Sailing, we are sailing...

When you spend years re-building a boat, you stop sailing, you stop hanging out together and, if you’re not careful, you stop dreaming. Every weekend, and often weeknights, Evan would head to Ceilydh. Sometimes I would tag along with Maia and we’d all install hatches, lay-up fibreglass and remove old fittings. But mostly Evan worked alone. The project, while often fulfilling, also wore us down - it taxed our marriage, diminished our bank account and pulled us away from family and friends. If ever there were a time I longed to just go sailing - this was it. But instead, the tasks stretched on.

Then you hit the point when you're done, or done enough. And nothing can compare to that moment when the wind fills your sails and you're free. When you sail to the next harbour, with a warm breeze on your face and a dream in your mind, it's almost possible to forget what it felt like to miss yet another event because you had fibreglass to sand.

Ceilydh hasn't sailed since Oregon. We've put plenty of hours on the motor, but it's sailing that first brought Evan and I together and sailing has been what's propelled us through our years.

Evan likes to beat the pants off of the other boats. I like to gather friends and family and combine all the elements I love best. Both are good ways to sail.

Steve and Irma (before there was a Maia, Ellie or Clara) shared in our dream about someday owning a boat and sailing away. Later they sailed with us on little Ceilydh once we reached the east coast. They came with us today to test our repaired rig and see us off as we start south again.

Our day was perfect. The sailing was perfect.

San Francisco Days go on and on...

The weeks seem to be slipping by and here we are - still in SF. No further ahead than we were when we arrived.
Actually - we have made progress:
We have way less money now.
And our mast is held up by shiny new stays and lower shrouds. We're still waiting on the main shrouds because it seems who ever initially did our rig cobbled it together out of parts that our extremely experienced riggers say they have, "never seen anything quite like." So they've had to order a few unexpected things - which of course are on back order.

The upshot is they are impressed we made it as far as we did. Fab.

For the first week we were here I panicked about how far behind our non-schedule we were falling. In fact I was a pretty stressed right up until yesterday. But then, as we paid for an unplanned engine repair and I took on another last minute writing assignment (which will almost pay for the engine repair), I thought about all the loose commitments that pepper our calendar and tried to sort out how we could make it all work.

We can't.

So we've traded the whole non-schedule, schedule for no schedule at all. We're now at the mercy of the wind, our moods and my work schedule. We're not trying for the South Pacific in March, not worrying about where we are for Christmas, heck we're not even sure where we'll be for Halloween - which we're not telling Maia, she's pretty sure we have that one in hand.

It's all sort of freeing - in a disturbing sort of way. I can't quite tell if I'm giving up or letting go - the two things can feel remarkably similar some days.

The thing is, living with this much uncertainty isn't as easy as people think it should be. Consider all those straightforward questions that people ask:
Where are you going next?
Where can we send you mail?
When would be a good time to hang out?
What are you doing tomorrow?
Would you like to order now?

None of them have answers.
None of them.
Well, we're pretty sure we're doing our laundry tomorrow and I'll take a beer, but aside from that, Maia's Magic 8 ball has a better chance of predicting the future than we do.

San Francisco Days

 If you’ve ever traveled with a child you’ll know there are certain magical moments that come when you find a place that causes them to fully engage and leaves them wonderstruck. It’s in sharp contrast to those other moments, the ones when they are hungry, thirsty, tired, bored, cold, hot, have sore feet or want to buy that tacky souvenir and that one too.

As parents, we kind of aim for those sublime moments of fascination, but the trick comes in knowing where to find them and what will leave them awed (which I guess is why Disneyland was invented). The whole thing gets even more fraught when you want to show them a place you’ve been and that you loved. Because if you loved it, they probably won’t enjoy it.

The thing is, despite the fact we raise her and influence her heavily we still don’t really understand Maia. She doesn’t quite see the world the way either Evan or I do. She’s constantly surprising me by being fascinated by things that confuse me,  by being bored by the things that enthrall me and by being left cold by the things that move me. And she likes Brussel Sprouts...

 So when we got to San Francisco and started choosing what to do and where to go, Maia had her own ideas – and a chocolate factory (which I pointed out didn’t actually give tours and only had a retail store selling regular priced chocolate) was inexplicably at the top of her list. Riding on the cable cars barely rated, she didn’t like the hills. And the other options only got a shrug.

 The thing with kids though, is even if they don’t like the stuff you like, it's easy to learn to love the things they are fascinated by. There is something about that moment, when time slows down and every thought they are thinking is pure and clear on their face, that lets you know you’ve been privy to a moment of enchantment.

 It’s worth searching for – even if it takes you to places you never meant to go. And makes you speed through the places you really thought you would linger.

For those wondering about our rig, we moved to a dock in Alameda this morning. We're really pleased to have arranged for Glenn Hansen to be our rigger (and equally thrilled that our dollar is doing so well for when it comes time to pay him!) Glenn will be taking apart the cap shroud that failed and will let us know what happened to the damn thing. Then we'll get to be a sailboat again!!

Leaving Harbour

Deciding when to leave a harbour is rarely straightforward. If we leave when we’ve seen everything we wanted to see, done everything we’ve wanted to do and spent enough time every interesting person we meet – we may never get anywhere.
We need to leave when the weather is right for leaving.

I was thinking about this the afternoon before we left Eureka. A silver-haired fisherman named Ken had slowed his boat down while passing our boat and pointed out a dock on Indian Island. “That’s my dock. You can go for a walk on the island. There’s lots of deer.”

We decided to go for a quick walk before heading to the grocery store to load up on passage food. We couldn’t take long because in the morning the perfect weather window was opening up – one with flatish seas and almost no wind to strain our damaged rig. But the lure of Indian Island’s storied shores made us squeeze it in before shopping and readying the boat to go south.

Our walk was nice – we saw a red-bodied hawk, snowy egret and heard a deer. Then just as we were leaving, to rush to the store before it closed, Ken and his partner Linda invited us into their historic old cabin. The practical side of me wanted to get going – we had food to prepare, routes to program into the GPS and stuff to store away.

We followed Ken into his cabin and learned when it was built. All through the rooms were clever built-in cabinets, the sort of building modifications that always mark the homes of sailors and fishermen and ones that made me think of the books I needed to put away. He showed us old pictures and told us how Eureka had changed over the years. I wondered if San Francisco had changed since my last visit.

With each twist in the conversation my mind would slip off. I’ll make chicken stew for a passage dinner, with extra potatoes, I thought, as Ken began to walk us down the coast – describing each contour and harbour the way only a fisherman – who has seen every bay in every type of weather can describe. I thought about needing more ginger ale as he talked of storms. It tried to recall where I had stashed my hat and mitts while he told us about his garden – not because I didn’t want to hear, I wanted to hear.

I wanted to sit by candlelight, sipping wine and listening to his generous stories.

The desire to stay conflicted with our need to leave and we said goodbye. Ken gave us a jar of sparkling peach jam, for passage sandwiches, he said. Maia could make those while I cook, I thought.

We thanked Ken for his gifts – the jam and the stories.

And we prepared to leave.

In the first light of morning I looked back at Ken's dock and then I looked forward, toward our next destination, hoping for a gentle passage.