back of both of our minds as we framed the problem.  Crossing a shallow spot with 8 feet of high tide adding to the water depth would be stunningly easy; crossing that same spot at dead low tide could be tricky.  But we weren’t in Maine or Georgia, we were in the Chesapeake.

“Phil!”  I called excitedly. “I had a revelation!  Do you know what the difference between high and low tide is on Sunday afternoon?  Ten inches!  Ten inches!  We’re both so used to places with big tides that we never thought to check.  We’ve been driving ourselves crazy for less than a foot of water difference between high tide and low!  We can travel in comfort and come in whenever we want!”

Moral of the story: Big problems can seem insoluble until you put them in context.

(PS: We had an absolutely spectacular sail and came into the harbor carefully, at low tide, lightly touched bottom once but that was due to inattention, not channel depth.)

Originally published in the Annapolis Capital-Gazette, May 28, 2013

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Location, Location, Location

It’s a truism in real estate that the 3 most important things in selling a property are location, location, location, because everything else can be fixed.  (And real estate is admittedly on my mind right now; we’re trying to sell our townhouse.  Don’t worry, this is an investment property, not our home; the sale isn’t indicative of any big changes going on in our cruising life).

Built into our character in the U.S., I think, is an underlying assumption that is so ingrained that we aren’t even aware of it.  We believe that your life can be improved if you just move to the right location.  Maybe it comes from being a nation of immigrants and second sons who crossed the ocean in search of adventure and opportunity.  The belief applies whether the move is on a local scale, just across town to a new house in a new neighborhood, or a major move across the country.  At its best, it gives us an attitude keeps us mobile, keeps us open to new ideas and new places, keeps us from getting complacent.  There’s a down side to this as well, I’ll get to that in a bit.

In our home marina, we have a nice slip on the outer row with easy access to take the boat out and go sailing, and a pleasant view from the cockpit when we’re in the slip. But when you live on a boat, this whole moving-for-a-better-life thing is even more so, because the moving is so easy.  No packing, no househunting, just up the anchor and go.  Find the new better place, drop anchor.  So it was with our boat slip.  We have been extremely happy with our specific spot.  Until, that is, our friends vacated their slip, just a few hundred feet away, same marina, same dock,  better view, but more exposed.  Would our lives get better if we moved over there? The ultimate local-scale move, about 150 feet further north.  Would this improve our lives? I was all for giving it a try; Dan had all kinds of concern about whether the geometry of the new slip would allow us to tie up securely against wind and storms.

With the tolerant permission of the dockmaster/slip administrator for our marina, we arranged to spend a weekend at the new location to check it out.  Friday afternoon we gathered some spare docklines and headed over.  It was a 5-minute trip that ended in a graceless docking debacle, fortunately with no witnesses, but a short time later we were tied up.  We were expecting some stronger winds on Sunday that would give us a real chance to test how well we’d resist the wind, so Dan spent what seemed like a couple of hours fine-tuning the docklines.  When he was satisfied we headed to the cockpit to unwind with a beer and check out our new, if possibly temporary, view.  It was indeed nicer than our old slip.  The friends who had been here before had said that it was so peaceful and private that it felt like they were anchored out even when they were in the slip.  The view out one direction was the anchorage; the other way was a carefully landscaped sloping hillside. In our old location, the window above the range gave a view of the side of the neighbor’s boat; here, it showed water and the boat traffic further downstream.  “So, what do you think?” I asked.  “It’s pr-r-r-etty nice,” Dan agreed.

We had an ordinary weekend planned, filled with minor errands, relaxation, some time with friends.  But every few hours we interrupted ourselves, asking each other whether on the whole, this location was better or worse than our last one, cataloguing the plusses and minuses.  For the big ones, view and exposure, we already knew what the tradeoffs were.  But there were lots of little subtleties.  Wifi speed? Plus one for the new slip.  Finger pier on the starboard side of the boat instead of port? Plus one for the old slip. It should have been a perfectly nice weekend, except we had this decision hanging over our heads, a decision that grew in importance until it became monumental and drained the pleasure out of everyday things.   Everything we did was examined and compared.  The walk to the car?  Shorter; plus one for the new slip.  Stern access for the winter? A bit worse; plus one for the old slip.  We were closer to the party pavilion: peoplewatching the guests?  Plus one for the new slip.  The guests walking the dock watching us? Plus one for the old slip. And we could better hear the music for the parties: that could be plus one for the new slip or the old one, depending on whether we liked the genre they were playing. We exulted in the new view and the light that reflected off the water and danced on the ceiling and cringed when the wind blew us toward the pilings or shifted a boat in the anchorage to come closer to our exposed side. We asked the friends that came to visit, and polled our Facebook page, for their opinions.  View? Or security? We walked back to the old slip and stood there for a while, gazing out to the creek.  Then walked back to the new one, and looked around.  Then back to the old one.  By Monday morning, we had to commit -- call and let the marina know, one way or the other, where we were going to stay for the rest of the season, and maybe longer.

