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There is a great scene in one of the Lord of the Rings movies where Gandalf is standing atop the castle wall, gazing out at the enemy, anxiously waiting for the battle to begin, and says “The deep breath before the plunge”.
There is a great scene in one of the Lord of the Rings movies where Gandalf is standing atop the castle wall, gazing out at the enemy, anxiously waiting for the battle to begin, and says “The deep breath before the plunge”.
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| Just days before we are due to leave and there is still shit tossed everywhere. It will never all fit on the boat! |
Well, the months prior to going cruising are nothing like
that, mostly because you don’t have the time to think a lot about what’s next;
you are too busy trying to get shit ready right now, and your event horizon
doesn't include thoughts of the future, stopping to take a breath, or plunging
in any direction. If anything, the
entire process is very much like running up a cliff that continues to get steeper while gasping
for breath.
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| We've removed all of the head liner (including the owner's) in order to install the bimini plumbing |
For the last few months we've been furiously upgrading,
installing, revising, redoing, rebuilding, repairing, and replacing various
parts of our boat and haven’t had a moment to reflect on what was coming, or
how quickly it would arrive. But we are
now only a few days away from leaving, and dreams of sugar plums dance in our
heads.
Of course, those sugar plums include things like getting
registered for the Baja-Haha, the cruising rally of approximately 200 boats
going from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas, on the tip of Baja Sur, in Mexico. It also includes obtaining the necessary
permits to cross our southern border. We
think we have, although the Mexican website for doing so leaves a lot to be
desired. We’ve also had to make sure
that our crew, AnnMarie’s older sister Judi, and Judi’s boyfriend Marco, have
supplied us with all their proper paperwork.
And managing all this via the interwebs using Gurgle Translate is no joy
either.
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| Nothing is more fun that fixing things in small, cramped spaces! |
We also need to take care of lots of little details like
closing out various accounts, cancelling car insurance, and all the myriad
details involved in going off for an extended cruise. When I say we, I really mean AnnMarie, who
has been handling almost all of the paper work involved. I mostly lift heavy things, force various
bits of metal or fiberglass together, and/or absorb toxic substances. Honestly, I think I got the better job, and
don’t envy her, as her task is on par with filing out a complicated IRS form,
except in Spanish.
But it has been overwhelming, and we are starting to get a
bit ragged. A friend of ours, while
trying to console us, recently said “Don’t worry, once you go sailing, all your
problems will be behind you”. I’m sure they
meant well, but what will “be behind us” is our schedule, which has not kept
pace with the calendar. A lot of things
are not done and won’t get done, but hopefully we won’t need them for the sail
down to Mexico and can finish them once we are there.
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| We attended their wedding and then tried to leave town |
When we were in this same situation last year, we doubled
down, working twenty hour days, trying desperately to get nine women to make a
baby in one month. That didn't work, and
we decided, quite at the last moment, to take another year to get ready. That wasn't welcome news last year for our
crew, which included Mike (who also sailed several legs on Triton) and his
sweetie Melissa.
They had taken time off
to make the trip, and we felt horrible about it, begging forgiveness and
promising we would make it up to them.
Ironically, our shove off date this year was (initially) October 12 th, which is one day after their wedding, so at least there was a happy ending! |
| Three boatloads of shit in a two boatload boat |
It also forced us to realize just how much crap we had
accumulated in our lives, and how little of it we actually needed. We have spent the last year and a half giving
away various treasures, keepsakes, tchotchkes, and other paraphernalia that we
were storing in various places in our life.
It was amazing how much stuff we had.
It was made worse by the fact that
we had (at the time) two boats, several dock boxes, two storage containers, and
a very large office with an even larger storage room attached to it. Last year shocked us when we attempted to
sort through all of it, but what we found even more surprising was how much
stuff we still had to jettison this year.
We now follow what we have come to call “The Robb Kane
Container Theory Of Life”, which says that everything you own should have an appropriate
container that will protect it and preserve it, that you should not over-stuff
the container, and that the choice of the proper container is as important as
the thing it contains.
