A Day in the Life...

It seems that time passes quite differently on a boat. I did bring along a watch, but I stopped wearing it sometime in the first week of our trip. No rehearsals to attend, no appointments to keep – heaven. Rick has needed to pay more attention to the time because of the tides – not paying attention could easily screw up his navigation efforts – and we sort of decide together where we are going next, but mostly we just let each day pass without trying to insert too much of a schedule.

For Rick, each day begins with a cup of coffee and then usually some time spent at his navigation station/desk doing something on his computer. He looks at the weather forecast and the tide schedule, and then figures out where we might take the boat to our next stop. After that he likes to spend some time working, answering emails and writing. This is his time to really get somewhere on his latest book project and he needs to be pretty much left alone to concentrate. When we are at home in Baltimore he has a study on the third floor of our house where he can close the door to me and the rest of the world, but here on the boat it’s a bit more difficult.

My day starts a little differently; I pretty much wake up talking. I’ve always been a morning person, finding coffee totally unnecessary. While Rick is trying to work I putter around the galley, cleaning up, making breakfast, chatting away. Then I get on the computer myself and give a running commentary of the latest news and gossip. Rick has had to ask for a moratorium on talking while he’s working and I mostly remember, but it’s really hard. I try to visualize “the cone of silence” from Get Smart. I have had to bring along a number of things to do, since I knew this was going to be part of our daily routine. I read, blog, sew, all things I never seem to have enough time to do at home. One would think that getting internet on a boat would be a big problem, but not in these modern times. Our cell phones work almost everywhere, even quite a ways off shore, and Rick’s Iphone is set up as a “hotspot”, acting like a wifi and allowing simultaneous connections from both of our computers. We are somewhat limited by our battery power though  - the more actual sailing we do, the less we run the engine and that means we have less electricity to run all of our little gadgets. It’s a good thing I brought a hand powered sewing machine!

After a couple of hours of “quiet time”, we usually ready the boat and up anchor for a new destination. The traveling part of the day can be fun and exciting, but it can also be kind of boring depending on the weather and the scenery. It’s always interesting to go through a canal because there are lots of other boats around, and often people on the sides to look at. Wide open expanses of water have a very relaxing effect. Sometimes we go for hours with nothing new on the horizon. That’s usually when I fall asleep.

When we’re underway, Rick most often has the boat set up with either the auto-helm or the wind-vane. Both of these devices are self-steering aids that set the boat on a specific course and keep it there until you change it. The auto-helm is run on electricity (more battery power), while the wind-vane uses the wind to hold the boat steady. The auto-helm makes more sense to me – the wind vane looks like a Rube Goldberg contraption – but Rick seems to understand both of them very well and utilizes them quite a bit. When either self-steering method is used, you still have to look out for other boats or large buoys, but you are pretty much free to wander about the boat and do whatever you like.

The Monitor Wind Vane

Even with the steering taken care of Rick likes to stay on deck, scoping the water for sea life. He alerts me whenever he sees anything interesting, and I scramble about, grabbing the camera. Taking seascape pictures from a boat is really quite easy with a good digital camera; you pretty much point and shoot. The camera does all the work. Capturing wildlife from a boat though is an entirely different matter. The subject of your photo is a moving target, spending only a second or two above water or else very briefly perched somewhere. You and your boat are of course also moving, and on a day with big waves you are moving a lot. I have gained a whole new appreciation for those guys at the National Geographic. I was able to get some very ill composed dolphin photos a few weeks back, and yesterday we spotted some very far off whales that photographically look like black lumps and a puff of spray. In two summers of sailing I have seen many, many seals, yet I only have ONE very blurry, unrecognizable photo to show for it.

Meals aboard the boat are of course limited to whatever we’ve managed to bring with us, but we have a surprising amount of variety in our diet. In fact, sometimes we are able to come up with meals that I think are positively gourmet! The other day we had a dinner of grilled pork tenderloin with a watermelon/feta salad that we could have served to the most discerning of guests. Our lunches are a bit more mundane – hot dogs, liverwurst sandwiches, leftovers from dinner, etc – and are usually prepared while underway. I have to say though, even a tuna sandwich tastes extra special when enjoyed on a boat. The stove is gimbaled – that’s when something pivots in order to rock with the motion of the boat – so we can cook even in the worst weather.

We’ve been through a few storms now, mostly in the evenings, and they can be pretty exciting. The other day in South Dartmouth we had a nice front blow through and decided to stay on a mooring there and ride it out on the boat. We saw a couple of young fellows heading out in a small racing sailboat, and wondered what they were doing with a storm about to hit. They were looking the other way, so maybe they didn’t see that half the sky was black?!! A bit later we saw them coming back, apparently frantically searching for their mooring ball. With no engine on their boat they were forced to use the now screaming wind to move their sails along, and they had to keep tacking between all the other boats in the mooring field. We finally saw them struggling to take down their sails, but the wind was too strong and their mast broke in two! A police boat came blasting out into the field to get them and we watched it head more slowly back to the docks, towing the ailing boat behind. We speculated that the fellow in that sailboat was a kid trying to show off to his friend in his father’s fancy racing vessel. I don’t think Daddy’s going to be very happy!

 

In the evenings we usually head in and anchor somewhere, sometimes in a port city but usually in some little picturesque natural spot. My favorite part of our routine last year was the cocktail hour, usually spent on the foredeck. We would sit up there with our captains’ chairs and some snacks and watch the end of the sun, sometimes still in transit and sometimes at anchor. I hadn’t really realized until now, but that part of our routine has sort of fallen away. We’ve had better weather for sailing this year – more wind – and with the boat heeled over amid lots of deep waves, it’s not that inviting to be sitting on the foredeck. Rick would also like to suggest that the reason for our loss of the cocktail hour is that we’ve been drinking all day, so why bother? I’m sure that’s not true. Well, pretty sure…

We finally have begun our regular duet playing sessions which usually happen sometime around that now defunct cocktail hour. We got off to a late start this year with our music making, I think for several reasons. First of all, there were so many things going wrong with the boat that Rick was spending practically every spare moment working his magic and fixing things and there wasn’t a lot of energy left for violin/viola playing. Many people may not realize that playing an instrument requires a great deal of mental effort, even when playing for fun. The other main reason for our musical lethargy is much less forgivable; we have a really great stereo on the boat. How much easier it is to push a button and have wonderful performances of great music right in your living room! Or in our case, the cabin or cockpit. How demoralizing to pull out your fiddle and not sound like one of those recordings! It took us a few practice sessions to get our fingers moving properly again – and also to come to terms with lowered expectations – but now we’re in the groove and making our own music once more.

Going ashore is something we do to break up the regular routine. We went in for breakfast in Cuttyhunk, and although the meal was delightful, I actually got a little sea-sick just from being on land. Leave it to me to have something like that happen; now that I’m used to living on a boat I get sick by landing on terra firma.

We most often go in for dinner when we go ashore, but this last week we decided to visit the Whaling Museum in New Bedford, MA, and we spent the day there. New Bedford is obviously struggling financially, but the museum is top-notch. The focus of the museum is a bit schizoid in that half of the place is devoted to the glorification of the whaling industry, while the other half is devoted to education about whales and whale conservation, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. I particularly liked learning about a certain whaling ship, the “Rebecca”!

We’ve had a number of great sailing days this past week and are making steady progress up the coast toward Maine. We’ve decided that the wind will be better tomorrow and the next day for our last few stops up to Portland, so we’re taking the day off to rest and recuperate here in Gloucester. We’re mainly following our usual routine – writing, reading, napping, etc. – but I think I’m going to insist on the reinstitution of our cocktail hour. Cheers!