What was weird, though, was that Dan and I had changed viewpoints.  Now he was the one who was enchanted by the view, and I was the one who felt vulnerable and exposed.  Now he wanted to stay and I wanted to go back.  File it under “things that make you go ‘hmmmm.’”

There’s a theory that our decision-making style has an effect on our happiness.  The theory says that there are two types of people, one who obsesses about making the best possible decision, the other wants to make a good-enough decision.  Say you are trying to decide where to live.  You could list your 3 or 4 most important priorities in a place to live, attributes like climate, recreational opportunities, job market, culture, cost of living, whatever matters to you, and the very first place that has those things, you make a good-enough decision and move there.   Then you stop spending energy on deciding, and go on to build your life there, and don’t look back. No what-ifs.  Or you could spend months looking for the very best possible combination of those things and many others, spending lots of time and energy to refine your choice, and even after you have made the choice, you always have this nagging concern, you are always second-guessing your call, that maybe if you had changed this one minor feature, your total happiness might be just a tiny bit more.  But meanwhile, and maybe forever, you spent a lot of time worrying.  The downside of being in a culture that believes that you can affect how good your life can be by choosing or changing your location, is that wherever you are, you are not content to simply enjoy it, you are always looking over your shoulder to see if there is an even better place you could be.  As my friend RoseAnn puts it, you miss the good thing you have right in front of you because you’re so busy looking for the next, better, thing -- because if you find an even better place, you will have an even  better life.

I began to fear that the great boat-moving experiment was going to be a bit like that obsessive second type of decisionmaking.  We were going to be in the same marina, same dock; all we were doing was moving 150 feet.  A lot of angst over a difference that really made little difference.  Both places were okay!  One had a little nicer view, the other was a little more protected.  And it’s a boat! It moves; that’s the whole point! Four months from now, we’d be taking the boat south for the winter and it would be all moot.  So why was this so hard?  Maybe because the differences were so minor? As another friend, Margo, asked, “If this opportunity hadn’t come up, would you have been unhappy enough where you were to consider moving, or were you satisfied there?”

Bingo! Thanx, Marg!  That answer was "no." We sent the email to the marina and moved back to our old slip after work on Monday.  Just the comfort of the familiar?  Maybe.  But then we realized what we had seen in the new slip, the one where first Dan, then I, was concerned about exposure to the north wind.  This photo shows the bumper on the piling at midships.  See the abrasion?  Granted that their boat was a different size and shape than ours so our results might not have been the same, but during at least one storm over the last couple of years, the former slipholders couldn’t quite keep the wind from pushing them onto the pilings.

Abraded dock bumper: this should have told  us that the problem of strong north wind was significant.

(Originally published in the Capital-Gazette on May 22, 2013)

What Kind of Error Would You Rather Make?

Yep.  It's another anchoring post.  My last one is here.

The plan was to get a few boat friends together, pick up a Navy mooring in Weems Creek, raft together, then go out to Mexican Café on Saturday night to celebrate an early Cinco de Mayo.  If we had one too many margaritas, we only needed to walk/row back to the boats to sleep instead of driving home.  The weather report was encouraging, for warmth and some sunshine after a chilly spring that has seemed to go on forever.  We arrived at the planned meeting point at Weems Creek after a brief pleasant Friday afternoon sail to find … disappointment.  No moorings were available; they were occupied by a number of dilapidated, neglected or abandoned boats – one covered with a threadbare tarp, one without a mast, one trailing a deflated waterlogged dinghy. There was still some prime anchoring real estate available, so we set the hook and let out plenty of chain, and got our heads into weekend mode.

We spent a pleasant day chatting with other boats in the anchorage, old acquaintances who had returned to the Chesapeake for the summer.  We met some new folks who, drawn by our hailing port of Northport, Michigan, came over and introduced themselves as fellow Michiganders new to the Chesapeake.  And then our gang showed up, some by boat, and others came to the restaurant by land.  Much laughter ensued; later there were even fireworks we could watch from the cockpit.  The derelict boats spoiling the mood were reduced to a minor annoyance, grit under my fingernails or pebble in my shoe, but the irritation never completely went away.  As the boats themselves will never go away, which is of course the issue with abandoned boats – they cost tax dollars to remove.

There was a recent situation elsewhere in A.A. County that was diametrically opposite: a police launch came along side an anchored boat and very politely said that one of the shore residents had suggested perhaps that boat had stayed long enough and should be moving on.  The heavy irony here is that the boat in question was an extremely beautiful and well-maintained one; the owners, Evans Starzinger and Beth Leonard, long-distance sailors well-known in the cruising community, were aboard; and there was no chance of mistaking this for a dilapidated boat about to be abandoned.   (For Evans’ take on the incident, go to their blog  and scroll back to the post from 4/16/2013; another blogger's reaction to his post is here) In addition, there are no regulations prohibiting anchoring in the Chesapeake as long as the boat is properly lit and not blocking a channel or access, so I'm not sure which I find more disturbing, that a shore resident thought he/she had a right to control who anchored nearby, or that the local law enforcement did nothing to disabuse him/her of that notion.

The inconsistent, in fact contradictory way local authorities react to anchored boats in the county is confusing, or worse.   In one case, boats are allowed to sit unattended for long periods; in the other, a properly-anchored and attended boat was asked to move.

