Family

I wasn’t at home when we were tied into slip A58 in Monterey Harbor. I was homesick. Surprising yes, since I was on my own boat, tied up with my usual dock lines, cooking in my own galley, and sleeping in my own bed. I spent my time in Monterey constantly checking the three forecast areas on NOAA to find our perfect weather window to head north. Again, I was surprised at myself. The trip north is usually hard, wet, and cold. Our boat is in great shape and we could actually (foolishly) cash in Tucker’s retirement accounts and head south for at least a year. I always want to go south, or anywhere warmer than wherever I am. But I wanted to go north, to go home. ...

Last week was hard. I’m not sure what aspect of the work/life package was hardest, but it wasn’t just me. The whole family was under strain. By Friday I knew we needed a reset. “We’re going sailing tomorrow,” I told Vick as we were cleaning up from dinner. Saturday morning, we all woke up early and got moving. I’m glad we didn’t set the timer because the clean-up may have taken more than one hour. Still by 11ish we were ready to get under way. I was fiddling with something on deck when our friend and fellow cruiser Carl stopped by. “You guys going out today?” she asked. “Yup, probably out to the Gate and back, it looks like a great day for it, want to come along?” “No thanks, we’re going out too. After I pick Christina up, we’re going to drop anchor at Clipper Cove, do you want to go too?” At this point I’m thinking, “Victoria would never go for this.” but when she popped her head out and asked what we were talking about I implored Carl to talk her into it. I was relieved when I noticed the signs of her wheels turning as she figured out what we would need to do to get ready. “I guess we’ll need ice,” she finally said. ...

Olive: “Knock Knock” Me: “Who’s there?” Olive: “Banana” Me: “Banana Who” Olive: “Aren’t you glad I didn’t say Orange?” At this point I’m thinking, at least he got the right fruit in there but Olive scrunches up his forehead as I fake laugh and says “Daddy what’s the real joke?” So I decided to humor him again. Me: “Knock knock” Olive: “Who’s there?” Me: “Banana.” Olive: “Banana who?” Me: “Knock knock” ...

This is Olive. I feel like I’ve just begun to know her. Recently she’s been relating her observations to us with her own clever interpretations. I find myself constantly amused, inspired, and uplifted as I watch this little girl interact with the world. She’s developing a piercing wit that she casually melds with her uncomplicated but somehow sophisticated (for a 2 year old) understanding of how people and things work. ...

Victoria, Ruby, Olive, Jacob, Kate, Michael, and I left the dock at Emery Cove around noon on Friday for a 2 night stay at Alaya Cove, Angel Island. We’ve made this trip twice before but never with company. I decided to fill up the third tank (for an alleged total of 110 galons) just in case. We did our shopping the night before and got everything ship shape early on Friday morning for our guest’s 9am arrival. As expected it took a few hours to get Kate and her family moved in, and we took the opportunity to shower and pack a few more last minute maintenance tasks in. ...

We spent a magical afternoon with Kate and Michael and cousin Jacob. Here’s the photo evidence.

A few weeks ago I was lamenting to Victoria how we seem to have fallen right back into traditional gender roles in our household. It should not have come as a surprise to me, what with Vick being a stay at home mom, but after many years of mixing and matching roles based on personal strengths rather than gender roles, I was somewhat irked by our lapse into traditionalism. ...

Today sucked royally. I started the day saddled with the dread of a project (replacing the hot water heater) that I just knew was going to go badly. This project was going to go badly because: I couldn’t get to all of the fittings to measure what size they were and therefore didn’t know for sure what to buy to replace them. The old water heater may have or may not have fit out through the available hole… Oh no. It didn’t. The beginning of the project involved cutting the safety net (all of the hoses, strapping, and electrical) thereby completely committing me to raving success or miserable failure. The space that I had to work in was miserably small, virtually guarantying several minor concussions, gashes, and bruises (check, check, and check) The very best that I had hoped for was to get enough done that I could safely turn on the pressure water in the evening (cold only) to do the dishes from the margaritas. So after a grumpy breakfast, and a grumpy trip to the chandlery and the hardware store, I grumpily made by way back down the dock with not quite enough parts to complete the project, and a pretty bad attitude. I was short tempered all morning, and when I finally remeasured the new hot water heater and found that it was something like 10" too tall for the space it was going into, I was pretty certain that I was going to go stratospheric. When I then remeasured the old heater and found that there was no possible way to get it out without removing the countertop, I thought I would cry. ...

Thought this was pretty funny. Thanks to this article by the super funny and entertaining Janna Cawrse Esarey for hooking me up with this video.

A Friday ritual, inspired by Soule Mama. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see.

For the past 9 years I’ve had less than 30 minutes of commute a day, total. Today I commuted a total of 3 hours. The two bike segments home were directly into the wind, with killer traffic, in my lowest gear. I got home and met Vick and the kids in the parking lot and spent nearly an hour searching for food and clothing in the ManVan. Tonight, with winds howling at ~20 knots in the harbor, we finally relented to the worsening head smell in our cabin. It was obvious what needed to be done but with the cold and wind and dark, we were hoping it could wait until morning. Not so. After one aborted attempt for a pump out at the fuel dock (turns out that pump out must have gone away when they relocated the fuel dock) we headed back to our slip to do some reconnaissance on foot. Once I had confirmed that we could get over and back to the Emery Cove pump out we pushed off again and made our way over, did the deed, and got Convivia back into her slip. ...

This is it. As of Monday we are officially live-aboards. To me that means that, starting on Monday, I will come home to the boat, sleep on the boat and wake up on the boat every day for the foreseeable future. This is deeply comforting to me. To Vick it means a week (only a week) of final push to sell everything that we own that doesn’t fit this new life, or doesn’t fit in the boat/manvan/storage unit. Monday is not deeply comforting to Vick. ...

On the way to work this morning Victoria suggested that we play the lottery. “Its $166 million today, seems like a good time.” Now understand, we don’t play the lottery to win, that’s just crazy talk. We play for entertainment value. When we were younger we would go out an drop a cool Washington on a ticket and then spend all night talking about our fantasy future. As we got older, and started to live that fantasy, we did this less often. Still, a couple times a year, the mood strikes us and we splurge. ...