Existential Crisis

sailing the ICW , sailing pearson ariel 26

I’ve been tied to the mooring ball for days. Ten, maybe. Maybe seven. Chipping away at the boat. I’d look at my log but I haven’t been keeping it. The passage of time makes no sense. The days have blurred into one. Drill holes, go to the hardware store, fix a new problem I didn’t know existed. Tear the boat apart. Put it back together.

living on a small boat, refitting a small sailboat for cruising

It seems like a life time ago I was cruising in Tandem with Sixth Girl, a Melody 32, and her captain Dale. She won the Chicago Mackinac, once. In the sixties. She fell off a semi-truck once, too. Dale has been restoring her to do a trip much like my own–except he’s sailing on the outside of the Atlantic Coast. What I intend to do has snippets of it, but is mostly part of the Inter Coastal Waterway. There’s blue water though, on my trip. And even more blue water to chose from once I get further south.

melody 32, charlie morgan,

People ask me why I’m doing this. For food, I suppose. I never know what to eat in the American world of meat and dairy. I’m searching for coconuts and pineapples (although I’m slightly allergic to pineapples. On a crowded bus to a tiny peninsula in Costa Rica my lips started to tingle and I pondered the possibility of a tracheotomy and who on said bus might know how to perform one. I’ve got plenty of benadryl on my boat though…don’t worry, mom).

“I’m trying to find the conch dock,” I’ll often say. “You know, a place you can tie up your dinghy and there’s like, fried conch for cheap.” (But the Carribean and Bahamas are expensive I’ve heard. So the odds are greater I’ll have to learn to forage for my own sea food). I just like saying ‘the conch dock.’

Bluewater, I suppose, is a reason too. While it scares me more than anything it’s something I’ve always yearned to return to since a yacht delivery from NZ to Tonga in 2011. I suppose it’s there that my obsession with sailing boats truly began, but I’m only just beginning to know what I’m actually doing.

pearson ariel 26

Wherein lies my problem is that my boat is ready for this trip (almost, a few more screws and pieces of string), but the whole point is to keep going and she’ll need more work for that. I know that without constant maintenance and upkeep she will turn for the worst. Even though I’ve done nothing but make her better and stronger, I’m afraid that once I leave here and all my resources I’m not going to be able to continuing making progress to her and I’ll be forced to leave. I’m afraid I won’t be able to accept that and I’ll fall into the category of ‘live aboard’ not ‘sailor,’ stuck somewhere in Florida.

What if I never make it beyond to distant shores?

But aren’t they all distant shores? I have the Champlain Canal, Hudson River, New Jersey coast, Chesepeake Bay and more in front of me before I have to worry about that. Shit, there’s even the possibility that this all works out. That I maintain my focus. That I continue to learn.

Still, I can’t stop thinking about making her totally blue water capable. Like strong enough to cross an ocean. Nothing for miles except blue onboard my own boat. New standing rigging, strengthening her transom, ripping out and rebuilding everything that’s decaying, stripping her to bare bones, etc., etc…

Can I do it all along the way? Will other parts of the country, or other countries entirely be as friendly and helpful as this sailing community has been? Will I sail into the perfect port some thousands of miles from her to begin another stage of my little boat’s refit?

I guess I’ll find out.

The Weather Cock

I love my boat. I’m in love with this lifestyle. Tearing everything apart during the day, putting it back together every night and she’s a home again. It’ll be even better when we’re floating. Everyone thinks I’m the crazy American girl living on her boat. Lots of people stay on their boats here in the boatyard and the marina, but I’m the only one actually living aboard. I walk around saying “bounjour” to people I don’t know, and wear a little red scarf around my neck to show what a Francophile I am.

live aboard, bristol 24, boatyard

This morning I woke up to a knock on the hull from the waitress at the little cafe on site with a pack of cigarettes for me! “Yellow cigarettes for the yellow boat,” she said. We chatted on the boat for a bit and then she took me for a real tour of this one pony town. She’s originally from Seattle and we had a lot to talk about like the Pacific Northwest, our taste for dating older men, and traveling. She paid for lunch and when I tried to give her money she said “welcome to North Country.”

The tour wouldn’t be complete without a stop at the Weather Cock, the local watering hole. While there I told sea stories and basically won all the local’s over, once we got one question squared away. One of the guys asked it, after I told them my plans for the boat, but everyone was thinking it.

weather cock

“So, what are you a trust fund kid or something?”

My new friend chimed in. “She bought her boat with the tips she made waitressing.”

She filled me in on all the gossip around the marina. Like how everyone thought my crew member, Gina, and I were lesbians, and how it was just assumed I was French Canadian because of my style. Both I took as compliments.

When we got back I invited her and her boyfriend for dinner onboard one night in the yard, and definitely a sail once I’m launched. Before leaving she told me how cool she thought it was that I have the self motivation and confidence to buy my own old sailboat, fix it up and go sailing. It was nice to hear from one of my peers.

My confidence and motivation comes in waves, but today was a good day. I finally figured out the roller furler, prepped for my chainplate repair, and got my new ground tackle all set up. While doing so, my boat neighbor, Claude, came over with a shackle that he insisted I keep, “just in case.”