This whole moving aboard thing is taking its toll on me.
I'm not sleeping very well.
I wake up in the middle of the night with disturbing thoughts like, "Why is the boat's engine cutting out when it idles? Do we need a mechanic? What happens if we're going for fuel at a crowded fuel dock and a fisheries opening is called and the engine cuts out and I don't hear it because huge fishing boats are motoring past at high speed, rushing to get to the fishing ground because if they're late they'll lose out and won't be able to make their house payments? Could our boat be damaged?"


That was last night's worry.

The night before it was, 'What happens if someone calls for our Craig's List sofa and they come alone and are really little and need my help to carry the sofa down our 3 flights of stairs? Could I re-injure the torn ligaments in my knee from the strain? And if I do how will I get in and out of the dingy?"



The good news is Evan's incessant googling on the idling problem led him to discover that our engine's governor needed adjusting. He just called to say it's fixed! And the couch was taken by friends last night. So hopefully I'll sleep well tonight.

Although I am concerned that the floor above the port water tank has been creaking and in rough seas a seam could pop and then the whole thing might rupture and then we'd be sloshing around trying to fix it while a freighter, which we may have missed on the radar, bears down on us...

Very Superstitious People

Sailors tend to be superstitious people. It's probably because crossing oceans used to be such a risky and uncertain activity, but early sailors seemed to think if they followed a few rules they'd see land again. We, of course, know that it's more about having a wellfound boat and the skills to run the thing that keeps you off the rocks. But we can still rattle off a few beliefs we've heard through the years:

• it's good luck to smash a bottle of champagne against the boat just before launching
  
• black cats on board are good luck (we'll limit this to one black cat)
  
• it's good luck to step aboard using the right foot first
• a bare breasted woman on the bow can calm a savage sea
• it's unlucky to name the boat with a word ending in "a"
• it's bad luck to change the name of a boat without a renaming ceremony
  
• it's bad luck to sail on a Friday
• the word "drown" can never be spoken at sea or it may summon up the actual event
• Seabirds are thought to carry the souls of dead sailors
• Whistling, cutting nails and trimming beards at sea will cause storms
• Banana's are bad luck to have on a boat
  

Most of our sailing friends claim they don't believe these things. Heck, we claim not to believe them. But we did have a proper renaming ceremony aboard Ceilydh to get rid of a name that ended in an "a", and we painted underwater eyes on the hull on so she can see where she's going, and the only times we set sail on Fridays, well, it's gone badly...

Somewhere along the line I decided rather than fighting superstitions, we'd embrace them. All of them. Which is why if you visit our boat you'd discover we have a Mayan corn god in the galley (to ensure we never go hungry) an Aztec sun god near the door - for happiness and health, a few versions of Yemaya who is known as Queen of the Ocean, a Huichol Indian carved Virgin Mary, a Ganesh (dipped in the river Ganges for extra protection) and a few other assorted gods, goddesses and spiritual items.

Most recently we added a carved raven paddle to the collection. Paddles carved by First Nations people on the North Coast are said to help ensure a boat will always find its way home again. But we got the paddle because it's a beautiful piece of art. Really.

CHARTS...

Boaters navigate from place to place using charts. Lots of charts. The world is big.
Finding the right charts tends to take up a lot of time when you're travelling to a new destination all the time. Luckily Evan happened upon the deal of century - a private yacht was updating their charts and was selling all the charts for the world for $900. That's about a $40,000 savings. The only problem was the charts weren't sorted - the skipper explained that it would cost more in man hours to sort the charts then to drop another 40k for new ones.

They just came in this huge pile. Pretty much enough paper to sink our boat.

So for the past four months Evan has been sorting the charts by geographic region and then by country. Putting all those pieces of paper in order... He even discovered enough duplicates that we've since made money reselling sorted charts.

Then he boxed them up. Next up is to convince his parents to let us store everything east of Australia in their basement. THEN we need to figure out how the hell to get all those charts to us. Where ever we are.

But the good news is we have charts for the whole world...
Lots of charts.

Moving aboard sounds pretty straight forward. Get rid of all the excess stuff and go. Last time we did it, it really was that easy. This time round I'm not sure if it is because of Maia, the fact that I'm older and less flexible or because we have better stuff - but this time it is so much harder deciding what should go aboard and what should just go away. Normally, when you move from one home to the next, most of your stuff goes with you. Even when you downsize you get to keep your favourite books. But on a light boat, with a waterline that sinks 1/2" for every 350lbs that finds its way aboard, we need to say goodbye to a lot of stuff we like.

And with time ticking we're having a Craig's List fire sale. The only stuff we're storing is some art work, a few baby things of Maia's and charts for the second half of the world.

The rest of it is going.

Well, not the cat.

After 3 days of hard labour (and the tiniest over-stressed freak out by me) the boat was ready for Maia's party...

It finally feels like a home. Could be because there is no scratchy fibreglass dust clinging to every surface. But I think it's because we were able to host 20 kids and their families and still feel sane at the end.

Honey, Maia's going away party is in 3 days you know?

yup, 3 days...

Our rig - to help answer a question on the SSCA board

Exciting Plumbing photos for all our fans out there




The propane on demand hot water heater
The "long drop" gravity discharge holding tank. Diane insists that such vulgarity as actually seeing your own excrement drop into the tank is simply "not done" and wants to fit a nice curtain around it.


Evan takes apart a perfectly good Spectra watermaker, with automated timer, automated fresh water flushing, automated salinity detector and more relays, solenoid valves etc. than Chernobyl. He replaces all this with a few extra manual valves and little handheld TDS meter you put under a spigot to test the water. This is the same sort of system as the Volvo RTW race boats use - nothing electrical or electronic to go wrong. Except about 70 pipe joints....

More work in progress:

Little lockers at the head of our berth. You know, things you might like when you get up in the morning. Di informs me it will be for jewelry and the like. Oh well.



Radar display, fan, stereo. It's nice to have music when I'm working - but when you're painting for 2-1/2 hrs, it's hard to change a CD! Must get that iPod hooked up soon.

I also have the stereo installed w. outdoor speakers under the stern arch. But they are 8 ohm impedance and not as loud as the 4 ohm car type in the cabin. Still nice to have tunes inside and out - and not have to worry about kicking the cord of the boom box out of the power bar all the time.

Solar panels added to the stern arch. 375 watts of 'em. Woo hoo. That should run a fan or two.