In statistics they call them Type 1 and Type 2 errors.  The technical definitions include lots of confusing phrases like “failing to reject the null hypothesis,” but it’s simpler to think of them as “false positives” or over-reacting, and “false negatives” or under-reacting.  See, in the real world, no matter how you make the decision rules, it is likely that there will be a few extremes or special cases that aren’t properly covered.  The trick is to define the rules in a way that minimizes harm from these errors.  In some cases it is very clear to see which type of error is the more dangerous.  If the rule, for example, is about a new cancer screening, then a false positive means some people will get unnecessary followup tests even though they don’t have cancer.  But a false negative means some early cancers will be missed until it is too late, and people could die.  So you skew your test to have very few false negatives, even if that means you might have more false positives – you over-react.  The Coast Guard does the same thing with “mayday” calls – they’d rather go out on a false alarm or multiple false alarms, than miss someone in danger that they could have helped.  In other cases, false positives are clearly the more dangerous error: for all its faults, our judicial system is skewed to minimize the chances of an innocent person being found guilty, even if that means that some guilty may go free.

There are other cases when it is not clear whether type 1 or type 2 errors are worse.  My favorite example of this is the rules for eligibility for public assistance.  No matter how we write the rules, some people just won’t fit in those boxes and their circumstances won’t be covered properly.  If we write the rules too broadly, there is a chance that some freeloaders will game the system.  But if we write the rules too strictly, there is a chance that some folks who really deserve help will fall through the cracks.  There’s no obvious right or wrong answer, but which type of error we are more tolerant of says a great deal about our values as a society.

Perhaps the case of abandoned boats in Weems Creek is a “Type 2” error, and the seaworthy boat asked to move along is “Type 1” error?  In writing public policy, it is hard to find a perfect balance.   Write the anchoring rules too lax, and you get derelict boats that we all (somehow) have to deal with.  Write the rules too stringently, and no one ever anchors out and learns to appreciate the natural beauty of the Chesapeake.  Right now, we’re making both types of errors; do we have the worst of both? Which error are we more concerned about? What do we value?
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A slightly different version of this post was first published in the Annapolis Capital-Gazette on May 11, 2013:

Call Me? Maybe???

 We've known for a while that "something" was a little bit off about our boat's electrical system.  I really am obsessed with monitoring our power consumption and recharge from our beloved solar panels, and I had noticed that one bank of batteries wasn't quite recharging all the way, maybe they were just a few percent low, but something was still NQR (Not Quite Right).

I'm so glad we hadn't known how close we were to potential disaster! (Photo from here)

That's when we learned how hard it was to schedule marine electricians.  We left a message with one, who never called us back.  The second one, we were able to get on his calendar in a few weeks to come and diagnose the problem.   He was very informative about many issues and new ideas and standards that had come into existence in the 33 years since our boat was built to then-code.  No specific answers to our mystery lack of charge, but he pointed out some things that definitely needed attention.  We paid him for his time, but when we tried to schedule the actual work, multiple phone messages and emails were met with ... silence.  So, disappointed that we would now have to pay someone else to familiarize himself with our systems before getting actual work done, we phoned a third electrician.  Who didn't call us back ...

Back when we had our kitchen design/remodel business, we had at one time a 6-month waiting list for new projects.  We had told one potential client this, and offered some other names that could get to her work sooner, and she said, "No, that's okay, I'll wait.  I heard you return phone calls."  That's it? I asked myself.  Not that we're creative, not that we have good attention to detail, not that our work is on budget and on time, but that we return phone calls?  That just didn't seem to me to be a prize-worthy achievement; it seemed more like the foundation stuff, the goes-without-saying stuff, that should be taken for granted.  But now that we were the clients instead of the providers, I learned how frustrating it was to be so dependent.  Meanwhile, I was looking suspiciously at our battery-selector switch, seriously, dangerously undersized by modern standards, more and more aware that something was going to have to be done sooner rather than later.

Just a look at our electric panel doesn't hint at the chaos behind,  but the hand-printed labels and multicolored breakers should be the first clue that this has evolved over time.  Four owners over 33 years had each added their personalization.

Aaaack!  This is what's inside!  The blue circle on the left side of the panel is the selector switch.  The wires leading up to it are the proper size, but the switch itself is small.  

 Enter Patrick and Rob from Marine Electric Systems.  We broke the project into two phases, partly due to the crowdedness of their work schedule, and partly due to the emptiness in our checkbook.  Phase 1 replaced the battery switch and rerouted the wiring.  The scariest thing they found wasn't the battery switch, though; it was that a few connections had vibrated over the years and were loose, as was one of the crimps on those big honking red battery cables.  I feel a lot better now!

After.  The negative wires (black, yellow, and gray) are grouped on  the back wall, and each  positive (red) is labeled.   The big heavy-duty wires that went to the battery switch have been re-routed to a new, larger switch right next to the batteries.  Shorter run of wire = a good thing.

Battery box "before."

Battery box "after." Big new fuses in the upper left corner, big new switch in upper right corner.