Stuff

Q: Name something you packed and so far you find you really just don’t need. A: Thankfully, we really don’t have much of this category. We have gone through some clothes, worn through some shoes, and jettisoned a down comforter, but there was a time when they were needed on this trip. There are several things that I don’t need yet (spares galore, Christmas cookie cutters, secret chocolate stash) but their time will come. Then there are things that I hope to never need, 153% genoa, the life raft, and EPIRB. And then there’s that blow up shark Olive won for being the youngest kid on the HaHa. Technically we didn’t bring that, but we didn’t ditch it either. Vive El Tiburon! ...

ManVan, I salute you. You drove a ton of boat stuff down from Washington, saving us hundreds on U-Haul. Then you helped us move from Mountain View to Emery Cove. You were there for shuttling stuff back and forth to the marina, and you’ve served us faithfully all these months as our nearby no-cost storage unit. When you wouldn’t start for me last weekend, I understood. You’ve been neglected, your fuel had been left too long, your headlights were probably left on by young, curious fingers. ...

I noticed on facebook today that many of my friend’s kids were dressed in fresh new clothes with hair and teeth brushed. Ruby and Olive weren’t actually all that bad considering they had a shower just yesterday (showering when you don’t have one of your own can be a little more of an adventure). When we went out for the morning I decided to drag along Tucker’s good camera to snap a few shots of our first day, and what a beautiful day it was. We had sun and warmth starting in the morning and lasting until evening. Ruby came home from swimming lessons after 6 without wearing her winter hat. Remarkable! Here’s why I’m glad I didn’t send my daughter to school again today. Both kids have fairy dust necklaces (though Olive lost her fairy dust in the bilge). Ruby offered Olive a wish on her fairy dust every five steps so we could make it down the dock in a reasonable amount of time. Yep, stopping every five steps was an improvement. You might think that the B dock was a straight line from our boat to the shore, but for the kids each and every finger has something to explore and they surely can’t be done until they know every boat name (and why they were named that); see every shell left by a sea bird; compare how each boat ties their dock lines; count how many boats have and anchor or two, or not; why one boat has a pirate flag; why someone is cleaning a certain way; why someone left their hose on; ….it could go on and it does, and we needed to get down the dock to go on a bike ride. We managed to drop off the PFDs and sun hats in Tucker’s truck and trade them for bikes and helmets and then they were off. But a bike ride is easily interrupted by a stick that begs to be thrown into the water. That was the end of the bike ride because Olive needed to head back to the bathroom. Then it was time to play on the grass. Ruby’s tag game seemed to be chase Olive and then push her over. She’d get up, she’d chase, she’d push (hard) and eventually she didn’t want to play that anymore. Ruby got mad at me for asking her to be gentle and stormed off to play in the mud at the edge of the grass. Olive joined and and they got pretty darned muddy. I didn’t think it was a terribly big deal because we had access to bathrooms and 64 faucets and hoses between the lawn and our boat that I could rinse them off in. And again it was a remarkably warm day out so we could even string their clothes on the lifelines to dry. ...

There has been a rash of theft in our marina lately. It started with a bunch of fishing gear getting stolen off of some power boats, but this Saturday I found my bike had been stolen. This kind of thing can really make you question the quality of the average person… until you come back from your errands to find an annoymous gift in your cockpit. We think one of our friends down the dock left the toy castle for the kids. They had a ball playing with it but agreed that it wouldn’t fit in our boat. The next morning Ruby and Olive raced down the dock to return it and were perfectly delighted to put it back aboard Gemini. ...

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. This morning Vick made the brilliant and unexpected decision to call our good friend Katherine in for some professional organizing help. Katherine arrived late in the afternoon and the two of them lit into the piles of stuff that we’ve accumulated over the years and reduced it to a tidy stack of boxes and neatly organized piles. They made it through two rooms. Tomorrow Vick will be flying solo, but she’s already significantly more optimistic. ...