To that end, all of our clothes are in Snap Ware
containers. We’ve found that if you
leave clothes in cabinets on a boat, you end up with moldy clothes.
This is another thing that has amused many of our friends, but when you are tired, seasick and just slightly drunk, and its dark inside the boat, and you need to find something without digging through everything, you’ll be glad you took the time to be so anal retentive. Okay, so its beyond anal retentive. Its epiglottis retentive. Yet it works. But I digress.
In retrospect, delaying the trip last year was the right
thing to do, and yet that year has sped by.
You would think that by now everything would be done and we’d be picking
out matching Hawaiian shirts with our boat name on them. Instead, we find ourselves working just as
hard, and just as frantically trying to cram everything in at the last moment…just
like last year. But the difference this year is that although
we have a lot still to do, and a lot of projects still got put on hold, we
believe we've got enough things ready to safely sail to Mexico. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
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| The bimini almost completely installed! Finally!! |
The fuel tanks, on the other hand, were not completely
finished. This wasn't a show stopper,
but we’d really rather not leave without finishing at least the port side (the
old tank rotted away and was removed), and if need be, we can complete the starboard
side sometime later on. But here is
where we were touched by an angel, or, at least a mensch.
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| Our hero! |
As any reader of this blog will recall, our dear friend Jen
Jackson sailed with us (on the leg from Trinidad to Panama) when we bought the
boat and brought it back to the S.F. bay area.
She has continued to sail as crew on various boats around the world, even
crossing the Pacific on one trip, and has become quite the consummate sailor
herself. In fact, she recently bought her own boat, and
much to our delight, just offered to join us as crew on the Haha!
She also started dating another sailor named Harry, a former fishing captain, who lives on his own sail boat. Harry is, like Jen, one of those people who
can do just about anything he sets his mind to.
He has awesome fabricating skills, and is able to work crazy long hours
with almost no breaks. And he did just
that.
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| Jen throws in some tacks on the tank |
When he realized that we were struggling to get things
finished on time, he immediately offered to help, spending unbelievably long
hours with me in the shop building the fuel tank along with various other
projects on the boat. Even Jen pitched
in (when she wasn't at school or working) helping me fabricate the tank. She had been taking an aluminium welding class
at the local college at the time and showed up knowing the right TIG welder
settings for what we were doing, which also saved us a lot of time and
frustration.
More importantly, both of them really knew what they were
doing. When you are building something
mission critical like a fuel tank, or a bimini, that kind of help is
invaluable. In fact, a number of friends
stopped by to help, all of them having the kind of competence and skills that
made it possible for me to hand them a task and know it would get done right
the first time. Having their help made
it possible for me to focus on getting other things done without having to
constantly double-check what they were doing.
To that end I also need to give a big shout out to Jeff, Kate, Felix,
Mota, and a few others whose names escape me at the moment. If I've overlooked you, please know that your
help was still greatly appreciated, we are just too brain-dead exhausted to
call it to mind.
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| The finished port side fuel tank waiting to be installed. UGH! |
So, we trudge on, working on those things we think too
important to leave to others, throwing money at the things we think need doing
that we just can’t take on ourselves, and putting (too many) other items on
hold for when we get to Mexico.
The dead line approaches, our nerves fray, our resolve
deepens, and the road goes on…
Cheers for now,
Robb & AnnMarie
PS. Life on a sail boat is
fraught with the three most corrosive elements known to man, namely UV
radiation, salt water, and divorce lawyers.
Lest we've painted too rosy a picture, the stress is very real, and it
takes its toll on us and the relationship.
Unless you are able to joke about it, that kind of pressure can break
you apart. Instead, we have adopted a
gallows humor response. When we first started this project, our term of
endearment was “I love you more.” Now,
we say “I hate you, but I'm stuck with you.”
Sometimes we can go as long as four hours before saying it to each
other. Lately it has morphed into "I hate you more, and I'm still stuck with you." Its a funny old life.
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